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).
IFComp 2014: Hunger Daemon 5 comments
IFComp 2014: The Black Lily Leave a comment
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?
IFComp 2014: Venus Meets Venus 3 comments
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.)
IFComp 2014: Laterna Magica Leave a comment
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.
IFComp 2014: Milk Party Palace Leave a comment
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.
IFComp 2014: Inward Narrow Crooked Lanes Leave a comment
Form of address :
1) street etc.
2) unit etc.
3) ratio etc.
4) horatio etc.
4) exhoratio etc.
5) X etc.
6) when etc.
7) Ms. etc.
So this is a … job interview, I guess?
IFComp 2014: The Contortionist 1 comment
An arm wriggles out. Your arm. Then a leg. You hyperventilate before flattening your chest and sliding it sideways through the bars. Your pelvis, warped into something inhuman, follows almost by itself. Other limbs slip out easy as shadows gliding on the ground.
Nicholas Stillman’s The Contortionist is the first competition game I’ve played with a point-and-click interface that has the puzzle-and-inventory ambitions of a parser game. The plot is a pretty good choice for a puzzle game: you have to escape from a prison of a dystopic society that incarcerates people by random lottery to use them as free labor.
IFComp 2014: And yet it moves 1 comment
“Fine. Perfectly fine.” he says shortly. He glances nervously at the monk before looking back down at his experiment. The monk stares, stony faced. It seems Galileo doesn’t want to talk in front of him.
I’m going to address this one directly to the author. Feel free to listen in, though–
IFComp 2014: Unform 1 comment
As you step outside, the world shifts from day to night. Looking behind you, the tent disappears, slowly fading into the background, until it disappears. You pat your pocket and realize you have a knife in there. You take it out of its sheath, and accidentally knicking your finger on it. You promise yourself that you won’t do that again.
I am a fan of “get out of a mysterious puzzle” movies like Cube (1997) and Exam (2009) so I’m in the target market for S. Elize Morgan’s Unform. In this case you have amnesia and are facing “Judgement” from a series of tests.
IFComp 2014: Icepunk 1 comment
Your Habitat is a huge complex designed to house a bustling, self-sufficient human society. The reality, though, is that your habitat runs like music that has gone on long after the singers have fallen silent. M8 forever fulfills its countless imperatives that now serve a “society” with a population of just 1.
I really wanted to like this one. Icepunk gave me a early-90s-BBS-door-game vibe with the ANSI art (as seen below; the writing is vivid as well). However, I couldn’t even bring myself to finish.
Renga in Blue 