The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction met on Monday, August 30, drawing our largest audience yet. Over a dozen members crammed themselves into our host’s office space.

Once again, we had the honor of being (virtually) joined by Jason Scott, the director behind the exceedingly ambitious IF documentary GET LAMP. The DVD is now available, and one of our members passed his copy around for those eager to inspect the cover art and gaze at the lustrous, freshly-minted Zorkmid (no. 1842) that arrived with the DVD. Sales of the DVD are going well, and purchases are even arriving from overseas. Jason also announced his tour, JET LAMP, during which he’ll travel the country to hold exclusive screenings and discussions about his film.

We also had the chance to play an experimental point-and-click adventure game, Symon, which was produced by one of our members, Clara Fernández-Vara, of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. Symon recreates the random, yet eerily orderly, atmosphere of dream logic. With procedurally generated puzzles and game-spaces, you never play the same game twice. Feel free to step into the dreams of the paralyzed protagonist while you play Symon online.

Jason McIntosh and Andrew Plotkin reported on their talk at the Boston Gameloop unConference during which they demonstrated the power and ease-of-use of Inform 7 by creating a small text adventure in front of their audience.

We rounded up the evening with a brief discussion of Interactive Fiction Month, scheduled to be held at Tufts University during October. We have heard little in terms of plans, but we do know that our own Nick Montfort will be giving a talk (title and content to be determined) on Thursday, October 14. Two days later, Nick will also be speaking at the Boston Book Festival in a panel entitled “The Future of Fiction”.

As for our next meeting, the gathering has been tentatively scheduled for Monday, September 27, same IF-time, same IF-place. And don’t forget to help Grunk find his lost pig on Sunday, September 12. Details below.