Thursday, December 31, 2015
Undo Restart Restore: Best of 2015
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Emily Short: Cibele (Nina Freeman)
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Renga in Blue: EGYPTIAN WALKING SIMULATOR
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Renga in Blue: King Tut’s Tomb (1978)
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Segue: 2015 in Review: Thank-yous and shout-outs
As the year heads to a close I have been busy sending thank-you notes (well, emails). This list is in no particular order and, inevitably, incomplete; if you feel like I have missed you, I am sorry.
- My testers, too numerous to name but incredibly important; any remaining bugs and typos are entirely my fault.
- Tory Hoke, Devi Acharya, Kerstin Hall, and the rest of the sub-Q team: You’ve made a dramatic change to how I look at writing IF. This has been an incredible year, and sub-Q is responsible for a lot of that.
- Carolyn van Eseltine, Aaron Reed, Neil Butters, and Jason McIntosh: That is, the people whose competitions I entered this year. People consistently underestimate how much work organising those events is, and the least I can do is thank the people who inexplicably continue to do it, expecting no reward whatsoever.
- The good people at &if, including furkle, Brendan Patrick Hennessy, Chandler Groover, Emily Short and others, who’ve made the last couple of months a terrifying delight. There’s a million things we haven’t done; but just you wait.
- greenie, chromakode, and intortus, the Euphoria crew, for giving me this wonderful space to do terrible things with.
- Last but not least: Cat Manning. You know what you did (and continue to do).
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EGYPTIAN WALKING SIMULATOR
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The Maddening Lord Montwood by Vivienne Lorret
Another story where the epiphany involves the heroine realizing what a dumbass she is. Scary thing is: her boyfriend's dumber.
The post The Maddening Lord Montwood by Vivienne Lorret appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
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Emily Short: December Link Assortment
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Wednesday, December 30, 2015
2015 in review
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Web Interactive Fiction: IF Goals for 2016
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Updrift by Errin Stevens
There are interesting atmosphere and premise here, but the whole thing is too big for its length and size.
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Tuesday, December 29, 2015
what will you do now?: Pale
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Renga in Blue: Castle: Finished
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Castle: Finished
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Segue: 2015 in Review: My Work
I was originally going to release this year-end rundown all in one piece, but I realised it’s very long and therefore probably best split into three parts. First, the most skippable part: A look back at games and stories I released this year.
This has been a whirlwind year for me; when I wrote Terminator Chaser, I didn’t think I would then release nine games in a year (including the tiny It Is Not So Much a Story and a game for Space Fucking Jam), produce not one but two pieces of commercial IF (sub-Q wasn’t even on anyone’s radar when this year started!), and publish the second-highest rated piece of hypertext fiction in the IFComp. And yet, here I am.
Terminator Chaser
A hard science fiction thriller that suffered from less than great puzzle design (the airlock doors, my God). Terminator Chaser is my first IF game release, but it’s also hard not to rank it at the bottom. I bring it up mostly to remind people that yes, I do write parser fiction.
I think in a lot of ways I enjoy the process of designing systems using Inform 7 (which is a wonderful tool) more than players enjoy the resulting systems. The person who got the most enjoyment out of the airlocks in Terminator Chaser, I think, was myself.
Mere Anarchy
Mere Anarchy is cursed by the fact that I could never figure out how to write a good blurb for it. Nevertheless, I believe it came out as a very coherent piece of work; there’s some clunky writing in there (most of the dialogue) and some great writing in there (most of the descriptions). It also led directly to the development of Raconteur.
When The Land Goes Under The Water
Pseudonymous entry into Shufflecomp: Volume Two. Deliberately very limited in scope so I could finish it in time for the comp; WTLGUTW is a sort of love letter to the power of room and object descriptions. It’s also a bit of a sacrilegious stab at implicit storytelling, blending explicit declaratory statements about the history of that place in with its suggestive descriptions.
Lesson learned, though: For the most part, players have strong feelings about being instructed not to replay a game. This isn’t a complaint, mind; I just didn’t anticipate the reaction that came out to it.
Prospero
The first thing I wrote for sub-Q Magazine this year, a strange revisionist take on Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. Surprisingly hard to write; though it contains a decent chunk of verbatim Poe text, it also has a lot of painstakingly written Poe pastiche.
I’m also very proud of this piece for another reason: It’s part of the first flight of sub-Q stories, written and developed before the magazine started publishing. I’m in good company there, and one of my hopes for 2016 is that sub-Q finds the success it so richly deserves.
Cape
A novella-length choice-based narrative about superheroes, politics, and violence; fifth place at the annual Interactive Fiction Competition. Buggy on Firefox on release (I blame Mozilla). My feelings about Cape and the reaction to it are quite complicated, and I haven’t really finished figuring things out yet; particularly, I find it hard to gauge how much of the piece’s perceived issues are things I failed to do as a writer, and how much of it is ideological mismatch between myself and various reviewers. I expect figuring that out will take a long time regardless.
Lyreless
Another revisionist adaptation for sub-Q, this time taking on the Orphic myth. Much, much easier to write without having to pattern myself on a specific writer’s style; Lyreless came out very quickly. I’m very fond of the writing in it, and though I don’t personally think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, this is definitely a sentiment I’ve heard from others.
The World Turned Upside Down
I wanted to get a couple more games in before the end of the year, and I also really wanted to do a Christmas special; something that would be more intended as a gift to people who’ve followed and supported my work than as a piece of art or entertainment for general audiences. I think of The World Turned Upside Down as a third place game; it’s not quite a private game, but it’s also not fully public. Its audience isn’t “people who play IF” or “people who like fantasy”; it’s people who specifically played both Cape and Mere Anarchy, and even more so it’s people who hang around on Euphoria and people within that group whom I consider friends.
Cultural Exchange
A game about pornography, mistranslation, reproduction, and space. Released only yesterday on Itch for Cat Manning’s Space Fucking Jam.
I hope that out of all this, you enjoyed at least one thing. As always, my Twitter presence is there to take your comments. And finally: If you played, reviewed, tested, or otherwise supported my work this year, thank you so much.
TOMORROW: I look back at things I read, played, or watched in the year that I think are relevant to talk about.
DECEMBER 31st: Before the year ends, I hand out public thank-yous and shout-outs to a bunch of brilliant people.
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Silken Tide by Danielle E Gauwain
The hero is such a big weenie king that he's quite the spectacle to behold.
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The Spinster’s Guide to Scandalous Behavior by Jennifer McQuiston
Idiot heroine goes on a road trip to discover the truth about herself: she is an idiot. You have to read this gripping story!
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Made in the A.M. by One Direction
Aww, these boys have broken up, I mean, taken a hiatus. The world will be missing a special Backstreet Boys tribute band.
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Monday, December 28, 2015
Ron Newcomb: Bronies, Smashers and Others Battle Cancer - by Ron Newcomb
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Resplendent Ruin by Bella J
Her hubby-to-be is too busy working to pay the bills, so the heroine cheats on him with the hero who gets her tramp juices flowing. Resplendent!
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Silken Embrace by Zuri Day
There are some interesting twists on age-old tropes in here. Shame that the whole thing ends up rather blah.
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Storyteller by Carrie Underwood
There isn't much innovation going in here. So, how big of a fan are you?
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Sunday, December 27, 2015
There Be Monsters by Julya Oui
Oh boy, this one has problems, lots of them.
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Tactical Pleasure by JC Wilder
It would have been fabulous if it had been longer.
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Saturday, December 26, 2015
What Happens Under the Mistletoe by Sabrina Jeffries, Karen Hawkins, Candace Camp, and Meredith Duran
Four authors get together to show everyone how tired and played-out historical romance tropes can be.
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what will you do now?: Bell Park, Youth Detective
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what will you do now?: Wolfgirls in Love
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The People's Republic of IF: January meetup
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Sweep in Peace by Ilona Andrews
Remember when the author wrote kick-ass urban fantasy instead of werewolf soap opera? This is a throwback to that lost era.
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Friday, December 25, 2015
The Digital Antiquarian: A Pirate’s Life for Me, Part 1: Don’t Copy That Floppy!
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Thursday, December 24, 2015
what will you do now?: The People’s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game
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Happy Holidays!
I want to wish everyone a happy holiday and hope that the new year brings good tidings to all!
There are a lot of exciting things happening for the studio in the new year:
- Showcasing at the Smithsonian Indie Arcade on January 16th
- Launch of Heroes Guard: The Journal!
- Card design Contest, where the winner will be included in the first content update!
- Kickstarting the Heroes Guard Tabletop Game that was so popular at conventions!
- Preview of a new puzzle game set in the Heroes Guard universe!
Although next year will be incredible exciting, 2015 was pretty unforgettable:
- Took Heroes Guard: The Journal to conventions and had its first beta - and folks loved it!
- Received a few articles, videos and mentions in the media - starting to gain awareness!
- Hosted a 48 game jam where the game made a top 5 list!
- Went from a social reach of 219 to 2,616 - that is nearly a 1,200% increase!
And the most exciting news of all: I became a dad!
Excited to see what the new year brings us all! :)
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How to Draw Top Down Mountains on a Map
Mountains are a defining piece of any world map. They are the largest features after the coastlines, they determine the borders of countries, and the obstacles adventurers must overcome. They are the home of lost treasures, dragons, and giants – as far from civilization as its possible to be. It can be hard to convey the majesty […]
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Segue: The World Turned Upside Down
The World Turned Upside Down is a tiny bit of parser fiction I wrote as a sort of thank you note/Christmas special. It’s very short and straightforward, so I’ll just direct you to the game page where you can play or download it.
Happy holidays, everyone.
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Wednesday, December 23, 2015
The Digital Antiquarian: A Little Christmas Gift
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Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Castle: Starving for Progress
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Renga in Blue: Castle: Starving for Progress
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what will you do now?: Mainframe
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Choice of Games: All of our games are 25% off or more in Steam’s Winter Sale
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All of our games are 25% off or more in Steam’s Winter Sale
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My Complete and Utter Dark Future Bibliography
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Monday, December 21, 2015
Sixth Grade Detective — Spy on your classmates for cash!
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Renga in Blue: Castle [using Wander system] (1974)
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Castle [using Wander system] (1974)
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Choice of Games: Sixth Grade Detective — Spy on your classmates for cash!
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Corporate Treachery Meets Otherworldly Forces in MetaHuman, Inc.
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Sunday, December 20, 2015
what will you do now?: My Name is Tara Sue
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Saturday, December 19, 2015
Renga in Blue: Adventure II: Finished! (sort of)
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Adventure II: Finished! (sort of)
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what will you do now?: Her Pound of Flesh
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sub-Q Magazine: Author Interview: Caleb Wilson
Caleb Wilson’s non-interactive stories have appeared in Weird Tales, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. He has also written interactive fiction including HOLY ROBOT EMPIRE, Starry Seeksorrow, and Six Gray Rats Crawl Up The Pillow. He can be found online at Tumblr and Twitter. He and his wife live in Illinois. He is […]
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Friday, December 18, 2015
Renga in Blue: Adventure II: Painfully Close
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Segue: Notes on the Euphoria chat
A brief reminder, since I haven’t posted about this on the blog ever since the comp postmortem: the Euphoria IF chat (&if) is still ongoing and regularly active. It’s an open channel, so anyone can join the conversation on Euphoria.
Euphoria is a “a platform for chat rooms you care about”, developed by some friends of mine; it’s a web-friendly, modern recreation of the IRC chat environment with support for threading and other cool features. As before, it’s a public chat that anyone is welcome to join in on.
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Choice of Games: “The ORPHEUS Ruse” on Steam
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Choice of Games: MetaHuman Inc. — The finest superpowers money can buy!
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The Digital Antiquarian: Dungeon Master, Part 2: The Playing of
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That quiet sense of something
Hard to believe that another year has almost come and gone, and the time has arrived once again to mull over the ups and downs of twelve months in DQ world. To be honest, I almost wasn’t going to do my yearly review, as I rather off-handedly said to myself – well, there was no new book this year, so nothing to report. But then I realised, that really wasn’t true at all. In fact, this has been a great year for DestinyQuest and there is lots that is worth celebrating.
Granted, there has been no news on a fourth DestinyQuest book, but May did see the release of the mass-market paperback version of The Eye of Winter’s Fury. I’ve always preferred the smaller versions of the books over the larger trade paperbacks (which can be a bit cumbersome to handle), so it was nice to receive this new addition and place it on my shelf, to join The Legion of Shadow and The Heart of Fire.
And of course, there was also the German translation of The Legion of the Shadow hitting shelves in August. It really is a great looking book and you can read more about the German version here.
In the digital realm, QuestForge finally released their interactive version of The Legion of Shadow. Gone are the dice, paper and pencils – now you can play The Legion of Shadow in your browser, while on the move, or with your feet up on the couch. All the hard work and inventory management has been done for you. Result! For completionists, the digital version also has a wealth of flavour text for the hundreds of items and monsters that you will encounter. There may even be a few clues hidden in there to future books and storylines. (You can purchase the app here.)
Ah, future books. Well, that is the holy grail that still alludes me at the present time, although – as I have hinted at on more than one occasion – there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Patience isn’t one of my greatest virtues, but I am fast learning that the best things come to those who wait – so I am optimistic that 2016 will be a fantastic year for DestinyQuest.
Fandom continues to grow. Once again, a huge thank you to all the supporters and gamers who have taken time to contact me, post on the forums or share their love of the books through Twitter, Twitch and YouTube. I really appreciate the support and I hope that I can repay you at some point with further amazing DestinyQuest adventures.
Until then, I feel hopeful. I have John Williams’ Force Awakens soundtrack resonating in the background, its sonorous beats both familiar and new. There certainly has been an awakening in the Force – and I hope that same surge of positivity and excitement drives us into 2016 with lots of surprises and awesome DQ goodness. Here’s hoping.
Have a great Christmas and New Year.
Happy gaming.
MJW
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Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Leia, Luke, Han Solo, Chewbacca - it's so good to see all of you again. Oh, and hi, new kids, I guess they ain't so bad.
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Thursday, December 17, 2015
Inkle: Going round and around...
80 Days is an adventure that spans the entire globe. There are hundreds of routes to choose from. But won't that mean players only see a tiny proportion of the content?
Like everything we've done so far, 80 Days takes existing ideas and pushes them a little further. Last year, when we were developing the first part of our Sorcery! series we made the discovery that pinning an interactive, choice-based story onto a map gave it an amazing sense of breadth, openness and exploration. With Frankenstein - which had no such visual map - the number one question we were asked was, "Do my choices make any difference?" With Sorcery, it was "how many different ways are there to explore?"
But that breadth of content also made for a game that was very wide, at the cost of making a game that was long and a lot of reviews complained about this. Our response was to make Sorcery! 2 about four times bigger - but also, to build a mechanic into that game to help players see more of that content. (No spoilers! You want to know what that mechanic is then play the game.)
Replayable interactive fiction
For 80 Days we're developing that approach further. We want to make a game that you don't play once, but can play and replay several times, and will always have more to offer you. Mixing authored content with randomised elements, every game will be a bit different, with new secrets to discover and short-cuts to take.
What might be a profitable route on one journey could be disastrous on the next - so every time you travel, you'll need to pay close attention to the hints and clues you can learn from the people you meet about which way to go.
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Inkle: New Adventures
With Sorcery! 4 well underway, we're looking ahead to our next big project. After four years of adapting books - interactive and otherwise - into great, interactive reading experiences, we're looking to expand outwards a little.
A new game is a precious, fragile thing: this game doesn't have a name, and any mechanics and systems it might contain could be flung away at a moment's notice if a better idea comes along. 80 Days went through ten or so major iterations before reaching its final combination of cities, journeys, trading, health and conversations.
The Pillars of the Game
But there a few things we're certain of - the pillars of the game, around which we hope to build our temple.
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It's going to be made in Unity. After so long making iOS-first games, this is quite a change for us, but we want to be releasing our games across as many platforms as we can.
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It's going to use a next-generation version of our ink writing engine. We'll talk a bit more about this in the coming months, but ink2 takes all the best parts about ink1 and adds more flexibility and power.
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It's going to use dialogue. A lot of dialogue. In every game we've made, we've found dialogue is what works the best - so much so, that we told 80 Days entirely through one character's voice.
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It's about a partnership. Two characters are better than one, especially if you're game is about dialogue! We discovered this the moment Jann the Minimite first appeared back in Sorcery!, and the combination of Passepartout and Fogg is at the heart of 80 Days.
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It's going to be beautiful.
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It's going to take you somewhere you have never been before. For the first time, we aren't adapting anything, but starting from scratch. That's exciting, but also terrifying - what if people don't like the world we've created?
That's what we know for certain so far. Discovering the rest of the game is like caving - exploring dark passages, retreating from dead-ends, and occasionally holding one's breath to swim through a flooded, darkened chamber in the hope of coming up on the other side...
We'll tell you more, once we get there.
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Inkle: Should you play 80 DAYS?
Going the Extra Mile
We've been lucky enough to enjoy some excellent reviews of 80 DAYS since its launch (such as this one). But we've never seen anything quite like this from Cool Ghosts... Moustaches at the ready!
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Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Renga in Blue: Adventure II: Sewer Maze
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Sibyl Moon Games: A great article I couldn’t have written – Max Gladstone, on fight scenes
I wrote my first fight scene in 2012. I know this because I was bewildered by how difficult it was to write, and then abruptly realized that I’d never written one before. Despite increasing practice and experience, I am still fumbling about in the dark, and I am not the … Keep reading →
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Renga in Blue: imaginary games from imaginary universes: Phase 2 update
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Feel the Burn by GA Aiken
Bloodthirsty loonies need love too, and GA Aiken knows all their stories.
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Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Cthulhu 1776: Converting Colonial Gothic to Call of Cthulhu
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Sibyl Moon Games: Your Game Idea Is Too Big (But You’re Making It Anyway)
In a recent post at intfiction.org, a poster asked for advice on a (very) complex text-based game they wanted to create. The postscript read:
Also, yes, I am aiming WAY too high, thank you for noticing, especially considering my complete and utter lack of skill, practice, and focus, but … Keep reading →
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The Billionaire’s Christmas Bargain by Joely Sue Burkhart
How cute - the hero's best Christmas gift is discovering how much he likes being a submissive.
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Monday, December 14, 2015
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Undo Restart Restore: ICIDS 2015: Highlights
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Twelfth Krampus Night by Matt Manochio
This sickening, violent, and gory mess is just what every Christmas needs.
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The Christmas Promise by Sean D Young
Hey look, it's a bad communication story!
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Saturday, December 12, 2015
Black Eagle by Karen Kay
Romances with native Americans can be a gamble, but this one isn't bad. Isn't great either, but hey, I'd live.
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what will you do now?: So long, farewell
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Emily Short: Deathless: The City’s Thirst (Max Gladstone)
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Renga in Blue: Adventure II: The Walkthrough Method
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Adventure II: The Walkthrough Method
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Witch Island by Stephanie Bedwell-Grime
The best thing about this story is the scenery.
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Bloodsworth Bayou
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December update and art preview
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Friday, December 11, 2015
The Digital Antiquarian: Dungeon Master, Part 1: The Making of
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Thursday, December 10, 2015
My Big Trip — To Brazil!
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Deluxe Goblin Lake for Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls
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Emily Short: Recent IF for iOS
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低身長症とは?/ただ背が低いのは病気じゃない
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Cold-Hearted Rake by Lisa Kleypas
He's a cold-hearted rake! Look into his eyes! Ooh... those eyes... I'm feeling sleepy...
The post Cold-Hearted Rake by Lisa Kleypas appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
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Wednesday, December 9, 2015
These Heterogenous Tasks: A Year Without Zombies 11: I Aten’t Dead
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Once Upon a Marquess by Courtney Milan
Now I remember why I don't like kids. Sneaky little bastards, all of them.
The post Once Upon a Marquess by Courtney Milan appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
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Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Renga in Blue: Adventure II: Tidy Dwarves
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Adventure II: Tidy Dwarves
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Sibyl Moon Games: On Risk Legacy, and failing to do the math
Risk Legacy is a campaign version of Risk. It plays like a house-rules version of Risk initially, but the game changes dramatically over time as players customize it. Not only do players write on the board and put terrain-altering stickers and notes on the board, but the various factions … Keep reading →
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Emily Short: Writers’ Guild Awards 2016
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Segue: Impressions: Lime Ergot
Lime Ergot, by Caleb Wilson, has just been republished by sub-Q Magazine – Which, full disclosure, also published my work in the past, particularly Lyreless which came out last week. I think of Lime Ergot as a pretty important entry in the canon of parser fiction, and also a very good starting point to introduce players new to parser IF, so I’m taking the occasion to make it all about myself and write a few impressions of it. This post contains mild spoilers.
x general
General Livia Tudor-Adolphus is the senior colonial officer left on St. Stellio. She is a tiny woman in her eighties. She is wearing a dark green uniform. Beneath a peaked hat, and a wig made of white metal molded into the shape of tight curls, her face is tanned and wrinkled. Her eyes are like small and perfectly formed spheres of ice.
The rotting corpses of colonial empires are not a standard-issue settings for horror; we like our decline and decay distant, preferably European and Gothic. There is a heat-rash rawness to Lime Ergot that discomfits, and its backdrop in the ugly haze of postcolonial states is crucial to building it.
We don’t associate horror with heat or with tropicality at all, of course; in our horror stories, people waste away from consumption or freeze to death.
A year or so ago, during one a pretty bad outbreak of dengue fever in São Paulo, I came down with it. Given modern medical treatment, one’s first such infection is not much worse than a nasty bout of influenza; you spend about a month laid up and experiencing the umwelt of hot garbage baking on the pavement.
This is a disease that has no antiviral treatment presently available and which, in its worst possible form, causes internal bleeding until death if untreated.
There is not, I don’t think, nearly enough horror about mosquitoes silently carrying deadly disease, about malarial delirium states, about the self-defeating panic inherent in heatstroke.
x tangle
This tangle of bushes grows from water at the end of the pier. Deep inside the maze of stems and leaves you spot a skull. Beside the skull is a rusted sword.x sword
Sitting beneath the rusted sword is a fat lizard, motionless as a statue.x lizard
The lizard sits curled around the rim of a golden goblet scaled with grime.x grime
After a few years on St. Stellio, everything becomes grimy.
Lime Ergot is a telescoping perception puzzle. This is where its importance to the parser medium lies: it uses the traditional construction of objects and subobjects to recast movement and perception. For decades, the parser was very concerned with “mimetic” representations of realistic space, with achieving a form of immersion that is present, also, in graphical video games; particularly with achieving the sort of materiality and space that is also found in those games.
Works like this upend this ideal. They present a space that has to be traversed on different terms. You play Lime Ergot by falling into its descriptive text, one layer at a time. Most uses of this device only go a couple layers deep and rely on increasingly-minute detail; Lime Ergot discards our spatial expectations entirely, and not only builds in an implausible number of layers of perception, many of the moves are lateral or even not spatial at all. It’s probably one of the best representations, in fiction, of a hallucinatory or dissociating state.
It’s also very much of its medium, so much of its surprise and power deriving from the veiled way in which the parser can only ever suggest what you might do but never entirely enumerate options for you. In many instances, this haze of unknown quantities presented by the parser is a hindrance; in Lime Ergot, it’s a core strength of the piece.
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小学生の身長を高めるサプリメント|料理が苦手ならコレ!
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子供の身長が低いのは遺伝?【無関係】背の高さと遺伝の関係
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His Housekeeper’s Christmas Wish by Louise Allen
This is the story your Christmas needs. Keep alcohol close, though, just in case.
The post His Housekeeper’s Christmas Wish by Louise Allen appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
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Monday, December 7, 2015
背を高くするための「最強」運動法はコレ!
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Sunday, December 6, 2015
Emily Short: ProcJam Entries, NaNoGenMo, and my Generated Generation Guidebook
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Magic systems that don’t warp the world
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Convalescence by Maynard Sims
Ooh, a creepy Gothic kind of chiller tale... with a twist that can be seen coming from a mile away.
The post Convalescence by Maynard Sims appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
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Wrapped Up in a Beau by Angelita Gill
A pleasant story, but the author seems to be on a mission to cram as many details in as few sentences as possible.
The post Wrapped Up in a Beau by Angelita Gill appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
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Strictly Business by Sheryl Nantus
Why have a Domme if she's just going to be Bridget Jones in a leather corset?
The post Strictly Business by Sheryl Nantus appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
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The Rats of Midnight by Sean Munger
Her office is full of human-sacrificing rat-worshiping creeps, but she is more concerned about how to respond to her superiors' emails.
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Saturday, December 5, 2015
Paired Pursuit by Clare Murray
"Oh god, I was so scared trying to get out of town - TWO HOT GUYS OH MY GOD I MUST TAKE THEM ALL IN AT ONCE!"
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背を延ばすのに必須の「成長ホルモン」を出すための【重要項目】
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Emily Short: Imaginary Cities (Darran Anderson)
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Easy Target by Kay Thomas
Once again, America will save the world. After it cleans up some mess in its closet first, of course.
The post Easy Target by Kay Thomas appeared first on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.
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Temptation of a Governess by Sarah Mallory
The hero wants to toss the heroine and his late brother's brats out of their home so that he can have drunken orgies. How heartwarming!
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what will you do now?: Voice Box
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Friday, December 4, 2015
A LETTER FROM PAUL
My name is Paul Gresty. I'm the lead writer for The Frankenstein Wars. I was watching our Kickstarter page very closely the morning the project finished. When that countdown counter clicked to zero and I saw that we'd hit our target - and we'd reached it literally seconds before - I was elated, and proud, and supremely thankful to our backers, and everybody who'd done so much as share a link to the project online.
That first feeling of elation lasted for about twenty-five minutes. Then came a looming anxiety, a sense of 'Wait - now we're actually going to do this.'
The taskmaster was like this guy, but about 10% more brutal.
The Cubus guys and I had some further planning discussions, the first time we'd been able to do so with an exact budget for the project in mind. Jaume Carballo taught me to write code in a way that the Cubus parser would find agreeable. He was a harsh taskmaster.
The fact that we'd grazed past our minimum target for the project imposed some restrictions on us. Not so much from a technical standpoint - we'd always maintained a realistic view of what we could achieve. The greater pressure came from time limitations. Put simply, as we wouldn't be making any money on the game in the short term, it became difficult to make it top priority - we all had to work on the game while simultaneously pushing forward with other projects.
Time constraints notwithstanding, I began writing. The first section of the story takes place on the island of St Helena. The second occurs at the Clerval family home, a chateau a little ways south-east of Paris. I worked on both segments together, sending regular updates to the Cubus guys to check over.
It was around the 20,000-word mark that we realised that the text wasn't ticking the right boxes for us. As a standalone gamebook-style story, it was pretty good. The player takes the role of Anton or Thomas Clerval; the story moves forward as the player attains various objectives, overcoming obstacles and defeating enemies along the way.
But that was never our mission statement with this game. The Frankenstein Wars has always been intended as a more three-dimensional game. It is a story of the transition between fanatical devotion to a cause, and disillusionment with that cause. Of the closeness and the tension that exists between two brothers who are in love with the same woman. The reanimated lazarans of The Frankenstein Wars are neither mindless zombies nor indestructible revenants - rather, they are people who have died once, and been dragged back to life; they must continually question the purpose they find in this new existence when they have already tasted oblivion. Yes, it's a story about remarkable technologies, and how those technologies can be turned to the age-old business of warfare. But, above all, it's a story about the seismic impact of this technology on people - both living people, and the resurrected. And that wasn't coming through.
To my knowledge, these sorts of character-led themes have never really been attempted within the quite specific format of interactive fiction - and we're aiming for a particularly compact style of IF. So, we're exploring and learning as we go along. And that's slowing things down.
The bad news: it's going to take us longer than planned to get the game out to you, our backers. Sorry about that.
The good news: we're behind schedule on this game precisely because we're working hard to create something really innovative and absorbing. We have no intention of phoning in a mediocre IF app. We want The Frankenstein Wars to be something you'll remember.
For my part, I'm succeeding in extricating myself from other time-leeching obligations. I'll very shortly able to work on TFW full time (or very nearly full time). I think progress will come thick and fast thereafter.
And, a bonus: if we ever get around to making a special '20th anniversary edition' of this game, I have a ton of deleted material I'll be able to include as extras.
More news soon, Franken-fans.
P.
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Post Position: A New, Untitled Poem
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Signed Books Make the Best Gifts!
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The Digital Antiquarian: The Faery Tale Life of MicroIllusions
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低身長に効果的といわれる成長ホルモン治療とは
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Choice of Games: New Hosted Game! “Community College Hero: Trial by Fire” by Eric Moser
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Choice of Games: Pendragon Rising — Seize the throne in the age of King Arthur!
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