http://ift.tt/2enyFHp
These are quick thoughts about an entry in the 2016 Interactive Fiction competition.
Start as an amoeba, end up as the ruler of a galaxy-spanning civilization. A great concept, if not entirely original. Despite the incredible scope, it ends up feeling slight. Partly this is because of the playful, whimsical tone, but mainly its due to the massive gaps between the little vignettes. One minute you're developing into a multi-celled organism, where you get two choices about how to develop, the next you're already leaving the sea and crawling onto the land, a gap of millions and millions of years. Less of an evolution, more a series of snapshots. It feels like a prototype for a much more involved, detailed strategic evolution simulator, which is, admittedly, something I'd like to play. The game is written with ChoiceScript (the Choice of Games engine), and it's a clever use of the medium. Normally stats are tracked to define relationships with other characters, here its defining the fundamental aspects of you and your society. Its a generally happy, cheerful view of civilisation, which interestingly also seems to have its diametric opposite entered into this year's competition: 500 Apocalypses by Phantom Williams grieves over the death of civilisations whilst Fade Manley's game celebrates its birth and life. So far this year we have had Britain voting to leave the EU, and the US voting to leave reality. Apocalypse is in the air, so will this third vote, in the 2016 Interactive Fiction Competition, between an optimistic vision of the future and a massively pessimistic one, be the vote that decides the fate of the world and confirms the coming of Armageddon? You decide!
Gamebook blogs
http://ift.tt/2enyFHp
via Planet Interactive Fiction http://planet-if.com/
October 21, 2016 at 07:16AM
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