Anthrovian
Full-Stack Developer
About the Project
Anthrovian is a platform for interactive African folklore — myths played as branching adventures rather than read as static stories. The flagship title, 'Sundiata's Rise: Awaken the Lion Within', adapts the Epic of Sundiata across 11 scenes and 6 endings, with choices scored against three philosophical variables from Mande thought: Badenya, Fadenya, and Nyama. It runs on a 'Living Canon' model — stories are co-authored with African storytellers and cultural custodians, with AI used to scale and branch the narrative rather than to author it. Built mobile-first as a PWA with ElevenLabs voice acting, ambient soundscapes, and a WhatsApp play surface alongside the web app.
Key Highlights
- Designed the branching narrative engine: 11 scenes, 6 endings, scored against three Mande philosophical variables rather than a single linear score
- Built anonymous-first play — a device token from localStorage starts a playthrough with no signup, with email as an optional cross-device resume key added later
- Stored full game state as schema-agnostic JSON so saves survive story revisions and save-format bumps instead of breaking mid-playthrough
- Integrated ElevenLabs voice synthesis and ambient soundscapes, with a shareable ending card generated for social distribution
- Extended play to WhatsApp with its own session model, meeting the target audience on the channel they already use
Technical Challenges
The save format was the decision that mattered. Narrative content changes constantly during production — scenes get rewritten, choices renumbered — and a normalized save schema means every one of those edits risks invalidating playthroughs already in progress. Storing the whole game state as opaque JSON gave up queryability in exchange for saves that survive story edits, which is the right trade when the story is the thing still moving. The other constraint was cultural rather than technical: AI branches the narrative but never authors it, so the pipeline had to keep human-written canon and generated variation clearly separated.