Someone’s working on a remake of Melbourne House’s The Hobbit.
They are working in C++ rather than something modern like TADS, but I am supposing they are aiming for an authentic parser. The original is difficult to recommend because the response time is sluggish, so hopefully a remake would at least fix that issue. The more pressing concern is, will the emergent gameplay be preserved?
The Snowman was second place in the Text the Halls competition. My review is down below.
This is a web-based CYOA game. It can be found online here. Review after the jump.
This TADS 3 game could be thought of as Urban Conflict set as a romance in alternate-universe World War 1. Review after the jump.
The top three are
1. Snowblind Aces by C.E.J. Pacian
2. The Snowman by Caio Miranda
3. TIGSaga by various (Terry, Kinten, Akhel, Xander, Haowan, Shinygerbil, and #tigIRC)
I plan to put up reviews for these three games (and maybe a few others from the competition) over the next few days.
2007 ended with a flurry of activity, with the French IF-Comp launching and two new games. (The Text the Halls contest also hasn’t closed yet.)
2007 was quite a year for theory: we saw two new IF dissertations and new blogs. While I don’t see any more dissertations coming down the pipeline, I’m hoping more pieces like Dennis Jerz’s brilliant article on Adventure surface in journals.
For the coming year, Textfyre should be coming out with their first game. While there is understandable trepidation at commercial interests, I find the possibility of there once again being professional IF writers too thrilling to ignore.
It’s much harder to predict freeware releases, but based on commentary in various Internet forums I predict this year we’ll see more new authors brought in the fold by Inform 7.
Also, the trend of more non-English IF will undoubtedly continue. I’m hopeful translations will also start to appear for the best works.
Out of sheer wishful thinking I will also predict a major tutorial for TADS 3 will come out, giving it a major boost. I also predict (once again based on nothing at all but hope) that a major multimedia Hugo game like Future Boy! will come out and hit outlets like Adventure Gamers.
I’m hoping more “mainstream” outlets like Play This Thing!, TIGSource and JayIsGames continue to support IF (although it seems from the JayIsGames awards list this year they didn’t have much exposure outside of the Lovecraft Project and IF Comp).
Personal goals:
Let me slip in something extra and say I have something new coming out on the 10th of January.
Renga in Blue 