Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Fallout Shelter, by Histroy Gloam

You stand at the east side of the unidentified object, bathed in the thing’s jaundiced glow. You see no features on this thing whatsoever, yet it glows with a shifting pattern of psychedelic light.

This is an odd little sci-fi story which seems to have suffered from a lack of beta-testers. I was only able to get 2 out of 3 crystals at the end; did anyone finish this?

Nova Heart: Don’t Be Around While The Earth Dies Screaming, by Zenith J Clangor

The beast gorges on your screaming audience. You have been driven to the edge of your godly skill. You have no choice. You must rock out harder than you have ever rocked out in your immortal life.

Individual sentences ooze cool. I also didn’t mind the bizarre spastic switching between story sequences; it’s as if someone wrote a short-short story collection then tossed it in a blender. Unfortunately, the parser is essentially faked (only reacting on very particular prompted phrases) with the occasional bit of extra action required.

Little Bird, by Dick Dawson

It beats louder, too loud to hear her response. Your eye locks onto the painting above her. It’s a depiction of President Bastard. The panic increases tenfold. what on Earth have you done? You’ll be lucky if all they do is kill you.

There’s a “cussin’ is rad/horrible” toggle option. This has no relevance to the review, just thought I’d point that out.

Nothing makes sense at the start but as you trudge through the options there are glimpses here and there that some kind of sense exists. It’s like a mystery story where your job is reconstruct just what the plot is about, and not to worry too much about the volcano in the White House.

The darkness of mere being, by a lost kitten

Slowly you traverse the rubble, ash billowing up in knee-high clouds. Some of them are made of people.

An alarmingly normal introduction quickly devolves into something apocalyptic. The prose is generally fine, but I felt like the choice points lacked import. (This even includes one which determines if a character lives or dies, because there is little emotional impact either way.) The epilogue is interesting but I’m uncertain how it connects with the story.