Any recommendations for good recent IF?

Playing Game Hints
#1

Um! Hi, again! I used to post on this forum occasionally, a long time ago.

Long story short, I’ve been out of the interactive fiction scene altogether for a few years or so. I’m not particularly experienced in playing IF - mainly I’ve played all or part of a whole bunch of the more well-known stories - but I do get the sense that I’ve missed a lot in the years I’ve not been paying attention. (I did hear that Hadean Lands is out now - congrats to Mr. Plotkin on what seems to be a successful launch! - but haven’t tried it yet, and haven’t heard of anything else.)

In the past couple days I’ve been thinking about IF again, which brought me back to the genre, back to Inform 7, and back to this community. So: Does anyone have any recommendations for what I can try in terms of good recently-published interactive fiction? Within the last year or two is ideal.

#2

Here’s a link to an IFDB search for all games from 2014-2016 with at least 5 ratings, sorted by average rating:

ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu … tings%3A5-

#3

Inexplicably, I had forgotten about IFDB. Egg on my face, etc! Thank you very much; I’ll look at these.

Are there any that you all think are particularly worth playing?

#4

I’d recommend Hadean Lands, Scroll Thief, Superluminal Vagrant Twin, Fifteen Minutes, and, if you missed it, Counterfeit Monkey. I’ve also enjoyed Robin Johnson’s Versificator games.

For context, my tastes tend towards puzzle-oriented parser games.

#5

Grazie! I have indeed played Counterfeit Monkey, though not to completion - if you dig through its rather long thread on this very forum, I have a few posts there. Hadean Lands is definitely on my to-do list.

My tastes definitely lean toward parser games as well, and I enjoy good puzzles, so I’ll definitely take your recommendations seriously. Thanks again!

#6

I don’t know if you’ve played any of these, but for interesting uses of parser or cool concepts, I recommend Midnight. Swordfight., The Northnorth Passage, Patanoir, Bigger Than You Think and Weird City Interloper. These are all fairly short games.

Some choice-based games I’ve enjoyed recently: Open Sorcery and Arcane Intern (Unpaid).

#7

Try Coloratura and Choice of Robots. They were respectively my personal Best Game of 2013 and 2014.

#8

Coloratura also gets a huge recommendation from me. I adored it.