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2004 Interactive Fiction Results
silent_knight writes "Early in October, the 2004 Interactive Fiction competition began. The results are now in! Be sure to check out some of this year's best entries: Luminous Horizon, Blue Chairs, All Things Devours, Magocracy, and Murder at the Aero Club. All entries (and interpreters) can be downloaded together for Windows and the Mac from the download page." As mentioned in the previous story, Linux support for these games is also easily available.
There's a Firefox extension called Gnusto that lets you play these games from your browser. Have fun : )
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Here is the article announcing the beginning of the competition. May be interesting.
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Oops.. link should be http://www.cs.csubak.edu/~dgriffi/proj/frotz/ Other Infocom Interpreters
You know you're right? But if we reserve IF for people who can afford a game development team with artists and designers and all that extra expense we'll find far less gems than if we accept textual games as being valuable also. This applies as much to MUDs as it does to single player IF.
How we know is more important than what we know.
This may seem off-topic, but it is wihin the same genre and while it is great to see new Interactive Fiction (IF), if people are interested there are some of the true classics still out there on the net. While most IF afficianados have certainly played the IF version of 'Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy', if not it is available online at http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava. html
. It's not always up, but it is available elsewhere and some links are provided on that webpage.
This is the game that introduced me to the genre, and I've enjoyed it ever since. Can be extremely frustrating at times, but it is rewarding and thought provoking. Hopefully this new beed has come up with some 'easter eggs' to reward creative typing!
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
I played the first two when the winners were announced (because I was too lazy to judge this year).
Luminous Horizon is a well-polished game, but it's the third part of a superhero series and the story is nothing new. The most interesting part about it is the way it handles switching characters and hints.
Blue Chairs is far more interesting. It's hard to summarize, but it starts out with a drug trip at a party that turns into a dream sequence. Even if that's not your thing, it allows for some amazing writing. Highly recommended.
Oh, crap.
Anyway, here's Eric the Power-Mad Dongeon Master,
a z-code game that follows a night of D&D gone awry.
There are a few bugs, I guess, but folks say it's fun to play.
But yeah, It'd be nice if iblist did do that.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
You should check out The end result has got a much more flexible syntax than Z-code interpreters, and writing the code should be pretty familiar to C++ -style coders. You can even use the Pascal-style assignment operator if you like, with a compilation switch. If you like that kind of thing.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
rec.games.int-fiction will soon be brimming with reviews for this year's comp games -- and there are quite a few up already. Here's the Google link, check for posts preceded by [IFCOMP] or [COMP04].
-s
1. Blue Chairs
You play the role of someone--I recall it being a university student, but I may be filling in details from memory--who takes a drug at a party.
The game basically consists of you trying to leave the party, and the events that occur along the way. There are subplots involving various characters, including romantic partners.
I thought the game was extremely well-written and refreshing in its execution. It is much more sophisticated than my brief description might suggest. The story is extremely nonlinear, and there are many routes through the game. I found myself replaying the game to discover alternate endings.
This nonlinearity, however, can be annoying at the same time, because it's not at all clear that some of the alternate routes through the game exist. Moreover, the party setting does seem a little trivial in some ways.
Overall, though, it was tied as my favorite game of the IF competition, and one of the most enjoyable and engaging works of IF I've played.
2. All Things Devours.
If I recall correctly, in this work, you play a scientist who returns to a secret government lab you have been working in to correct a mistake in order to prevent serious catastrophe.
The game has a strong element of suspense. Like Blue Chairs, it is very well written. The descriptions are succinct and engaging. The author was extremely effective in creating an atmosphere of suspense and dread, and does a good job of making what is a science fiction setting seem real.
The game, however, is turn-sensitive, so if you have a problem with that approach to IF design you might be turned off. I personally have never encountered an IF work where the turn-sensitivity was necessary and useful. In this game, however, it seems appropriate, especially given the story line. In that way it might be similar to A Change in the Weather, where you could make arguments to support either position.
I never completed the work, however, because I encountered a number of bugs that would crash the game. It also doesn't implement synonyms and the like as effectively as other games.
3. Luminous Horizons
A continuation of a series involving a super-hero setting. If you've played the other ones, this is familiar.
The series is well-written, creative, and humorous, and this is similar in that way. The author also tends to make good use of graphics, in a limited graphic novel sort of way.
I don't find the super hero theme compelling, but it's well written, and I think many would enjoy it. This and Blue Chairs were my two favorites of the competition.
4. Murder at the Aero Club.
A murder mystery, at an air club. Pretty self-explanatory.
I thought it was enjoyable. The writing is succinct and clear, and is well-written in that way. The setting and descriptions are also compelling and intresting.
I thought the puzzles were a bit simple, however, and too easy. I often felt that the answers where being shoved in your face, so to speak, and which that there was more subtlety in the puzzle solutions. I also thought that the game suffered from some technical difficulties with interactivity.
Some games I enjoyed that I thought I should mention were The Orion Agenda and Splashdown, both of which finished higher than some of the entries mentioned in the article. The games are very similar--almost identical in plot at places, like the beginning--but have different approaches to writing and puzzles.
It's not too hard to learn Inform, at all. The language's manual and tutorial puts most projects' documentation to shame.
Inform homepage