TThe People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Friday, April 29th on Zoom. Zarf, anjchang, Kyrill, Brendan Desilets ,Hugh, Mike Stage,andStephen Eric Jablonski attended. Warning: What follows is probably not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories.
Group play-through of Beam Me Up Scotty
We enjoyed playing Strand Games’ Beam Me Up Scotty for Spring Thing. It’s a catch phrase game where you type in the answer to what you want Scotty to do in different situations. All the phrases are start with B and we had fun! Has anyone seen a catch phrase game like this before?
Could do another game based on Casablanca. “Play it again” phrases that start with ‘P”?
Mike asked about the language platform (Strand). Hugh explained that it is custom flow-based code. ( We also talked about “vi” and vi commands, since that’s Hugh google name for his Spring Thing entry. ) Hugh gave us a walkthrough of the source code to the Beam Me Up Scotty game. He showed us the token language that he’s designed, which was quite interesting in the way many objects and dialogues were configured. Check out the blog describing how he builds the games for Strand Games.
Discussion on how he authored the character dialogs to scale for larger games. At the bottom of his latest post, youu can download the work in progress game for Roger The Pirate. The post also goes into detail on the story code and flow of RogerThePirate. Thank you Hugh for sharing your game!
What else we’re playing
Kirill played “Imagine Lifetimes” a satirical simulation game about the meaning of life. Also mentioned Storyteller puzzle game released last month on Steam.
The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Tues, Feb. 28th on Zoom. Zarf, anjchang, Stephen Eric Jablonski, Andrew Stephens, Dana Freitas , Daniel Gaskelll, Hugh, and Kyrill attended. Warning: What follows is probably not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories.
Depression Quest – Dana told us the backstory and gave it a chance. The author was at FIG. It’s a story about depression.
Discussion about database-like games, wandering a memory.
Serial Experience Lain, the anime game. Game is very strange. Game released after the series. Memories and fading memories.
HerStory, Mike S mentioned about a database. A digital love story. Immortality.
Analogue: a hate story arguably much more database like than digital
Dana asks what are the challenges of a database-type game.
One of the challenges is access, you usually only have only one piece to work with at a time
https://neurocracy.site/ is another database-style narrative game, modeled on editing wikipedia.
Making these games compelling is tricky. Sam Bardo uses video actors. 1986 Portal game was pretty linear. Portal’s story was not ideal to slog through.
Did Emily Short wrote a post about this type of game but either I’m fabricating the memory or can’t remember well enough the phrase she used to describe them
Immortality, and whether or not you need to encounter the memories in the right order is a concern. Is it coherent when pieces are encountered in random order.
Does it skew away from adventure toward world building? Is there an incentive to explore, if you’re walking around IF game…you have a list of things to get. In a game like HerStory, putting the pieces together requires a different motivation, as it is more open ended. Ideally you would still progress in a linear fashion. How to balance the linear progression and exploration?
Will readers do a breadth first search, clicking on every link?
Becketts plots where you arrive after something happens, or Apocalyptic plots where you don’t bother with NPCs.
What if memories and nodes are unstable? Video game version of unreliable narrator?
Is there an agenda for retelling a story based on manipulating the character’s perspective. Like Disco Elysium, restructuring memory from scratch?
Anj has been watching Murdoch Mysteries the story of modern technologies retold. Hugh has been doing research into the 1890s Sherlock
Jeremy Haight a game where hippies go back in time and try to imitate the sounds of their era with existing musical instruments.
Can you be a punk with a flute before you’ve become a punk?
CS Lewis, using narration of space to open up what was there. We think about the world in such a limited space of our present day needs. For example Dan Mantions the maze puzzle in Photopia. Anagramming gun from Counterfeit Monkey. Baba Is You.
The author has been running a mailing list game “Inbox Adventure: Interactive Fiction via Email” Check out this author, Geoffrey Golden giving his talk at Narrascope video. Also check out misadventure snack, a form that collects ideas for guiding an interactive IF game.
Kyrill found it interesting they games they deal with slow time. These games explore the “dead time” as something productive to get you involveed deeper into the world of the game. Exploring what happens when nothing is happening.For example in Pentiment, referring to the slow time in medieval age. Everything is thoughtful and meaningful. Heidegger’s theories about a broken tool eliciting out what people think. “A perfect tool is a broken tool. ” Invites the thought that humans are in constant repair.
Carrington working with Kay on beta testing his PunyInform adventure. Check out DORM Adventure!
Emilie is finishing up her dating simulator! Sunflowers and god reference. Sunflowers are invasive and alien-looking! Carrington just went to a sunflower maze in the fall.
