ShuffleComps I Have Known
It’s 2014. I haven’t written any IF in 9 years. I hear about ShuffleComp and the little lightbulb goes off in my brain. (Here’s the thread in which the details are hashed out: ShuffleComp planning!). I send Sam my eight songs and eight pseudonyms and just like that, I’m back in!
I entered a game called HOLY ROBOT EMPIRE (I’ve found out since that some people find all-caps titles annoying, hee hee, sorry!) under the pseudonym Ralph Gide. It was my most elaborate game to date – my first using Inform 7, which I found so much easier to use than earlier versions it was almost a miracle. It was so fun being part of the IF community which formed around this website after some other places I used to visit faded away.
One funny result of the first ShuffleComp’s pseudonym requirement was that I released all of my games under pseudonyms after that for a while. I’ve been Rust Blight (for Lime Ergot, easily my most-discussed game), Snowball Ice (my favorite anagram of my name), Boswell Cain, Ayla Rose (for Starry Seeksorry, my favorite of my own games, written for the second ShuffleComp), Lewis Blanco, Lionel Schwob, Ian Cowsbell, Mild Cat Bean (along with my friend Tim), and Abandoned Pools (the name I used for a number of Ryan Veeder-prompted projects). Itch.io is great for running small comps, but the one thing I don’t like is it makes it harder for me to use my pseudonyms! The only time I bothered to make an alt account was for Ian Cowsbell; it wasn’t really worth it. I’ll probably mostly be Caleb from now on.
Two more things about names. First is this post from a few years ago, which made me laugh wildly: Mike Russo's ParserComp 2021 Reviews - #3 by DeusIrae
Secondly, there is another pseudonym I released a game under. The game is on ifdb, but it’s not attached to my profile and it has no reviews or ratings. The mystery is alive!
Anyway, I’d been wanting to write another ShuffleComp game, and I couldn’t pass up one that fell exactly ten years after the first.
I Submit My Songs
This part is always fun. I went for songs I thought had neat lyrics, or in one case no lyrics but a cool title. My rule of thumb is that I’m happy if my songs inspire even one person to make a cool game. So congrats, Lionstooth, for coming in first with “hideous, fabulous”! The Slow Poisoner, a.k.a. Andrew Goldfarb, wrote the song “Candelabra Cadaver,” which that title comes from. It was awesome seeing what you did with it!
I Get My Songs
What inspired me most was the animated video for the song “Slice.” I wanted to know what those odd beings were doing, and how a slice of cake was involved. From the beginning I wanted a peaceful mood. This comp took place during a very stressful time, and I needed Lozengy to escape into for a little while. Even so, for a time Anolelona was a more malevolent character, inspired by the song “Step On Me” – in the original conception, Anolelona had essentially tricked Lohihm Tung into performing its duties in Lozengy forever. However, this didn’t make me happy. I came close to abandoning the game a few times, but since a big part of the fun of ShuffleComp is seeing how people use your songs, I pressed on. However, I decided that Anolelona would be somewhat irresponsible but no worse. I wanted to make their friendship with Lohihm real, so I filled up the item descriptions with references to it. Anolelona exists pretty much only in descriptions – they might be only memories, but I wanted them to infuse the landscape of Lozengy and hopefully come to life that way.
The Deadly Hammock
I found one tester (I should have found more for a game of this size) who helped find some bugs and a ton of missing descriptions. Thanks, Jason! But then I made a very silly mistake – I messed with some room exits after testing was finished. And what do you know, I managed to make a hammock it was impossible to leave once you’d gotten into it. Thank you, Kanderwund, for letting me know about that! (And thanks also for your lovely review on ifdb – my other rule of thumb is, if a game of mine can get one review like that, it’s done its job.)
Let’s Talk About Talking
Want to know something funny? The conversations in Anolelona are much more complex than they appear. I spent a long time make a conversation framework that would allow me to inject new topics of conversation as you explore Lozengy and go back to talk to the characters, with new topics always popping to the top of the queue, but my energy and mood began to fizzle out right around the time I was going to write all that conversation… so I didn’t end up writing anything but placeholder text. If I do an update, a large part of it will involve conversation with the characters. The programming’s all there, I just need to give them something to say!
I Love ShuffleComp
Thanks for reading! I’ve had a lot of fun being part of this little IF community over the years. Anolelona was a hard game for me to write, not because of anything about it, but because of the outside world. I’m glad I finished it, even though it’s imperfect. Keep making things and sharing things, everyone. It’s why we’re here! (On this site, and in this world.)