Author: emshortif

Several Small Things

  1. This was effectively true some time ago, but the IF Cover Art Drive is officially finished and closed and over now, in the sense that I have taken down the flickr page. In the unlikely event that anyone reading this (a) got my email about their cover art and (b) really wanted to answer and accept it but (c) has been trapped under a big log for the last five months, you can email me — I still have a copy of the submitted art on my hard drive. But I’m assuming we’re done now.
  2. We draw near to the opening of IF Comp 2008! Now is a good time to donate prizes. (No, I’m not entering this year myself. I just thought I’d mention it, because a couple of people have floated interesting prize ideas in my hearing in the past few months but, er, I’ve forgotten who some of you were. So: generic reminder.)I am donating a copy of Second Person, which has great and provocative stuff to read by Jeremy Douglass, Nick Montfort, G. Kevin Wilson, Steve Meretzky, Chris Crawford, the authors of Facade, and others.

Further Guilty Pleasures

I tend to variously rant and rave about the casual-type games that cross my path: it’s a genre I want to love, but often don’t.

But here’s one that offers considerably more depth of game play than you might initially expect: Gabob‘s “Now Boarding”, a game about airplane routing. You own an airline and airplanes; you get to direct them where to pick up passengers, but you also get to hire and fire airline employees, decorate the terminal, and buy upgrades for your equipment.

Continue reading “Further Guilty Pleasures”

Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble, Part 2

Web stats show that my post on Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble is getting a lot of traffic — clearly Mousechief has done something such that everyone is playing this game right now. Which is terrific, but I should issue a disclaimer: my comments on DHSGiT were based on an old demo version of the game, before the full version was completed.

I’ve since tried the new demo, and it is improved over the original in several ways: the cumbersome and confusing introductory stuff is gone, the most boring mini-games have been replaced with better ones, and the dialogue has in some places I think been made a little less arch. (At least, I found it easier to understand what was going on.) I haven’t played the full version yet, but my old critiques don’t necessarily stand.