25 games: A retrospective and review of my own work to this point

Absence of Law

This game came to me in a flash of insight. I was living in Utah; I had basically given up IF. My ex didn’t really like me spending time on it (this was before I was making money off of it), and I had gone six months without reviewing. I was driving through Provo when I had what I thought of as ‘an idea for the greatest IF of all time’.

The idea would be that you would hack into a system and all of your actions would be hacking commands. It would sidestep the biggest issue with parser games: errors. In normal games, it shows the parser is dumb. In this game, it could be explained away by limitations in the computer you’re hacking into. And I had great memories of IF-like hacking games, specifically Activision’s game Hacker.

Looking at my source code, there are remnants of the original ideas: you were part of the group Anonymous, and were offered several jobs, but ended up forced into working at a nuclear reactor.

But the final game has you contacted by a brain in a computer backup from someone who has recently died. This man (named Dr Law, who is missing, thus ‘Absence of Law’) asks you to impersonate him and help his laboratory finish their three different resurrection projects. Fixing those projects involves riding a flamethrower-equipped robot and controlling disintegrating clones.

It’s a limited parser game, and has colors and music. I was worried when I originally wrote it that would be grating, but playing just now I left it on the whole time.

At times the limited options felt constricting, like in the opening, but I really enjoyed the clone-controlling part and the language part, which I only partially remembered (it was based on Cantonese). I liked the gags, like the crazy living room and the Star Spangled Banner or the poker game (which I had completely forgotten). I especially found the ending funny, which makes sense, since it was taken indirectly from Hanon Ondricek’s game Fair, which I similarly enjoyed.

Almost everything in this game is taken from other games. It’s like a musuem of IF puzzles. In the credits in the game, it says:

“The puzzles in this game were designed to represent my favorite types of puzzles in Interactive Fiction, including the “zooming in” puzzles found in Lime Ergot, Toby’s Nose and Out of the Study; the giant desk puzzles of The Reluctant Resurrectee; the optimization/scavenging puzzles from Moments Out of Time, Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder or the original Adventure; the language puzzles from the Edifice and the Gostak, and my own conversation puzzles in Color the Truth; the war mech puzzle from The Duel that Spanned the Ages and the battle puzzles in Gun Mute and Attack of the Robot Killer Yeti Zombies; the reflection puzzle from Tookie’s Song; the Babel fish puzzle from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; the entire game of Grandma Bethlinda’s Variety Box; and the presentations from the Art of Misdirection and Fair.”

I only found minor typos in the game, which is good, but I still made a new version, and I’m uploading the full version to the IFArchive so that the Play Online button works. I appreciate everyone that’s liked this game over time. I really thought it could be the greatest game ever, but it actually took 5th place in IFComp! I had hoped that, even if I didn’t win, I could place in the top 3 three different times like Eric Eve did, but this game didn’t make that, either. I was pretty bummed at the time, but looking back, the games that beat it are IF legends: Wizard Sniffer, Eat Me, Harmonia, Will Not Let Me Go. All of these games are in the top 100 IF of all time, and that year has more games in the top 100 than any other year. Which shows to me that you really shouldn’t focus on placement, but just enjoy making games. In contrast, on IFDB for a year or two (before it switched to star sort and before some negative ratings) it was the highest-rated IFComp game ever, but only because it hadn’t gotten popular enough to attract bad ratings. Now, with the new ranking system and more negative ratings, it’s not even close to the top (it’s 19th now, I think). But did the game quality change? No, but people have different tastes and there exist yet unmade games to make that are even better than those we have. Overall, I had a lot of fun playing this game and am grateful for its reception over time.

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I think there’s some really good advice with this. It’s about making something you like: if it can appeal to another person that’s great, but this is mostly for you.

(Also, for what it’s worth, I think that apart from NGUHD, this is definitely your best game, and also it may have not gotten Top 3 but 2017 was an absolutely fantastic year for games, and AoL joins those other high-scorers in the Top 100 rightfully so.)

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Since this is a pretty self-indulgent thread(but more importantly a great and interesting read, thanks Brian) I just want to mention that it has compelled me to work on a new version of the one thing in my oeuvre I always felt bad about: the stupid twist ending in oldest hangover on Earth.

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That’s great! Feel free to post a link once it’s finished

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(I wrote this a few weeks ago. I always intended to finish this series on the day that I released the commercial version of Never Gives Up Her Dead, so while I was being authentic, this is also an advertisement).

Never Gives Up Her Dead

Wow, playing this after playing all the others just really highlights the difference here. In so many ways, this game is equal or greater than the sum of all games that came before. Just opening it and beginning it feels so much more substantial than my other games, all of which are designed for relatively quick play and usher the player through the game in an orderly manner. This game takes its time, and it felt like it had more ‘gravitas’ to me.

This game is set in a spaceship that has been struck by an asteroid. Unseen by anyone but you, nine portals to other worlds and dimensions have opened up, each with its own environment and challenges: an escape room where you solve puzzles, a laserbattle arena where you lead robots into battle, a cabin where you restore old furniture, etc. Each world was designed to be about the same size as one of my IFComp games, and playtime estimate is around 20 hours, with no one I know of beating it in less than 10.

It took me roughly the same time to play this game as my entire back catalogue put together. Its word count is around 360,000, while all my other parser games totalled is around 400,000. One of its ten areas is a murder mystery that is 50% larger than Color the Truth and more polished. The wax museum alone has more puzzles than Absence of Law. The cabin has better environmental descriptions and simulates the passage of time much better than Grooverland, and due to its length the best parts of the game impacted me more than Impossible Stairs. I really don’t know how I was able to complete this; looking back, I remember refusing invitations to events and skipping watching new tv series because I was spending every evening for a year and a half working on this game, writing and testing and working with a wonderful set of testers.

It really feels like the finale of ‘Chapter 1’ of my IF career. All my other games led up to it, even the really bad ones. Halloween Dance pioneered its conversation system; Barroom Brawl was my first foray into automated combat; Grooverland (even though it was pretty good!) taught me that you shouldn’t make big games entirely modular as people can miss big chunks of the game; Indistinguishable gave me ideas for a futuristic zoo and the blending of science and magic; and even Fridgetopia came into play in Never Gives Up Her Dead when I used multiple copies of a kind of object to allow the player to assemble words one letter at a time.

With all this said, it’s not for everyone. It’s like Thanksgiving at my school. We always cater a big meal with turkey, mashed potatoes, pie, and cake. But one student (who is sadly graduating soon) has parents who gives us a giant platter of really high-quality sushi from the luxury grocery store they run. And I love that sushi; I look forward to it every year. Not everyone loves sushi, though. Some would much prefer a perfect slice of pie or a warm plate of turkey and stuffing over any amount of sushi. Some gag at the thought of sushi.

This game is a giant platter of sushi. For people who love being lost in a giant world, playing for days or weeks, setting it aside and coming back much later, games like Curses or Mulldoon Legacy, this should be really enjoyable. For people who like short, snappy games with tight, coherent emotions, or experimental and groundbreaking games, or puzzle-light games, this game will sharply disappoint. I know at least one player who got bored to death with the robot army and stopped playing for weeks. I know others who never finished because they lost interest. So my rule of thumb would be: try one dimension; if you like it, you’ll probably like the others. If not, you’ll probably hate the game!

With this game I feel like it can be my ‘legacy’. If this is the best game I produce in my life I’ll think, ‘that’s a pretty good best game for my life!’ because it represents what I most wanted to create and what I most like to play. I genuinely enjoy replaying this game, and laughed at some dumb jokes I forgot I put in and felt emotional at the endings.

I’ve updated the game for a release 3, fixing a lot of bugs and expanding the good endings, and I’ve recently released a commercial version:

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Thanks for everyone who’s read along! Tomorrow starts a new day, with a new game for Ectocomp’s Petite Morte:

Two of my biggest goals over time were winning IFComp and getting nominated for a Best Game XYZZY award. Winning Best Game didn’t matter as much, since nominees are usually the same quality as winners. I’ve never achieved either goal, but I did get Miss Congeniality, which is nice and made me more relaxed (as mentioned above). I do still wish to work towards an XYZZY Best Game nomination and think I have an okay shot this year, although I think the final award will likely go to Repeat the Ending or Dr Ludwig and the Devil, both games that exemplify what interactive fiction can be and which would both fit in well with past winners. Regardless of awards, though, it’s just fun to try to make people in the community happy and to share my ideas and thoughts. There would be no point in the games if there weren’t wonderful people like you readers to work with.

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so far :wink:

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when I made erstwhile, I explained to my co-writer that I wanted to “have my cake” (color the truth mechanics) and “eat it too” (toby’s nose mechanics). I think I mentioned this in its postmortem? I’m a little surprised at the calculations you made with CtT to “win IFComp”, but I guess it might track for a detective game. nevertheless, it meant a lot to my IF development.

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Thank you for all these thoughts. I think they really help, especially the authors in the bud such as myself.

I have a question, that I hope would be interesting for others as well, and still somewhat on topic:

You also review and reviewed lots and lots of games. Would you say this knowledge helped or held you back?

I know this might be a bit of a strange question, so I should elaborate. Some time back I took a course on creativity and one of the postulates in that training was that increased knowledge also limits people in what’s possible, i.e. the more you know the less creative you can be. At the time, I just thought, what a load of ****, but it was somewhat disconcerting and I find my thoughts often go back to that. That training was for engineering and there are laws there, that are mathematically proven. To apply that logic to IF, though, we have “ways of how things are done”. Like inventory, compass directions, etc. Did you ever feel that all this additional knowledge stifled you creativity, or was it enabling?

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That’s a great question. There’s a possibility that that’s true and I’m just unaware of it. On hand, all of my most popular games were created as references to other great games based on my knowledge of them (this is clearly true with Impossible Stairs, Grooverland, and The Magpie take the Train, which are all sequels or tributes to works by other authors, while Never Gives Up Her Dead uses dozens of Inform example games from the documentation and Absence of Law uses all of my favorite puzzles from other games). On the other hand, popularity is not the same as creative freedom. I often see works by other authors (especially Charm Cochran and Chandler Groover) and think, ‘How did they think of that? Where is this imagination and creativity coming from?’

So for me, while having increased knowledge has given me what I wanted (more likes and reviews), I have no evidence of it enhancing my creativity and partial evidence of it limiting it (as I feel less creative than other authors).

But I guess one thing that I thought of is this: say I had an idea one day to do a game where the whole game is reversed in time, but you don’t know that it is until the end. Now, because I’ve played a lot of games, I can say, “oh yeah, that’s just like ____ parser game and _____ commercial game”, and I can then think of my game as one in a category. But if I didn’t know those other games, I’d think ‘Wow, I’m so creative!’. But in both cases I had the same idea, I’m just mentally categorizing it as creative or not based on other things. So like, a person with little experience who has 10 ideas might put them all in the ‘I’m creative box!’ while someone with more background trivia knowledge who gets the same 10 ideas would put them all in the ‘I was inspired by pre-existing media’ box.

So maybe this only applies to people who believe creativity means doing what’s never done before. I know of at least 6-10 IF authors who only want to do completely original ideas and get upset if they find out others have done what they want to do; and if that’s the case, then I think prior knowledge is extremely limiting of creativity. But if you accept that almost everything has been done before and instead try to find ways to express them better than has been done, I don’t think it’s as big of an issue.

Edit: I guess an audit by an outsider would work better. Someone should find a prolific author who never plays other IF and compare the creativity of the two in terms of ‘many, varied, and unusual ideas’. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if I suffered by comparison, but it would be fun to try!

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Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I agree completely.

Maybe, but now I feel bad about asking the original question as it may have come across wrong. Creativity can be expressed in many ways and there’s plenty of ways of expressing it within the frameworks we already have. The added benefit is that the users are also familiar with what they are getting into.

My question was more along the lines of, I had this idea, but dismissed it, perhaps subconsciously, because I didn’t think it feasible.

In any case, just to be clear, I think your contributions are great, and I really appreciate your games and all your thoughtful reviews!

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You better not name them. If they find out they aren’t the only one pursuing solely original work… Well…

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Well, I don’t want to discourage them because I also love their work! (which is why I was ambivalent above, I really don’t know which approach is better).

I just wanted to add that I think that, after all these side-thoughts that training seems to have induced, the best way is still Shuhari:

Comes from martial arts but I think it applies everywhere and I have been (sometime unknowingly) following it for years. The trick is to master what is known and then to break the rules in knowledge of when you can and then transcend even the rules. So, Brian, I think you mastered it, and I don’t even know my first kata :slight_smile:

I apologize if I derailed the topic.

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No problem at all! I’ve actually been going through a writing internal struggle the last few days. My last two games have focused heavily on romance, and have fallen fairly flat. I read a review once that Adam Cadre wrote where he said ‘The author writes as if he had seen humor before but doesn’t know what makes it funny’. I feel the same way about romance! I’ve seen good romance games before (several of which I’ve really enjoyed) but don’t know what makes it work. I had even thought of incorporating romance into my big game next year, but now I’m doubting.

So, while I’ve had some success with science fiction and comedy writing, I now find myself doing quite poorly in a new area. I can’t tell if it’s a fundamental disconnect I have, a lack of practice, or the fact that both games were mostly-untested jam games.

So talking to you has actually been therapeutic, helping me sort out my thoughts. After reading what you said, I think I’ll take more special care to read through other successful romantic games and see what I can learn about them, rather than trying to be quirky and break rules I hadn’t even learned yet.

So, thanks, and feel free to comment all you want in the future!

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I think increased knowledge can only limit you if you decide to limit yourself based on what you do with it. Even then, that may not be a bad thing.

Technically, placing a limit is not inherently bad. e.g. Consider this idea of someone who only wants to do something that’s never been done before that @mathbrush mentioned. It’s not limiting their creativity, it’s informing them about what they want to spend time doing. It would be limiting their creativity if they wake up screaming: ‘Argh, I really want to create something today, but I refuse to act because what I make must be new and I can’t think of something new right now!’ Then you’ve got a block to your personal evolution, and you never want those.

This is still all rather a negative way of looking at increased knowledge, as if we’ve taken the end of the stick that was stuck in the mud rather than the clean end. Mostly, more knowledge is a great thing :slight_smile:

-Wade

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As a writer who enjoys subversion: I find I can only subvert what I understand.

But to circle back to the thread and its subject: I’ve always been impressed with mathbrush’s broad and deep knowledge of IF, both in terms of larger movements and individual texts. As this thread indicates, it’s led him to some very interesting places as both author and critic.

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I think it depends what one does with the information. If one writes or reads reviews creatively, as well as analytically, it is not only possible to learn a lot about craft, but also find and inspire a raft of new ideas.

Both are necessary to do this. The analytical part allows one to get the most possible information from the review and helps to understand the intent behind the games under review. It also helps with ideas about how things relate to each other.

Creative thinking allows for imagining possibilities that are suggested rather than stated by the process of reading/writing the review.

@mathbrush writes reviews in both an analytical and creative way, so I believe this helps make the games better, albeit perhaps in a subtler fashion than, “Here’s this idea nobody in the universe has done before (or will ever want to try again)!”

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