Versu

Versu
Authoring system
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Link	Home page
Developers	Emily Short, Richard Evans
Format
Interaction style	Choice
System
System details
Latest version
Status	Unavailable
Uses interpreter
Multimedia support
License
Notes
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Versu (originally named Little Text People) is a conversational IF engine developed by Emily Short and Richard Evans.

The Little Text People studio was acquired by Linden Labs (of Second Life fame) in early 2012. Development continued for the next two years; in this period, Linden released an iOS app called "Versu" which included short works by Emily Short and Dietrich Squinkifer (writing as Deirdra Kiai).

In early 2014, Linden cancelled the Versu project. A larger Emily Short work titled Blood & Laurels was briefly released on Feb 25th, apparently by mistake, and then withdrawn. After further negotiations, it was released officially though not under Linden branding, and was available for iPad on the iOS app store.

According to a 2021 blog post by Aaron Reed, "Versu games are no longer playable, except on aging iPads that have never installed software updates since 2015 and have a certain version of the Versu software."

Links

• Versu website.
• A Family Supper (portal) - 2013's work at 50 Years of Text Games, an example of a Versu work.

Design Articles

• Versu: Content Structure by Emily Short. February 22, 2013.
• Versu: Conversation Implementation by Emily Short. February 26, 2013.
• The AI Architecture of Versu by Richard Prideaux Evans and Emily Short.
• Computer Models of Constitutive Social Practice by Richard Prideaux Evans.
• Praxis: A logic-based DSL for modeling social practices by Richard Evans. Slide show.
• Prompter: A Domain-Specific Language for Versu by Graham Nelson.