Arc Symphony | |
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Developer(s) |
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Engine | Twine |
Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Linux, web browsers |
Release | May 15, 2017 |
Genre(s) | Adventure |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Arc Symphony is an adventure video game developed by Matilde Park and Penelope Evans, and released on May 15, 2017, both as a browser game and in a downloadable version for Microsoft Windows, MacOS, and Linux. The player takes the role of a formerly active user of a Usenet newsgroup for a fictional Japanese role-playing game (JRPG), also titled Arc Symphony, and reads messages from the game's characters.
As part of the game's release, fake game boxes for the JRPG, in the style of those for PlayStation JRPGs, were created and given to the developers' friends, who shared photos of it on social media with comments pretending that the JRPG was a real game; additionally, a fake fan site for the JRPG was created to further the illusion that it was real. Critics liked the game and its marketing, calling them accurate to fan communities in the 1990s.