About

Episode is an interactive story mobile story platform developed by Pocket Gems in which players are offered to create and complete visual stories, each one tailored by choices made through the playthrough. In 2018, the app gained popularity as a remake tool for popular Vine videos. In early 2019, parodies of the choice screens from the game gained popularity online.

History

On February 20th, 2014, American game developer Pocket Gems released Episode^[1], a mobile story platform which allowed to create and play through non-linear visual stories, making choices for the characters along the way.

Along with original stories created by the developer, the game allowed users to write their own narratives, as well as featured licensed stories based on popular TV shows and lives of celebrities such as actress Demi Lovato^[2] and Vine personalities the Dolan Twins^[3].

Online Presence

Instagram Sketch Accounts

Through 2018, several notable accounts dedicated to sketches and edits created with the Episode app launhced on Instagram. On March 18, 2018, epi.shan^[4] Instagram account was created, posting remakes of popular Vines made with Episode. The account gained 78,300 followers in ten months with over 290 sketches posted.

Another popular account, elxsha.edits^[5], gained over 11,800 followers since its launch on May 29th, 2018.

On July 23rd, 2018, YouTube user LKtv posted a compilation of the Episode sketches.

Choice Screen Parodies

In 2019, the game gained notoriety due to its mobile ads, edited versions of which were circulated in fringe subreddits and on Instagram.

On January 27th, 2018, Twitter^[6] user @slackfluffy posted an unedited mobile ad for another game, Mafia City, in which a handcuffed convict was presented with a choice between killing and seducing a person in order to protect his boss. The post gained over 5,100 retweets in one year.

On January 5th, 2019, Twitter^[7] user @nanadzl_ posted an edited mobile ad for Episode in which a man was presented with a choice of urinating in his wife's mouth or divorcing her. The tweet gained over 60 retweets in 24 days. The original author of the edit is currently unknown. Within the next 24 hours, the image was posted in /r/Cumtown^[8] and /r/comedyheaven^[9] subreddits, where it gained over 200 and 17,900 upvotes in 24 days, respectively.

Through January 2019, more parodies of the choice screens from the game were posted on Instagram and Reddit, including /r/Lithuaniakittens^[10] and /r/thememeunderground^[11] subreddits.

External References