Hi friends, it’s Rose and I’m back with a new series from Flash Forward. It’s called Welcome to Vanguard Estates, and it’s in your feeds … now! The gist is simple: Welcome to Vanguard Estates is a choose your own path story. Each episode has a number, and a short title, and at the end of every episode you’ll be presented with a choice. All you have to do is follow the numbers, or titles, whichever works best for your brain, and you’ll be on your way.
Starting next week, you’ll also get a series of explainer episodes, where we talk to experts about all the things that inspired this story.
But for now, head to episode one, and begin your journey into the not so distant future.
I personally think that this story is best experienced in audio — we worked really hard to score and sound design this thing and have some amazing voice actors along for the ride. But if you’d rather read the story you can head here to play the story online.
You can also play through an interactive version with the audio in a browser here!
Vanguard Estates is a production of Flash Forward. The story was written by me, Rose Eveleth; edited by Ace Tilton Ratcliff and Georgia Wyatt; and produced by Ozzy Llinas Goodman. The sound design is by Mischa Stanton and music is by Ilan Blanck.
The voice actors for Welcome to Vanguard Estates are:
- Marcus Jones — Keith Houston
- Imani Jones — Shara Kirby
- Robot #1 — Ashley Kellem
- Amy — Chelsey B Coombs
- Vanguard Estates Representative — Aiya Islam
- Missy — Anjali Kunapaneni
- Robot # 2 — Brett Tubbs
- NPR Host — Sandhya Dirks
An earlier version of Vanguard Estates was originally performed live for Pop-Up Magazine.
You can also play through a web version of the story at flashforwardpod.com/vanguard, which features really cool illustrations by Mattie Lubchansky.
For a complete transcript of the entire series, click here (PDF).
