Archive for the ‘Interactive Fiction’ Category
Attempts to locate the party failed, primarily because of poor villagers being paid for their silence by Kas’s crew.
The few reports that did reach the King’s court consisted of rumors about a dwarf who split the mountain and built a palace filled with riches before the sunset on a single day.
A.E. Jackson’s The Secret Vaults of Kas the Betrayer goes for fantasy heft straightaway with its title. I kept a running “word map” of all the references, because in this sort of game I find it easy to get lost in a sea of names. (I did end up finding the fantasy backstory to have the right amount of thickness; not too dense, not too implausible.)
Read the rest of this entry »
“And now you presume to speak to one of the hrrugh without a proper introduction? Insolent blorg!” (Great. Apparently your translator module is faulty.) “I cannot hold a grrbog under such conditions. Produce your rrha or cease wasting my time.”
Naomi Hinchen’s Tea Ceremony involves some awkward and under-prepared diplomacy with an alien.
Read the rest of this entry »
Immanuel Kant taught us that it is important to obey authority, so that your actions will follow a consistent general rule. He even demonstrated that it would be wrong to lie to the police, if they want to know where your friend is hiding. Always keep that in mind, and you will have a great career at AlethiCorp :).
Simon Christiansen is the wag who last year entered a PDF gamebook into the competition, instructing judges to print it out. This year he asks us to apply for a job at Alethicorp.
TRIVIA: Did you know pictures of eyes can reduce cheating on tests, and make people contribute more to an honesty box?
Read the rest of this entry »
Tia Orisney’s Following Me is of a style I thought I might be seeing more of: the classic Choose Your Own Adventure book. (Caveat: As fas I know none of the originals involved fleeing from serial killers.)
I should probably explain: our mom took her intuition to a higher level by believing that a finding a black ribbon on the ground meant that someone was going to die. The “theory” behind that had something to do with how, when her father had died, she’d worn a black ribbon around her arm for a year. This was too far into the world of hoodoo nonsense for me, but for a moment when I’d seen that glove I’d been frozen by panic. Aria must have thought the same thing, she hadn’t wanted to go anywhere near it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Origins by Vincent Zeng and Chris Martens involves two characters — a courier and a runner — in a split-screen arrangement where you can choose “myopic” style so you only control one, or “omniscient” mode where you see choices for both. Each choice is between two options, for example:
Your breathing deepens as you start getting ready for the hill, and you let your stride open up a bit so you can hit the base of it and go.
The traffic light turns yellow.
You can make it.
You slow down.
Read the rest of this entry »
Two months later, all that was knocked out of you. Blanko. Fatigues. March, march march. Orders. Being bawled out by Sergeant Major Grant. Then at the new year, when you’d marched up and down half of France and having had been there for months on end, and stuck for all those dreadful weeks in First Eypre, or Wipers as you learned to call it, thrust into long and badly constructed trench lines, frozen nearly to death out there, you were ready to call it quits.
Hill 160 by Mike Gerwat is a parser game set in WWI.
Read the rest of this entry »
Slasher Swamp is a gore-infused attempt at a cheesy horror movie. It uses TADS but for some insane reason is compiled for Windows-only (reminiscent of Jealousy Duel X which compiled a portable Flash file).
This is the oldest of old schools: I had to draw a map.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Entropy Cage by Stormrose casts you as a “cyber-psychiatrist” who communicates with some problematic artificial intelligence via computer commands.
user> sub.queryRequest()
user> What did you do that was so bad?
e26: Here is proof I crashed an elevator killing all inside.
PROOF:Verified: e26 in charge of elevator. Crashed killing 2/2 occupants.
ERROR: queryRequest() not found in sub e26.
user> sub.punish() | sub.disconnect()
Read the rest of this entry »
How minimalist is too minimalist?
I had this question while playing Arthur DiBianca’s Excelsior, an abstract puzzle game with a parser reduced to direction commands, examining, and the USE verb.
Read the rest of this entry »
“Oh, Netflix,” you say out loud, while pouring bourbon into a hopefully-clean glass. “My one true love.”
The whiskey, your evening, and three episodes of No Reservations disappear.
Missive by Joey Fu is in a way another “dual game” like Raik, but instead of simultaneous surrealism two tales are intertwined. It’s the main character’s birthday and they receive a typewriter as a present which includes a stash of mysterious letters. The PC’s relationship with their ex-girlfriend (and liquor) mixes with a tale as told by reading the letters.
The letters also contain hidden messages, and for each one the player gets to pick from three resolutions to prove they’ve decoded the hidden message properly.
Read the rest of this entry »
Renga in Blue 