As possibly the most famous older CYOA based interactive fiction game, would you say that it is influential? I didn’t like the game much due to it feeling kinda regressive, but really find it mechanically interesting from an IF point of view.
For one data point, we had a very specific reference to it in last year’s IFComp (Welcome to the Universe by Colton Olds), but a lot of people (including me) didn’t get the reference.
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That is fair :). But I guess I was referring more to the mechanics. The game is kind of a regressive slog itself
I think it influenced a lot of game designers that were actively playing games in the 1980s. Forty years later and refracted through generations of design and technological progress, that can be hard to observe directly. This is true of a lot of computer games from that period. Infocom’s Deadline is a ready example.
I recommend Arcade Idea’s thoughtful essay about Alter Ego. They have a knack for situating games in history.
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I think it was very influential on the creation of the Choice of Games company.