The People's Republic of Interactive Fiction

The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Tuesday, Dec. 20,. 2022 over zoom.   Zarf, anjchang, Carrington (Eaten By A Grue), Hugh, Kyrill, Michael Hilborn, Emilie Z,  Josh Grams,  Kathryn,  Stephen Eric Jablonski, and Dana Freitas attended.  Warning: What follows is perhaps not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories.

Carrington is reviewing Hadean Lands on Eaten By A Grue. Discussion about reset command in Hadean Lands. Hugh found a bug in EBAG show dates.

In the podcast they mentioned, Jason Shiga’s Leviathan which is now on Steam!

What we’re playing:

• Mad God
• Then You Come to A House Unlike the Previous One.
• Use Your Psychic Powers at Applebees

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.

Call for talks on Narrrascope is up https://narrascope.org/pages/call.html

Zarf has been judging for indie game festival (IGF) this year. Mention of some of the games he’s judging:

• Betrayal at Club Low (Alt Geek City environment)
• Midnight Girl
• Butterfly soup 2 (asian teenagers growing up in america)
• Beacon Pines (point and click adventure)

Emilie and Angela attended Nick’s Interactive Narratives final project class:

• Ginseng Soup
• Lost in the Woods
• Rubber Ducky

Zarf did a tiny game in November https://confoundingcalendar.itch.io
Advent mirror short IFpuzzlegame https://zarf.itch.io/advent-mirror

Next year is the 9th anniversary of Hadean Lands , plan to release
Trope tank has a copy of physical book of Hadean Lands.

Life and Suffering of Sir Brante– medieval narrative
https://www.gog.com/en/game/the_life_and_suffering_of_sir_brante

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.

Beyond the Chiron Gate bay John Ayliff deals with exploring alien technology. Also mentioned Voyageurs by Bruno Dias, Out there by Ayliff . Concept of procedurally generated planet description with more of a plot line.

Gods will be watching– a semi strategy game.

Kyrill is working with Jim Andrews on a bigger version of Sea of Power, a larger version of “Sea of 9” from Taper. Idea of control over text.

Kathryn has been reading Adventure Games: Playing the Outsider

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.

The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Monday, Jan. 30th on Zoom. Zarf, anjchang,  Josh Grams,  Stephen Eric Jablonski, Hugh,  Kirill Azernyi, Dana, Kyler HE, Michael Hilborn, , and Mike Stage welcomed newcomer Andrew Stephens.  Warning: What follows is probably not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories.

Hugh participated in SeedComp. The idea was to develop someone else’s idea into a game (read more about it here). SeedComp is currently in part 2, with the game deadline for Feb.

Colossal Cave released their 3D version of the original Colossal Cave Adventure. Zarf wrote a blog post about it here. Zarf shared some screenshots. Discussion about what people liked and didn’t like. Pictures are not of the original cave, and the 3D adaptation has additional story elements.Could expose a new generation to the old Colossal Cave (which you just die a lot in). Currently PC only, Steam says MacOS Catalina (10.15) or higher and console release is Q1 2023. Josh shared the podcast with Roberta Williams.

Modern games are more user friendly than the original Colossal Cave. What is the fun of dying a lot? Although nowadays, Angela reports that in elementary school, kids are loving the impossible game, where you continue completely based on memory. Also reminds us of Nethack. Will there be a sequel or expansion to Colossal Cave Adventure? What would that look like– there caves, seeing existing variants would be cool. Family tree of Adventure variants: https://mipmip.org/IFrescue/ajf/

Andrew asks do people feel about randomness to add to repeatability? Full randomization as a basis for different game play is not all that common. Hugh uses randomness to bury the text description, not for state of game play to support repeat-reading. The state machine isn’t randomized. For randomizing NPC or object positions as “background color” it’s often not very interesting.

Kyrill playing NORCO. Visceral meta games that might not make much sense. Loved the monkey thing. Zarf recommends as “one of my top games of the year.” High praise is also mentioned for Roadwarden, Citizen Sleeper, Betrayal from Club Low by Cosmo Dee, Case of the Golden Idol,ButterflySoup 2 (visual novel), Space Wreck game (French) about surviving a wreck. Hugh planning to play Syberia 3, having played Syberia some time ago. Angela’s played a bit of Carrington’s beta for the Dorm game. Didn’t finish yet but it was fun and interesting. Learned a lot about retro computing and Kansas Fest sounds fun.

Angela’s latest project is trying to figure out why some Commodore 64s are not working after being in storage. Got some pointers to check out the RAM chips and salvage the C64 audio chips (since they’re a commodity).

Kyrill asks “Where to publish a small IF piece” SubQ Magazine used to be a venue. We talked about ELO, the Electronic Literature Organization. Their fourth collection is out, https://collection.eliterature.org/4/ and the prior collections are available here https://collection.eliterature.org. Some people “publish” at media events and museums. For example, Brucker-Cohen’s Wordplay exhibit at the NY Hall of Science, now running until March.

Kyrill talked about visceral games, and the sensations we get through text adventures. In FPS games, it is hard to pause and reflect on the emotion, mentality, and perceptions in the moment of the action. Games like Saints Row, when you’re robbing a bank can be thrilling, but there’s not a lot of reflection or space to pause when the action is going down. But Angela would find it useful to understand those moments more. Recommendation to check out PayDay and other RPGs. There’s another aspect of viscerality when we are all in a room together experiencing the joy of solving a game together. An intellectual darshan or elation from being in a crowd.

Hugh brought up graphical stealth based games like Spider and Web. We talked about how the story is told through the narrative of a capture spy. The recollections build up to the downfall of the spy. Highly recommended as an investigation into visceral description of tense moments.

FYI how to turn on Inform debugging:
Verb "xdeterm" * -> Xdeterm;