• The recently released “Apollo 18+20: The IF Tribute Album,” a collection of games that honors the They Might Be Giants album Apollo 18;
• The recently released tribute to the Harry Potter universe, “Muggle Studies“ by our very own Flourish Klink;
• Spring Thing 2012, this year’s instance of the annual IF competition;
• The No Show Conference, where we hope to host the third annual IF summit and all-out good time;
• Recent updates from the local Kickstarter endeavor, Hadaen Lands;

After our meeting, we’ll retire the evening with food and drink and the usual conversation at the the Cambridge Brewing Company.

The games are playable online or offline, so give them a try!

• For Best Story:“The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M,” by Michael D. Hilborn (writing as Edmund Wells);
• For Best Individual NPC: The puppy in “Beet the Devil,” by Carolyn VanEseltine;
• For Best Individual Puzzle: The Hat Mystery in “Cold Iron,” by Andrew Plotkin (writing as Lyman Clive Charles), “Last Day of Summer,” by Doug Orleans (writing as Cameron Fox), “The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M” by Michael D. Hilborn (writing as Edmund Wells), and “Playing Games” by Kevin Jackson-Mead (writing as Pam Comfite);

Congratulations to the nominees and good luck! Voting continues until March 2, midnight PST. Winners will be announced on the ifMUD on March 4, 1:00pm PST.

• “Beet the Devil” by Carolyn VanEseltine; placed 7th
• “Cold Iron” by Andrew Plotkin (writing as Lyman Clive Charles); placed 15th
• “Last Day of Summer” by Doug Orleans (writing as Cameron Fox); placed 25th
• “The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M” by Michael D. Hilborn (writing as Edmund Wells); placed 6th; tied for 3rd for Miss Congeniality; winner of the Golden Banana of Discord
• “Playing Games” by Kevin Jackson-Mead (writing as Pam Comfite); placed 28th

In addition to contributing to the competition, four of the authors undertook a secondary mission: To write a super-secret bonus puzzle that spanned their games. A tip of the hat from the man with the hat to Andrew Plotkin, who generously retold this tale of intrigue (sans spoilers) in a post on the Gameshelf. Congratulations to everyone involved, and we hope to continue to see entries from PR-IF in next year’s competition.

The interactors, all of them new to interactive fiction, enjoyed the sessions enough to ask that the library create an interactive fiction club, so that they could read more IF stories and eventually learn to write IF.  The library may well establish such a club.

In the coming months, interactive fiction will also play a role in a young adult book club for sixth, seventh, and eight grade students. Likely selections include “Mrs. Pepper,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Aotearoa,” and “Escape from Santaland.”

Meetings

We held our monthly meetings, one on Monday, May 9, a second on Monday, June 13. On both occasions we filled Nick Montfort’s lair with approximately a dozen IF enthusiasts. Our agenda focused on the plethora of competitions out there, including the Spring Thing, the Indigo New Language Speed IF, and IntroComp (voting concludes in just under a week!). We also test-drove a few of our member’s games, the first a work-in-progress by M. Flourish Klink, the second Zarf’s contribution to the Speed IF competition: The Matter of the Monster, a game written in Undum. And per our usual, after each meeting, we sauntered off to the Cambridge Brewing Company for libations, comestibles, and additional confabulation.

Cambridge Science Festival

On Saturday, May 7, as part of the 2011 Cambridge Science Festival, several of us attended Story and Play: Interactive Fiction for Children. Hosted by our own Brendan Desilets, the event involved a group of children playing Mrs. Pepper’s Nasty Secret. Although we didn’t discover the aforementioned secret or its nastiness (we only made it a little more than half-way through the game), the children were entranced, some of them enough to request even more games. Perhaps Zarf summed up the experience best with his tweet: “The sound of little voices shouting ‘Oo, pull the switch!’”

Purple Blurb

On the same day as our Cambridge Science Festival event, Nick Montfort hosted “Adventuresome Creations: Interactive Fiction Graphical Adventures & Electronic Literature”, the final session of this spring’s Purple Blurb series. Our own Clara Fernández-Vara discussed the design of two of her games, Symon and Rosemary. Although Brian Moriarty of Infocom was scheduled to attend, he unfortunately could not make it to the session.

Grue Street

Several of us are currently pounding out games, so Jason McIntosh generously outsourced his home as the site for a Grue Street gathering on Sunday, June 12. The single condition for attending Grue Street is that you must have at least one “interactive situation” implemented that we can play and critique. During this particular Grue Street, no less than seven authors arrived with their works-in-progress! We hope to continue encouraging authors to create games with yet another Grue Street, but no additional plans have been made.

Our agenda first focused on an informal discussion about the numerious competitions going on in the IF community, including Spring Thing (the entries are in; vote by May 15), the SpeedIF Jacket (it’s all finished; so speedy!), and the Indigo New Language Speed IF (learn a new language; entries due on April 30).  And don’t forget that intents to enter IntroComp are due May 31.

We also discussed a few upcoming events:

• Cambridge Science Festival:On Saturday, May 7, from 2:30pm-4pm, Brendan Desilets will be hosting Story and Play: Interactive Fiction for Children as part of the Cambridge Science Festival. We will be playing Mrs. Pepper’s Nasty Secret, a romp for children of all ages.
• Purble Blurb: As if one event on Saturday, May 7, wasn’t enough, Nick Monfort will be overseeing “Adventuresome Creations: Interactive Fiction Graphical Adventures & Electronic Literature”, part of his Purple Blurb series. Presenters include our own Clara Fernández-Vara and none other than Brian Moriarty, author of the Infocom classic Trinity.
• Grue Street: Well, we would love to have another of these. Any volunteers?

We also explored Undum, the hypertext IF engine designed for HTML5 and CSS3. A tutorial game is available, as well as Flaws, a tale told by IF author Jon Ingold.

Finally, we had a brief post mortem on our mini-convention at PAX East 2011, and initiated conversations about the gathering’s future. Zarf has eloquently summarized our thoughts in a post on our Google Forum. The upshot: It’s going to happen, but the what and how is to be announced. Heck, we’ve got a year. How long can putting something together like this take?  (Cue ominous music)