Vesp: A History of Sapphic Scaphism is a Porpentine game commissioned for Vice. It tells the story of a person obsessed with wasps, desiring to be a wasp, and inhabiting a world where wasps are pestilentially omnipresent. Leaving our apartment requires exiting through a wasplock, lest they get into our flat. (Edit: I originally misunderstood … Continue reading “Vesp: A History of Sapphic Scaphism (Porpentine)”
Neon Haze is this week’s release at Sub-Q Magazine. A side note: If you are interested in IF, especially Twine IF with a speculative fiction focus, you should be paying attention to Sub-Q: it’s an ambitious venture, a website with stories and interviews that pays pro rates for interactive fiction. It provides some resources for … Continue reading “Neon Haze (Porpentine, Brenda Neotenomie)”
Eczema Angel Orifice is an anthology of Porpentine’s work from the last several years, assembled into an application with a soundtrack by Brenda Neotenomie and authorial notes for each piece. Because Porpentine is prolific, there is a lot in the collection, including a number of works I’ve reviewed individually on this blog: howling dogs, Their … Continue reading “Eczema Angel Orifice (Porpentine)”
Ruiness is a Porpentine game, and as such is typically difficult to summarize. It takes place in an evocative post-apocalyptic wasteland in which people have roles like “scavenger” and “dustrunner”, as well as apparently belonging to different species and riding various creatures. Most of the gameplay is exploratory and concerns uncovering new places to go, … Continue reading “Spring Thing 2015: Ruiness (Porpentine); Missing Since ’77 (Andrew Watt)”
Lately we’ve been seeing more and more work that falls somewhere between parser-based IF and hypertext: in the past six weeks or so, I’ve run across two new games and a creation tool that push the boundaries in various directions. Jim Munroe and Juhana Leinonen recently released Texture, a system designed especially to produce touch-based … Continue reading “Hybrid interfaces: Texture; Contrition (Porpentine); Spondre (Jay Nabonne)”
With Those We Love Alive is a choice-based nightmare-fantasy game, with music, which also requires that the player draw on her own body during play. I played it to completion.
