Les Misérables, The Divine Comedy, Hesiod’s Theogeny, A Tale of Two Cities, The Count of Monte Cristo… what do all these classical novels have in common? Aside from the fact that they are all considered to be great works of literary past, they are also all becoming indie point and click adventure games courtesy of Enter the Story.

Enter the Story is a project started by Chris Tolworthy, a classic literature fan who also happens to be quite keen on the old Zak McKraken games (one of the better, and lesser known adventure classics in the world). As he was a huge fan of both reading and point and click adventure games it only made sense to turn all of the world’s greatest novels into point and click adventure titles. In fact, here is his exact game manifesto (written in 1997):

“I will turn the world’s biggest ideas and the world’s greatest stories, into the world’s biggest adventure game with a new story every 6 months (long term goal every 2 months), I’ll stay commercially independent so no compromise on serious topics and plenty of stupid stuff as well! The game will always be cheap. I won’t worry about polish or avoiding mistakes* — that will all come with time. I’ll be true to this long term vision even if everyone thinks I’m mad!”

- Chris Tolworthy

*don’t worry I WILL fix any bugs!

Of course, being that that was back in 1997, today’s current classic adventure titles have actually matured quite a bit from what they were initially (playable databases).

Today Chris has since produced four games with the fifth being worked on as I write this. Les Misérables, The Divine Comedy, Hesiod’s Theogeny, A Tale of Two Cities are all available right now, with the first in the series Les Misérables being available for free. If you’re interested beyond the first title, you can buy the entire current set for $14.99 or each individual title  for a scant $7.99.

What’s most interesting about this project, however, isn’t the fact that Chris has decided to undertake such a huge project by himself, instead it’s the fact that he is really just making all of these games into one huge game. Somehow he is figuring out a way to connect the stories of each of these books. Now, I haven’t read any of these aside from The Count of Monte Cristo (the one that isn’t out yet) so I can’t comment on the literary accuracy of the titles yet. That said, however, I’m not quite sure how The Count of Monte Cristo could be connected to any of these other stories. It’s an intriguing concept that’s definitely peaked my interest.

Anyway, if you’re at all interested in point and click adventure games and classical literature then you’ll probably be interested in what this project has to offer. As stated above Les Misérables is completely free to download right now, so you’ve got nothing to lose by trying it out.

[Buy/Try]

Trailer