How to Win

How to Win is an online adventure game where the story is controlled by player’s suggestions and votes. Whatever you decide, that’s what happens next. Created by multi-award winning UK theatre company Hidden Track, and commissioned by Harrogate Theatre as one of Manchester HOME’s HOMEMakers commissions, How to Win tries to capture the frenetic energy of a live performance within an adventure game where the ideas of a few can affect the story for everyone. New chapters are being made and released throughout Summer 2020. Created in Unity, and designed to be played in-browser, players make a series of moral and dialogue choices within each chapter, before being presented a larger question at the end of each chapter, asking what should happen next in the story. Players are then invited to send in their own suggestions for the next chapter via an online form, and a selection of those suggestions are put to a live public vote. The winning selection then becomes the main subject of the next chapter to be released, while alternative suggestions that did not win the vote still feature in the game, but in a smaller way. The game plays largely like a visual novel, with occasional extra gameplay elements and minigames taking inspiration from various genres including clicker games, tycoon games, and RPGs.

Hello. Welcome to our game. In this game, you decide the rules. And before we start any game, we need to know How to Win. Maybe we win by Making the Most Money? Maybe we win if we Slay the Dragon? Or maybe it’s by doing something we haven’t even thought of yet. Let’s decide together. ‘How to Win’ is a new episodic online game made in collaboration with you, the player. Each new episode will be created in response to your suggestions which are voted for by the public. Give us your ideas, vote on your favourites, shape or derail the future of our story. Can we find a way that everyone can win?