In the 80’s and 90’s chose your own adventure books became a cultural phenomenon with over 250 million copies sold. As technology evolved, the idea of actively shaping a story rather than just consuming it started to weave its way into narrative and adventure based games. Edmonton based startup, Story City, takes this concept to a whole new level with their interactive story platform that allows users to live out immersive adventures in their own cities.

Founder Emily Craven came up with the idea for Story City from a desire to be part of a story rather than just reading it or watching it. Her background in writing and publishing combined with a fascination with geo caching, chose your own adventure books, and the burgeoning QR code technology, came together to create the first interactive experience for a festival while living in Adelaide Australia. “We got started with zip tying QR codes to poles and the it actually went really poorly because we kept losing posters to vandals. Only about 10 people total finished the experience.”

Despite the setback, municipalities started reaching out interested in using the concept to activate public spaces and were interested in working together. Together they upskilled creators and created experiences that helped the cities to get more visitors and activate underused areas. From there Story City began to grow to where they now consistently send 30,000+ users through city centres where they run their projects.

When Emily moved to Canada she found that Edmonton was the perfect place to transition what started as an arts project to a full fledged startup, “There is a lot more technical and game developer talent and it’s closer to larger populations and investor markets.” Together with co-founder Brett Ludwig, they built out a new more scalable version of the platform that allows anyone to build and sell games, which allows for stories to be set up in any city.

Over the summer Story City partnered with the City of Edmonton Downtown Vibrancy Fund and Capital City Pilots and The City of Calgary Downtown Strategy team to upskill 40 – 70 creators in each location on how to create interactive digital games and stories and public space. From there 20 creators in Edmonton and 15 in Calgary were selected to create stories for the platform.  Many stories are now live in both cities and include time travel, saving a hockey player from being murdered, stopping a mad scientist and more. These experiences are available for free on the Story City app and take you on an adventure through the city’s downtowns.

When asked what’s next for Story City Emily said “We are building. We landed our first US contract for a festival in September. We also received CMF prototype funding which has allowed us to build out a suite of universal stories that are meant to be placed in any city.” The agile team of 7 hopes to receive more CMF funding to launch this set of stories in the next 12 months so that cities across the world can use these stories even if they haven’t worked with them in the same capacity as Calgary or Edmonton.

Interested in building your own story? The good news is that it takes no coding skills to be able to use the platform. “If you can upload a video or audio and drop a pin on a map, you can build with our tools. Organizations can also get organizational licences to brand stories and see their analytics.”

Emily noted that the biggest win from the projects carried out across the province have been “very clear proof that there are very talented creators in our backyard and we don’t need to bring in talent from outside to build really creative stories.”

Learn more about Story City here and check out some of their FREE aventures in Calgary or Edmonton!