Rek Bell

Thousand Rooms is a visual novel collaboration with devine, following the behaviours of four characters and a room. The project was finished in April 2017.

We have written a book in the style of Borges for children, in which the reader follows a bat, a cat, an owl and a fox who try and make sense of a simple system.

Languages

The book is available in 18 languages (all are available for download on purchase), and can be used as a tool for study. The translations were done on a volunteer basis. If you'd like to contribute a translation, or to make corrections to any text, please contact me at rek ౷ kokorobot · ca.

Available in English, French, Japanese, Russian, German, Hungarian, Polish, Italian, Dutch, Greek, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Serbian(latin alphabet), Solresol and Catalan.

Volunteer credit:

arabic version

Production story

We started thinking about this project on a trip to Montreal in 2017. pino was in Mexico at the time, and we had flown home to update our passports. We went out with friends in bars and asked them what they would do if they woke up in a blank room, with no memory of anything. They can't leave the room, and all they've got is a desk, a pencil and a single sheet of paper. We learned some of friends had mild psychopathic traits—I kid I kid, it was all in good fun.

We returned to Mexico with a few more ideas, and we developed the project further during our crossing from La Paz, Mexico to the Marqueses in French Polynesia (a 28 day trip). We decided to make a book. We didn't have a ton of power a board, so making a game didn't make sense, but a book seemed like a good compromise.

We published the project while in the Rangiroa atoll (a beautiful place). Back then the project was made in Ruby, but in 2022 we re-wrote the project in ANSI C. The book is now available as both a PDF and as an ePUB