interactive fiction
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Live theater over Zoom is better when it’s interactive
Live theater over Zoom is a lot more fun when the audience gets to call the shots.
Learn to fear The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo
Author Michael Lutz has released The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo, a short work of interactive fiction revolving around that one kid you knew in school who supposedly had an industry insider relative. The story begins with players sleeping over at a friend's house on a rainy night, and recalls commonly shared experiences with the Nintendo 64 and tall tales that once circulated regarding Pokemon's infamous Mew. Things take a sudden turn as the in-game clock approaches midnight, however, leaving you questioning the nature of your boastful childhood friends and their always-nameless Uncles. There are multiple endings, and experimenting with alternate story paths pays off in a big way. Make sure you wear headphones, too. [Image: Michael Lutz]
BioWare partners with Fallen London dev for upcoming project
Interactive fiction developer and Fallen London creator Failbetter Games broke an extended period of radio silence this week, announcing that it is working with Mass Effect and Dragon Age creator BioWare on an upcoming project. "For the last year, on and off, we've been working in absolute secrecy on a project for a much larger company," Failbetter co-founder Alexis Kennedy explains. "When we've gone quiet for no obvious reason, it's because we've been heads-down on this. When I've mentioned that we don't take client work any more, with rare exceptions, this is the rare exception." Publisher Random House previously tapped Failbetter's StoryNexus platform for the browser-based interactive story Black Crown. Failbetter also recently Kickstarted Sunless Sea, which features an "underground ocean" and customized steamships. No further details regarding the team's BioWare project have been announced. [Image: Failbetter Games]
Year Walk's eerie Swedish scares creep onto Steam March 6
Swedish developer Simogo - they of Device 6 fame - have announced a release date for the PC incarnation of the spooky Year Walk: March 6. Originally released to iOS in February of 2013, Year Walk is a puzzle game focused on an old, bizarre Swedish folktale. As with all Simogo games, playing Year Walk is less like working your way through a game and more like interacting with a novel work of fiction, so explaining the mythology behind Year Walk would defeat its purpose. Just know that the above trailer is a valid reflection of the game's eerie tone, and the sort of snowbound, Scandinavian horror awaiting players in Year Walk. Instead of simply rehashing Year Walk for its PC debut, Simogo has added a number of new features to the game. These include additional areas to explore, new in-game puzzles, updated artwork, Steam achievement support and a comprehensive in-game encyclopedia which will offer players more information on the strange things they encounter in the game's darkened forests. [Image: Simogo]
Linden Lab releases Versu, an interactive fiction system for iPad
Linden Lab is best known for putting together the old social MMO Second Life, but more recently the company has been getting involved in tablet development, releasing its first iPad app last year. Today, Linden has released another app, and like Creatorverse and Second Life, this app is more of an engine than a game -- it's an interactive fiction platform essentially, designed to upgrade the idea of traditional text adventure games into something more replayable and dynamic. Versu is what it's called, and you can download it for free on the App Store right now. There are only a few stories available right away, with most of them based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. As you can see in the app, the action plays out like a text adventure: you get a description of the surroundings and the setting, and then can interact with various characters at different moments, either engaging them in dialogue, or performing certain simple actions. The big innovation here is that Versu allows you to play through the same scene or story from multiple perspectives, so you can play once through as one character, and then play through the same scene again as another character, playing out different reactions every time. Unfortunately, what's available right now with Versu isn't very much -- the platform's potential is impressive, but the current content is more of a demo than anything else. But the app's FAQ says this will turn into a content creation system very soon, and that seems like the fun part: users will be able to create their own characters, actions and even stories, and fit them into the Versu system. There have been some really intriguing interactive fiction games showing up lately, and Versu could do a lot to really expand upon and improve that genre -- if it can get those content creation tools out and running. In the meantime, you can check the app out for free, and you should, if you want a look at what Linden Lab has been working on. Hopefully, they'll open the platform for creation very soon, and then we should see some really intriguing uses for this new app.
They Might Be Giants fans celebrate 'Apollo 18' anniversary with geekiest tribute imaginable
We love us some They Might Be Giants, and not just because the two Johns took the time to sit down with us for an episode of The Engadget Show last year. Of course, we're not the only ones out there with a strong appreciation for the fiercely original New York duo. When you've got a fanbase as geeky and devoted as TMBG's, you're bound to get some strange and wonderful tributes out of the deal. Take "Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album," a collection of 38 interactive fiction games created to pay homage to the 20th anniversary of one of the group's most beloved albums. Ever wondered how "I Palindrome I" would play out, were it a text-based computer game, instead of a rock song? Manonam, click the source link to find out.
Interactive fiction meets interactive typewriter, pilfers the kingdoms of Zork (video)
You are standing in an open field as usual, or perhaps you're in the darkness, likely to be eaten by a grue, but the words aren't etching their way into your soul from the familiar computer terminal -- they're on freshly printed paper. Like a player piano, the Automatypewriter lets you play games like Zork by automatically keying in letters via a series of solenoids and fishing line to tell you where you are, and it records your input, too; every time you type "XYZZY" in vain, it's an Arduino board that sends signals to the text parser, which directs a hollow voice to pity your foolish word. Forget the iPad typewriter -- this is old-school. See it in action after the break, or hit the source link for the schematics to build one yourself. Just be sure to install Planetfall, too.
> Text adventures come to Kindle, other e-readers
We're ... we're just so proud of all the would-be e-readers. Following known non-book Scrabble's ascent to the top of the Kindle sales charts, we learn from Ars Technica that a handful of gaming entrepreneurs have brought Zork I, II, III and Mini-Zork to the Kindle and other e-readers. While an e-reader's typically nubby keyboard might not be the best form of input for an interactive novel like this, we're strong supporters of any innovation that allows us to use our books to play video games. One hang-up, though -- can't we get a game on the Kindle that doesn't require so much reading?
Frotz brings text adventuring to the iPhone
We've already seen text adventures on the jailbroken iPhone way back when, but now Craig Smith has brought the z-machine interpreter (the engine that runs classic text adventure games like Zork, Planetfall and all the Infocom titles) to the iPhone officially with Frotz, available right now in the App Store. It comes with a few games to begin with, and there's also built in access to the Interactive Fiction Database, so you can grab as many text-based adventures as you'd like -- hours and hours of text-based good times. Whether you're an old hand at GET LAMP or new to the surprisingly vast world of IF, Frotz seems like a perfect portal to all the adventuring there is to find out there.[via Joystiq]
Penguin takes on interactive fiction with 'The (Former) General'
The (Former) General in His Labyrinth isn't a game necessarily, but it is a really interesting take on interactive fiction that we wanted to share with you. Inspired by Tales from the 1001 Nights, Mohsin Hamid's new piece allows you to create your own story by choosing the path that the titular character will follow both through his home and down Memory Lane.The story is the last of six classically-inspired tales in Penguin's "We Tell Stories" series, each designed specifically to be presented online. Though the others may not have that Zork-meets-Scheherazade feel, we heartily recommend all of them.
Hotel Dusk: worth reading or worth playing?
In his attempts to solve the enigma buried within the story of Hotel Dusk: Room 215, Wired's Clive Thompson gets caught up in another mystery entirely. Is Hotel Dusk a game or a novel? While the general consensus is that the DS adventure is somewhat of a novel game (see what we did there?), the copious amounts of text, glacial pacing and rigorous story lead Thompson to believe that the distinction between Hotel Dusk and an "average airport novel" is less than clear.Interestingly, he suggests that interactive elements like branching dialogue are the prime culprits in not only seperating the game from a novel, but preventing it from telling a story on par with the best of books. The piece concludes that games like Hotel Dusk and Phoenix Wright represent compromises between the interactive nature of games and the unresponsive presentation of books -- terms like "novel" and "interactive" don't quite capture the experience the games try to convey. It's a good read, but we'd be remiss not to append our own conclusion: Hotel Dusk is a choose-your-own-adventure novel!
Interactive phiction: Zork phone demo is online
Remember ZoiP (née Zasterisk), the open source implementation of the text-adventure classic that you play on the phone? Installation required rolling up your sleeves and installing some *NIX-y stuff which, despite my urgent desire to experience this, I never got around to doing. Fine, the real reason I never got around to doing it was because the project's author, simon, promised to have a call-in number available to test the project out. Why do today what someone else will do for you later, y'know what I'm saying?It's later and, true to his word, simon's put the public beta of ZoiP online. All it took was a little linkage from Boing Boing, Make: Blog, digg, and ... ahem ... Joystiq to get the old motivation meter up. Here's how you do it: Call 416-548-7557 (Toronto, ON, Canada) which is the "best quality." Otherwise try 360-226-7386 (WA, USA) which is "a little choppy." Or use a SIP-compliant program like Gizmo and add zoip@demo.zoip.org and dial out. This method worked the best for me (and it's free). I'm not sure if it's just me, but some calls seem to go much better than others in regards to voice recognition. On some, I can roll right through, other times I'm stuck repeating myself more often than "blue" in Brain Age. He warns to speak naturally, as "careful enunciation actually seems to make things worse." Give it a shot and let us know how far you get.
Stuck on hold? Zork is the new soft jazz
Forget Michael Bolton, Zork is the best hold music ever! From Zasterisk:"I was tinkering with Asterisk and the Festival text-to-speech engine, and wrote some short Asterisk::AGI scripts to read back live weather reports. After that, I thought I needed something more interactive to work with..."Now Zork is back! Listen as the eerie voice of Festival takes you into the Underground Empire, and marvel as you explore this world with your dial pad, unlocking the secrets within!"You'll need to install the Asterisk open source phone-switcher (*NIX only, that includes you Mac users), the Festival text-to-speech application, and then let Zasterisk work its special brand of magic, turning that boring phone tree into a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Too much work, you say? Good news! On March 13th the project's creator, simon, announced "over the next few weeks I'll be putting a public beta online for you to call in to." A few weeks is, like, right now! We're officially on the lookout.[Via Boing Boing]
WoW: The Text Adventure
This Wired column takes a sideways look at WoW, re-imagining it in the form of a text adventure. It's an excellent parody of some of the gameplay mechanics we've come to know and love, but I find it interesting for other reasons too.Having managed to log over ten days of play in a MUD character in the past (my WoW habit now puts that to shame), I wonder if the addictiveness of text-based multiplayer gameplay is often underestimated by those who joined the game when graphics were the de facto standard. After all, a great deal of the social interaction in WoW is done via text, even in this age of emotes and stunning visuals--that addictive social factor was a huge part of what kept me playing the MUD, and what keeps me playing WoW.
WoW reimagined as a text adventure
Lore Sjöberg, formerly of Brunching Shuttlecocks, has reimagined massively multiplayer online role-playing juggernaut World of Warcraft as... what else? A text adventure! It begins:"You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully. There is an elf with an exclamation point above her head here.>Talk elf"Alas," she says. "There is a great darkness upon the land. Fifty years ago the Dwarf Lord Al'ham'bra came upon the Dragon Locket in the Miremuck Caverns. He immediately recognized the ..."> Click Accept"Hey," the elf protests. "This is important expository. Azeroth is a rich and storied land, with a tapestry of interwoven ..."> Click Accept"Good stuff. When will the practice of reinterpreting things as text adventures get old? (Don't answer that if you disagree!)See also:Gamers respond with Thompson text-adventuresHamlet - The Text AdventureIraq war as text (mis)adventure[Via Boing Boing]
