To the best of my knowledge the blog Forty Two Hooks is not currently syndicated to Planet-IF, but it’s currently running Introcomp reviews as well.
Introcomp 2011: Chunky Blues
From Introcomp 2011, “Chunky Blues” is a noir mystery set in the town of Bleakton, MA, with some pleasingly innovative puzzle mechanics.
The first part of my feedback is not spoilery, and talks about the puzzle mechanics in general. Then there’s a spoiler space, followed by some more specific discussion of what I think does and doesn’t work.
Andrea Phillips on Choice of Genders
A bit belated, but this is an interesting addition to the discussion about gender roles in Choice of Games projects.
Introcomp 2011: ChoiceScript entries
Introcomp 2011 is now on, and it has a record 13 entries. Five of those are ChoiceScript games, best played online, but usually taking a bit less individual time commitment than a parsed game might. So I had a look at them together: Of Pots and Mushrooms, Exile, Gargoyle, Choice of the Petal Throne, and Choice of Zombies. Mildly spoilery remarks follow the jump.
Mini-Ludum Dare 27
Last weekend there was a mini Ludum Dare — an online game jam — focusing on conversational games and encouraging people to try Inform, Undum, Ren’Py, and other text-heavy engines. There were thirty entries and I haven’t tried all of them, but some thoughts on the ones I sampled:
Leaks is an Undum piece that presents the backstory to a poem. Technically it’s doing something rather cool: new stanzas of the poem appear in the sidebar as the reader makes progress through the story. The story itself could use quite a bit of polish, as there are a bunch of non-native English errors, and it is initially somewhat confusing what is going on and how the different passages of text relate to one another. It’s also extremely linear. All the same, it’s an interesting example of what Undum can do with juxtaposing and reordering text. (See also The Matter of the Monster.)
Interactive Prose
I have already tweeted about this, but it’s worth bringing up again, especially for people who aren’t twitterers:
Failbetter’s blog has a couple of cool posts on writing prose for interactive narrative: Part 1 and Part 2. Some of the discussion is specific to the setting and interactivity issues that affect Echo Bazaar particularly; some of it is just good advice. There’s not enough of this kind of discussion out there, and plenty of bad prose in games, so it’s nifty to see someone doing a good job and then discussing the craft of it.
(Extra cracker jack prize: here’s an old article of my own on prose style for IF.)
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 