Having spent many years in that industry, I always find it quite nice to see computer games people appropriating the Voynich Manuscript. But as games get more visually “realistic” (or, rather, foolishly detailed), their reliance on conceptual props ever diminishes: so I wondered whether Charles Cecil‘s Broken Sword IIIwhich comes over a bit like a traditional text adventure that just happens to be rendered in 3d – would be the last such game.

Yet some are still thinking about Voynich-themed games. Here’s some concept art from Swedish (but Australia-based) games artist Micael Nyberg called “Wilfrid Voynich & The Grand Multiplier” – click on the image to see a decent resolution scan.

In these days of commercial mega-games corporations and marketing-driven games, will this ever see the light of day? Probably not. But do I like it? Yes! 🙂

Perhaps because the Voynich hacker who gets killed at the start of Charles Cecil’s “Broken Sword 3” was modelled (as well as texture mapped) on me, I have a certain amount of empathy with people who are so moved by the VMs that they weave it into their own stories. Here are a few links: as with all things, make of them what you will…

Voynich – Synopsis — this plays with the idea of Voynich obsession, and has the “tormented young mathematician” swap roles with his “Javanese cult-deprogrammer”. The VMs takes a supporting role here: it’s more of a road-story about the maths kid and the therapist.

Les Plantes (in French) — this is a teaser for a longer Voynich story. An architect gets given a copy of “Le Code Voynich” (the French near-facsimile edition of the VMs), tries automatic writing, and to his surprise (even though he dabbled with ouija boards when younger) gets given precise directions to the page upon which he should meditate in order to crack its code (just so you know, it’s f16v – the page with the four leather-red flowers). He empties his mind, follows the instructions, starts to fall into a kind of unconsciousness, and… [to be continued]. If you like it, tell the author, and he might finish it! 😉

Gabriel Knight fan fiction by David de Sola — This is more fan fiction about Sierra’s Gabriel Knight than about the VMs, but what the hey. At least this guy knows about the Beinecke (even if he does spin off into Dracula, AIDS and medical malpractics). Interestingly, he gives a couple of reaaaaally old VMs web pages as his source: but both are so ancient they aren’t even in the Wayback Machine. Oh well! 😉

Some Wraeththu fan fiction has the VMs as a key object, that gets decoded only when other related manuscripts are found. From “Strange figures of women taking a bath“, the author has at least looked at the VMs’ pictures (which is good). Though I’m not too sure about the rest…