Stornaway.io was founded in 2020 by filmmaker Ru Howe (CEO) and writer/producer/performer Kate Dimbleby (Creative Director). Read more about us here. The platform is used by 30,000 creators globally by video producers, agencies and learning designers wanting to make their videos interactive, personalised and gamified.
Based in Bristol, UK, angel funded, Stornaway received a UK Innovation Award Smart grant last year to build out the platform with key stakeholders in film, TV, education and learning.
Free to use and to play with ideas, Stornaway was designed to be simple and intuitive. We offer monthly and annual plans for professional use and custom options for larger organisations.
With the new Stornaway App Builder, we can take a project that you’ve designed in Stornaway and convert into an App for VR, PC, Mac, iPads, iPhones, Android, Quest VR, Smart TVs and even game consoles.
Then you can use your apps at events, expos, conferences and trade shows, in classrooms and workplaces with poor internet, or sell it on app stores and game platforms.
Find images on our resources page, and email us for more at press@stornaway.io
Stornaway is an interactive video editor, game engine and player designed for creative producers. Think of it as like iMovie, Unity or Vimeo for interactive video.
What’s the problem we’re solving?
Before Stornaway.io, interactive filmmaking was creatively difficult, expensive and locked into proprietary platforms. Most projects were one-off custom coded projects, where the creative team couldn’t see what it’d play like until the very end, and with a limited shelf life on a specific system. Typically the hugely expensive code base would not be reusable, and the team would be disbanded, never to work on interactive again – all the learning lost.
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was a viral hit which showed the massive potential of this new form that sits between film and games. But although Netflix see this potential and have made 15 other interactive specials now, the same blockers remain for the industry. Charlie Brooker said about making Bandersnatch, “It was like doing a Rubik’s cube in your brain – there are no tools aimed at professionals” and his co-producer Annabel Jones said, “If we’d known how hard it was going to be, we’d probably never have done it.”
Stornaway.io fixes this, with a magically simple and affordable web application for creators at every level – from feature film console games to teachers and vloggers.
Unlike all other interactive video systems, we are focused on storytelling and simplicity, we complement professional tv, film and game workflows and we uniquely provide open compatibility for delivery to other VOD and game platforms.
Watch our 3 minute Getting Started video to see how it works.
As you see in the video, one of the key concepts of Stornaway.io that really strikes a chord with creatives is the Story Island – a block of story which might be a scene, a sequence, a location or a clip. A story is made by linking up Story Islands. This concept came from co-founder Kate Dimbleby’s work in devising theatre shows, and is a great help for producers getting to grips with this new non-linear form.
Stornaway.io was created by a team with decades of experience in tv, film and digital production at large media brands, who believe that empowering creatives will drive a new wave of interactive experiences in the 2020s, to be monetized on multiple platforms.
Since we came out of beta in 2021, thousands of users in over 150 countries are signing up to use Stornaway.io to create interactive experiences for Comms and Marketing, Learning, Entertainment and in Film and Game schools. See some examples here – the range of ideas is much broader than choose-your-own-ending stories. This is just the beginning.
People always ask about our name. We named ourselves after the town of Stornoway in the beautiful Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, well known to the British public as a regular feature of the Weather Forecast. We wanted an untechy name that carried the sense of travel, islands, mapping and exploration – but we’ve changed the name slightly – to away, not no way!
