My latest GSW column looks at the original Kudos. A new version is now out, and I may do a comparison in the future.
However (warning): on my last column it was mentioned that I seem to spend more time critiquing unsuccessful narrative approaches than analyzing good ones. I promised to come back with more positive reviews — and still intend to — but, er, this is not one. Or at least, not in unmixed form.
Another IF Comp review, following my format for this comp. Yeah, I know, I thought I was done too — but then I discovered (apropos of playing Eliuk Blau’s Damusix demo) that my copy of Spatterlight wasn’t as up to date as I thought it was. So I thought, why not have another stab at playing the Alan game, since maybe the problem there was that I didn’t have the latest Spatterlight with the latest Alan insert?
And what do you know: it worked.
(Incidentally, one of the things I really love about Zoom is its ability to check on its own for new interpreter modules, and download them when updates are needed. That is a sweet feature. Too bad Zoom doesn’t cover Alan, or play sounds.)
More after the break, which is to say
shortly.
Continue reading “IF Competition Bonus Round: The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom”
I just stumbled across an interesting recent post by Zachary Reese, which includes the following observation:
I play a fair amount of interactive fiction, if only because each piece is an extension loaded by a single client of your choice (an interpreter). These are unintrusive entities that can coexist with the important functions of the computer. I can have an indie game minimized with the sound off, then play a few rounds while I’m waiting for an audio mixdown or a video render. Doing such a thing with a traditional PC game would likely result in a massive CPU fire.
People make a big stink about casual games, but I don’t think that label is appropriate. It’s more like transparent games. Games that don’t interfere. The reason games like Rocket Mania and Bejeweled took off isn’t because of some gameplay mechanic that reach a previously untapped market; they became successful because the games became accessible with minimal effort. That audience has always wanted to play games, they just didn’t have the means. They weren’t going to go out and buy a console and they didn’t want to dedicate hard drive space and system resources to the big boxed titles. These are the same people who played the shit out of Minesweeper in Windows 3.1 while on a conference call at work.
I am delighted to announce that Christopher Armstrong has taken over the job of Inform extensions librarian. Authors should now submit their work directly to him.
Instructions for reaching Christopher can be found at the extensions page.
Being an overview of my favorites and general impressions, now that I’ve played all the games I intend to play this year. (That includes all the TADS, Inform, and ADRIFT games. I tried to fire up the Alan game, but it refused to run under Spatterlight, and Zoom doesn’t do Alan at all. Edited to add: I did eventually get Alan to work — my copy of Spatterlight was older than I thought, so I needed to download the latest.)
There are no spoilers, except inasmuch as knowing which games I liked is itself a spoiler for the comp as a whole.
Continue reading “IF Competition: General Reflections and Favorites”
Another IF Comp review, following my format for this comp. There is a cut, then any spoiler-free comments I have, and then spoiler space, and then more detailed feedback that assumes the reader has tried the game.
But first, we have some obligatory filler to try to make sure that the RSS summary does not accidentally contain any review. Filler, filler, la la la…
Okay. Here we go.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 