Entries in Event Two of the Second Quadrennial Ryan Veeder Exposition for Good Interactive Fiction were written over the course of two weeks. The challenge of Event Two was to create a work of interactive fiction with no ending that takes place in a zoo.
Fans of me will recall that in 2019 I published a game called Ryan Veeder's Authentic Fly Fishing. With this project I sought to create a work of interactive fiction that functioned as a place moreso than as a story.
By no means should the magnitude of my success in this endeavor discourage others from pursuing the same goal. On the contrary, I wish for the interactive fiction community to expand upon this great idea of mine, and so I challenged the Entrants in my Exposition to create a textual location: A game that has no ending, existing to be occupied rather than completed. A place where, if there is progress to be made, it is not progress toward everything being over.
For the setting of games in Event Two I chose a zoo, because I love zoos.
I am very pleased with the Entries in Event Two. The Entrants have done a wonderful job of entertaining me and satisfying my particular desires for entertainment. They have also demonstrated that the ending-less exploration-game-experience style of interactive fiction, popularized and arguably invented by myself, has tremendous untapped potential. In the same way that Event One of my Exposition will undoubtedly inspire thousands of beautiful Inform 7 code-artworks, I believe that Event Two is the beginning of a new wave of textual places.
I have given high scores to all of the Entries in this Event because I like them all a lot.
