Can a poem be adapted into a video game? Here’s what I learned from trying

Video game adaptations of novels and short fiction have helped them to meet new audiences. The Witcher, for example, which now spans three games and a Netflix series, began life as a series of fantasy stories by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.

Frank Herbert’s novel Dune (1965) has been adapted into more video games than movies. The same is true of Terry Pratchett’s popular Discworld series (1983-2015), while Harlan Ellison’s short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1967) was turned into a point-and-click adventure game in 1995 under supervision from Ellison himself.

Shakespeare’s work has been adapted into video games many times, most notably in Elsinore (2019), and has also been the subject of multiple game-making contests.

But what of poetry? There’s a long history of poetry crossing over with puzzles and games, so the form should surely be brought into the age of visual interactive media too.

Pattern Poetry: Guide to an Unknown Literature by Dick Higgins (1987), for example, documents examples of chessboard, labyrinth and riddle poems from centuries past. There’s also a form Higgins calls “leonine verse”, which features branching paths for the reader to follow in a “choose your own adventure” style.

The mid 20th century, meanwhile, saw a variety of poets and artists experimenting with new “ludic” forms of poems – poems which either evoked games and gaming or invited physical interaction. La Rose et le Chien: Poème Perpétuel (A Rose and the Dog: Perpetual Poem, 1958) by Tristan Tzara and Pablo Picasso, for example, is a volvelle (a paper machine with rotating discs), which can be adjusted to produce variants on the same poem.

Even more expansively, Cent Mille Milliards de Poems (Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, 1961) by Raymond Queneau, enables readers to build their own sonnets from 140 different mixable lines. A digital version can be played online.

None of these poetry games, though, are adaptations. Perhaps the most longstanding case of existing poetry being used as the basis for a game is Hyakunin Isshu Karuta, a competitive Japanese card game in which players match the different parts of poems from the Hyakunin Isshu haiku anthology. The actions of the players here embody the principle of “two worlds in one breath”, which some have argued is central to haiku.

But with the plethora of digital game-making tools now available to poets, as well as the enduring literary penchant for modernising classical texts – see Alice Oswald’s Memorial (2011), or Simon Armitage’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2000) – it’s likely that we’ll begin to see more efforts to convert classical poems into video games.

Scenes from Dante’s Inferno (2010).

One example is Dante’s Inferno (2010) by Visceral Games. The action game re-imagines Dante’s circles of hell as battle arenas, honouring some of the poem’s more memorable imagery, such as “the infernal hurricane that never rests”. Inevitably, though, in the case of violent action games, it’s the narrative arc of the story which is the focus.

On the more experimental end, Gotta Eat the Plums! with William Carlos Williams by Calum Rodger remakes Williams’ poem This Is Just To Say (1934) as a miniature role playing game for the Game Boy. The original poem can be interpreted as concerned with the everyday perversity of human desires, about which we are simultaneously apologetic and boastful (plums, like all juicy fruit, being symbolically linked to forbidden knowledge and sex).

But Rodger adds subtle commentary to this symbolism. He gives the player the option to refrain from eating the plums three times, using up their willpower gauge until they are eventually compelled to consume them.

Adapting a poem into a game

For my part, I have tried to adapt part of Arthur Rimbaud’s Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell, 1873) into a custom level for Broforce (2014) by FreeLives, a run-and-gun pastiche of 1980s action movies.

Elsinore (2019) is the most famous adaptation of Shakespeare’s work.

This attempt uses a flaming tropical jungle, replete with machine guns and exploding barrels, as a metaphysical representation of Rimbaud’s psychological turmoil, with the player battling toward self-understanding. It ran aground, however, due to the difficulty of following the poem alongside the colourful action sequences.

Video game adaptations of poems are not impossible. They do, however, need to leave space for readers to engage with the specific effects of language.

Experimenting further, I found the video game genres which admit the presence of poetry most readily are those which require careful calibration and thoughtful probing from the player. For example, puzzle games, story-rich role playing games, games of exploration and visual novels. Where the two mediums can be integrated, there is great potential for a doubling up of their powers – video games’ ability to draw us into alternative worlds and poetry’s propensity to speak lasting truths.