Created in 2010 by Andy Campbell and Judi Alston - and included in the European eLiterature Collection - Nightingale’s Playground is a work of digital fiction divided into four interlinked parts: an atmospheric browser based experience; an interactive virtual book; a short e-book download; and an immersive game for PC and Mac.

The project was inspired by an old 8-bit computer game called The Sentinel – a unique and haunting chess-like strategy game devised by programmer Geoff Crammond that baffled magazine reviewers when it was originally released back in the 1980s. Hailed by some as proof that even computers like the Commodore 64 and Spectrum can achieve a sense of ‘virtual reality’, The Sentinel revolved around a tense and atmospheric one-on-one battle across a mountainous chequerboard with an unknown life-form that was slowly but surely taking over and enslaving the universe.

Using snippets of reviews and artwork from the original release of The Sentinel, Nightingale’s Playground follows the story of a teenage schoolboy whose best friend Alex – an oddball kid obsessed with pseudo-science and video games – mysteriously disappears leaving behind only a strange journal of half-finished notes and sketches.

Read the story