Hi, I’m Michael.
I’ve spent most of my career making games, from AAA to mobile. Now I’m going indie with a project of my own called Canovaccio, which I think the interactive-fiction community might find interesting and hopefully entertaining.
Canovaccio is a scene-performance sandbox with some game elements. You cast characters, give them a situation, and direct the scene. The characters improvise the dialogue in their own voices and play off one another.
You can begin with a simple scenario or provide more structure through a story or script. The app beaks that material into acts, scenes, and roles. The idea I’m exploring is AI as the performer, not the author, with the player as director. Characters can also develop memories through rehearsal that influence later performances.
I’m looking for approximately 5 to 10 testers from the interactive-fiction community who would be willing to use it over the next few weeks and provide candid feedback. I’m especially interested in:
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Whether the directing model is understandable without explanation
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Whether character voices and behavior remain distinct
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Whether it feels meaningfully different from an open-ended chatbot
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Where the first-session experience becomes confusing or frustrating
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Whether it suggests interesting possibilities for interactive narrative
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Where you think the app could go from here and what would make it useful or interesting to this community
The Closed Beta is free, and the app runs in a web browser. It is currently available to testers aged 18 or older in the United States.
This is not an NSFW app. Its content level is configurable, ranging approximately from PG-13 to R.
Generative AI is central to the improvised dialogue, so this beta will not be a good fit for everyone. Canovaccio also includes optional generated portraits and voice features. Nothing testers create is used to train AI models.
If this sounds interesting, you can learn more and request an invitation at canovaccio.com. You can also reply here or send me a private message.
Thank you,
Michael P. Riccio
Founder, Poison Arrow Frog Studios