Sunday, May 31, 2015

Mapping Slaver’s Bay

I’ve been building a web based hex mapper for a few months, and I thought it would be fun to put it through it’s paces mapping Slaver’s Bay (the official map is here for comparison). If this catches your interest and you’d like to be an alpha tester – here’s the sign up form. Here’s […]

The post Mapping Slaver’s Bay appeared first on Fantastic Maps.



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Trollhalla Renders

Downloading some pix this morning, and looking at things I’ve posted to Facebook, I came across this lovely render. It was more than time for something new on the outer sanctum, so here’s an invite to come inside where things […]Continue reading «Trollhalla Renders»

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The Digital Antiquarian: Thieves and Jinxes (or, When Michael Met Anita)

The young and brash Tony Rainbird had never made a good fit with the rigid management structure of British Telecom. Thus when in late 1986 he suddenly left the hot new label he had formed barely a year before it came perhaps as more of a surprise to outsiders than to said label’s inner circle. […]

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Why Thieves are not mere theives: on class and level



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Emily Short: May Link Assortment

Carolyn VanEseltine has an excellent post on techniques for debugging ChoiceScript projects, both using ChoiceScript’s own tools and adding some hacks of Carolyn’s invention to display possible stat ranges. * Issue 3 of IFography is out, including reviews of a … Continue reading


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Placement produit : Captive



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Saturday, May 30, 2015

The Scoundrel and the Debutante by Julia London

On the bright side, this tired tale is readable. But there are many other books that are readable too.

The post The Scoundrel and the Debutante by Julia London appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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San Andreas (2015)

Not even a humongous earthquake can stand before the might of The Rock.

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X by Ed Sheeran

The ugliest man in music (after Bruno Mars) wants you to know that he knows how much you want him.

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Piece by Piece by Kelly Clarkson

How many albums down already? She's still consistently going, bless her.

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Retroactive Fiction: The Secret of Arendarvon Castle (1985) — bytecode avant la lettre

In previous posts, I wrote about Wander (1974), the interactive fiction creation tool for mainframe Unix systems. But my speciality (I use the word laughably) is text adventure games for the BBC Micro, the legendary 8-bit microcomputer that helped kickstart … Continue reading


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Emily Short: Favorite moments from Feral Vector

Feral Vector is “a festival about making games and gamelike things” that ran this Friday and Saturday in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire. It was staged in a wonderful building with pew-like benches for watching the talks, and a big open space … Continue reading


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Queen of Frost and Snow for T&T/Swords & Wizardry/USR



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Sharkpunk Saturday - Starburst Review



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Celtic Music for Relaxation by Llewellyn and Conway

It does exactly what it claims it will do, so I can't really say it's that blah. Even if it sort of is.

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Friday, May 29, 2015

Web Interactive Fiction: Glulx in TypeScript

I’ve read through the quixe JavaScript extensively and although I don’t feel accomplished enough as a software engineer to implement Glulx, I do feel that I can read code and understand its construction. However, plain JavaScript is becoming really irritating (I know join the club) and I’ve been playing with TypeScript a lot lately. I’m […]

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Web Interactive Fiction: Quixe-Channels and Angular 1.x

So one of the goals I have is to implement quixe-channels within an Angular 1.x web application. I hired an Elance developer from Poland, Bernard Labno, to help with this effort. He’s almost done though it wasn’t simple. I’ve complained (in my usual shameless manner) to Andrew about how tightly-coupled quixe and glkote are and […]

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Mabelin and the Demon Trials, by Samuel Harrison Young

We wanted to inform you that Samuel Harrison Young, author of the Hosted Games titles “Trial of the Demon Hunter” and the upcoming “Captive of Fortune”, has released a narrative version of his game entitled Mabelin and the Demon Trials It is now available in its entirety for $1.99! Not only that, but you can read the first 30% for FREE. Mabelin is a demon huntress, a fighter of evil and a natural enemy of demons. In a twisted display of irony, a demon appears and destroys her village. Determined to avenge her shattered home, the huntress embarks on a

Continue Reading...



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Choice of Games: Mabelin and the Demon Trials, by Samuel Harrison Young

We wanted to inform you that Samuel Harrison Young, author of the Hosted Games titles “Trial of the Demon Hunter” and the upcoming “Captive of Fortune”, has released a narrative version of his game entitled Mabelin and the Demon Trials It is now available in its entirety for $1.99! Not only that, but you can read the first 30% for FREE. Mabelin is a demon huntress, a fighter of evil and a natural enemy of demons. In a twisted display of irony, a demon appears and destroys her village. Determined to avenge her shattered home, the huntress embarks on a

Continue Reading...



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How to draw an isometric house

I’ve been asked a few times recently about how I draw isometric buildings. Here’s the run down. 1. Floorplan Use some rectangles to get an interesting floor plan. Don’t go crazy, but don’t just do a single rectangle – that leads to dull uniform buildings. 2. Make it isometric Spin the shape around by 45 […]

The post How to draw an isometric house appeared first on Fantastic Maps.



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Designer genes



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Gamebook Friday: Bloodbones the App, and YOU ARE THE HERO at the UK Games Expo



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Thursday, May 28, 2015

These Heterogenous Tasks: Enter Your Name

I love the art of names. I am entirely unreasonable about this. I spend entirely too much time on sites like The Baby Name Wizard even though I am highly unlikely to produce any babies. I cringe at speculative fiction when its … Continue reading


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Twisted by Cynthia Eden

First Broken, now Twisted. The agony is real.

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Sibyl Moon Games: 18 Rooms to Home: Room 17

This is the second installment of 18 Rooms to Home, an experimental work of interactive fiction. The full game covers a day in the life of Yesenia Reed, whose life is far from ordinary, no matter what she might prefer.

18 Rooms to Home is a serialized game. … Keep reading



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Quelle horreur!



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Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Jolt Country: Cyberganked is on Steam Greenlight

I’m putting the character role-playing game I’m making onto Steam Greenlight, in the hopes that it gets on Steam proper. This is not the first time I’ve tried to put something on Steam. Long before the Greenlight program, I submitted Cryptozookeeper into their old system and got a rejection letter. I’ll give the old process […]

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Segue: When the Land Goes Under the Water: Mini-Postmortem

Shufflecomp, which has just closed its second edition, is an IF competition in which entrants swap playlists and make games based on songs. Not content with taking part in the previous two IF comps, I entered Shufflecomp this year.

When the Land Goes Under the Water, pseudonymously released under the name Nikephoros de Kloet, was my entry.

Themes

I wanted to get started quickly, so my process here was simply to listen through the playlist I received and pick up on the first few things that came up. A lot of the songs suggested things that were either more specific than what I wanted to do (ie, I didn’t feel like writing something referencing specific characters or events in a song). Some of the songs were too expansive, so I didn’t feel like I could scope the game to do them justice; for instance, I had My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist (The Decemberists) which is its own long elaborate family story with multiple characters. I also received a track from Ziltoid the Omniscient (Devin Townsend), which was itself a ten minute long section of an hours-long space opera.

I ended up settling on What’cha Gonna Do (Béla Fleck, Abigail Washburn). It’s a pretty simple folk tune which conjures up (for me, anyway) images of an Appalachian community being dispersed because their valley is about to become the reservoir of a new dam. That is to say, exactly what is implied to happen after the ending of Deliverance. Thinking about Deliverance got me to the idea of an apocalyptic story turned on its head: What if you sifted through the ashes of a society that had just been wiped out, but the overwhelming mood was “these were horrible people and it’s a good thing they’re gone.” Atlantis was an easy place to go for this effect.

Development

I’m generally fascinated by objects as storytelling instruments. And I knew I had to be very conservative with scoping this project. Shufflecomp is fairly brief, and I didn’t have a lot of time to put into it in the first place. So if I wanted to do a parser piece (Which I did, since I was going to be leaning on object descriptions for all my storytelling), I had to limit myself severely. The game makes this explicit from the start: It’s a purely exploratory piece with a severely limited palette of verbs. It’s about taking a walk through a prose space, looking at the scenery, piecing together a picture of Atlantean society from those objects, then leaving.

Atlantis as an imperial state run by a body-horror shame cult is a setting I might want to come back to at some point. The goal was to play around with the tension of loss – something is very much being lost forever, but closer examination reveals that maybe it should be buried anyway. Asking the player to play only once stemmed from that; I wanted to sell the moment when the player realises part of the game has been cut off. I also liked the thought of players having different experiences, and having to talk to other players to figure out how those differ.

As it turns out: People really despise being told to not replay the game. Almost universally, the reaction to that was a kernel of unhappiness amidst mostly positive reviews. In retrospect, including that note was a mistake for a number of reasons.

A major one was that the two game branches just weren’t different enough. Another is simply that this kind of discussion is infrequent these days, at least in public online spaces where I might see it. So even if players were to compare experiences, the discussion would mostly consist of collating coherent chunks of information.

Ultimately, I think this shows that you can’t achieve an effect in a way that antagonises your audience long before the effect becomes apparent, though I will claim ignorance and say I did not expect it to be read as antagonistically as it was.

I’m still interested in the idea of games that supply players with variant perspectives and ask those players to exchange them, but I think this may be successful as part of the technology itself – either in the form of a game with persistent state that forces players to stick to their choices, or as a multiplayer IF experience. Emily Short’s Aspel plays around in that area with fascinating results.

Still: With overall praise for its prose, a moderately positive IFDB score, and no technical issues on release, I have to consider When the Land Goes Over the Water a success, and comp voters seemed to agree, as the game was commended. But consider this Official Dispensation to ignore my stupid author’s notes and replay the game as many times as you please.

As a bonus, here’s a Spotify playlist of the songs I submitted to Shufflecomp this year. One of them, Jusqu’a la Mort, inspired a game (Submerge). Funny that both me and the author of that game wrote games about things sinking into the ocean.



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The Maddening Abolon for White Star/T&T/USR



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The Gameshelf: IF: Hadean Lands greenlit! It turns out



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8-bit Dungeonsynth BBC Micro



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These Heterogenous Tasks: Out There Ω

Out There Ω is a resource-management space-exploration game. A more straightforward way to describe it – the influence is fairly obvious – is as FTL without combat. A lone astronaut, displaced by mysterious forces, has to make the long trek home. You gather resources and … Continue reading


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Editorial Assistant position

Employer: Choice of Games LLC Location: Telecommute (US resident) Choice of Games LLC was founded in 2009 to produce high-quality, multiple-choice text adventures. Choice of Games has a strong commitment to diversity of authors and representation within its publications. Its games are feminist and inclusive, and have been featured positively in press for the vision-impaired community and the lgbt community. Choice of Games is a small, fast-growing company, with over thirty titles published on storefronts such as the iTunes App Store, Steam, Amazon, and Google Play. This is an excellent opportunity for someone interested in becoming a professional editor or

Continue Reading...



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Choice of Games: Editorial Assistant position

Employer: Choice of Games LLC Location: Telecommute (US resident) Choice of Games LLC was founded in 2009 to produce high-quality, multiple-choice text adventures. Choice of Games has a strong commitment to diversity of authors and representation within its publications. Its games are feminist and inclusive, and have been featured positively in press for the vision-impaired community and the lgbt community. Choice of Games is a small, fast-growing company, with over thirty titles published on storefronts such as the iTunes App Store, Steam, Amazon, and Google Play. This is an excellent opportunity for someone interested in becoming a professional editor or

Continue Reading...



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New Fantasy Fiction on Inkitt.com



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Tuesday, May 26, 2015

When exploring gets boring

One of the reasons that we play gamebooks and RPGs in general is to immerse ourselves into new worlds and explore dark corners for shining new treasure.  We want to know what kind of people and monsters populate the world, interact with its people and know what the weather will be like tomorrow. In writing […]

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When exploring gets boring

One of the reasons that we play gamebooks and RPGs in general is to immerse ourselves into new worlds and explore dark corners for shining new treasure.  We want to know what kind of people and monsters populate the world, interact with its people and know what the weather will be like tomorrow. In writing […]

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When exploring gets boring



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Emily Short: Apartment: a Separated Place on Kickstarter (Robyn Tong Gray et al)

A-part-ment is a narrative game currently on Kickstarter, and about this > < far from reaching its funding goals. It's a slice of life narrative game that, through vignettes, tells the story of a number of relationships all happening in … Continue reading


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Monday, May 25, 2015

The Gameshelf: IF: Javascript wonkery



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Renga in Blue: Porpentine on Greenlight (and Hadean Lands update)

A new collection by Porpentine is on Greenlight and awaiting your vote. Eczema Angel Orifice is a compilation of award-winning interactive fiction by me, Porpentine Charity Heartscape! They’ve been exhibited in museums, profiled in the NYTimes, taught in college classes nationwide, and now I’m trying to get them on Steam, truly the ultimate goal of […]


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Porpentine on Greenlight (and Hadean Lands update)

A new collection by Porpentine is on Greenlight and awaiting your vote. Eczema Angel Orifice is a compilation of award-winning interactive fiction by me, Porpentine Charity Heartscape! They’ve been exhibited in museums, profiled in the NYTimes, taught in college classes nationwide, and now I’m trying to get them on Steam, truly the ultimate goal of […]

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Emily Short: Writing for Seltani, in general

I’ve written a couple of blog posts (1, 2) about particular design decisions for Aspel, a multiplayer game I wrote for Andrew Plotkin’s Seltani platform. Those posts were mostly about how I structured puzzles and information around having multiple characters, … Continue reading


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Cat o' Nine Tails for White Star and Somnium Void



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#47: The Crimson Tide



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Awake by Tycho

Well, none of the tracks here put me to sleep, so yay.

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SHARKPUNK at MCM ComicCon



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The Italian’s Deal for I Do by Jennifer Hayward

What is with that title, people? I mean... what is that thing?

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Sunday, May 24, 2015

Thought for the Day



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Spy (2015)

It's like a Stephanie Plum movie where the heroine is genuinely kick-ass and bad-ass. Awesome!

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Emily Short: Tightening the World-Plot Interface: or, Why I Am Obsessed With Conversation Models

Framed is an interactive comic game in which you move around the panels of the story, reordering events in order to change what happens in the story. It looks really attractive, too. When I first heard of this game, I … Continue reading


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The Rake to Reveal Her by Julia Justiss

Could this be? A book by Julia Justiss without flesh-rending melodramatic displays of self flagellation?

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Saturday, May 23, 2015

The Armored Doctor by Ava Morgan

This story is "armored" against things that could have made it interesting, snort.

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Tomorrowland (2015)

I believe I can confidently say that this is going to be the worst movie of 2015, if not the entire decade.

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Gamebook magnificence. Charitable munificence.

If you’re a regular follower of this blog you may already know Choice of Games. They develop gamebook-style apps, such as the phenomenally successful Heroes Rise, and my own app The ORPHEUS Ruse. Which isn’t selling so well, these days. Sigh. Anyway, it turns out those folks at Choice of Games also have great big […]

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Gamebook magnificence. Charitable munificence.



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Emily Short: Lifeline (3 Minute Games)

Lifeline is an iOS and Android mobile game in which you are fielding a distress call from someone named Taylor (gender never actually specified — I’ve seen some reviews refer to Taylor as male, but I pictured a woman). Taylor … Continue reading


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Wade's Important Astrolab: Accessibility observations part 3



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Sharkpunk Saturday: SHARKPUNK at the MCM Expo, London



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Friday, May 22, 2015

A Lady for Lord Randall by Sarah Mallory

What take a story rife with possibilities and turn it into a tale of stubborn one-dimensional creatures scowling at one another?

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$8K raised by roleplayers through charity product bundles to help in Nepal



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Retroactive Fiction: L — A Mathemagical Adventure (1984)

A video playthrough of the classic 1980s educational mathematics game L — A Mathemagical Adventure by the UK Association of Teachers of Mathematics, for the 8-bit BBC Micro computer : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKMeuxsvk3k&list=PLy5HwFxc67UFERGEqbKU-Ky74QwEtuLsm


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Retroactive Fiction: Wander follow-up

Previously I wrote about Wander, the 1974 mainframe text adventure game-creation system by Peter Langston, which was recently rediscovered. You can now play Wander online. This em-dosbox repackaging of a DOS port of Wander was created by me, using blunt … Continue reading


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Retroactive Fiction: Wander (1974) — a lost mainframe game is found!

Wander was possibly the first program for creating text-adventure games. Once thought lost, it has now been found. Continue reading


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Name your own character in our charity auctions

Choice of Games is proud to announce that we’re auctioning off cameos in four of our most anticipated games; proceeds will go to My Friend’s Place, an organization that assists and inspires homeless youth to build self-sufficient lives. The auctions close on Tuesday, June 2nd. Name a Powered Hero in “The Hero Project: Redemption Season,” the sequel to “Heroes Rise: The Hero Project“ “The Hero Project” is back for a second season, and you can make a cameo as a Powered Hero in the competition! Be the envy of your friends when they see you in their game! “The Hero

Continue Reading...



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Choice of Games: Name your own character in our charity auctions

Choice of Games is proud to announce that we’re auctioning off cameos in four of our most anticipated games; proceeds will go to My Friend’s Place, an organization that assists and inspires homeless youth to build self-sufficient lives. The auctions close on Tuesday, June 2nd. Name a Powered Hero in “The Hero Project: Redemption Season,” the sequel to “Heroes Rise: The Hero Project“ “The Hero Project” is back for a second season, and you can make a cameo as a Powered Hero in the competition! Be the envy of your friends when they see you in their game! “The Hero

Continue Reading...



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Lone Wolf 3 - The Caverns of Kalte playthrough



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Awkward Treasure #4 A Coffle of Slaves (part one)



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Gamebook Friday: YOU ARE THE HERO at the MCM Expo, London



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A brandy with the monster



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Thursday, May 21, 2015

Sibyl Moon Games: 18 Rooms to Home: Room 18

This is the recommended starting point for 18 Rooms to Home, an experimental work of interactive fiction. The full game covers a day in the life of Yesenia Reed, whose life is far from ordinary, no matter what she might prefer.

18 Rooms to Home is a serialized … Keep reading



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Sibyl Moon Games: 18 Rooms to Home

18 Rooms to Home is an experimental work of interactive fiction. It’s a day in the life of Yesenia Reed, whose life is far from ordinary, no matter what she might prefer.

This story takes place over the course of 18 updates, which are presented in reverse chronological order. With … Keep reading



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Traitor's Duty is on sale!



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These Heterogenous Tasks: A Year Without Zombies 5: Zed is for Zion

(For 2015, I am trying to avoid playing any games or consuming any static media with zombies in them. My reasons, and other fun things like ‘what exactly counts as a zombie?’, are explained here.) Hankerings Avoided Around mid-April I took … Continue reading


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Doctor Who: The Ark in Space



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Emily Short: Mystical Creatures: Hunting Unicorn (Chandler Groover); Iron Rabbit Encounter (Caeth)

HUNTING UNICORN, Chandler Groover (play online). HUNTING UNICORN is the recasting of classic unicorn legends, the story of a poor and unattractive woman whose chief income comes from serving as unicorn-bait, drawing the animals out so that they can be … Continue reading


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The Digital Antiquarian: The Pawn’s Second Life (or, When Tony Met Anita)

Two adventure games overshadowed all of the others in North America during 1986. The success of one of these could have been predicted long before it reached store shelves. Leather Goddesses of Phobos combined the Infocom brand, slightly battered by recent events but still widely regarded as the premiere label in adventure gaming, with Steve […]

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Emily Short: Want to get coffee? Feral Vector, Salt Lake City, SE Asia

So I’m coming up on some travel, and — since this worked out really well last time I tried it — I’d love to have coffee with IF/interactive narrative/social AI/game writing folks. As I said then: if you’re in the … Continue reading


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Swept Away by Violet Winspear, Charlotte Lamb and Sally Wentworth

This is a collection of three Mills & Boon stories, one each from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Surprisingly, I've had fun.

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Steampunk Thursday: Pax Britannia at the MCM Expo, London



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Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2 • Collection of skills, talents, spells and items



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La Troisième Porte du Rêve



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Yay! Bryce is Back!



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Lord of the High Lonesome by Janet Dailey

A TBR Challenge 2015 review. I think there is a spelling mistake in the title. It should be "loathsome", no?

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Warhammer Wednesday: The Third War for Armageddon



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Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2 • Re: Ways to harm supernatural creatures without magic weapon



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Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2 • Re: Stunts in combat



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Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2 • Re: Ways to advance players without making them too powerful



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Five Star Desire by Jacquelin Thomas

Six feet under, more like.

The post Five Star Desire by Jacquelin Thomas appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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Shirt Campaign!

Over the next 10 days you can purchase a premium quality t-shirt that has the world's coolest mascot: Uby!

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Tie-in Tuesday: My new claim to fame



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#13: Freeway Fighter



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Monday, May 18, 2015

Sibyl Moon Games: 18 Rooms to Home starts Thursday!

For months now, I’ve been head-down in two major projects, which have occupied enough of my time that I haven’t released any smaller games for a while. But I miss writing short-form games, and people keep telling me they enjoy my short-form work, so I want to remedy that.

This … Keep reading



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Thought for the Day



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These Heterogenous Tasks: The Interdependent Ludic Institute of Tlön’s GOTY 201Xb

(Previous Tlönology: 2014, 201Xa. And we encourage the valuable work of Institute anfiliates, such as Renga in Blue.) 10: HOW TO WIN A RIOT (Nôtre-Bloc). I’m in two minds about including a game so flamebaity in its self-promotion. The outcry over historical level … Continue reading


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Monster Talents

Because why should Heroes have all the fun?

Here are a few generic Talents that can be assigned to all sorts of monsters. They work much the same way as Hero Talents,

This is a work in progress, and your ideas and input are appreciated.

Bloodlust X - Each time the monster inflicts damage, roll 1D6. On a roll of X or higher, the monster gains +1 Attack Strength until the end of combat.

Clearsight - As per Hero Talent.

Cowardly X - Each time a friendly monster is slain, roll 1D6. On a roll of X or higher, all Cowardly monsters attempt to flee the battle. 

Darkseeing - as per Hero Talent.

Demonic - Monster is immune to non-magical damage. Takes double damage from holy attacks.
 

Double Damage - Inflicts double damage with each successful attack.
 

Elemental - Monster is immune to non-magical damage. Takes double damage from its opposing element.
 

Fear X - Monster reduces opponent's Attack Strength by X.
 

Frenzy X - Each time the monster takes damage, roll 1D6. On a roll of X or higher, the monster gains +1 Attack Strength until the end of combat. 

Instant Kill - If the monster rolls a double for its Attack Strength, it kills its opponent instantly.
 

Leader - Each other monster of the same type in the area receives a +1 bonus to its Attack Strength. This effect is not cumulative.
 

Multi-attack - Monster can attack more than one target each Attack Round.
 

Immunity - Takes no damage and is unaffected by the thing it is immune to (fire, magic, etc.).
 

Poisonous - Monster's attack inflicts poison damage.
 

Regenerate - Monster regenerates 1-3 STAMINA points at the end of each Attack Round, unless it is killed first.
 

Resistance - Takes half damage and is only partially affected by the thing it is resistant to (fire, magic, etc.).
 

Spirit - Monster is non-corporeal, immune to non-magical damage and non-silvered weapons.
 

Undead, Greater - Monster is immune to non-magical damage, non-silvered weapons, sleep, fear, hypnotism & illusions. Takes double damage from holy attacks & sunlight.
 

Undead, Lesser - Monster is immune to sleep, fear, hypnotism & illusions. Takes double damage from holy attacks & sunlight.
 

Unstoppable - Each time the monster's STAMINA is reduced to 0, roll 1D6. On a roll of 6, the monster's STAMINA is 1 instead.

Vulnerable - Monster takes double damage from thing it is vulnerable to (fire, magic, etc.).


Monsters could also have Special Skills assigned to them, for those creatures that are particularly good at a certain ability (e.g. Climb, Dodge, Jump, Strength, Swim). A monster only Special Skill could be Flight, where the higher its score, the more agile it is in flight.






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Sunday, May 17, 2015

Japanese T & T Material

On Saturday, May 16, 2015, I received an unexpected package from Japan. Inside were books all in Japanese that were all original Tunnels and Trolls adventures written by a man named Akira John Sugimoto. Mr. Sugimoto is a Facebook friend […]Continue reading «Japanese T & T Material»

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Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2 • Stunts in combat



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Where is Valyria?

In Season 5 Episode 5, Tyrion and Jorah Mormont are heading to Meereen by boat. That’s a careful choice on Jorah’s part, but it goes horribly wrong when they detour through Valyria, in the shadow of the Doom. So, why go through Valyria? And where is Valyria in context to the rest of Essos? Tyrion […]

The post Where is Valyria? appeared first on Fantastic Maps.



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If You Go Down to the Woods Today (DQ: Legion of Shadow - Scarlet in the Woods quest)



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Owning Violet by Monica Murphy

Worst book of 2014! What a surprise - it's new adult sh... stuff.

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Firesoul by Gary Kloster

Now this is how you create a familiar but very entertaining romp!

The post Firesoul by Gary Kloster appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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Run by AWOLNATION

The orgy of weird-kooky electronic overload continues.

The post Run by AWOLNATION appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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Saturday, May 16, 2015

Segue: ShuffleComp Impressions: Ansible

For the duration of ShuffleComp, I won’t be commenting on games because I don’t want to blow my own pseudonymity just yet. However, Jacques Frechet appears to be a real person, meaning he’s definitely not me; whereas all other ShuffleComp authors are either Doug Orleans or currently in a quantum state of simultaneously being and not being me. So I get to talk about Jacques’ submission, Ansible.

Ansible (Jacques Frechet) is a hypertext piece built using a custom system. Structurally, it’s a pure, stateless time cave. What sets it apart from traditional CYOA-style time caves is the presentation. Ansible uses an infinite scroll, similar to Undum, where content is added to the bottom of the page as the story “grows” with player choices. Unlike Undum, however, past choices are not cut off; every link remains active, allowing the player to go as far back as they want to change something. Effectively, Ansible is a deconstructed CYOA book, with all of its branches laid side by side as tabs that you can page through at will.

Much like in a traditional CYOA, too, Ansible has numerous branches that result in death. The ease of clicking back to explore other branches makes the experience more like a tightly refined try-die-repeat loop out of something like Super Meat Boy, though, and less like a punishingly cruel Twine. In effect, it’s turning lawnmowering into a game mechanic.

Overall, I thought the conceit was interesting enough that I’d like to see other games built using the same structure, though I didn’t think Ansible itself served that structure as well as it could.

This is about as much as I can talk about Ansible without spoiling story or plot details; so I do recommend you give the game a play (It’s quite short) before reading on, if you care about spoilers.

Ansible uses the same basic premise as Fail-Safe (Mild spoiler for a 15-year-old game): The player is communicating over an imperfect connection (the titular ansible) with a character in the game world who is taking instructions from them. In this case, they are receiving messages from a generic-fantasy adventurer equipped with a magical ring that seems to transmit thought and sound. All of the prose consists of dialogue and occasional asides from the protagonist, asking the reader to fill in the blanks of what’s going on. Often, the adventurer’s presumably grisly CYOA-style deaths are merely implied by a “connection terminated” message.

For the purposes of this review, I’ll be referring to the character receiving advice (on the “far side” of the ansible) as the “adventurer” and the character giving advice (on “this side” of the ansible) as the “angel”, to avoid confusion about what I mean when I say “player” or “player character”.

It is strongly implied, in a metatextual twist, that the angel has some kind of clarvoyance or time travel ability corresponding to the player’s ability to explore branches of the story and then go back. Acknowledging this ability to “calibrate” the ansible is the first thing that happens in the story, and the adventurer clearly understands that the angel “will have to try again” to properly get to the next branch of the story.

The rules of how their connection works were never quite clear to me, and after a while they take on a (perhaps unintended) existential horror quality. The adventurer expects guidance from the angel on almost everything, and understands that the angel knows better. So the adventurer is clearly willing to entertain every command from the angel, even when they don’t make sense, even though on the vast majority of cases those commands lead to death. Presumably our mediaeval adventurer doesn’t understand the concept of quantum branches, but I got the picture of the angel as some vast impersonal alien intelligence flipping through different versions of the universe, to find the one where Shrödinger’s adventurer is alive. More than that: Actively driving the adventurer towards death, in a way, to find out what to avoid.

At the same time, the angel is extremely limited. The information you get is incomplete at best, misleading at worst; and you can only communicate by echoing the adventurer – ie, by clicking on links, which are themselves words supplied by the adventurer. So there’s a dimension of helplessness to the angel’s position; you can’t really warn the adventurer of what’s going to happen, or indeed paint outside the lines of the options that the adventurer is enumerating for themself.

From the beginning of the story, I expected gameplay to hinge on gaining information from one “death” branch that would be applied to succeeding in another branch, but this almost never came into play. Eventually, there are few enough branches that lanwmowering becomes the answer, once the shape of the story is taken into account. The time cave structure also suggests, toward the beginning, that the game contains several wildly different stories; in practice, this isn’t true either: there is really only one well-developed plotline, with all other possibilities leading to swift death.

For me, Ansible works best as a piece of metafictional existential horror about Choose Your Own Adventure books. The distancing effect of the ansible, and the frequent death puts an undertone of menace on everything, aided by the writing. The panoply of magical items that is central to the game’s primary plot comes off as sinister, rather than wondrous.

Overall, like a lot of structural experiments, Ansible doesn’t succeed on all counts, but it’s interesting enough that I would care to see more on this mould or from the same author.



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Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Easily the biggest girl power action flick of the year, this one however doesn't offer much beyond loud explosions.

The post Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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Emily Short: Tentacles Growing Everywhere (Squinky)

Tentacles Growing Everywhere is the story of three young tentacled aliens who are just transitioning into their lifeform’s version of puberty. The primary mechanic is one of editing posts: each of the three protagonists keeps a blog, and you’re in … Continue reading


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5th edition Dungeons and Dragons and E2 rules

I love looking through RPG systems for inspiration for gamebooks, so naturally, so soon as 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons came out, I got the Players’ Handbook, Dungeons Masters’ Guide and Monster Manual. However, I am not a fan of people walking around fantasy worlds with superhuman abilities or magical spells that can wipe out […]

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5th edition Dungeons and Dragons and E2 rules



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These Heterogenous Tasks: Shufflecomp Failure

With one thing and another, and to my great regret, I didn’t get a game made for Shufflecomp. Here’s some discussion of why, largely in the interests of Know Thyself, and because I think best in writing. (There’s also the … Continue reading


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#51: Island Of The Undead



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Classic Adventure Solution Archive: CASA Update - 11 new game entries, 1 new solution, 2 new maps, 2 new clue sheets



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Sharkpunk Saturday - The first reviews



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Friday, May 15, 2015

Sound of the Heart by Genevieve Graham

The adventures, the dangers, and the hero are all adequate for a good time. The romance, not quite.

The post Sound of the Heart by Genevieve Graham appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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>TILT AT WINDMILLS: Spring Thing '15 Post-mortem and Feedback



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Gamebook Friday: YOU ARE THE HERO at the UK Games Expo



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The Digital Antiquarian: Fire and Rain

While the Apple Macintosh, Atari ST, and Commodore Amiga weren’t exactly flying off American store shelves in 1985 and 1986, they at least had the virtue of existing. The British computer industry, by contrast, proved peculiarly unable to produce 16-bit follow-ups to their 8-bit models that had made Britain, measured on a per-capita basis, the […]

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Designing from the bottom up



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Thursday, May 14, 2015

The Future of Gamebooks?

Originally posted on graemedavis:
Someone from a Fighting Fantasy Facebook group just asked me whether I thought there could ever be a gamebook resurgence. Is it possible to capture the same lightning in a bottle, 30 years on? Branching novels? Other applications for the numbered-paragraph format? It’s a question I come back to every so…

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The Future of Gamebooks?

Someone from a Fighting Fantasy Facebook group just asked me whether I thought there could ever be a gamebook resurgence. Is it possible to capture the same lightning in a bottle, 30 years on? Branching novels? Other applications for the numbered-paragraph format? It’s a question I come back to every so often myself. Here’s what […]

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Up, up, and away! SUPERPOWERED release!

SUPERPOWERED has been live in both Kindle edition and paperback for four days now, and I just realized that in all my social media blitzing and marketing, I somehow forgot to mention it on my blog! My bad. But I’ll redeem myself by saying, “It’s only $0.99 during the special release period!” so that should help, […]

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Sibyl Moon Games: Matt Chelen’s Another Interactive Fiction Engine List

Occasionally, the thought crosses my mind: what if I created a game in every existing interactive fiction engine, something tailored to capture its strengths? It would be a whole lot of work, but it would also ensure that I know the strengths of every system out there (an appealing thought!)

Keep reading


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A Ring from a Marquess by Christine Merrill

Don't tell anyone, but I think the two main characters here skin bunnies and kill old ladies for fun.

The post A Ring from a Marquess by Christine Merrill appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Raconteur: New feature: sections

An interesting new feature has been added with version 0.4.1 of Raconteur. From the changelog:

0.4.1 (May 13th, 2015)

Each situation with content is now output as its own <section> element. Each situation with content clears the #current-situation id from previous situations and gives its content section that id.

Writers, instead of inserting before the .options or at the end of the content spool, now insert at the end of the #current-situation. This behaviour has ramifications if you’re doing strange things with Raconteur situations, but if you’re using most of the features as intended this change should be transparent.

The gain from this feature is significant: Situations can now be styled individually, or in groups by giving the situation a classes property.

The major potential pitfalls are: first, the “changeover” happens at the content-printing step of RaconteurSituation#enter, so if you define a “before” function in your situation and refer to the #current-situation that will still be the previous situation. Second, if you are using Undum’s low-level API to write to the end of the content spool (With system#write for instance) and mixing that with Raconteur writers, you might have odd behaviour where text is popping up where you don’t expect it. The fix is to make sure you always writeInto the #current-situation section, OR that you use system#write throughout that situation instead. It might be useful to create a new, empty #current-situation at the bottom of the content spool by entering a situation with a function that returns empty string as its content.

I’ve merged this feature into the stable branch. If you try it out and have problems or questions, let me know.



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When a man is tired of Whedon...



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Emily Short: ShuffleComp, 2015 edition

ShuffleComp is an interactive fiction comp in which participants send in lists of songs; the songs are shuffled and redistributed, and each participant writes a game based on one or more of the songs they received. (Last year’s competition yielded … Continue reading


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Emily Short: ShuffleComp, 2015 edition

ShuffleComp is an interactive fiction comp in which participants send in lists of songs; the songs are shuffled and redistributed, and each participant writes a game based on one or more of the songs they received. (Last year’s competition yielded … Continue reading


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Tuesday, May 12, 2015

The Blow Off by Mickey J Corrigan

Hos on the street, sucking and robbing their johns! Hold your excitement, though, the story is nowhere as exciting as it could have been.

The post The Blow Off by Mickey J Corrigan appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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Sultry Pleasure by Lindsay Evans

Nothing new here, just the same old stuff, rehashed the same old way.

The post Sultry Pleasure by Lindsay Evans appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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That Don't Leave No Time Left to Play



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Goblin Mercantile Exchange: Doggerland design notes

So about a month ago I entered a new Twine piece of mine, called Doggerland, into the Spring Thing competition,…

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Segue: Mere Anarchy Postmortem

Need help remembering a book series...

One of the books has a giant worm monster and I think a city that resembles Venice on the cover... ring any bells?

submitted by BlazeRod
[link] [comment]

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Lone Wolf additional rules?

Hi all, I would like to play all the Lone Wolf volumes again, it will be so epic! I'm pretty sure I've read some additional rules, but I cannot find them (maybe Project Aon?). What rules do you use to add replayability to Lone Wolf gamebooks?

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Sharks by numbers



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Monday, May 11, 2015

T & T Gremlins

I’m happy to announce that Trollhallan Starrf Orengk’s Gremlin Magicarium is now available from drivethrustuff.com.  Here’s the front cover: You can find it here: http://ift.tt/1QCG0gn.  I hope to have hard copies of it available by June, at least. This book is […]Continue reading «T & T Gremlins»

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Let's take a look at the Elemental Evil Player's Companion



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Sibyl Moon Games: Version control with Mercurial and Tortoise HG

ChoiceScript doesn’t have integrated version control. If I select three paragraphs of source code, cut them to move somewhere else, and then lose them out of the clipboard by cutting something else, then the only way to fix my mistake is with “undo”. And it only works if I … Keep reading



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Giants of Sundered Valley



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Review: Uncle Tetsu's Cheesecake, Penang



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The Daring Exploits of a Runaway Heiress by Victoria Alexander

The author didn't run away with her fantastical premise, more the pity.

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Where is Braavos?

The Free City of Braavos lies at the North Western tip of Essos, directly across the Narrow Sea from the Vale, and North East of King’s Landing. Here’s a map to orient Braavos to the rest of the events in Game of Thrones. This is a sketch, based on the maps of Lands of Ice and […]

The post Where is Braavos? appeared first on Fantastic Maps.



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Mapping An Ember in the Ashes

I was commissioned to map the world of An Ember in the Ashes, the New York Times bestselling debut novel by Sabaa Tahir. The final is at the top of this post (and a larger version below). It’s great to take on a map of a new world. Sabaa and Penguin had a great outline sketch […]

The post Mapping An Ember in the Ashes appeared first on Fantastic Maps.



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Thought for the Day



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Saturday, May 9, 2015

Charmer by Aimee Mann

The songs are mostly catchy and adorable, but, together, they all sound the same after a while.

The post Charmer by Aimee Mann appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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Thief of My Heart by Janice Sims

Oh, old school goodness. Don't come across that often these days.

The post Thief of My Heart by Janice Sims appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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Renga in Blue: Mainland, the first parser game on Steam

Mainland had been approved on Steam Greenlight (I think due to longevity — it had been on there a while) and has just appeared on the service. Click here to go to the Steam main page Note that the “parser” is somewhat hybridized. You type a verb you want to use and the initial letters […]


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Mainland, the first parser game on Steam

Mainland had been approved on Steam Greenlight (I think due to longevity — it had been on there a while) and has just appeared on the service. Click here to go to the Steam main page Note that the “parser” is somewhat hybridized. You type a verb you want to use and the initial letters […]

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Renovation by Lane Robins

This is a "Huh?" book. Ask me about it a few days down the road and I'd give you a blank look.

The post Renovation by Lane Robins appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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Emily Short: Spring Thing 2015: Doggerland (Alan DeNiro)

Alan DeNiro’s Doggerland belongs to the interactive poetry school of Twine: highly personal, only loosely narrative, making play with hover effects as well as links in order to evoke some connections that aren’t explicitly stated. It concerns, among other things: … Continue reading


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Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2 • Re: Ways to harm supernatural creatures without magic weapon



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Sharkpunk Saturday - Sharkpunk launches today at Forbidden Planet!



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Friday, May 8, 2015

Various States of Undress: Georgia by Laura Simcox

Oh look, another story where female incompetence, emotional crackpot antics, and defeatism are celebrated as virtues.

The post Various States of Undress: Georgia by Laura Simcox appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia

The author has a big gun; he wants everyone to watch him play with it for over 700 pages.

The post Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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Sharkpunk on Pornokitsch



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Lone Wolf 2 - Fire on the Water playthrough



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The rising of a new gamebook

Hi there!

More gamebooks are coming! We are happy to reveal some info about our next release.

THE STORY

Frankenstein's secrets raise an unstoppable army from the dead. Rival factions battle for supremacy. Interactive story of war & horror.

As post-revolution France tears itself apart, the heirs of Victor Frankenstein raise an unstoppable army of the resurrected dead in their struggle to seize control. Decide the fate of the world in this enhanced interactive adventure

This will be one of the main characters...

This will be one of the main characters...

Direct two brothers through a branching, non-linear storyline - and decide if they become allies, or enemies. Explore interactive maps to reach your objectives, but this time storylines and goals will be time-sensitive, a new way of designing gamebooks.

SOME KEY POINTS

We are still at a very young stage of the project, but we have some points that we may disclose. 

- Storyline conceived by the godfather of gamebooks, Dave Morris.
- Written by experienced gamebook author, Paul Gresty.
- Original illustrations by Rafater.
- Released and developed by Cubus Games.

Stay tuned 



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Emily Short: Spring Thing 2015: Ruiness (Porpentine); Missing Since ’77 (Andrew Watt)

Ruiness is a Porpentine game, and as such is typically difficult to summarize. It takes place in an evocative post-apocalyptic wasteland in which people have roles like “scavenger” and “dustrunner”, as well as apparently belonging to different species and riding … Continue reading


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Rock, paper, scissors - and bots



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Thursday, May 7, 2015

Storycade: Visual Novel: Shan Gui

Shan Gui

Shan Gui is a sweet kinetic novel about the adventures of a young Chinese woman and a mysterious girl she meets on a mountain trail. Shan Gui begins with the main character, Han Hui, lamenting the heat of the mountain and her lack of water. She’s come to the mountain to recall memories of happier […]

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Sibyl Moon Games: Carolyn vs. the Data Serialization Formats

My current C# project involves a great deal of data and some fairly complicated object structures, which I save to file and reload every time I start the program.

I’ve been saving and loading with .NET binary serialization, which works wonderfully right up until I want to make changes … Keep reading



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but what have I turned to recently?

So, it's been a while, faithful old gamebook / hyperfiction blog. Did I convert all the branching narratives? Looking forward to crossing that one off my list, but we're not there yet. Not quite. Have I reported on all the new works? Not even close. Life got complicated, free time took a hit and I had to withdraw to a core two primary blogs, leaving my extended projects, including this

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Emily Short: Spring Thing 2015: Toby’s Nose (Chandler Groover)

The premise of Toby’s Nose is that you are Toby, a dog belonging to Sherlock Holmes, and your task is to sniff out a murderer from a roomful of suspects. There are quite a few possible suspects to choose from, … Continue reading


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Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Web Interactive Fiction: Quixe-Channels

Since this is the inaugural post, I wanted to get right to the most important aspect of my new work, which is developing new tools to help authors build interactive fiction for the browser. This work will revolve around a fork of Andrew Plotkin’s quixe virtual machine, a Glulx implementation in JavaScript. The fork is […]

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Emily Short: Spring Thing 2015: Mere Anarchy (Bruno Dias)

I didn’t run reviews during Spring Thing because of having my own Back Garden entry. I’ve also changed my review policy for comps: moving away from trying to be thorough (a goal at which I didn’t always succeed anyway), and … Continue reading


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Tora Datang Lagi by Amirul Bozu

If nostalgia is a drug, this fellow has managed to captured the perfect high in writing.

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SHARKPUNK - The Official Launch at Forbidden Planet



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Not so Green as cabbage-headed



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The Gameshelf: IF: Hadean Lands on the Humble Store



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Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2 • Re: Number of terrains to have lore for?



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Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2 • Re: Number of terrains to have lore for?



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Lautz of IF: Trizbort 1.5.8.8 and New Trizbort Website

Thanks to some contributors we’ve been able to keep development of Trizbort moving along.  So I’m happy to release another minor update to Trizbort.  This update (1.5.8.8), focused on a few new features and the beginning work on a somewhat neglected section of the application, the auto-mapper.  Special thanks goes out to Matt Watkins for […]


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Storycade: Kickstarter: Trigger

trigger

Trigger is an upcoming visual novel from Amy Dentata and stolencomputer, currently being crowd-funded on Kickstarter. Made with Ren’Py, the story is about the trauma, PTSD, and survival. Trigger follows the story of Wendy, a 30 something housewife whose history is wreaking havoc on her present, and her veteran husband Rick. The games endings are […]

The post Kickstarter: Trigger appeared first on .



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TOMORROWKINGS LOSTWARRIOR [OLDHAMMER]



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Buy White Star, you Radfish



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You are the Hero by Jonathan Green

Oh, those were the days, nicely captured in this tribute to one of the most popular gamebook series of the 1980s.

The post You are the Hero by Jonathan Green appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2 • Arion Games Stockists



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Emily Short: Writing for Seltani: an Aspel Post-mortem

Seltani is Andrew Plotkin’s platform for multiplayer choice-based IF. He’s written about it and its world model here, and we had an IF discussion club meet in/about it, from which the transcript is available. I’ve also been kicking around some … Continue reading


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Monday, May 4, 2015

Storycade: Twine: Space Adventure Laika

Space Adventure Laika is the story of a little dog that’s going to die. You probably know that going in. It’s like watching the Titanic. No matter what happens in the interim, something tragic is on the horizon. Lives will be lost. Tears will be shed. But Laika isn’t about a human tragedy. You might already be […]

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SPAG: Poetry Is What Gets Lost in Translation: notes on translating PataNoir and Sunday Morning

I love the English and the German languages equally. The process of translation fascinated me since I first realized I could watch my DVDs in English, so wanting to translate an IF game came naturally to me. I offered a translation as an IFComp prize three times, and the first two I completed were PataNoir […]

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SPAG: MacDougal and Me at the Spring Thing Fair

Everyone loves a fair, and with the onset of Spring, the fair is where the village casts off its winter bundling, and steps out with ankles flashing, to see what the ripening year has to offer. Macdougal was no exception, though, being a fictional character and an urban one at that, he had never actually seen an annual […]

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SPAG: Issue #62: Letter From the Editor and Call For Submissions

Good afternoon! We’ve wrapped up what has proven to be an unusually historical month for IF: The XYZZY Awards, for the first time ever, were dominated by commercial IF, notably Meg Jayanth and Inkle’s excellent steampunk piece and Best Game winner 80 Days. Ever since the beginnings of the hobbyist IF boom, authors, readers and observers […]

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SPAG: SPAG Specifics: The Writer Will Do Something

Whenever I read the seemingly unkillable complaints about modern IF and its “uninteractivity,” I’m plagued with flashbacks to 1998. (Boy, I hated 1998. I had helmet hair.) 1998 was the year of Photopia, a near-universally acclaimed work of interactive fiction in which nothing you do will derail the crushing inevitability of the plot one inch, […]

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SPAG: >JUSTIFY, HEIGHTEN, SAY YES: Interactive Fiction as Improv

Interactive fiction is a magic trick, and it’s always been a magic trick. It’s sleight of hand to try and convince you that this pre-programmed robot that we built three months ago is actually telling a story that’s changing for you right now. That’s the goal, to make it come to life. Jon Ingold, Gamasutra […]

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The Fourth is Strong with This One

It’s been a year since I announced my intent to reboot the prequels. The project is still alive. More to come. For now:   And just to celebrate Star Wars day, check out this amazing recreation of The Force Awakens teaser in paper: Add your opinion in the comments below. And don’t forget to like, […]

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Sibyl Moon Games: Interviewed in IFography #3!

Hanon Ondricek interviewed me for IFography #3! It’s a longish interview that covers everything from multiplayer IF (exciting) to AI (fascinating) to roller coasters (scary) to my first games (dubious).

IFography is primarily a print fanzine that happens to be distributed through the Internet, so there’s only a PDF … Keep reading



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Raconteur: Raconteur Updates: Version 0.4.0

This is the changelog for for Raconteur, from the launch release up to 0.4.0.

0.4.0

  • qualities.js now exports create() and use(), two functions used to incorporate your own quality constructors into the API.

0.3.0 (April 30, 2015)

  • Did away with exportUndum(), since the problem it solves doesn’t really exist.
  • Moved undum to a devdependency.

0.2.1 (April 18, 2015)

  • Add racontest.js, a module for inserting debugging/testing utilities.

Explanation of the changes

exportUndum() was an ugly, late-night hack to fix a mostly imaginary problem caused by the way Raconteur had its dependencies list set up. Since that problem was fixed, that function has been removed; instead, use the usual require() syntax to import undum-commonjs into your projects.

This was caused by Raconteur and your project having independent copies of Undum, which should no longer be the case as Undum is no longer a regular dependency of Raconteur; instead, undum-commonjs should be a dependency of your project, which it invariably will be anyway. The Raconteur scaffold reflects this change.

racontest.js is (currently) a tiny module that will create an interface widget that allows you to jump between situations. To use it, import it and call racontest.init(system) inside your undum.game.init function; then test your game in a server by adding the #debug hash to the end of the URL. This module is still experimental, but it provides some minimal testing functionality to go with Raconteur. Eventually, however, the goal is to have more robust testing facilities like the Monte Carlo test harness that ChoiceScript enjoys; but for that to be done efficiently, Undum will have to be modified so it can run well headlessly.

create() and use() are the first step towards letting you attach your own prototypes to Raconteur, and important ones, since they allow for custom quality definitions.

The past, present, and future of Raconteur

I’ve written a post regarding the current state of Raconteur on my blog, which also contains some tutorials to help people get up to speed. As ever, if you need help, don’t hesitate to submit an issue on Github or contact me on Twitter. Happy hacking!



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ADRIFT News: 5.0.33 out now



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Slight Change of Plan...



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Bring a little OSR into your Star Wars Day



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GAME OVER - Call for Submissions



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May the Fourth be with you



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Thought for the Day



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Des fleurs et des arcs-en-ciel : Hissssa de Makan



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Sunday, May 3, 2015

Winning Her Love by Harmony Evans

Turning the heroine into a cartoon shrew is never a good idea, darling.

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Beautiful Surrender by Sherelle Green

If you like stories of heroes boinking crazy into submission, here's your baby.

The post Beautiful Surrender by Sherelle Green appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.



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The Sense of Wonder



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New race: The Carriath



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How important are graphics in a digital gamebook?

I have an idea for a gamebook, which I would develop for mobile devices (Android, iOS). As I am no artist, I was thinking of how important graphics are for a gamebook.
In most gamebooks I read there were a few artworks throughout the game, but the main part was reading. Do you think this is still a good way to do it? Or do you need good graphics like the mentioned artworks to get into the story?

submitted by Rebusmind
[link] [comment]

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Wade's Important Astrolab: Leadlight Gamma reviewed at Gamerz Unite



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Saturday, May 2, 2015

Beyond the Morning Mountains expanded!

Due to a not entirely unexpected excess of written content (currently at around 80,000 words) I’ve decided to split the Beyond the Morning Mountains adventure into two volumes. Book 1 will take you from your home north-west of Ustahm down to Balquis, where you can extensively explore this large major city, meeting many of the […]

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Embrace My Heart by AlTonya Washington

The author turns into a different kind of beast when it comes to the sex scenes. Pretty impressive.

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Cardboard Warriors paper models minis and tiles in $15 Nepal Charity Bundle



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Snowy Mountain Nights by Lindsay Evans

Aren't divorce lawyers disgusting people? So what does it say about the heroine, when she wants it bad from someone she claims to hate?

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Web Interactive Fiction: Quixe-Channels

Since this is the inaugural post, I wanted to get right to the most important aspect of my new work, which is developing new tools to help authors build interactive fiction for the browser. This work will revolve around a fork of Andrew Plotkin’s quixe virtual machine, a Glulx implementation in JavaScript. The fork is […]


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Lautz of IF: IFography #3

Today the third issue of IFography was released.  In this issue are a lot of great articles and reviews. Highlights include an interview with IF author Carolyn VanEseltine, discussion with some of the author’s of last years Shufflecomp, an interesting take on Magnetic Scrolls’ version of Alice in Wonderland and much more. Check it out.Filed […]


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Free Comic Book Day 2015



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Quite the turnip for the books (DQ: Legion of Shadow - Best in Show quest)



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Sibyl Moon Games: Improved Automatic Templates for ChoiceScript

After I posted Debugging ChoiceScript, Dani Church sent me a better version of Automatic Character Templates. Here’s her solution.

Copy the following line into debug_generate_template.txt:

*script for (var stat in stats) {if (stat == “scene” || stat == “sceneName”) continue; println(“*set “+stat+” “+((typeof stats[stat] == “boolean”) ? stats[stat] … Keep reading



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Sharkpunk Saturday - Sharkpunk making waves already



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The Creation of a Series



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Friday, May 1, 2015

Moonlight Kisses by Phyllis Bourne

Lots of love and kisses from me to this one. It's too adorable for words!

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Renga in Blue: Tin Star is on Steam Greenlight

Not long ago three text adventures appeared on Steam Greenlight. They still need your votes, but there’s a new *ahem* sheriff in town: Tin Star is one of the very best choice-based interactive fiction games I have played. If you have a Steam account and care about the future of commercial interactive fiction, go vote […]


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