Two games completed in one day, two reviews posted on IFDB, and the completion of your short course?
I hear you gasp. Why, yes, it’s true!
And here’s a link to my review of It is Pitch Black - a very short and easy Twine game, it has to be said (but it was kinda fun while it lasted).
And as this is a marathon, I will continue (to Junior Arithmancer) to see how far I can get.
Congratulations, @JohnD, for finishing your short course! Since Junior Arithmancer is only one square away from It is Pitch Black, it counts as extending your contiguous run for determining the winner of the Imbued with Iron award – you’re now tied for first with Harren.
If you don’t want to compete for that award, then now that you’ve finished your course you’re allow to “hop” around to any square on the board. Posts about games and reviews of games reached by hopping will still count for the awards related to those.
I’ve had quite some fun with The Curse of the Scarab! Managed to get to 770 gold, though it seems there are still quite some secrets remaining, and I did not discover how to get into the Annex. Possibly I’ll come back to this later, curious to see how far I could push it, but for now I’ll move on with my run - going to CYBERQUEEN
That was a quick, though quite gruesome little game.
I’ll move on now to The Missing Ring - I love whodunnits, and am curious how this Twine game implements this mystery.
(First Draft of the Revolution was co-authored by Emily Short and Liza Daly; Short did the design and writing while Daly did the programming. All quotes were taken from her artist statement.)
First Draft of the Revolution is an epistolary choice-based narrative, released as an e-book. The reader interacts with the work by editing letters sent by four different characters to each other. In a given letter, there are passages that must be changed and passages the character is considering rewriting; the reader chooses which tone to take when revising a passage and how much editing to do once the minimum alterations have been made. The story will always play out in exactly the same way, since First Draft does not keep track of the reader’s decisions. No matter how gentle or forceful one letter is, there will be the exact same set of options for how to compose the reply.
Short stated that First Draft isn’t intended to be about “defin[ing] or chang[ing]” the letter-writers, but rather about exploring their personalities. To me, however, what characters do and what they choose to write determines who they are. The version of Henri who scolds Juliette for complaining about her banishment and the version of him who tries to empathize with her are two different, albeit similar, characters. For the reader’s interaction with First Draft to be meaningful, these differences of character should add up to create a difference in the story.
To an extent, First Draft does allow players to change the final version of the narrative. The reader, in editing both sides of the correspondence between Juliette and Henri, shapes their relationship. But if the reader’s idea of the characters strays too far from Short’s idea of them, the ending no longer seems to follow from their personalities. For the first half of the story, I was imagining Juliette as more rebellious, even sympathetic to the revolutionaries’ cause. As a result, it came as something of a shock when Juliette suddenly took the side of her husband and the aristocracy.
The realization that my choices hadn’t mattered made me question why I’d taken the time to weigh the different options. If the story is completely linear, why give readers the ability to alter the final versions of the letters at all? Readers won’t all see the exact same text, and they’ll create the final, complete versions of each letter, but their choices won’t create differences later in the story. Short said she intentionally made First Draft more linear so as not to “distract the player from focusing on the thematic issues that [she] wanted to explore.” By not making the reader choose whether to have Juliette take Henri’s side or the friar’s, however, they aren’t required to consider “the tension between Juliette and her husband [and] the moral dimension of the aristocracy and its magic-using” at all.
Speaking more generally, players like to know that the game they’re interacting with values their input. Even a simple character customization choice, like selecting a name for the PC, is effective, especially if it shows up again significantly later. Every time the PC’s name shows up, the player knows that the game paid enough attention to their input to remember it. Of course it’s just a variable being stored by a program, but there’s an implicit personification of interactive fiction games. The customization of the player’s experience, in contrast to traditional, non-interactive media, recalls being told a story in person, with the opportunity to exert some control over the narrative. Counterfeit Monkey is probably the single best example of a game that takes all of the player’s choices into account: there are numerous ways to solve the puzzles in the game and hundreds of objects the player can create, each with its own description. Many of them have nothing to do with the main plot, but the fact that the player can create them anyway makes playing it such a memorable experience.
First Draft was an interesting experiment in conveying characters’ personalities through how they write, and while it’s one that I think fundamentally cannot succeed without making the plot less linear, First Draft is still a compelling, skillfully-written story set in a splendid world.
Next up is Pageant, inspired by Emily Short’s Bee.
As an aside, Short mentioned in her artist statement another work set in the same world. Does anyone know if this work was ever published?
Her blog says First Draft is set in the same universe as Savoir-Faire and Damnatio Memoriae but those are both older…
The weekly update has been posted on the main thread. Only three weeks left, so try to get some play in this weekend! (You can do it!)
I have finished Junior Arithmancer and posted a review on IFDB. I played it a fair bit this week, on a quest for 100%. Sadly I had to quit, for the sake of sanity, at 94%. This is kinda frustrating for me, as I am studying an OU maths module this year (exam in September). However, if I can achieve 94% in my actual maths exam I will be very happy!
I have actually recommended the game to other students on my course, so no doubt the IFDB should prepare for an influx of enthusiastic new users 
I thought it was a really fun game, though a little confusing to begin with. Overhearing your examiner’s discussion is a really nice touch that ensures the game feels like actual IF rather than just a maths puzzle.
Anyway, I am quite torn between Worlds Apart and Pytho’s Mask, as both sound intriguing. But I think I will give Worlds Apart a try; it sounds really ambitious.
I finished The Missing Ring - a fun whodunit with interesting characters.
Now on to Moondrop Isle. I might regret it, and switch to another game if I do not manage to finish it, but it seems like a fun challenge.
I really like The Missing Ring, nice to see people talking about it!
Completed The Anachronist. Moving now to D5, Pytho’s Mask.
It took me a bit of patience to really get into Moondrop Isle. I’d say making a map is essential, but before that, I’d recommend a quick survey of all the main areas you can access.
Also, please keep an eye out for @Doug_Egan, I don’t think he’s re-emerged yet!
You’ve probably seen, there are also a couple of excellent hint threads on here, should you need them.
I played Messages from the Universe Graveyard last week, but as I was in tech for a show I was in and a separate show that I did costumes for, I didn’t have time to write up my thoughts until now.
Here’s my review: Messages From the Universe Graveyard - Details
Definitely a unique game, and one that reminded me more of my experience of tabletop RPGs than any IF I’ve played with dice-rolling mechanics or whatever.
My penultimate game will be A Murder in Fairyland, which I’ve really been looking forward to! One of the many well-regarded games from IFComp 2020 that I didn’t get around to at the time. (Of the 30ish games I played during the comp that year, playing in randomizer order, one ended up in the top 20 and eight were in the bottom 20, which is probably because the randomizer has it out for me personally.)
In Pageant, narrative and interactivity are truly integrated. When the player first sees that Karen only has time for one activity but that there are seven ways she should be spending that time, it quite effectively puts them in her mindset and makes them realize how impossible it is for her to live up to all of her parents’ expectations. For the player, the list of activities is defined by the game; for Karen, they’re defined by her parents. She has no more choice about what options are available to her than the player does. The only freedom available to her, and to the player, is how she’ll spend her time.
This really is a freedom, because Pageant has significantly different branches and storylines depending on what Karen prioritizes. If she concentrates on studying science, she’ll get the opportunity to run for captain of the Science Olympiad team. If she socializes with her friends, she won’t do well on all her extracurricular activities, but she’ll be less lonely. If she spends more time with her family, she’ll see how fragile the peace within it is. Pageant couldn’t have the same emotional impact if it were a linear story. The family dinner branch was far more effective because I knew Karen didn’t have to face that; she could have just done homework and practiced for the pageant and ignored it as best she could.
Autumn Chen put in the effort to ensure that the choices really matter, even though it means many players will only see a fraction of what she wrote. This effort paid off; as a player, it was very satisfying to see that my input meaningfully shaped the story.
From here, I’m heading to the final game of my short course, Social Democracy: Petrograd 1917.
The weekly update has been posted on the main thread. Only two weeks left, so if you’re a weekend player this is your second-to-last chance.
Runners are reminded that using hints is perfectly fine, and that giving up on a square and going a different direction is OK, too. Cheers to those runners who keep heading for their goal!
I am playing Worlds Apart, but progress is pretty slow. I’m finding the puzzles and methods of getting the game to progress quite hard to get to grips with.
However I’m enjoying the story and the game world, both are exceptionally rich.
I just doubt that I’ll be able to get this over the line before the marathon ends… Though I am prepared to use the hint system when proper stuck!
Because indeed Moondrop Isle turns out to be too big for me to finish in the limited time I have left, I go back and switch to B8 instead: A Murder in Fairyland!
I hope to finish Moondrop Isle another time with less pressure