Welcome to File Format Fling

Where Am I?

This is the GitHub repository for the game "File Format Fling". Very possibly the world's first file format dating simulation game. Part interactive novel and part dating simulation game you will be whisked away to lands of binary sunsets, feverish dreams and charming picnics. Will you, a busy digital preservation practitioner, finally make time for yourself over your job or will you succumb to the workload and ultimately choose to ignore love?

Will it teach you everything you ever need to know about formats? Definitely not! Does it even try to be educational? A bit! What is the point then? Well it is fun (we hope)!

You can play the game here to find out more!

Please do note that the game is entirely fictional. No rights may be derived for this game. No people or file formats have been harmed during the creation of this game. This game can be played at your own risk.

How Do I Play?

File Format Fling should be quite intuitive. It is a text based choose your own adventure style game, so simply click on the buttons to explore the world that we have created.

It is designed as a single person game but possibly more fun with a few of you clustered around a computer together.

How did you come up with this idea?

The concept for the game was the result of a workshop, facilitated by the creators of this game. The workshop was designed to teach people coding skills whilst building digital games. Participants were invited to create a digital preservation themed game in small groups and were so absorbed by the process that the facilitators had time to create the start of a game themselves! Staying in touch after the workshop (as well as even more people getting involved in the project) we finally created the game in time for World Digital Preservation Day 2024!

How was it made?

The game was made using the interactive storytelling tool twine, the team also wrote code in JavaScript and CSS to create the design, finish and some of the game mechanics. The resulting output is an html file hosted on GitHub pages.

Who made it?

This game was created by a truly international team across the Netherlands and UK after a workshop collaboration at iPres.