Du Vien Trang is a Freelance Web Designer / Developer based in Scotland. This is his portfolio, blog and his digital playground.

The alternate-reality game genre has a new friend, and a new format, thanks to Penguin Books, the famous British publishing house.

On Tuesday, Penguin and startup Six to Start launched their new ARG, We Tell Stories, a new-style game that its creators say is a hybrid of traditional story-telling, Web 2.0-style mashups, interactive games and classic novels.

We Tell Stories is actually a seven-part adventure, said Jeremy Ettinghausen, the digital publisher for Penguin. It will begin with six weekly installments, each of which is based on a classic novel--and written by a different Penguin author--and which tasks participants with finding their way through the story using tools developed for the game.

News.com

Interesting concept to use a Web 2.0-style mashups to draw attention to reading online. I did have a quick go at it and to be honest i got a little bored and annoyed because they are displayed in short paragraphs and i had to click through the pages more times than concentrating on the story itself.

Even so, it gave me quite a good idea. Perhaps if it they extended it to add a social network where each user takes on a character in a book and is able to view the location of the other characters (and communicate with each other too). Something comes to mind, okay not quite a book but if you have ever seen the excellent film Mystery Train, you'll get the idea... or maybe not?

Try out the game: We Tell Stories