There’s a new episode of that text adventure podcast up now. In it, Jenni and Emily begin playing my game Taco Fiction, which you can play online here if you so choose.
The episode where Jenni and Emily finish playing Taco Fiction should follow shortly. I hope.
There is a new episode of a podcast over at the home of the podcast. Jenni and I played It by Emily Boegheim.
The next episode of the podcast will appear in less than two months.
The new StoryBundle features a selection of books about video games that will interest you, as well as a sub-bundle of text adventures I wrote! The Gothic Tower & Assorted Interactive Fiction includes a few games you can play over here at this website, but critically it includes The Ascent of the Gothic Tower, which was commissioned by Simon Carless specifically for this StoryBundle.
One of the other games, titled So, You’ve Never Played a Text Adventure Before, Huh?, was first released in this bundle but is available for free as well. You can play it online even. I recommend it to anyone who has never played a text adventure before.
The bundle also also includes the ebook of “MOTORCYCLUS” and Other Extremely Scary Stories”! Functionally what is going on here is you can pay any amount you wish—the minimum of three dollars, if you want—for my book of scary stories.
Oh. Oh, no. What have I done?
I don’t even know where to start!
When Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder took fourth place in IF Comp 2013, I was lucky enough to pick the prize I had been eyeing for the duration of the judging period: a translation of the game into French, donated by Hugo Labrande.
Well, just in time for my birthday, Hugo has finished the translation, and now Le butin du Capitaine Verdeterre is available for your francophone enjoyment! I’m freaking out over here!
At my request, Hugo also translated all of my comments in the source code, and included comments in English on the translation: There are puns that don’t make any sense in French, puns that make more sense in French, all kinds of stuff. In the first section there’s a long series of words I wrote (in English) about my decision not to fix a bunch of bugs. You should be checking it out right now.
Thank you so much, Hugo!!!
A second episode of Clash of the Type-Ins is live. That is all.
My friend Jenni Polodna and I have a new podcast where we play text adventures. “Parser IF”. You might enjoy it even if the phrase “parser IF” means absolutely nothing to you.
(I anticipate that new episodes will be released on a “whenever we feel like it” basis.)
Today I revamped the Interactive Fiction section, adding separate pages for each game, because it pleased me to do so. You might go ahead and check out the new format, in a spare moment.
Now, if you never saw the old version of the Interactive Fiction section, you may think that you’ve missed out on something. I assure you that you have not, but I understand your feelings regardless. Let me make it up to you by reproducing a novel I composed on my phone last Friday night:
How very nice: My game The Horrible Pyramid has won EctoComp 2013! There were 24 games entered this year, and a lot of them were really well-done and enjoyable, especially considering this is a “SpeedIF” competition and you’re supposed to write the whole game in three hours or less. (I freely admit that I took very slightly longer than three hours, but the competition organizer said it was okay.) The best place to see all the other entrants might be… here. Yeah.
I’m very proud of this game and I thought it deserved more than three hours and twenty minutes of my time, so I’ve released a revised edition that you can play in your browser. The source code is also available, if looking at that kind of thing amuses you.
Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder (working title; also, release title) was not originally intended as an Interactive Fiction Competition entry. In late 2012 and early 2013, as Emily Boegheim and I were trying to pick up steam on Robin & Orchid (working title; also, release title), I thought to myself: I just need to make a tiny game, to stretch my dang legs. After I finish a little game, I can finish this big game.
Verdeterre was not that game, but for a while I thought it was. From the beginning my goal was to make a slight game, unambitious in scope or plot or theme or mechanics, and to a certain extent I think I succeeded.
And yet here I have written many words, a lot of words, about the design of this game. You will have to scroll past them to see the high score table.
Continue readingFINISHED. Here are the results.
The winning game, Coloratura, definitely deserves its victory and its .41-point margin over the second-place game. If you haven’t played it yet you have got to get on that.
I am very proud of the second-place game, and I’m immensely grateful to Emily Boegheim for all the hard work and genius she contributed.
I’m also very glad and kind of astonished that my other game got fourth place. If you look at the statistics, Captain Verdeterre beat Tex Bonaventure by only a hundredth of a point, and Tex beat Solarium by the same tiny margin. A very serious and interesting game was edged out by two very goofy games by a very narrow margin. You ought to give Solarium a look is what I’m saying.
With 35 games in the running, one will naturally expect some games that are not that great, but a lot a lot of these games are quality pieces of work that deserve your attention. Go ahead and direct your attention to these games.
I’m planning on releasing the source code from both games I worked on, and I have some words and thoughts about Captain Verdeterre to broadcast, and maybe I could stand to pretty up this page a bit, and now this post has become a checklist purely for my own benefit. This post is OVER.