Archive for the ‘Interactive Fiction’ Category
Caroline by Kristian Kronstrand is a choice-game where you still type things in. That is, you have one or maybe two choices but you need to reproduce what is in boldface (exactly) to move on. I suppose the intent was to avoid the click-click-click syndrome that can affect choice-works where it is too easy to jump by story material without thinking about it.
I did have typos sometimes but I type fast enough it wasn’t too frustrating for me; still it makes me wonder if they’re some middle ground between instant clicking and long typing. (There is also one payoff spot which I’ll write about in a moment.)
After this point are plot spoilers—
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Zest features a “life simulator” in Twine by a crew of three (Richard Goodness, lectronice, and PaperBlurt).
A man named Billy wakes up. He has choices.
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HHH.exe starts with some graphics ripped from Hugo’s House of Horrors and makes a freestyle glitch-game from the remains.
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A.D. Jansen’s Eidolon involves a child with insomnia who finds their way to another world. I had trouble finding a good excerpt to reproduce. There are too many.
It is a bright morning in spring and you are seven years old and a shoal of golden flies is simmering on the surface of the wide river, on the other side of which lies another world.
Ok, fine: here’s another:
And every bit of its disturbing span has been overburdened with stars; at any moment space might collapse under the weight of them.
One more:
Sometimes, when there is almost no light, a strange phenomenon will occur. Things will reveal their true selves to you.
Ordinary things: decorations, appliances, furnishings. They shed their shapes and leave crumpled snakeskins behind.
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You are cold with terror. How could you have been so stupid as to think you could handle this quest? Your breath freezes in your chest… and something else slips in. A seeping, grey mist that first fills you up, then starts oozing out through your pores, covering you completely. Your fear sharpens itself into acute awareness, holding you absolutely still, all senses alert. The monsters are there, there and… a gap! You flow along your escape route, noiseless as smoke.
Krypteia by Kateria clearly had a great deal of love put into it. There’s some fantastic shifting images, a hand-drawn automap, and some solid bits of prose. Alas —
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If there’s been a theme in the comp games I’ve played so far, it is “grimdark”. I’ve seen dystopias (multiple times), murders (multiple times), black comedy (multiple times) and a game where the objective is to survive by begging for as many days as possible (where you usually die in less than a month).
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The unthinkable happened: Femi jerked away from me, turned around and left with determined steps. Her hips swayed in rhythm with her legs. Just before reaching the stairs, she twisted her upper body around once again, bowed her head slightly and tore her long eyebrows wide open. She shot me a look which hit me with the force of a sledgehammer, but with the tip of a dagger. After endless seconds, she disappeared floating through the floor. I stood alone. Deserted. Desperate.
Hannes Schueller’s The Black Lily has a similar vibe to Enigma in that something happened or is happening and you need to reconstruct it. Choosing to WAIT results in questions:
Is my memory already this clouded? What was it that happened next?
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could you break your hand on your bathroom wall
macy broke hers
you could do it too
one hard smash is all it would take
I find dividing interactive fiction into “choice-based” and “parser-based” a little troublesome, in part because there are other options for an interface (like Ice-Bound or 18 Cadence) but also because point and click games can reflect different gameplay styles: the inventory-and-puzzles of The Contortionist inhabit a different universe than the strategy choices of Begscape. Half-Life 2 and Portal are considered to be in entirely different genres even if they are both first person using the same engine.
Of yet another genre are some visual novels with no choices at all (including “kinetic novels” and “motion comics“). They usually have some sort of multimedia (otherwise they would be almost completely indistinguishable from reading an ebook) although there have been exceptions in Twine.
Venus Meets Venus is of related style, with a linear story where the only “interaction” is the option to view side scenes. It’s a little like reading a book with footnotes. (While we’re categorizing, I’d say The 39 Steps more or less falls into the same category.)
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What does it mean to ask? How do I ask?
A: Ask the divine cosmic intelligence by simply closing your eyes and start to feel how you want to feel. Make it a habit to ask your higher self for guidance in this process. Guidance is always given if you know how to listen.
B: There are more than one way to ask, but all includes a need for something. You need to feel a desire. So, you might say that it all starts with a feeling, a need or desire. The stronger the need or desire, the stronger the asking and the stronger the message. Make sure always to be in a state of allowing yourself to receive. Then start receiving.
Laterna Magica by Jens Byriel is a maze, of sorts. It asks a series of questions answerable by choices A and B, and only responds with more questions.
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Alon Karmi & Glenn Parker’s Milk Party Palace is the first choice-game I’ve seen done in Unity. It has its own clean and minimalist interface aesthetic.
The plot is mostly summarized by the clip above: the PC works at a hotel and is invited to a milk party, and needs to bring milk. The only catch is there is no milk left in the hotel refrigerator because the gallons have been given to guests, and your quest is to reclaim them from the various hotel rooms before arriving at the party in glory.
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Renga in Blue 