Reviews – Page 14 – Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling

IF Comp 2015: Taghairm (Chandler Groover)

This year I’m reviewing things that I can generally recommend. On this particular post, I want to bracket that a little bit: Taghairm has violence and cruelty content warnings, for good reason. It may not be for everyone. It arguably wasn’t really for me. But I think what it’s doing is interesting and want to talk about it anyhow. This clears the bar for “worthwhile” in my view.

This is a piece that took me a few minutes to play to the ending that I reached. There is another ending that takes longer; I did not get to that ending.

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IF Comp 2015 Guest Post: Lucian Smith on Switcheroo

This post is part of an ongoing project to bring more voices to the IF Comp conversation. I have been reaching out to players and authors who aren’t part of the intfiction community, and also to some veteran intfiction denizens who might not have time to cover the whole comp but who are likely to have especially useful feedback in particular areas.

Here IF author Lucian Smith writes about Switcheroo, and especially about the narrative of foster care and adoption, from the perspective of his own experience. I am grateful to everyone who has agreed to help with this project, and I am especially grateful to Lucian for the openness of what he writes here.

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IF Comp 2015: Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! (Steph Cherrywell)

The 21st annual Interactive Fiction Competition is currently on, through mid-November. Voting is open to the general public; the only prerequisite is that you not be an author, not vote on games that you tested, and submit votes on at least five games. (You emphatically do not have to have played them all! In a year with 55 entrants, it is very unlikely that most judges will get through anywhere near all of them.)

Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! is a parser puzzle game set in the trope-world of 1950s alien invasion movies. The author is Steph Cherrywell, author of Jacqueline, Jungle Queen! and Chlorophyll, both thoroughly enjoyable easy puzzle games. It promises to be polished, with this nice cover art and an attractive feelie as well. There were teasers for it on the IF forum months ago, and the blurb is charming and confidently written.

This is basically as good a first impression as a comp game can make.

I played to what I believe is the only winning ending. It took me most of the two hours of comp judging time, and I had to get a hint from another player for one bit, but I didn’t need to take any notes. Some players may find they want to map.

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IF Comp 2015 Guest Post: Brendan Desilets on Untold Riches

In this post, Brendan Desilets, a middle school teacher with extensive experience teaching using IF, kindly covers Jason Ermer’s IF Comp game Untold Riches, which was designed for classroom use. (Here’s Brendan’s website on IF in education, which I recommend to anyone with a broader interest in the subject.)

These previous reviews are also part of this project:

Kane County, reviewed by gamebook author S.A.
Grandma Bethlinda’s Variety Box, reviewed by Justin DeVesine

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IF Comp 2015: Two Encounters in the Woods

Crossroads is a Twine game about meeting a witch in the woods. It branches very broadly and is extremely open-ended about what ultimately comes of the encounter, as well as the protagonist’s backstory in reaching that point.

A Figure Met in a Shaded Wood is a Twine game about meeting a fortune-teller in the woods. It is quite linear, and makes a point of undercutting expectations about replay.

In neither case does a single playthrough occupy more than 10-15 minutes, I would guess. (Maybe closer to 5.)

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IF Comp 2015: I Think the Waves Are Watching Me (Bob McCabe)

The 21st annual Interactive Fiction Competition is currently on, through mid-November. Voting is open to the general public; the only prerequisite is that you not be an author, not vote on games that you tested, and submit votes on at least five games. (You emphatically do not have to have played them all! In a year with so many entrants, it is very unlikely that most judges will get through anywhere near all of them.)

If you are looking for other reviews, this ifwiki page contains a list of places currently carrying them.

I Think the Waves Are Watching Me is a choice-based game with strongly procedural underpinnings: characters wander around an island of numerous locations, someone is committing murders, and you need to figure out who did it. But that description undersells just how weird this game is. There is a mystical talking rabbit and strange red lightning. It was not at all clear to me whether we were looking at a religious armageddon experience, or the closing down of a VR scenario, or hallucinations on the part of the protagonist, or something else entirely.

Special thanks go here to Prios, who on learning that I wasn’t able to play this game on my own system very kindly screen-shared the whole game via Skype. (Prios’ own views on this game are here, written before our play session.)

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