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In the upcoming game Virginia, you can sit down in a diner and enjoy a cup of coffee "black as midnight on a moonless night," as if you were Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks.

Over the past year or so there's been a wave of games strongly inspired by television, but while studios like Telltale Games focus on modern properties like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, Virginia is influenced by the weird, surreal mysteries of the 1990s. It's Twin Peaks crossed with The X-Files, with a dash of The Outer Limits tossed in. The developers at new studio Variable State hope its unique story and setting will feel a bit different from what you're used to seeing in a video game. "I hope we can make something more personal," says developer Jonathan Burroughs.

Virginia puts you in the role of a new FBI agent whose first case involves the disappearance of a young boy in the middle of rural America. There are few story details available beyond that, but like the death of Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks, the missing child is just a starting point. Soon you'll be pulled into "a world both familiar and strange," as the developers describe it, which blends real-world drama with surrealist elements. It's a type of storytelling that has worked well in other forms of media, especially TV, and Burroughs wants to translate that feeling to something more interactive. "They give you a certain leeway with reality which serves drama and storytelling," he says of magical realist stories.

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