May Link Assortment

Carolyn VanEseltine has an excellent post on techniques for debugging ChoiceScript projects, both using ChoiceScript’s own tools and adding some hacks of Carolyn’s invention to display possible stat ranges.

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Issue 3 of IFography is out, including reviews of a number of the ParserComp games, a detailed overview of which IF systems play best with mobile devices, an interview with Carolyn, and various other treats.

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Meanwhile, the venerable SPAG has published its 62nd issue — the first full issue in quite a while — featuring capsule reviews of a number of recent IF releases, as well as articles on (among other things) translating English-language IF to German and the links between IF and improv theatre.

SPAG also seeks articles for future editions, so if you have an IF-related article in you, check out information on how to pitch.

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sub-Q is a forthcoming magazine for F/SF/horror interactive fiction; they pay pro rates and are open to submissions starting June 1. The editor-in-chief is Tory Hoke, whom some may know from Ziva’s Conjury Mart.

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The IGDA Game Writing SIG (Special Interest Group) is running a contest/jam for writing in games, running from June 1-30. Twine, inklewriter, and other IF engine games are welcome, and the games will be judged primarily on their text. Details here.

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If you want a cameo appearance in a Choice of Games piece, they’re auctioning off the naming rights to four characters in different upcoming stories. The funds raised go to support services for homeless youth.

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Porpentine has a big collection of her work from the past few years, compiled together and enhanced with director’s notes, on Steam Greenlight.

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The Art of IF Collective blog talks about art for visual novels, and I was particularly interested by this post on a kinetic-novel recasting of Faust with both Faust and Mephistopheles pictured as female.

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There’s a good intfiction thread on how to build hints into game puzzles — Jenni Polodna’s post is particularly worth checking out.

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Andrew Plotkin has a teaser up for something called The Flashpaper War, coming “later this year”. There is not a huge amount of information available at this time, but it’s something to keep an eye on if you are a fan of zarfian works.

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Here the Short Game podcast covers IF, especially the Spring Thing entrants.

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If you’re looking for an IF engine, Matt Chelen has provided a big spreadsheet of options, including information about the formats they’re able to build, rights to release stand-alone games, level of complexity, and how recently the tool was last updated.

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Here’s Mike Lazer-Walker on creating games with specialized, custom controls — in this case, 19th century telegraph hardware. While interactive fiction has mostly moved in the direction of greater accessibility and play on a wide range of devices, there are a handful of projects that have gone the other way: the Choosatron, the Automatypewriter, the original suitcase version of the Black Crown Project. It’s hard to deny the appeal of this kind of project despite all the challenges of getting it in front of an audience.

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Here is a piece about Rust, the online game that assigns skin tone arbitrarily-but-permanently to players. This strikes me as a fascinating experiment, though one whose results are depressingly pretty much what I would have expected.

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Austin Walker writes about what it means for Twine to be accessible, and the ways in which it is still not entirely so.

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Catt Small writes about how to organize diversity-focused events.