FIFP Round 2, Divisions 3 and 4 (Voting/Fan Choice Commentary)

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Welcome to the second half of the second round of the Free IF Playoffs! (See here for details and ground rules.)

With the first round complete, the pace of the tournament will be increasing. This post is for second round matchups in Divisions 3 and 4. All matches are based on Round 1 results.

DIVISION 3

Match 41: Inside the Facility vs. Spider and Web

  • Inside the Facility
  • Spider and Web
0 voters

Match 42: Toby’s Nose vs. The Weight of a Soul

  • Toby’s Nose
  • The Weight of a Soul
0 voters

Match 43: Slouching Toward Bedlam vs. The Spectators

  • Slouching Toward Bedlam
  • The Spectators
0 voters

Match 44: Repeat the Ending vs. Cannery Vale

  • Repeat the Ending
  • Cannery Vale
0 voters

DIVISION 4

Match 45: The Impossible Stairs vs. The Mulldoon Legacy

  • The Impossible Stairs
  • The Mulldoon Legacy
0 voters

Match 46: Savoir-Faire vs. Bronze

  • Savoir-Faire
  • Bronze
0 voters

Match 47: Anchorhead vs. Alias ‘The Magpie’

  • Anchorhead
  • Alias ‘The Magpie’
0 voters

Match 48: Worlds Apart vs. Photopia

  • Worlds Apart
  • Photopia
0 voters

Vote in the matchups above, join the FIFP Fans group, and discuss your selections and impressions on this thread. Voting will close and Round 3 for all divisions will begin in one week.

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These are some tough ones! I know there’s one where it’s pretty hard for me, but I know I have to go ahead with it.

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Spider & Web vs Inside the Facility

The two breaking-and-entering-the-secret-spy-lab games are head to head! Spider & Web is a clever multilayered game with flashbacks and an unreliable narrator. Inside the Facility is a tightly crafted minimalist puzzle-box, where the reward for discovering more rooms is even more rooms to find.

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Contest of the Impossible Match-Ups! Almost all of these are really tough choices.

How do you choose between wonderful and enchanting? Where does one go between magnificent and superb?
How do you decide between two great Short games going head-to-head?

With great difficulty, that’s how.

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Since this is the first time running the playoffs, it’s being tuned on the fly. Quick poll (join FIFP Fans to participate):

When should the duration of each segment be reduced?
  • For the Final Four and later, per original plan.
  • For Round 4 (division finals) and later.
  • For Round 3 (division semi-finals starting July 20) and later.
0 voters
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Inside the Facility vs Spider and Web

This is the clash of the high tech lab puzzle games. Both are big, both are puzzle-heavy, but Inside the Facility is a light-hearted minimalist game while Spider and Web is a thriller espionage story.

Of the two Inside the Facility might be longer but it has optional content and the beginning puzzles are easier. Spider and Web is a ‘few hours’ kind of game.

Toby’s Nose vs The Weight of a Soul

Funny that two Victorian games with non-human characters got put up against each other. Toby’s Nose puts you as Sherlock Holmes’ pet dog, tasked with helping solve a crime, while the Weight of a Soul is a steampunk alchemy medical goblin mystery thriller. Both are Spring Thing winners, both exemplifying the heart of Spring Thing in different ways (experimentation and longer games).

Toby’s Nose is relatively short (1-2 hours) while The Weight of a Soul is one of the longer games released in the last ten years, but probably no more than 5-6 hours.

Slouching Toward Bedlam vs The Spectators

A lot of good writing on display here. I have to strain a bit to find a connection, but here goes. Both deal with key npcs who are subjugated by an outdated system that oppresses them and who are under a great torment that they are not allowed to talk to others about. All of our PCs in these games have their own motivations and interests, and learning what those are is an essential part of the experience.

Bedlam is shorter, and has a steampunk setting. Spectators is about 3-4 hours long, has a realistic/historical setting, and shows us the viewpoints of several PCs.

Repeat the Ending vs Cannery Vale

These are both meta games, both primarily interested in the experience of the author. Repeat the Ending is a faux-retro game that pretends to be from decades earlier, a game reconstructed and revised over time with a great deal of supporting documentation and interviews and such. Cannery Vale is a game that is about constructing a story. By day, you, the author, decide what to write about. By night, you inhabit your world in dreams. Or do you? It’s hard to tell.

While both of these games aren’t oppressively long, both benefit from a careful reading pace, so I recommend setting aside some time for this match-up.

Impossible Stairs vs Mulldoon Legacy

While I won’t hype up my game, I can point out some similarities. Impossible Stairs and Mulldoon Legacy are both games centered on family legacy, puzzles, and different time periods. Impossible Stairs is small, the smallest in this division, while Mulldoon Legacy is the largest. Remember that you don’t have to complete Mulldoon Legacy to vote for it! A nice, memorable chunk is the opening area of the museum, with its wax characters.

Savoir-Faire vs Bronze

Emily Short vs Emily Short. The first game, Savoir-Faire, is the pinnacle of Short’s achievements with simulating physical properties of objects. Puzzles rely on weight, color, texture, mechanical properties, density, etc. Bronze on the other hand is designed to be easily completable by a novice while also being substantial and compelling. The first has a male ne’er-do-well as a hero; the second has a female e’er-do-well as the hero.

Anchorhead vs Alias the Magpie

It’s hard to think of two games in the playoffs so far more different in tone. Our Anchorhead is grim, tired, sleepy, exhausted, horrified, and teetering on the edge of losing it all. The Magpie is always in control, clever, eager, and sardonic.

The only thing they share is being long, polished, and having large maps that change over time with reactive and conversational NPCs. Anchorhead is longer, but Magpie is no slouch.

Worlds Apart vs Photopia

In Photopia, a girl tells made up stories to a child about another planet, underwater treasure, special seeds, and the burden of power. In Worlds Apart, you live those things, being an underwater-breathing denizen of another planet who uses special seeds as part of their burden of power. Worlds Apart is much like the fantasy worlds Alley makes up.

Photopia is far shorter then Worlds Apart. In movie terms, Photopia is a Pixar movie (though more grim) and Worlds Apart is Lord of the Rings extended version, all movies.

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In the rematch of “Horror vs. Humor,” I’m going to put in the good word for Alias ‘The Magpie’ – yes, even over Anchorhead!

If there is a game to convince the average person who considers themself too literate for “games” that the form is worth a closer look, it’s this. Yes, there are other games more meaningful, but none so universally entertaining. I have never before seen the concept of a situation comedy so well-executed in IF, in a manner so skillfully fashioned to create broad appeal.

I know that comedy is often considered the low-hanging fruit of IF, but this is not just a comedy, this is the comedy. The comedy is the point, the comedy is the art, and everything about its design and implementation supports that. Its logic is easy to grasp for newcomers, and the game takes great pains to be newbie-friendly in an unobtrusive way.

Anchorhead is a genuine marvel and an undisputed giant of its time, but the corpus of the horror genre is getting more populous every year, and several works have managed to surpass Mike Gentry’s classic in one aspect or another. In this tournament that pits news versus old in a test of time, I have to go with the new in this case.

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Inside the Facility vs Spider And Web

Two infiltration games, although Facility is more light-hearted.

  • I am impressed at the variety of puzzles one can build with only NSEW and waiting. The first review on IFDB says “And it’s been pared way down so that the only commands you really need are the four cardinal directions and the ability to wait a turn.” I got stuck on “really” and assumed it would be “but you actually need some others, wink wink”, but that really is all there is to it. (Well okay, there’s also “LOOK” and “STATUS”.)
  • This means the online version at itch.io is eminently playable on mobile, with a D-pad and automap on one side and the text output on the other. Bonus points for that.

It feels like Spider and Web should feel like the deeper game, being a full parser game (and with that classic twist), but my point goes to Facility.

Worlds Apart vs Photopia

I’ve said it before, but I got back into text adventures at the turn of the century, finding out that there was a healthy indie community making parser games. That’s over twenty years ago, and I still remember the uplifting setting of Sunset Over Savannah, and the melancholic endings of Babel and Photopia. What I’m saying is, I have feelings about Photopia. Sure, maybe it’s a walking simulator before Dear Esther and Gone Home made them cool, but it’s a really touching walking simulator.
Of course I replayed it, because hey, 20 year old memories, but… the magic’s still there.

Worlds Apart, on the other hand, is looking really good. Following Round 2’s theme of “similar games being matched up, if you squint”, it’s also about piecing together someone’s life from fragmented memories. Maybe there’s more, it’s really long according to earlier posters. But I’m enjoying the drip-feeding of information about a very alien setting so far.

(There’s a theme here - I’m not enjoying dumping Worldsmith and Worlds Apart partway through, but there’s simply no chance of me finishing those games before the end of the playoffs.)

And yet, the point goes to Photopia.

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Slouching Towards Bedlam and Spectators is really making me think hard, one of the few contests where I didn’t already have a strong leaning towards one game. Spectators is in my opinion Amanda Walker’s strongest game, at least for my tastes, due to its large world map, impressive death, strong characters, multiple viewpoints, and very few bugs.

Slouching Towards Bedlam has great worldbuilding, amazing responses, good ‘lore’, and good atmosphere.

Both have relatively mild puzzles, some of which are a bit fiddly. But Bedlam has more freedom in what you can do and what order, while Spectators is more guided and linear. But this linearity helps tell a story.

Right now, I’m voting Bedlam, but I might switch to Spectators later on, and I’m replaying it right now.

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I love my game, but if I were voting in that matchup, which I’m not because that’s tacky, I’d vote for Bedlam.

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I appreciate your feedback, and you may be right, but I just replayed Spectators and had just decided to come back here and change my vote.

I think that Slouching Towards Bedlam can teach new authors a great deal about interactive fiction, and I think it is groundbreaking, and I think it outclasses Spectators on both those fronts. However, I found the endings of Slouching less memorable, so much that I couldn’t even remember what the ‘normal’ endings are for a moment, just the quickest one.

Both games have some content that I’m kind of uncomfortable with, from suicide by hanging in Bedlam to the gritty realness of Spectators (including the fairly erotic scenes with the stable boy. Like I said in the thread on that topic, well-written teasing stuff is a lot more troublesome to me than poorly written pulp.

So I feel like those things cancel out. And where does it leave me? Replaying Spectators, I feel a little shiver at the ending. The story feels complete; the characters are vivid, the worldbuilding and plot arcs are exquisite. To me, it’s a better experience. I don’t think I’ll take Slouching Towards Bedlam out of my IFDB lists and replace it with Spectators, or even suggest it should be ranked higher on IFDB. But I think for purposes of this specific poll, to me right now I’m feeling like leaning towards Spectators.

You may disagree, of course, and maybe I should replay Slouching and change it again, but I’ve already changed my vote.

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Well, to even things out, I voted for Impossible Stairs. I’m afraid I rage-quit Mulldoon Legacy and never finished it (I think it was unlisted exits that ended it for me), but even so the story-telling in IS is better. There is time travel in both, but the bittersweetness of the family story as it moves through time in IS was better for me. I know Mulldoon is a classic and all, but Stairs got my vote.

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I really, really wish these two had not come head to head. Anchorhead has to get my vote but I’m bitter about casting it, because in many ways I feel like this is an unfair match-up. I disappeared into Anchorhead for weeks back when I played it. It was totally immersive-- I thought about calling in sick to work for it. It loomed so large in my life for so long and still hangs over me (my first game was largely a tribute game to it).

Magpie could not be more different. It’s just pure gleeful silly fun. I laughed constantly at its cleverness and its desire to partner with me instead of obfuscate me. It lightened my life at a time when I needed that.

It’s amazing how much of my feelings for these games are wrapped up with the time period in which I played them and how they affected me then.

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I feel this way about Inside the Facility. I remember exactly where I was playing it, the weather that day, the time of day. Printing the map and filling it out by hand probably did a lot to anchor the experience in my memory. It’s such a fun game. The design is so elegant. One of my favorites in DiBianca’s catalogue, up there with The Wand.

Spider and Web, on the other hand, did not work for me. I love so many of Andrew Plotkin’s games. Hadean Lands. Delightful Wallpaper. Cold Iron. Bigger Than You Think. Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home. Dual Transform. All incredible; many are medium-defining for me. But I played Spider and Web (like Lost Pig) too early as a newcomer to parser games, and it was a very bumpy ride.

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Excited by this round - there’s a few games here I haven’t played before - The Spectators, The Weight of a Soul and Repeat the Ending. Also, there’s a few I haven’t played for ages. There’s also a couple that weigh right in there amongst my top faves of all time. Good matchups!

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Just replayed Worlds Apart. I started in June and finally finished after midnight last night (took a long break in the middle).

I had never realized how difficult it was. When I first played it I just used walkthroughs for everything. This time I at least tried on my own without walkthroughs, but there is a lot of “guess the verb”.

I ended up following the hints closely like before.

And it was fantastic.

It’s really a full novel in IF form, much like According to Cain, but longer. There’s even a book within the game that’s really large, as well as a notebook, a storybook, etc.

Most of gameplay is flashbacks where time progresses on its own but you have to be doing something other than WAITing or it won’t progress.

The middle act is so different from the rest and doesn’t really fit in without more info but is really cool and vivid. (Actually, decompiling a bit and trying to find answers to questions at the end of the game [deep spoilers:] Saal is the spirit-form of the emperor who conquered the planet, a big man with fiery skin and long black hair. But the spirit form is the real form, and the emperor-form is just a disguise. Saal’s human form, the Sheiara, is directly responsible for the events of act 3, as seen in the letter.)

Finishing it caused the same reaction in me as when I first played it seven or eight years ago. Full satisfaction and a deep sadness that the sequel never came out.

But maybe it’s so popular because it has no sequel. A sequel would answer so many questions about the world building that might better be filled by our imagination. And while the story may be called incomplete by the author, the “true story” is complete.

This is a complete story. And it’s the same story as at least two other games we’ve seen in the competition: Will Not Let Me Go and Of Their Shadows Deep. All three games are about the intense helplessness felt as an adult parent slowly dies from a debilitating disease. (And I suppose
Repeat the Ending fits here too?). And this game gives a full emotional arc for the protagonist, giving the most weight to this subject.

Photopia is better at making sure the players commands lead to progress while Worlds Apart can get stuck more easily, but both are based on nonlinear flashbacks telling a story, and the Worlds Apart story is more cohesive, more fleshed out, and more realistic, even if the setting is not.

Worlds Apart and Blue Lacuna have a lot in common, too; both expect you to wander an island with timers that go off for events once you’ve explored enough.

I also loved (and had forgotten or not one) that Worlds Apart uses UNDO prevention for exactly one choice in the story for maximum effect.

I would vote for Photopia over many games in the playoffs, but this isn’t one of them. Worlds Apart is a top 10 game for me.

Edit: I can totally get voting for Photopia, though. It has great visual appeal, nice writing, and a good over-all plot arc, and a lot less frustrating to play.

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Toby’s Nose vs The Weight of a Soul

I got an idea once, about a mad scientist with a shrink-ray looking for shrunk stuff in increasingly small details of their furniture. Turns out multiple such games already exist, such as Lime Ergot and Toby’s Nose. In this case, the titular Toby’s sense of smell can bring you clues from all over the mansion grounds and even further out in London. Coupled with Groovers writing, this makes for an excellent take on the murder mystery genre.

The Weight of a Soul takes us to yet another alt-historical setting strongly influenced by alchemy. After playing According to Cain, Hadean Lands and Worldsmith, I expected to mix alchemical compounds in this game too, but it turns out our protagonist’s expertise is medicine. I think this is the first time I’ve gotten to carry out both medical procedures and autopsies in a game.

This is a hard one. The Weight of a Soul starts really strong, while Toby’s Nose is more even throughout. My point goes to Toby’s Nose.

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Worlds Apart is my absolute favourite game. I’ve played it three times now, and I’m touched by the story every time. I’m very happy to hear that you had such a marvellous time with it.

I will never forget my deeply-felt, almost bodily-physical reaction when the location “Haven” switched to “Darkened Haven” about halfway through the game. That image still sticks with me, I sometimes see it in my dreams.

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Quick (re-)poll (join FIFP Fans to participate):

What should be the name of the bragging-rights-only honor given to the person who does the best on the prediction game for Rounds 2 and beyond?
  • The Advanced Augury Award
  • The Contest-Calling Crown
  • The Distinguished Divination Decoration
  • The Perfect Prognostication Prize
  • Other (please specify in comments)
0 voters
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The buzzer has sounded, and there is a tie! Give me a few minutes to find a witness for the coin toss…,.

EDIT: Tails again – a lucky break for the defender! The voting page for Round 3 is up now.

EDIT 2: The final standings have been updated and the official match summaries posted on the main thread. There were no upset victories this segment.