Author: Mort Short

Events

March 1 is the registration deadline for Spring Thing 2021, so if you’re planning on participating, sign up ASAP.

March 6 is the next meeting of the SF/Bay Area IF Meetup.

March 21 is the next meeting of the Seattle/Tacoma IF Meetup. The group will feature Hanon Ondricek to play and discuss his 2016 game Fair 1.

March 28 is the submission deadline for Spring Thing 2021.

March 31 is the submission deadline for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.

Game Jams & Competitions

The Text Adventure Literacy Jam is underway this month, and continues to accept submissions until March 31st. The jam encourages authors to build text adventure games suitable for absolute beginners. There are two versions of the game jam, one in English, and one in Spanish.

ParserComp 2021 is also on the horizon. The itch.io page has not been set up yet, but should be ready on April 1 when registration opens. The comp focuses on text input games in the style of Zork, Photopia or Unhallowed.

New Releases

The newest offering on Choice of Games is Fate of the Storm Gods, a 275,000-word interactive fantasy novel by Bendi Barrett.

Harness wind, earth, fire, and all the forces of nature to destroy your enemies! Will you stabilize the broken magic of the weather, or revel in its chaos?

Kickstarters

There are just nine days to go for Failbetter Games’ Kickstarter for Mask of the Rose: A Fallen London Romance, a romantic visual novel set in the Fallen London universe. (In full disclosure: I’m the lead writer on this project.)

If you’d like to take a peek at some of what we’re creating, you can see some of it here:

Events

February 21 is the next meeting of the Seattle/Tacoma Area IF Meetup.

March 1 is the registration deadline for Spring Thing 2021, so if you’re planning on participating, sign up soon.

March 6 is the next meeting of the SF/Bay Area IF Meetup.

March 28 is the submission deadline for Spring Thing 2021.

Kickstarters

Failbetter Games is currently running a Kickstarter for Mask of the Rose: A Fallen London Romance, a romantic visual novel set in the Fallen London universe. (In full disclosure: I’m the lead writer on this project.)

If you’d like to take a peek at some of what we’re creating, you can see some of it here:

Events

February 6 is the next meeting of the SF Bay Area IF Meetup.

February 21 is the next meeting of the Seattle/Tacoma Area IF Meetup.

New Releases

Serania – Path of the Scion is launching February 4th 2021.

Serania is a new flavor of choice-based text adventure set in a Nordic style medieval fantasy world. The game has its own style with a fast-paced, progressive flow, combined with a multi-level choice-system that seamlessly brings elements from role playing and traditional text adventures into the choices.It is designed specifically for mobile and is using its own FableTree engine.

Contest, Jams, & Festivals

The Gaming Like It’s 1925 game jam, drawing on inspiration from works created in 1925, is still open to entries through January 31.

The French IF Competition also has ten games currently available for play and judging.

Articles & Links

Northeastern University is currently accepting applications for an Associate Professor/Full Professor of Games at their Boston Campus. Despite the listed deadline, they are still looking at additional candidates, and are seeking candidates “with an international record of excellence in research and/or creative practice in one or more areas including but not limited to: HCI, algorithmic bias, game analytics, creative coding, experiential technologies, extended reality, interdisciplinary design, player psychology, generative design, art games, serious games, and interactive narrative.”

Events

January 16 is the Boston FIG Fest, with the goal of fostering the next generation of game creators. The event is online this year, and registration is pay-what-you-like.

January 19 is the next meeting of the Boston IF Meetup.

January 24, the Oxford/London IF meetup will get together online; I’ll be talking about the design process for Orwell’s Animal Farm – people wanting to learn more about storylet-based IF design may find it interesting.

February 6 is the next meeting of the SF Bay Area IF Meetup.

February 21 is the next meeting of the Seattle/Tacoma Area IF Meetup.

Contest, Jams, & Festivals

The Gaming Like It’s 1925 game jam is now live. Participants can create either digital or analog games, drawing on inspiration from works created in 1925. Submissions are being accepted now through January 31.

The French IF Competition is also up and running, with ten games ready for judging now and for the next (roughly) six weeks.

New Releases

Oxford-based Cowleyfornia Studios is set to release a new game on January 28th. Sarawak is a combination of choice-based IF and point and click puzzles, embedded side by side in a novel-like layout, blending elements of mystery and adventure.

Articles & Links

Game designer Memalign has been hard at work exploring the potential of Listed Action IF, and has created an adaptation of some Counterfeit Monkey puzzles here. It’s a game very much not designed for that kind of presentation, so it’s curious to see what that looks like in a link-driven form.

Northeastern University is currently accepting applications for an Associate Professor/Full Professor of Games at their Boston Campus. Despite the listed deadline, they are still looking at additional candidates, and are seeking candidates “with an international record of excellence in research and/or creative practice in one or more areas including but not limited to: HCI, algorithmic bias, game analytics, creative coding, experiential technologies, extended reality, interdisciplinary design, player psychology, generative design, art games, serious games, and interactive narrative.”

Events

January 2 is the next SF Bay Area IF Meetup.

January 10 is the next Seattle-Tacoma Area IF Meetup.

January 16 is the Boston FIG Fest, with the goal fostering the next generation of game creators. The event is online this year, and registration is pay-what-you-like.

January 24, the Oxford/London IF meetup will get together online; I’ll be talking about the design process for Orwell’s Animal Farm – people wanting to learn more about storylet-based IF design may find it interesting.

Contest, Jams, & Festivals

For anyone interested in reading postmortems of IF Comp 2020, there is a fun thread here that covers many of the titles, including The Impossible Bottle.

Articles & Links

Now Play This has an open call for proposals for paid games work. This year’s edition is focused on the relationship between games, play, and the climate crisis. The submission deadline is coming up quickly on January 5.

Here is an interesting article on some of the work underlying AI Dungeon, focusing especially on the importance of analogy.

Events

December 22 is the next Boston Area IF Meetup.

January 2 is the next SF Bay Area IF Meetup.

Contest, Jams, & Festivals

IF Comp 2020 has wrapped, and results of the competition have been announced. This year we saw two first-place winners: The Impossible Bottle by Linus Åkesson and Tavern Crawler by Josh Labelle. All the games are still available for play on the site.

New Releases

Back in August, I mentioned that I was working with Nerial on a game adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. I’m pleased to announce that the finished product had its launch just a few days ago, and it’s now available on Steam.

If you enjoy escape rooms but can’t do one just now, you might get a kick out of the recently-released puzzle game / interactive story National Elf Service:

Additionally, Aaron Reed has just released Skycrawl, which you can get as either a PDF or full book:

Welcome to the Azure Etern.

This supplement for any fantasy roleplaying system gives you the rules and inspiration to run your own hexcrawl-style adventure in an infinite sky. Handle dangerous voyages through the clouds with a strategic Journey System, learn the secrets of Orcery to distill alchemical secrets from the winds, generate new flying peoples and ships of all descriptions, and peruse so many adventure seeds and encounter ideas, you won’t remember which way is up. Not that you’ll need to.

Articles & Links

And finally: people may be interested in this bit on how the story works in Watch Dogs: Legion, particularly the “play as anyone” feature.