I’ve seen some discussion of the best games to introduce new players to parser-based interactive fiction, but I’m wondering if there are any titles people would particularly recommend for new authors looking to get to grips with Inform 7 specifically. Is there anything that does a really good job of illustrating the basics?
I’d be particularly interested in hearing about games that are short, and/or have the source code available to look at.
The one I used to model my first game on was Glass by Emily Short, because it was short and open source and I figured its header data (like publication year and genre) would be correct since she helped invent the language.
The rest of the game isn’t great for “standard inform”.
I’ll suggest Sting as a well-made natural language game with commented source.
Bronze, also by Emily Short is not short by any means, but it does have a “making of” analysis that I found useful in addition to source code.
My inform7 version of the original Adventure might be helpful:
While saving the source code of these suggestions onto my computer, I discovered that I already had a folder of useful examples that already included Sting. Presumably it’s a solid choice that’s come up before!