In the burgeoning field of neo-Victorian studies, research on the afterlives of Rudyard Kipling remains very limited and typically confined to the analysis of literary and audiovisual reworkings of his texts (e.g., Noimann 2018; McNulty 2022). This paper seeks to join the seminar’s collective effort to expand the scope of neo-Victorian studies and rethink neo-Victorianism beyond post-Victorian literature, cinema and television by developing my own preliminary work on interactive Kipling (D’Indinosante 2023; D’Indinosante 2025, 62). After a necessarily brief overview of several other instances of engagement with Kipling and his works in the video game medium, such as ‘The Jungle Book: Groove Party’ (Ubi Soft Montreal 2000) and ‘Petrophobia’ (Orbis Tertius Games 2023), I set out to discuss ‘Kim’ (The Secret Games Company 2016), an understudied neo-Victorian video game adaptation of Kipling’s 1901 colonial novel of the same title. My discussion aims to complement and, to some extent, complicate Lindsay Meaning’s analysis of the game, which, to the best of my knowledge, is the only one to have been published to date and which exposes the colonialist assumptions embedded in the game without mobilising the notion of ‘neo-Victorianism’ (Meaning 2020). In my paper, I aim to begin theorising the game’s complex yet overlooked intertextual approach before integrating this discussion with an analysis of the game’s interactive aspects, highlighting how its neo-Victorian ludic modes of engagement reshape the Victorian imperial past for players. To this end, I intend to scrutinise such aspects as the game’s incorporation of other Kipling-based characters from his short fiction, which echoes the novel’s own transfictional approach; the influence of adaptations of Kipling’s works in other media (e.g., films) on the game; the game’s mobilisation of biographical and historical details that are not present or equally explicit in the novel
Playing with the Kiplingverse: Neo-Victorian Interactivity and Intertextuality in The Secret Games Company’s ‘Kim’ / D'Indinosante, P.. - (2026). (The European Society for the Study of English 2026 Conference, ESSE 2026 Santiago de Compostela; Spain ).
Playing with the Kiplingverse: Neo-Victorian Interactivity and Intertextuality in The Secret Games Company’s ‘Kim’
Paolo D'Indinosante
Primo
2026
Abstract
In the burgeoning field of neo-Victorian studies, research on the afterlives of Rudyard Kipling remains very limited and typically confined to the analysis of literary and audiovisual reworkings of his texts (e.g., Noimann 2018; McNulty 2022). This paper seeks to join the seminar’s collective effort to expand the scope of neo-Victorian studies and rethink neo-Victorianism beyond post-Victorian literature, cinema and television by developing my own preliminary work on interactive Kipling (D’Indinosante 2023; D’Indinosante 2025, 62). After a necessarily brief overview of several other instances of engagement with Kipling and his works in the video game medium, such as ‘The Jungle Book: Groove Party’ (Ubi Soft Montreal 2000) and ‘Petrophobia’ (Orbis Tertius Games 2023), I set out to discuss ‘Kim’ (The Secret Games Company 2016), an understudied neo-Victorian video game adaptation of Kipling’s 1901 colonial novel of the same title. My discussion aims to complement and, to some extent, complicate Lindsay Meaning’s analysis of the game, which, to the best of my knowledge, is the only one to have been published to date and which exposes the colonialist assumptions embedded in the game without mobilising the notion of ‘neo-Victorianism’ (Meaning 2020). In my paper, I aim to begin theorising the game’s complex yet overlooked intertextual approach before integrating this discussion with an analysis of the game’s interactive aspects, highlighting how its neo-Victorian ludic modes of engagement reshape the Victorian imperial past for players. To this end, I intend to scrutinise such aspects as the game’s incorporation of other Kipling-based characters from his short fiction, which echoes the novel’s own transfictional approach; the influence of adaptations of Kipling’s works in other media (e.g., films) on the game; the game’s mobilisation of biographical and historical details that are not present or equally explicit in the novelI documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
