The British Library Simulator is a mini game built using the Bitsy game engine, where you can wander around a pixelated (and much smaller) version of the British Library building in St Pancras. Bitsy is known for its compact format and limited colour-palette - you can often recognise your avatar and the items you can interact with by the fact they use a different colour from the background.

The British Library Simulator Bitsy game

Use the arrow keys on your keyboard (or the WASD buttons) to move around the rooms and interact with other characters and objects you meet on the way - you might discover something new about the building and the digital projects the Library is working on!

Bitsy works best in the Chrome browser and if you’re playing on your smartphone, use a sliding movement to move your avatar and tap on the text box to progress with the dialogues.

Most importantly: have fun!

The British Library, together with the other five UK Legal Deposit Libraries, has been collecting examples of complex digital publications, including works made with Bitsy, as part of the Emerging Formats Project. This collection area is continuously expanding, as we include new examples of digital media and interactive storytelling. The formats and tools used to create these publications are varied, and allow for innovative and often immersive solutions that could only be delivered via a digital medium. You can read more about freely-available tools to write interactive fiction here.

This post is by Giulia Carla Rossi, Curator of Digital Publications (@giugimonogatari).