Category: interactive fiction

IF Comp 2010: Flight of the Hummingbird

As has been my practice for the last few years, I’ve set my RSS feed to truncate entries so that I can post reviews without spoilerage. Within an entry, there is a short, spoilerless discussion (though the comp purists may want to avoid reading even that before playing for themselves); then spoiler space; then a more detailed discussion of what I thought did and didn’t work in the game, if appropriate.

I’m also pursuing an approach I came up with a couple of years ago: I’m playing and reviewing games that have listed beta-testers, and skipping those that don’t. In 2008 that turned out to be a pretty fool-proof indicator of which games were going to end up scoring 4 or less on my personal scale, and it made my reviewing process a happier one in 2009, so I’m sticking with it. I’m hoping this will mean I have more time to devote to the remaining games, which in turn will (I hope) be of higher quality, and you, dear reader, will have fewer rants inflicted on you.

Next up: Flight of the Hummingbird

Continue reading “IF Comp 2010: Flight of the Hummingbird”

Kill Screen #2 is coming out!

The Back to School issue, extensively discussing the ground between education and games, is now available to order. It includes an article by me, on teaching and designing; the discussion covers the IF game Voices of Spoon River among its examples. I’m also looking forward to the articles on Oregon Trail and Assassin’s Creed II, among others.

For those not already familiar with it, Kill Screen is an on-paper in-print magazine with high production values that looks great on the shelf. It talks about games in depth beyond the numerical scores, and is edited with dedication, insight, and tremendous raw persistence by Chris Dahlen. Seriously. Guy is not kidding around.

In which I am less useful than I’d like

Recently I got this email:

My name is (redacted) and I’m totally blind. I am a bit fan of interactive fictions and I have just downloaded Pytho’s mask. I have started it but I’m not exactly sure who I need to talk too or what I should be talking to them about. Do you know if there is a solution for this game or if poss could you send me one please?

I don’t have a walkthrough for Pytho’s Mask, and my suspicion is that (a) none exists and (b) it is more or less impossible to run it with a screenreader because of the way the conversation options are displayed in the status bar. (It does have both a z-machine and a Glulx version, but either way, the options go in their own window.)

If I’m wrong about either, though — that is, if you happen to know of a walkthrough, or you’ve successfully played this on a screenreader — I’d love to hear about it so I can pass on the answer. (I’d just sit down and make said walkthrough myself, but I probably won’t have time to do that for a few days.)

Edited to add: “A few days” has worked out to a long time, but I’ve now finished and posted said walkthrough.

Hadean Lands

I was going to post here about Hadean Lands, the new game Andrew Plotkin is writing, and how you can contribute via Kickstarter to get this thing fully funded.

Events have outrun me, and it’s already fully funded — which is awesome. But it’s not too late to contribute anyway! And here’s why you should:

  • Contributing is the only way to get yourself a PC/Mac version of the game when it comes out. It’s otherwise going to be released for iOS only. There’s a short, playable trailer available, so you can see for yourself what kind of a thing this is going to be.
  • The more Andrew’s funding goes over minimum, the more time he’ll be able to devote to being a full-time IF author and tool-maker. And that’s important because, in addition to releasing the game, he’s planning to share the tools for other people to release iOS games.
  • Also on the agenda is to polish up the browser-based Quixe interpreter, adding CSS support, javascript integration, and graphics.

If you’re keen to see more accessible IF on more platforms, this is a great way to help make that happen.

IF Comp 2010: The 12:54 to Asgard

As has been my practice for the last few years, I’ve set my RSS feed to truncate entries so that I can post reviews without spoilerage. Within an entry, there is a short, spoilerless discussion (though the comp purists may want to avoid reading even that before playing for themselves); then spoiler space; then a more detailed discussion of what I thought did and didn’t work in the game, if appropriate.

I’m also pursuing an approach I came up with a couple of years ago: I’m playing and reviewing games that have listed beta-testers, and skipping those that don’t. In 2008 that turned out to be a pretty fool-proof indicator of which games were going to end up scoring 4 or less on my personal scale, and it made my reviewing process a happier one in 2009, so I’m sticking with it. I’m hoping this will mean I have more time to devote to the remaining games, which in turn will (I hope) be of higher quality, and you, dear reader, will have fewer rants inflicted on you.

Next up: The 12:54 to Asgard

Continue reading “IF Comp 2010: The 12:54 to Asgard”