“Cana According to Micah” tells the story of the wedding at which Jesus performed the miracle of turning water into wine. After the jump, there’s some general discussion of the design, then spoiler space, then a couple more particulars. As always, those who want to encounter the game in total innocence should avoid reading.
Category: interactive fiction
IF Comp 2011: PataNoir by Simon Christiansen
PataNoir is a detective noir-themed wordplay game in which the player is able to manipulate the objects that appear in similes (so “His teeth are like a row of tombstones” would make “tombstones” an interactive object). It’s probably most appealing to players who enjoyed Puddles on the Path or Earl Grey.
More detail follows the jump, though no specific spoilers.
Continue reading “IF Comp 2011: PataNoir by Simon Christiansen”
IF Comp 2011: The Play
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.
“The Play” is an Undum piece by Deirdra Kiai (Life Flashes By, Pigeons in the Park). “The Play” concerns the dress rehearsal of a play about a statue come to life, her artist, and an escaping gladiator. There’s a certain amount of slapstick humor, but mostly the story is about juggling the moods of the actors you’re overseeing in an attempt to get through the evening.
In the review to follow, there are some comments on thematic content at the beginning, then spoiler space, then a more detailed discussion of structure. That said, even the thematic comments give away a certain amount of what the game is about, so if you want to encounter it entirely fresh, don’t read on.
The King of Shreds and Patches for Kindle
Jimmy Maher’s The King of Shreds and Patches
What’s more, Jimmy’s blog post on the topic seems to suggest that the underlying engine may be able to present other Glulx games on the Kindle in the future. This is a relief to me. I’m constantly being asked why there isn’t IF for sale on the Kindle. Now there is! Look! See!
I haven’t had a chance to play the Kindle version myself — I can read Kindle books on my iPad but not play the interactive Kindle games. But I have played the original, and can say that it’s a massive, meaty, plot-rich piece of work. (Review here.) Recommended.
Sign of corruption
I started thinking today, “hm, what if there were a way through Parchment/Vorple to instantly retweet a line from any IF game you were playing?”
I know, I know. The dark side, it is claiming me.
Alexandra Leaving
There’s a review of Bronze on IFDB that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
After hearing so much about Bronze, I was expecting a very satisfying and pleasurable experience. This was not the case for me… I came away feeling like the entire experience was rather hollow and somewhat forced… Beauty and the Beast is a beautiful love story, but in this version of the tale, I felt that the protagonist’s relationship with the Beast lacked very much warmth or deep love.
This is a challenging review for me. Obviously, I’m sorry the reviewer didn’t have a good time. It’s possible that I could or should have done something to frame the presentation of the game to make clear that it was not going to be a traditional fairy tale happy-ending romance. (The closest thing to that I’ve ever written is Pytho’s Mask, which, not coincidentally, has some pretty shallow characters and a heavily gender-bound treatment of love; even so some subversive elements snuck in before the end.) Perhaps I seemed to offer something the game was never going to deliver — and, for what it’s worth, I do think that players have the right to want specific things from their games. Indeed, if the player doesn’t want something, she’s not likely to play for long.
However. The unromantic aspect of the game is not a mistake. On the contrary, it is the summation of the effort and thought that went into its creation.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 