Emily Is Away <3 is dragging the chat-adventure series into 2008

Facebook as we know it is on its way out as the company eyes a so-called pivot to privacy, but its legacy lives on. Developer Kyle Seeley — creator of AIM-based visual novels Emily is Away and Emily is Away Too — is working on a new game that aims to recapture the spirit of Facebook in its heyday. Called Emily is Away <3, Seeley’s latest game will let players create a “Facenook” account, send friend requests, and enjoy angsty ambiguous statuses.

The game, set in 2008, is a spiritual successor to Seeley’s past works. Players navigate the game’s branching story through different dialogue decisions while also sending instant messages and “youtoob” links.

The original Emily is Away focused on the relationship between two high schoolers as they go away to college and eventually grow apart, as told via messages on AIM. Speaking with The Verge, Seeley calls his move to Facebook a natural progression. “I really grew up on the platform,” he says. “Plus I feel like present-day Facebook is a shadow of its former self. And much like how the first two Emily games showed AIM in its teen-drama heyday, I wanted to make a game that did that for old school Facebook.”

Seeley hasn’t announced a release date for Emily is Away <3 yet, but the game will be playable for the first time at PAX East in late March. “To be honest, I don’t know why I love exploring old social media so much,” he says. “I think part of it is wanting to encapsulate it, and show off the experience to different generations that weren’t teenagers then. And I think another part is I just like making pixelated game versions of my own childhood memories.”

Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Kyle Seeley’s name. It has been updated to reflect the correct spelling.

Kyle Seeley’s Emily Is Away series feel like interactive time capsules. An all-too-vivid recollection of what social media felt like, and how it affected the lives of people back in the day. In the upcoming third instalment Emily Is Away <3, Players have to say goodbye to AOL Instant Messenger and begin their descent into the only slightly invasive (at the time) vortex that is Facebook, circa 2008. Expect drama, multiple-choice dialogues and several possible endings once more when it launches. There’s no launch date yet, but you can see the debut trailer below.

Despite obfuscating characters in the series’s classic colourful silhouette style, it feels like this game might hit a little closer to reality than the previous AIM-inspired stories. Sidebars on every chat root you in the zeitgeist of the time, excitedly promoting the new ‘Incredible Hunk’ movie, or the unheard of and weird phenomenon of ‘indie games’, with a picture invoking Braid. My greatest fear right now is the game will too accurately recapture the lingo and memes of the Extremely Online circa 2008, and I will feel compelled to hurl my PC out a window.

As a naturally antisocial creature that only started on Facebook recently because of family who demand it, I feel this game may also be a little educational for me. What do normal people do here? What even passes as normal again, in that bizarre transitional year of 2008, back before everything went a bit mad. I’m also curious to see how well researched the game is regarding its greater internet space – players will be able to poke around ‘YouToob’ and other related sites, when they’re not elbow-deep in ‘Facenook’.

Oh dear. There are going to be Chuck Norris memes, aren’t there? Suddenly, this is a vision of hell worse than anything I’d see in a horror game.

Emily Is Away <3 is due out ‘soonish’, and you can find it here on Steam. In the meantime, you can play the original here for free, and the second game here for £3.99/€4.99/$4.99. Players at PAX East will also be able to try a public demo at the show.