Category: Opinion

I wanted to talk a bit about a singular and peculiar pre-Twine, choice-based game that came out in 2006 called Age of Fable. Even now there’s not anything (that I’ve found!) particularly like it.   The FAQ for the game also points to this indeterminate, fluid history. The text describes the game as an “RPG” but […]

Released in 1997, Andrew Plotkin’s “The Space Under the Window” (“Space”) was a groundbreaking, unclassifiable work of interactive fiction, the impact of which is still felt today. Many consider it a work of “poetic” IF, or poetry outright, but what does that mean? Is poetry a quality of language, interaction, or both? The work itself […]

Welcome to something new at sub-Q: IF Riffs! We hope this will become a recurring feature where a question will be posed to several members of the IF community on a particular topic. Our first blog collects some thoughts on IFComp 2017 by the top five winners. Please feel free to add your thoughts in the comments […]

Interactive fiction’s history both intersects and acts as an alternative space to modern game development—even indie, narrative-based development—with its own unique traditions and community standards. One of the most prominent is “comp,” which could also be a “mini-comp” or a “speed comp.” Most were small, one-shot affairs with perhaps a few games entered, while others […]

“I think that one day Rybread is going to successfully get what’s churning around in his mind written & compiled and present us with an absolutely stellar adventure game. And after giving us three weeks to play it, I predict he’ll then blow up the earth.” –Robb Sherwin on L.U.D.I.T.E.   When I first became […]

Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. In 1993, the golden age of commercial interactive fiction was mostly over, although a few notable games—such as Eric the Unready—were still being published. TADS (Text Adventure Development System) was […]

You’ve heard of parser IF. You want to like parser IF. But there’s a lot of typing, and the goal isn’t always clear, and failing to land on the right verb for what you want to do can make feel kicked out of the story. It may sound bananas, but the frustration is what makes it fun. […]

(This post includes Korean but is mostly in English. If the English in this post looks strange, please make sure it isn’t being auto-translated by a browser plugin.) Even if you don’t Horang’s name, you know his work. His horror webtoon “Bongcheon Dong Ghost” has been stopping hearts since its release in 2011. Hardly a “scariest thing you’ve […]

  You write. You love writing. And you want your work to be read. But maybe you’re not a super A+ award-candidate kind of author. Maybe that’s not in your cards. Maybe you want to know how to get published, even if you’re not the best around. It’s possible. I’m proof. Not everyone can belt […]

The short answer is Peer Music. The long answer is a bit more complicated: Oliver Hood—the man who likely wrote “You Are My Sunshine,” one of the most well-known and beloved songs in the English language—never received official credit for it.     Fans of Michael Lutz’s “My Father’s Long, Long Legs” will recall that its […]

(This article originally appeared at Storycade on October 7, 2014) I’m not the most curious pup in the litter. When Michael Lutz’s “My Father’s Long, Long Legs” hit MetaFilter last November and scorched my brain stem, I assumed it was the thousand-hour effort of a lone HTML5 gunman.