Lili is a retelling of Macbeth set in a "neo-noir" Iran that re-casts the three witches as hackers

rockpapershotgun.com:

In a dramatic turn of events, the Royal Shakespeare Company have finally acknowledged that video games are cool and theatre simply does not have enough buttons. They are partnering with a game studio to create a playable adaptation of Macbeth from the point of view of someone examining Lady Macbeth's computer for dirt. Lili looks a lot like the interactive drama popularised by Sam Barlow's Her Story and Telling Lies. Except this has the added twist of being set in contemporary Iran. The game "will see Macbeth’s witches reimagined as hackers, with surveillance cameras and cyber-infiltration putting the player at the heart of the story..." Witchy hackers? I'm in.

"Lili will plunge you into a stylized vision of modern Iran, where surveillance and authoritarianism are part of daily life," said the RSC in a press release. "The gameplay will feature a blend of live-action cinema within an interactive game format, so you can immerse yourself in the world of Lady Macbeth and make choices that influence her destiny."

Yep, that sounds very much like the work of Half Mermaid. But in this case the game is being co-created with New York studio iNK Stories, who made the Telltale-esque adventure game 1979 Revolution: Black Friday. In that historical adventure you play a young photographer caught up in the dangerous winds of the Iranian revolution. As far as choosing a studio to work with, it's a sensible match.

The game will star Zar Amir, who played the lead role as an investigative journalist in 2022 crime thriller Holy Spider. I haven't seen it, but the performance was good enough to win her an award at Cannes. The actor will be "drawing on her lived experience as an Iranian woman in exile who has courageously confronted her own battles against authoritarian gendered oppression," say the RSC. The game is due to "enter production in late 2025" , they say.

There's no shortage of snoop 'em ups that use a fictional OS as a way to get the player to trawl through a mystery. Orwell