Labeled Western propaganda by a government-run newspaper in Iran, but heralded for its innovative and immersive approach to documentary storytelling by media outlets worldwide, Ink Stories’ verite game 1979 Revolution: Black Friday has finally been released for the public to decide if all that hype has been justified. Aiming to place its audience on the gritty streets of Iran in the late 1970’s, as revolution rips through the country, you’ll be tasked with taking control of Reza, an aspiring photojournalist and make choices to decide how the game’s narrative plays out.

With the ever-increasing improvement and availability of technology giving storytellers a platform to experiment in delivery methods for their plot, 1979 Revolution: Black Friday is just one of a number of recent projects looking to push the boundaries of the narrative experience. Though gamification in the documentary field is growing in popularity in recent years, it still feels very much like a developing area and Ink Stories’ game looks to blurs the lines between game and documentary even further with a look and feel that is more akin to the world of Grand Theft Auto (the studios Creative director Navid Khonsari used to work on the Rockstar Games series) than you would usually expect to find in a project looking to provide a historically accurate experience.

Speaking at iDocs 2016, Vassiliki Khonsari (Filmmaker, Visual Anthropologist & Co-Founder of Ink Studios) touched upon the importance of their interactive documentary providing a “cinematic experience”, whilst also “passively educating an audience” and it certainly appears that this is what they have achieved with 1979 Revolution: Black Friday. With their approach feeling like it would appeal to the socially-conscious gamer and film audiences looking for a more engaging and participatory way to consume stories, this could well be the project that brings the world of interactive documentary to a larger, more mainstream audience.

1979 Revolution: Black Friday is available to buy on Steam and GOG.com