Author: emshortif

IF Comp 2010: The Bible Retold: Following A Star

As has been my practice for the last few years, I’ve set my RSS feed to truncate entries so that I can post reviews without spoilerage. Within an entry, there is a short, spoilerless discussion (though the comp purists may want to avoid reading even that before playing for themselves); then spoiler space; then a more detailed discussion of what I thought did and didn’t work in the game.

I’m also pursuing an approach I came up with a couple of years ago: I’m playing and reviewing games that have listed beta-testers, and skipping those that don’t. In 2008 that turned out to be a pretty fool-proof indicator of which games were going to end up scoring 4 or less on my personal scale, and it made my reviewing process a happier one in 2009, so I’m sticking with it. I’m hoping this will mean I have more time to devote to the remaining games, which in turn will (I hope) be of higher quality, and you, dear reader, will have fewer rants inflicted on you.

Next up: The Bible Retold: Following a Star

Continue reading “IF Comp 2010: The Bible Retold: Following A Star”

IF Comp 2010: The People’s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game

As has been my practice for the last few years, I’ve set my RSS feed to truncate entries so that I can post reviews without spoilerage. Within an entry, there is a short, spoilerless discussion (though the comp purists may want to avoid reading even that before playing for themselves); then spoiler space; then a more detailed discussion of what I thought did and didn’t work in the game.

I’m also pursuing an approach I came up with a couple of years ago: I’m playing and reviewing games that have listed beta-testers, and skipping those that don’t. In 2008 that turned out to be a pretty fool-proof indicator of which games were going to end up scoring 4 or less on my personal scale, and it made my reviewing process a happier one in 2009, so I’m sticking with it. I’m hoping this will mean I have more time to devote to the remaining games, which in turn will (I hope) be of higher quality, and you, dear reader, will have fewer rants inflicted on you.

First up: The People’s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game.

Continue reading “IF Comp 2010: The People’s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game”

Comp Games!

The 2010 IF Comp is now open.

It looks like a strong year. I just did my first pass to identify games I don’t plan to review due to lack of credited testers. Out of 25 26 entries, I only found two to skip for sure; there were two others where I couldn’t find a tester list but other indications suggest that a lot of work went into them, so I may give them the benefit of the doubt when I finish with the definitely-tested ones.

Meanwhile, there’s a lot of really polished-looking work in the collection, and quite a few familiar author names from past years. And a majority of the games can be played online, with a convenient link from the comp page.

Thanks to all the authors, testers, and comp organizing staff who make this possible for another year. This is going to be fun.

PS: Some places other than here where reviews are likely to appear, or are appearing already:

Pissy Little Sausages, Eat Lamp, Minimum Safe Distance, The Quiet Sunday, One Wet Sneaker, Paean to Wanderings, Cobaltnine, Philip Armstrong’s Games Journal, Farming the Apocalypse, The Gameshelf, The Stack, Cup of Joe, Gnome’s Lair, The Gaming Philosopher (warning: reviews not cut-tagged), Suppertime Sonnets (in sonnet form, no less), The Rest of Your Mice, Dan Shiovitz, Should I Play It, scratchm’s intfiction forum reviews, Rob “Flack” O’Hara’s intfiction forum reviews, Two Swallows, Iain Merrick’s LJ, Yoon Ha Lee, Monkey with Brain on Top, Another Mr Lizard / A Tonne of Feathers.

If you’re looking for reviews of a specific game, you can often find them linked from ifwiki (assuming any have been written yet).

Latest Homer in Silicon

My latest column is not about any specific game, but about the method that many games use lately, of creating friction between the apparent rules and the real ones, and requiring the player to question the system of play. It’s productive in a lot of cases, but it’s often put to the service of fairly dark messages.

IF Theory Book, update

Back in January, I was hoping to be able to revisit the long-dormant IF theory book project and give it an overhaul. At the time, I was applying for a fellowship that would have given me quite a lot of time to focus on new media work, of which I hoped this would have been a part. But that didn’t happen; instead, I am consulting for the video game industry and am enjoying myself quite a lot, but have very little time for major outside projects.

All the same, I was sad that I didn’t have time to finish something that I know a lot of people are still interested in seeing. If anything, the recent success of Aaron’s Inform 7 book has increased the amount of email I get from people about this project.

Recently, Kevin Jackson-Mead stepped forward to volunteer to work on the theory book, and I have taken him up on it, perhaps a little more vehemently than he originally expected. Kevin is an IF aficionado who does a lot of organizing for the Boston People’s Republic of IF group and also has substantial work background in publishing. I am stepping down as chief editor and handing the materials I had over to him. Dennis Jerz, who was working with me on the project way back in the early days, has chosen to remain involved.

Kevin is starting off by getting in touch with the original contributors. If you are one, you should already have received email from him asking about your interest in continuing to participate, and soliciting input about where the project will go from here. If you didn’t get his message, let me know and I’ll pass on your email to him, or you can contact him directly if you know where to find him. (I don’t want to post his email address here in the sight of the spambots.)

Many thanks to Kevin for being willing to take this up, and my apologies to everyone for not being able to bring it together some years back.