Back in August two authors were kind enough to allow me to preview and beta test their comp entries. I’ll keep these reviews short, as I don’t want to accidentally reveal anything I saw in the pre-comp versions. Interactive fiction is like sausage; they can be very tasty, but nobody wants to read a long essay from anyone but the author themselves about how sausage is made.
“Frankenfingers” by Charles Moore. This is a parser game produced in Z-code/Inform. The “Frankenstein’s Monster” legend is retold from the perspective of a dismembered hand, which begins trapped in the parts room of Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. What makes the game unique is that it is written in rhyming verse. The writing is nicely atmospheric, especially due to the poetry. There is a clever puzzle involving a trampoline, and other clever puzzles as well which the player must reckon with in order to escape Frankenstein’s compound and reunite with his family in the village. This reminded me somewhat of “The Bones of Rosalinda” (and its sequel). All of these games fall into a genre I choose to call “comic horror”.
“Where is Mr Beaver” by Stefan Hoffmann. This is a web-based parser-point click hybrid game. The player is a mail carrier who stops into Mr Beaver’s curiosities shop, and becomes worried that the owner isn’t around. A curiosities shop (or antique shop, as it is described in the game), is a great starting location for a text game; so many weird and unusual objects to examine and use. I really like games that feature options for parser and point click play styles. In fact, this particular engine has a long list of system options which make it highly customizable: to highlight words, add in multichoice options, to provide hints large and small, or even to revert back to a robust traditional parser.