Star Wars films reimagined as interactive storybooks, each with a game

Each of the six Star Wars films is being reimagined as a digital storybook with its own movie-specific game, Lucasfilm announced today.

Known as Star Wars Journeys, the mobile apps will retell the stories of their respective movies, reports Variety. The first one, available beginning today on iOS, is based on The Phantom Menace and is split into three parts, one of which is a podracing game.

Another component of this first release is described as a story mode (estimated to take roughly an hour to complete) where players interact with the environment as they make their way through the film’s plot and unlock podracer upgrades. Also included is a database with information on the characters, locations, vehicles, and more from the movies.

The first Journeys app is priced at $6.99 on the iOS App Store, with plans for it to also be released on Android in the future. Journeys covering the later movies will be released between now and the launch of the next film–the cast of which was announced this week–in December 2015. There is, as of yet, no word on exactly when the new Journeys will be released (nor whether a trash compactor will be featured in A New Hope‘s game).

If Journeys sounds or looks simplistic, that’s because Lucasfilm is gearing this toward kids in the 6-12-year-old range. That target demographic is also part of the reason Journeys is being released on mobile platforms.

While Star Wars-themed games have been released on iOS and Android in the recent past, including Tiny Death Star and Star Wars: Assault Team, Variety notes this is the first Star Wars digital release that Lucasfilm and Disney Publishing have partnered up to develop internally since Disney’s Lucasfilm acquisition in 2012.

In addition to the cast of Episode VII, we learned this week that all future Star Wars content will be part of the franchise’s canon–including the video games.

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