An Interactive Comic by Jason Shiga
Your death was a tragedy... your afterlife is a mystery. Unravel the secrets of death with the help of Xochitl, your guide. Can you find your way through the doors of the great library of the Beyond?
The Beyond is not an ordinary comic. You make the choices that determine how the story unfolds. The Beyond splits off into hundreds of different adventures.
(An iPhone/iPad edition is planned! In the future.)
The Game
The Beyond flows in all directions; it is built on Scott McCloud’s principle of the infinite canvas.
The orange outline always shows you the next panel. Simply tap to move forwards — whether that’s left, right, up, or down. (You can also see the previous panel. The rest of the story is dimmed out, so it’s less distracting.)
Whenever the path splits, you’ll see two orange outlines. (Or three, or more!) Choose your path and tap your decision! The story will follow the path you choose.
Of course, you can scroll around the entire story map if you want, and even zoom in and out. The browse button lets you view the story as a whole, without highlights or outlines. While browsing, you can tap any panel to jump into the story and follow the thread from that point.
The Beyond has many secrets, and you will not discover them all the first time you enter. Don’t be afraid to start over, backtrack, or try different approaches. The more you learn, the more you will understand.
The Creators
Jason Shiga graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in pure mathematics. He is the author of more than twenty comic books and the inventor of three board games, two card tricks, the greedy mug, the bus clock, and Meanwhile. He has won 2 Eisner awards, 2 Ignatz awards, and his work has been featured as an official selection for the Comics Festival in Angouleme. His puzzles and mazes have appeared in McSweeney’s and Nick Magazine. He lives in Oakland, California.
Andrew Plotkin is the author of many well-known works of interactive fiction. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where he is hard at work researching both classic forms of digital interactivity (like text adventures) and new forms (like The Beyond).
Together they have brought The Beyond to life in digital form.
The Book
The Beyond is book #2 in Jason Shiga’s Adventuregame Comics series. Part story, part maze, part game, The Beyond was inspired by the romance of literature, the game-books of the 1980s, and death.
