From the Editor

August 1st, 2019 by Stewart C Baker
Intrigue! Witty banter! The promise of danger around every corner!

These things—along with memorable characters and unusual settings—are some of the things that always make me stay up late reading.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the two games in this month’s issue also have these things in common. In Eleanor Hingley’s “A Tragedy of Manners,” you’re thrown into the perilous atmosphere of a dinner party on the private planet of Lord Cephus Alikarn, the brother of the Emprex of the Luminous Empyrean. In “War is a Mazed Garden” by Nin Harris, you must escape from the Governor’s lush—and deadly—garden maze in time to let your fellow insurrectionists inside.

[read the full post]

Issue Contents

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Cover

“Peer Pressure”

by Laura De Stefani
[view full size] – [follow the artist on Twitter]

Essays

Actions, Verbs, and Processes: Games and Being Human

by Sharang Biswas
What is it about doing something that makes a game work? Might actions also be what make us human?
[read essay]

A List of My Twenty Favorite Works of Interactive Fiction

What makes a piece of interactive fiction stick with you? Anya explores some of the reasons, along with her personal top twenty.
by Anya Johanna DeNiro
[read essay]

Dialogue and Player Choice

by Bruno Dias
How do you make dialogue meaningful in interactive fiction?
[read essay]

Games

A Tragedy of Manners

by Eleanor Hingley
Manners cost everything.
[play game] – [read interview]

War is a Mazed Garden

by Nin Harris
In Mazes, as with the Art of War, there is always a choice.
[play game] – [read interview]