Month: June 2021

Events

July 3 is the next SF Bay Area IF Meetup.

ParserComp closes for new entrants very very soon, and the games will be available to play and judge throughout July – so if you’d like to try some piping hot new text adventures, they’ll be available shortly. (If you’re curious about the how and why of voting, there’s an extended discussion of it on the intfiction forums.)

Recent Things

RockPaperShotgun has an article about Failbetter’s working process that also includes a bit about our forthcoming work and a few quotes of mine.

The Short Game podcast has recently covered a number of IF and IF-adjacent games – including inkle’s Overboard.

Aaron Reed’s excellent 50 Years of Text Games series continues, this time with an article on Patchwork Girl, a piece of classic hypertext. (If you’re curious about what I’ve written about it as well, that’s here.)

Events

June 30 is the last day to submit games to ParserComp.

July 3 is the next SF / Bay Area IF Meetup.

New Releases

Overboard! is a new interactive detective story from inkle – in which you are definitely the culprit, and the only question is who is going to take the fall for your misdeeds. It’s available for iOS and on Steam.

If you prefer your stories in interactive audio form instead, you may be interested in Wanderword’s audio horror story Escape from 63rd and Wallace, set in 1890s Chicago. Playable on the Amazon Echo, it features two modes, story-focused and puzzle-focused.

Books

Narrative Mechanics is a book of articles on games and the making of meaning through mechanics.

Articles

Aaron Reed’s 50 Years of Text Games series continues to deliver extraordinary stories about the history of the medium. I found myself particularly enthralled and fascinated with his telling of the games written by St. Bride’s – a chapter in game history I’d not heard of before Aaron brought it to my attention.

Talks

The London IF Meetup heard from Destina Connor about characterisation and identity in JRPGs. A recording can be found here.

Jeremiah McCall recently spoke about teaching history through video games, and that talk can be found on YouTube.