The Plant

Your daughter is in The Plant. You are going to find her.

The Plant is a kinetic-novel adaptation inspired by Bully Pulpit Games', The Plant, an award-winning single-player pen & paper role-playing experience by Jason Morningstar.  This adaptation was created with his express permission and support. In the game you explore a rundown factory in search of your missing daughter using notecards, rulebook, a recording method, and your imagination. You can view their game here.

This kinetic-novel is an adaptation of a playthrough of the game with the same title, written by Nathan Mehlhorn. Created with the goal of demonstrating what you can do with the joy of solo role-playing as well as showcasing Jason Morningstar's excellent game.

Changes have been made to the original writing for this version, but it is still quite similar. The biggest additions to this product is visuals, sounds, and a few little touches to make the experience more personal. If you would like, you can view the original writing with no edits on my website Jon Spencer Reviews. Edits in this older version were avoided to reflect a genuine blind play experience. Additionally, this provides detailed information as to how I went about the entire process.

You can experience The Plant for free on Windows, Mac, or Linux at this time.

What is a Kinetic-novel?

A kinetic-novel is somewhat similar to a visual-novel. In a visual-novel, players make choices in a way similar to choose-your-own-adventure stories in order to influence events and the narrative. Typically, these are dating sim games but they don't have to be.

Kinetic-novels are NOT that. Instead, they focus on delivering a linear narrative experience with little to no player involvement. They are basically fancy books/short stories with visual and sound elements to increase immersion. Just like a book, they can be experienced at your own pace. The Plant has exactly one player input but focuses primarily on delivering an atmospheric experience that highlights what one can do with a solo-roleplaying game in terms of creativity and as a writing exercise.

Development Notes

The Plant is created using Ren'Py, a program I have never used previously. I taught myself some programming alongside the software itself to create this experience for you. This project spent about five months in development because of this and life factors. In actuality, only about 200 real hours went into the creation of The Plant itself as a result of me learning the program, scripting, and all other necessary aspects that go into creating a project.

Despite this, there may be a few things that aren't 100% perfect in the current build but if you find something please feel free to let me know. I will strive to make any necessary improvements as needed.

Additionally, be sure to adjust your volume as needed before playing. The music is a little on the loud side by default, which causes the sound effects to be a bit quiet. If you use headphones, this is extra important!

I hope that you will fully enjoy your experience with The Plant and consider checking out the original game that inspired it. Please consider leaving a small donation if you did like The Plant as a lot of my time and energy went into its creation. In no way was I sponsored by Bully Pulpit Games or Jason Morningstar for this project, I just really like them and their products.

Special Thanks

I would like to give special thanks to Jason Morningstar and Bully Pulpit Games for the support of this project. Additionally, I would like to thank Michael Ripp for helping to edit the script and doing quality assurance testing for you guys. Thank you both very much!