I think we have all at least heard of Around the World in 80 Days. It is a classic book by Jules Verne, but it has been done time and time again. The most recent re-interpretation had Jackie Chan in it, and it was an excuse to have a star-studded cameo adventure with a steampunk twist. There was an award-winning film of the book where the characters travel the world in a balloon. The original book had no air travel at all, and it was a pretty standard adventure story full of imagination that wasn’t too far-fetched.

This is different than 80 Days from Inkle, a mobile game that decides to take the Jules Verne element of pseudo-science and run with it. I would have to say that this works, but for different reasons than its original source material.

The 80 Days game is essentially a huge “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. In the game, you play Passepartout, the assistant to Phineas Fogg, and you help him go around the world in 80 days. There are over 128 cities you can visit in this game, and you might be able to do the trip in less than 80 days!

Much of the adventure is mostly text, and there is over 500,000 words of it. That is much bigger than the actual book, and larger than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. It leads to about 10,000 different choices, which means you can explore towns that you go to, and find all kinds of ways to encircle the world.

What makes it really interesting is how much text there is, and it is almost like you are choosing what kind of story you are in. I’ve never really seen anything like this in a text-adventure game. There are pictures of this world that are brief, but they use things like robotic horse-drawn carriages and mechanical porters to immerse the player into this steampunk world. By the way, you can play this game against other players, even seeing their travel plans in real-time.

Inkle’s 80 Days is quite a game, and it is no surprise that it has won several “Game of the Year” awards. It is available on iOS and Android, and find out more information about it here.