Ah, my sweet loot fans. Here lies the last of Halloween 2015’s set of six. If you’ve found them all, look for a little additional reward link on your loot page. More sets and more little rewards are to come. Thanks for playing. It’s awful nice to have you here.
The post Happy Halloween, Loot Fans appeared first on sub-Q Magazine.
Ectocomp has just released its games for judging. It’s a competition for horror and Halloween-themed IF – this year with both “speed IF” and “spirit of speed IF” divisions. First up: Invasion (Cat Manning), a horror Twine about inexorable alien monsters.
This will be a mildly spoilery discussion. Before I get to it: Invasion is great, a very creepy Twine that helped rekindle my interest in reading horror in this format, and you should go play it.
There are a lot of unstoppable horrors going around lately – both It Follows and The Babadook, this years’ most praised horror films, dealt with relentless menaces of one kind or another. As a culture, we seem inexplicably interested in inevitable, slow-marching doom. For a long time, in horror, dread was produced from not seeing the monster and imagining what it might look like. Nowadays we seem conditioned to staring at the monster from a distance, seeing it coming, and not being able to do anything about it. We know it intimately; we just don’t know when it’s going to get us. We imagine death so much, it feels more like a memory.
Memory. Manning’s monsters consume mementos, and the actual memories that go with them. It wouldn’t be so unsettling if the story didn’t spend the time to detail the implausible number of personal mementos that the player character carries. Implausible until you find out what they are: sacrifices, or bait, or a paliative tactic. The beast stalking the viewpoint character can’t necessarily be stopped, but it can be delayed, slowed down with those small offerings.
There’s a long tradition, in Western literature, of questioning whether fighting against an inhuman threat provokes the loss of one’s humanity; Invasion interrogates how fleeing – how being a victim of such a threat might as well.
There are lots of ways to indicate water on a map with lines – and many more with tone or colour. Here are four I regularly use. 1. Broken Waves After you have your coastline, use short, gently curving lines along the shore. The lines should follow the shapes of the coast, but smooth […]
The post 4 Coast Styles for Mapmaking appeared first on Fantastic Maps.
Yeah, okay that doesn’t sound quite as catchy does it – but hey, that is what our valiant heroes in Germany will be calling out as they charge into the hordes, adding their might to the ongoing battle against the dastardly Legion of Shadow.
DestinyQuest Book One was released in Germany a few weeks back, and last week I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of the book. It is mighty loot indeed – mighty not only for its splendid design work by a very talented team (more on that later) but also its sheer size.
The German version of Legion is by far the largest of all the editions, with a spine that puts most George RR Martin books to shame. At first I did ponder why it had become such a large tome, after all, the text in the book looked to be a smaller font size to other versions. Then I suddenly hit on the reason – German words are big. I mean, really, really big.
The size of the wordage is most noticeable (to myself anyway) in some of the item names. The rat-bitten gloves, for example, have now become the impressive sounding Rattenzerfressene Handshuhe! Phew. I think there must be German gamebookers screaming right now for bigger inventory boxes to write all their loot in!
And, while we’re on the topic of the German language, let’s take a moment to admire this impressive beauty - beiseitezudrücken (which apparently means, ‘push aside’). Wow, I’m not sure how I would even begin to get my vocal chords around that one.
The German translation has been published by Mantikore-Verlag (http://ift.tt/20hVjAT) and is available from their webstore. The Heart of Fire is also currently being translated and will be available next year.
Back to the design. It is a stunning looking book, with great typesetting and formatting. What I also liked were the inclusion of black-and-white maps instead of the colour ones. I had considered going the b/w route back when I self-published as an obvious means of cost-saving, but was worried that adding in lots of extra quest symbols might confuse readers. I have to say, the approach that Mantikore have taken works really well, using weapons to represent the difficulty of each quest. If you’re a DQ collector, then this makes this version of the book a nice little addition to the set.
Mantikore-Verlag was set up by gamebook lover Nicolai Bonczyk back in 2009. Lone Wolf was the first book that he published. Having got into the hobby through the Lone Wolf series, Nic got chatting with the books’ creator, Joe Dever, (via the wonders of the internet) and asked why no one was publishing the Lone Wolf books in Germany. Joe apparently said ‘well, no one asked for it.’ So Nic saw that as the perfect opportunity to bring this fantastic gamebook series to Germany.
Since then, the company has gone from strength to strength, taking on other RPG, fantasy and gamebook series. Nic also attends conventions and even runs his own every August (Manticon). which is hosted in a German castle! I have been invited to the next one to meet my German fans, so I’m looking forward to that!
And finally, talking of ‘old greats’ like Lone Wolf, be sure to check out the Kickstarter for The Warlock of Firetop Mountain – the new digital version by the awesome guys at Tinman Games. I tweeted earlier this week that most gamebooks sadly lack that ‘rock n roll’ factor to make them cool – well, there is certainly some serious groove going on with Tinman at the moment, as this adaptation is using a 3D tiled combat system and digital miniatures to make the story come alive.
I will always have a soft spot for TWoFTM as it was the first FF gamebook I read and enjoyed. Please support the kickstarter if you can by pointing your browser at: - http://ift.tt/1PTGCjN
It’s been a quiet time for news, but keep your eyes glued to this site over the coming months, as I have my fingers-crossed there might be something special to share soon…
Happy adventuring!
MJW
At least this would make a funnier B-grade movie than any of Suzanne Brockmann's books.
The post Facing Fire by HelenKay Dimon appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
If you are looking for an offensively foul and dumb hero, it's your lucky day. Bonus: the rest of the book is just as crappy.
The post A Lover’s Vow by Brenda Jackson appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Sun Dogs is a text game in which interaction is mostly directed by moving around a map and exploring different places in a transhuman future.
It’s a curious little game, a very spare experience aided by a looping ambient soundtrack and modernist visuals. You travel around the inner solar system, collecting skills, information, and tools from the various planets, asteroids, and orbitals. For the most part, this isn’t a goal-driven game; there is a conspicuous “missions” tab in the UI, but during my experience with it, it mostly stayed empty. Instead, I was happy to bum around between Ceres and Mercury, getting to know the cultures and technologies that sprang up all over the solar system.
And dying. You die a lot in Sun Dogs; sometimes Jovian jackboots show up out of nowhere and maser your pod until it pops like a maize kernel. Sometimes you get into a literal trainwreck on Mars. Sometimes you’re shot in an anonymous corridor in Pallas for no apparent reason.
Sometimes they recover your cortical stack and you get reinstantiated from memories all the way up to your death. Sometimes they have to restore you from a backup. Either way, you’re in a new body and off you go again.
Making death “meaningful” is a long-running debate in video game design, featuring such illustrious entries as Nethack and Dark Souls. Sun Dogs uses its science fiction conceit to cheerfully invert the dynamic: What if death really was meaningless, a weird little break in an otherwise non-stop existence?
There’s not an overwhelming amount of content here, and what there is is spare and small, little frozen images from a strange universe. But I didn’t find it unsatisfying. I helped an odd vacuum-drifting creature recover their heart; I traded info for new intestinal flora – which turned out to be defective. I met zebras in a Dyson cylinder, elephants on the flooded-scorched surface of old Earth, and aristocrats permanently on the move around Mercury – Sounds familiar!
Sun Dogs is available now on Itch.io, available on Windows and Mac.
There’s a lot of writing out there about the macro-level [structure] of hypertext (or cybertext) stories. But, at least from the practical IF author community (as opposed to academia), there is relatively little about the micro-scale details of writing hypertext prose.
I’ve been collecting these lately, hoping to put together some kind of practical, writer-facing catalog of them; it’s particularly targeted at fiction writers from outside the fiction world. These are meant to be analogous to figures of speech or rhetorical devices such as synecdoche and anaphora, in that they sit somewhere between structure and semantics; with the caveat that they’re only possible in hyperlink prose.
I am not, however, going to make up Greek words for them. Promise. I’m going to give them vaguely meaningful, kenning-like English names.
To start out, a thing I stumbled upon writing my IFComp entry – no, this post doesn’t contain spoilers for that or discussion of it – which is a particular way to write a cycling link:
The joke here is that the cycling link works both ways. Each step in the cycle fits the sentence it’s in, of course, but together they also form a progression:
inaccessible / dark / preternaturally dark / dark, and you were likely to be eaten by a grue/ too dark to enter / inaccessible…
Such that the first/last entry, “inaccessible”, gets re-contextualised by the previous iterations. So the cycling link isn’t just a matter of affect; the reader isn’t just using it to select the version of the story she wants. The cycling link is itself delivering context that is only visible through interaction with it. By the time the reader has cycled all the way back around to “inaccessible,” she knows why the cave is inaccessible.
Usually, the effect of this is to suggest that the protagonist (or the viewpoint, whatever it is) is rethinking or approaching towards some conclusion. In the example, the suggestion is of the protagonist’s fear of grues creeping up on him as he stares into the black maw of the cave. It can suggest the interior state of the protagonist in a lateral way. Repetitive, intrusive thoughts are particularly natural to convey using a looping link.
The word loop here is meant as in rollercoasters or aircraft, not programming languages. You go back to where you started, but in the process you moved away from your original plane of movement, and got to see some things. The looping link is like an orthogonal vein of meaning embedded in the middle of the sentence.
Not all cycling links are looping links; for example this line from Prospero:
Here stood the musicians, playing through an interminable medley, the bassist’s arm drooping slightly under the weight of the instrument. […] As she moved unseen through the crowd, she [listened with distant interest / swayed along to the rhythm / did not harken to the sound].
Here, the cycling link doesn’t convey a specific meaning by itself; they really are just different possibilities for the player to pick from. For a looping link to exist, the possibilities have to agree on some level.
I hope this made sense. As usual, my comment section is actually [Twitter]. I’d especially love to hear about prior art on this general subject (of figures of speech and patterns in hypertext prose) as well as examples that fit the description of what I’m trying to get at here.
Autumn Nicole Bradley is a mercurial mixture of equal parts speculative fiction writer, game creator, and incorrigible polymath. Her Twine game “Player 2” appeared in Video Games for Humans, and her serial queer love story, Trash Romance, is available at trashmance.com. Follow her on Twitter @lifeinneon. This interview was conducted by email in October 2015. Devi […]
The post Author Interview: Autumn Nicole Bradley appeared first on sub-Q Magazine.
The hot stuff is here, but why does it have to have romance?
The post The Mistress and Her Men by Minerva Howe appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
This Book is a Dungeon is a Twine game about a terminally ill man trying to find his way through a dungeon as it tries to kill him in a number of horrible ways. In this game, you play a nameless, genderless person lamenting their lot in life. After feeling ill for some time, they […]
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Everyone's awesome, gorgeous, rich, and amazing; and there is nary a decent conflict in sight.
The post A McClendon Thanksgiving by Sean D Young appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Who cares about the book? Let's party, people, the series is finally over!
The post The Legend of Lyon Redmond by Julie Anne Long appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
This is more of a mystery than romance, but it's not too bad.
The post Dark Economy by M Keedwell appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Parallel lines are a good way to indicate a road on a map. But drawing parallel lines is next to impossible. Photoshop to the rescue – there’s a simple trick to get this effect quickly and easily. 1. Draw the roads using a hard round brush The first step is actually to draw in the […]
The post How to Draw Roads on a Map (with the Stroke Tool) appeared first on Fantastic Maps.
I am a fan of the author's works under another pseudonym, but this one doesn't resonate with me at all.
The post Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Hopefully, this flat and draggy movie is indeed the last of its kind.
The post The Last Witch Hunter (2015) appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Dear everyone,
Despite my very best efforts, I can’t juggle everything in my life right now simultaneously. I’m getting married in November, and I have to set a few balls down until the wedding is past.
This means I’m shifting from a regular posting schedule to an irregular posting schedule. … Keep reading →
Chandler Groover is a New York-based author of both novels and interactive fiction. His work includes the novels What Happened at Heath-Cliff Hall and Finnian’s Fiddle, as well as the games Hunting Unicorn and Toby’s Nose. This interview took place by instant messenger on 7 October 2015. Kerstin Hall: In addition to your interactive fiction, […]
The post Author Interview: Chandler Groover appeared first on sub-Q Magazine.
Fran Bow is a point-and-click game about a little girl named Fran who goes on an Alice in Wonderland style journey to locate her pet, uncover her parents’ killer, and eventually find happiness. I first heard about Fran Bow when the developer, KillMonday Games, was trying to get it Greenlit after a successful IndieGOGO campaign. […]
The post Point and Click: Fran Bow appeared first on .
A TBR Challenge 2015 review. Rape, selling off the dying heroine, branding her... and yet the whole thing is so boring.
The post Burning Up Flint by Laurann Dohner appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
Despite my best intentions, no Monday post (or makeup post today) this week. Back Thursday.
It's the same old Western romance, but the hero's dumber than usual.
The post The Countess and the Cowboy by Elizabeth Lane appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
