Category: Blog
Cryptozookeeper: Inside the Red House
October 4th, 2019 by Anya Johanna DeNiro“Someone make sure Eeyore there has herself a nice long gulp!” You’re not sure who said it. It could be any one of your friends. It could even be you! -Cryptozookeeper Sometimes, the moments that stick with you from a game—for years, even decades—are not significant moments in the game itself. Instead, they’re the off-hand […]
[More]Neon Landscapes & Spell Pyramids: Visuals and Form in Interactive Fiction
October 2nd, 2019 by Sharang Biswas“Like the hands of the correctional officer on my abdomen,” Sable Elyse Smyth’s Landscape III begins, “searching for metal—rather—groping for the sake of taking over—for possession.” [1] The poem continues for a total of eight lines, and evokes violence and sexuality, how the two can be intertwined, and how one’s experience with the carceral system […]
[More]October 2019 Table of Contents
September 30th, 2019 by Stewart C BakerThis month we’re very excited to bring you all “The Soft Rumor of Spreading Weeds,” a new game from Porpentine Charity Heartscape. This story is set in the same universe as “With Those We Love Alive,” and while you don’t need to have played that one to enjoy this, doing so might increase your enjoyment. […]
[More]A List of My Twenty Favorite Works of Interactive Fiction
August 3rd, 2019 by Anya Johanna DeNiroEvery four years, Victor Gijsbers compiles votes for the Top 50 interactive fiction games of all time. The aggregate is certainly compelling reading—if nothing else, to get a baseline for what might be considered “canon” (however loose) for a field that is, especially in recent years, coming from wildly disparate sources. Moreover, it’s worth noting […]
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Dialogue and Player Choice
July 31st, 2019 by Bruno DiasThere’s a lot to say about writing compelling dialogue in an interactive format, but for this month’s column I want to drill down to the question of player intentionality as it relates to dialogue. Intentionality, of course, is the player’s ability to not only have goals within the fiction of the game, but to knowingly […]
[More]August 2019 Table of Contents
July 31st, 2019 by Stewart C BakerIntrigue! 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 […]
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Actions, Verbs, and Processes: Games and Being Human
July 31st, 2019 by Sharang BiswasPiled in a corner, at the nexus of walls and floor, are hundreds of multicolored pieces of candy. The cellophane wrappers glint in the light. Your docent invites you to take one. To eat part of this sculpture, to slowly diminish its weight until, dozens and dozens of visitors later, there’s little left of the […]
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Author Interview: Nin Harris
July 31st, 2019 by Natalia TheodoridouNin Harris is an author, poet, and tenured postcolonial Gothic scholar who exists in a perpetual state of unheimlich. Nin writes Gothic fiction, cyberpunk, nerdcore post-apocalyptic fiction, planetary romances and various other forms of hyphenated weird fiction. Nin’s publishing credits include Clarkesworld, Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, The Dark, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Lightspeed. Nin is […]
[More]Experimenting in IF
June 12th, 2019 by Katherine MorayatiExperimenting in IF When was the last time a piece of interactive fiction blew you away with the fact that it was even possible? What was the last game where you thought, “I can’t believe that was made in _______?” Parser interactive fiction has a long, if currently stagnant history—something between a tradition and a […]
[More]Once Upon a Time in the Age of Fable
June 4th, 2019 by Anya Johanna DeNiroI 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 […]
[More]Dukes and Dumbledore: Truth and Canonicity in Stories
June 1st, 2019 by Sharang BiswasWhen JK Rowling unceremoniously announced that beloved wizard-headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay, the hundreds of fans packing Carnegie Hall apparently all fell silent—before bursting into applause [1]. Most fans, myself included, rejoiced. The Potterverse was gay! It was only later that I realised that my reaction was a little peculiar. Nowhere in the text does […]
[More]Interview: Hannah Powell-Smith
June 1st, 2019 by Natalia TheodoridouHannah Powell-Smith makes narrative games about fantasy politics, flawed characters, and fraught relationships. Often, ghosts are involved. Find her work at Choice of Games, sub-Q Magazine, and hannahps.itch.io, and find her on Twitter at @hpowellsmith. Hannah is the author of our June story, “Dead Lake Crossing.” This interview was conducted via e-mail in May of […]
[More]June 19 Table of Contents
May 29th, 2019 by Stewart C BakerThere’s a French term, l’esprit d’escalier (literally “staircase wit”), which refers to the experience of coming up with clever or insightful things to say hours after a conversation. For better or worse, the term perfectly describes many of my own social interactions. Our games this month both consider a similar theme. In “Dead Lake Crossing,” […]
[More]Aisle: Twenty Years Later
April 9th, 2019 by Anya Johanna DeNiroAisle by Sam Barlow is one of the foundations of post-Infocom interactive fiction. This isn’t just from the impact on other one-move games, such as Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle (played for laughs), or Rematch (played for puzzles), or even more recent games like Midnight. Swordfight. that take the one-move conceit and expand […]
[More]Failing Forward
April 1st, 2019 by Bruno DiasSekiro: Shadows Die Twice is out at last and so I’m thinking again about the perennial theme of FromSoftware’s loosely-connected Souls series: Failure. Failure is part of life, and it’s an ingrained feature of storytelling. Writing-101-type story structures often incorporate some aspect of failure: heroes make mistakes or are set back by their inability to […]
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