So… a side-scrolling interactive fiction?
*mind blown*
3 Likes
I thought about making a game which has been fully developed (okay, kind of) called Timesync. It’s based on a point-and-click game idea from Infocom.
But a lot of it would lie around navigating a ship through a solar system, and I’d want that to be 3D, right? So I created new names for directions for space navigation, and now you can even do (in other words) northwestup!
5 Likes
What time is it? Oh, yeah. Brain-hurty.
5 Likes
There are a few cultures, particularly amongst indigenous Australians, which have no relative directions, who only use cardinal directions. You could say that most IF player characters must secretly be from the First Nations of Australia!
But there are other cultures with interesting conceptions of direction. Some island cultures have primary directions of up-the-mountain and down-to-the-sea, and some even have clockwise/anticlockwise around the coast as the other primary directions. I’ve always thought that would be an interesting direction system for an IF to try.
5 Likes
Or the exotic uptown/downtown directional system.
2 Likes
You’ll always know which is which. The lights are always brighter in the direction of downtown.
3 Likes
This is one of those things I wrote that are vaguely in my mind. My big-story IFComp idea ran out. But I had an idea for CiC. I really would’ve liked to capture the feeling of walking upside down, but the rooms themselves were tough enough to put together. So I was a technical exercise with some pseudoscience jokes.
I feel like we’re missing a few games here. There has to be one where you can climb up a skyscraper like a spider and enter windows and so forth. You’d think there would be a mountain-climbing game, but the problem with too many mountains in a parser game is that you spend too much time typing U or D unless it’s designed really well. Perhaps there is a way around this – U (#) or even U# or UUUUUU or, perhaps, just a positive number to go up or a negative one to go down.
As for other games? I’m convinced there must be some really good parts that are vertical.
I don’t think the balloon in Zork 2 has been mentioned yet. It has a good bit of verticality with small side rooms and some relatively nice puzzles. I was so happy I figured it out, I never considered the other use for the initialed piece of wood before I burned it.
3 Likes
Related to the theme in Garry’s references: WWII Elevator Escape by @Denk.
4 Likes
Mathbrush did something similar in Ether where you could e.g. go SWD (southwestdown)
3 Likes
For what it’s worth, I’d like to mention the 400-storey building in Zork Zero, the seemingly-infinitely tall tree in YAGWAD, and I think there’s a tree in Katana that’s at least four levels high? Dangerous Curves has both an office building and a hospital with several levels to them. Flight of the Hummingbird has flying that’s less restricted than usual. I vaguely remember a game with a parachute with altitude readings as you fall. I don’t remember any mountain-climbing that stands out, but surely there’s one I’m just not remembering.The Oracle has an pool area that’s has three levels to it. And wasn’t Skies Above that game where you’re doing various busyworks to earn resources so you can get higher into the sky? Oops, mustn’t forget Threnody or Portcullis where you’re exploring a tall tower owned by someone important and powerful.
9 Likes
Down, the Serpent, and the Sun, by Chandler Groover, for the first ParserComp. It’s right there in the title: your goal is to go down.
3 Likes