Taco Fiction is a comedy about crime and being in the wrong part of town. It’s moderate length for a comp game — I think I spent about an hour on it, possibly a little more.
Category: interactive fiction
IF Comp 2011: Overview
I’m now done with my comp play-through, though some games in the not-recommended pile that will not be reviewed because they don’t list beta-testers. If you have reason to believe I’ve placed something in that category in error, or you know that there were testers even if they weren’t listed, feel free to let me know.
What follows is a non-spoilery list of recommendations and non-recommendations. I’ve been adding to it as I played, but now that I’ve finished the whole field, I’ve redistributed a bit, mostly to try to help people find things they’re most likely to enjoy; that means I’ve taken away the “Must Play” category and replaced it with subcategories.
But some general points: this year sees a lot of entrants and a lot of high-quality work. The proportion of flatly unplayable stuff is low, and many of the mid-range games nonetheless demonstrate interesting ideas and a lot of authorial talent. There are a variety of experiments with user interface — that probably deserves its own compare-and-contrast column; games that explore morality and complicity from several philosophical angles; and every flavor of noir you can imagine. If you like wearing a fedora, this is the comp year for you.
You will find a bunch of other reviews linked here.
IF Comp 2011: Playing Games
Playing Games is a very short, story-light puzzler focusing on spatial memory and reasoning. More details follow the jump.
IF Comp 2011: Cold Iron
Cold Iron is a very short atmospheric piece centering on folk superstition and a ramble through the woods. More details follow the jump.
IF Comp 2011: Calm by Joey Jones and Melvin Rangasamy
It’s comp time, so I’m going to short summaries in my RSS feed in order to avoid dumping spoilers into the aggregators. And, as usual, I will be skipping games that have no evidence of beta-testing.
“Calm” is a post-apocalyptic survival game by Joey Jones and Melvin Rangasamy, with a fair amount of open-world freedom and multiple possible paths, somewhat reminiscent of Quintin Stone’s Scavenger.
In the review to follow, there are some comments on the gameplay experience to start with, then spoiler space, then more details about what did and didn’t work for me. If you want to experience the game free of all preconception, though, you’ll want to skip even the first portion.
Continue reading “IF Comp 2011: Calm by Joey Jones and Melvin Rangasamy”
IF Comp 2011: Keepsake
Keepsake describes itself as “a short interactive story about vengeance and its consequences.” As usual, commentary follows the jump.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 