The Royal Shakespeare Firm is launching its first ever online game

Seem like the harmless flower however be the serpent below it within the Royal Shakespeare Firm’s first ever online game.

Introduced on Wednesday, the British theatre firm has teamed up with New York indie recreation studio iNK Tales (Revolution: Black Friday) to create Lili, a thriller noir recreation targeted on the damned spot-laden Woman Macbeth.

Set in trendy Iran, the interactive story-based recreation makes use of cinematic footage with point-and-click capabilities. Lili stars French-Iranian Holy Spider actor Zar Amir as Woman Macbeth, known as “Lili” (Amir’s personal Alambic Manufacturing co-produced the sport). Gamers make choices for the Scottish play’s villainous queen, amid a setting of authoritarian rule and gender oppression in Iran. As for the remainder of Macbeth‘s characters, all we all know thus far is the all-important witches are realised as hackers.

Lili is presently in growth, with a 2025 launch date and platforms to be introduced.

Zar Amir in “Lili.”
Credit score: Ellie Smith

“It pushes the boundaries of storytelling, marking an inflection level within the depth of expression inside industrial video video games and increasing the artistic imaginative and prescient of the RSC into new, interactive territory,” Vassiliki Khonsari, co-founder of iNK Tales, mentioned in an announcement.

“A online game based mostly on Shakespeare’s Macbeth is an exhilarating endeavour that transforms one in all literature’s darkest and most compelling tales — of gender, ambition, destiny, energy, and morality into an immersive, interactive expertise.”

It is not the primary recreation based mostly on Shakespeare’s work however it’s the first direct from the Royal Shakespeare Firm — an organisation which has staged Macbeth many, many instances. To honour Shakespeare’s phrases, iNK Tales labored with main Oxford Shakespeare tutorial, RSC board member, and creator Emma Smith on the textual content adaptation.

Lengthy the stuff of narrative legend, Shakespeare’s work has most lately discovered a crossover with cinema and gaming by way of the lauded Grand Theft Hamlet, a documentary movie through which filmmakers Pinny Grylls, Sam Crane, and Mark Oosterveen staged a manufacturing of the Shakespearean tragedy inside the recreation Grand Theft Auto On-line.

“As a storytelling medium, gaming right now is what theatre has at all times been; an opportunity to discover worlds, inhabit story, and expertise one thing directly private and communal,” mentioned Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey, RSC co-artistic administrators, in an announcement. “Centring this tense thriller round Woman Macbeth reasonably than her husband is radical and transformative. It turns the play’s questions round gender, id and energy inside out.”