778 – Discworld (1995 video game)

Discworld is a 1995 point-and-click adventure game developed by Teeny Weeny Games and Perfect 10 Productions for MS-DOS, Macintosh, and the Sony PlayStation. A Sega Saturn version was released the following year. The game stars Rincewind the Wizard (voiced by Eric Idle) and is set on Terry Pratchett‘s Discworld. The plot is based roughly around the events in the book Guards! Guards!, but also borrows elements from other Discworld novels. It involves Rincewind attempting to stop a dragon terrorising the inhabitants of Ankh-Morpork.

The game was developed because the designer Gregg Barnett wanted a large adventure for CD-based systems. A licence was difficult to obtain; Pratchett was reluctant to grant one as he wanted a Discworld game to be developed by a company with a reputation and who cared about the property. An original story was created due to Barnett having difficulty basing games on one book. Discworld was praised for its humour, voice-acting and graphics, though some criticised its gameplay and difficult puzzles. Discworld was followed by a sequel, Discworld II: Missing Presumed…!?, in 1996. (wiki)

Ankh-Morpork

Ankh-Morpork lies on the River Ankh (the most polluted waterway on the Discworld and reputedly solid enough to walk on), where the fertile loam of the Sto Plains (similar to Western Europe) meets the Circle Sea (the Discworld’s version of the Mediterranean). This, naturally, puts it in an excellent trading position. Lying approximately equidistant from the cold Hub and tropical Rim, Ankh-Morpork is in the Discworld’s equivalent of the temperate zone. The name “Ankh-Morpork” refers to both the city itself, a walled city about five miles (8 km) across, and the surrounding suburbs and farms of its fiefdom. The central city divides more or less into the more affluent Ankh and the poorer Morpork which includes the slum-like “Shades”, which are separated by the River Ankh. Ankh-Morpork is built on black loam, broadly, but is mostly built on itself; pragmatic citizens simply built on top of the existing buildings when the sediment grew too high as the river flooded, rather than excavate them out. There are many unknown basements, including an entire “cave network” below Ankh-Morpork made up of old streets and abandoned sewers (it has been continuously stated that anyone with a pickaxe and a good sense of direction could reach anywhere in Ankh-Morpork by knocking walls down in a straight line, though in Thud! it is added that they would also need to breathe mud). Recently, the underground regions have been extended by the city’s dwarf population to get around unimpeded. It has recently been made municipal property. Ankh-Morpork is also the city with the most dwarfs on the whole disc outside of Überwald, largely considered the dwarfen homeland, with over 50,000 dwarfs living there.  (wiki)

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Terry Pratchett – Back in Black BBC Documentary 2017 (youtube)

imdb

714 – Westworld – season 2 (2018)

timespace coordinates: 2022 – 2052 (unknown location/planet?)

https://discoverwestworld.com/#

258 – Westworld (TV Series 2016– )

678 – Blood Tea and Red String (2006)

Blood Tea and Red String is a stop-motion-animated feature film, directed by Christiane Cegavske. It was released on February 2, 2006 after a production time of 13 years, having been filmed in various places in the West Coast and in two studios. The musical score was composed and performed by Mark Growden. Cegavske says in the audio commentary to the DVD for this film that it is to be the first in a trilogy.

“A handmade stop-motion fairy tale for adults that tells the tale of the struggle between the aristocratic White Mice and the rustic Oak Dwellers over the doll of their heart’s desire.” imdb

677 – My Winnipeg (2007)

timespace coordinates: 20th century Snowy, Sleep-Walking Winnipeg

My Winnipeg is a 2007 film directed and written by Guy Maddin with dialogue by George Toles. Described by Maddin as a “docu-fantasia,” that melds “personal history, civic tragedy, and mystical hypothesizing,” the film is a surrealist mockumentary about Winnipeg, Maddin’s home town. A New York Times article described the film’s unconventional take on the documentary style by noting that it “skates along an icy edge between dreams and lucidity, fact and fiction, cinema and psychotherapy.”

Maddin also released a book titled My Winnipeg (Coach House Books, 2009). Maddin’s book contains the film’s narration as a main text surrounded by annotations, including outtakes, marginal notes and digressions, production stills, family photos, and miscellaneous material. The book contains a “Winnipeg Map” by artist Marcel Dzama featuring such fictional attractions as “The Giant Squid of the Red [River],” various poster designs for the film, and short articles about working with Maddin by Andy Smetanka, Darcy Fehr, and Caelum Vatnsdal. Maddin also includes an angry e-mail from an ex-girlfriend, collages and notebooks pages, and an X-ray of the dog Spanky from the film. The book also includes an interview with Maddin’s mother Herdis, conducted by Ann Savage, and an interview with Maddin conducted by Michael Ondaatje. Maddin’s publisher offers the book with or without a DVD of the film, distributed by Seville Pictures.

imdb

0553 – Warcraft (2016)

coordinates: Draenor // Azeroth

Warcraft (alternatively known as Warcraft: The Beginning) is a 2016 American action fantasy film directed by Duncan Jones and written by Charles Leavitt and Jones. It is based on the video game series of the same name. The film stars Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Ben Schnetzer, Robert Kazinsky, Clancy Brown and Daniel Wu. The film portrays the initial encounters between the humans and the orcs and takes place in a variety of locations established in the video game series.

Duncan Jones said that the Warcraft universe is very “High Fantasy” and planned to make it feel more grounded in reality though at the same time keep the look and feel of the games in the film. Chris Metzen, the lead story writer at Blizzard Entertainment and the voice of many key characters in the Warcraft series, is also in charge of the story of the film.

imdb   //   Sequel

548 – The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (2014 video game)

spacetime coordinates: 1970s Red Creek Valley

Experience, in non/linear fashion, a story that combines the pleasures of pulp, private eye, and horror fiction, all of it inspired by writers such as Raymond Chandler, Algernon Blackwood, Stefan Grabinski, and H. P. Lovecraft.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a 2014 horror adventure video game developed and published by The Astronauts for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a first-person story-driven mystery game that focuses entirely on exploration and discovery. Inspired by the weird fiction (and other tales of the macabre) from the early twentieth century, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter aims to significantly evolve immersive storytelling in games. While it features a private detective and quite a few mental challenges, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is not an especially puzzle-ridden game. Our focus is on atmosphere, mood, and the essential humanity of our characters.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM): OS: Windows 64-bit // Processor: Intel Core2 Duo or equivalent AMD // Memory: 6 GB RAM // Graphics: DirectX11 compliant card with 1GB of VRAM // DirectX: Version 11 // Storage: 9 GB available space // Sound Card: DirectX9c compliant

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Review

 http://store.steampowered.com/app/258520/The_Vanishing_of_Ethan_Carter/

536 – Simon Stålenhag

Simon Stålenhag is an artist and designer specialising in futuristic artwork focused on stereotypical Swedish countryside environments. The settings of his work have been adapted into a range of art books and a tabletop game. (wiki)

http://www.simonstalenhag.se/index.html