I wrote some games ages ago, and am considering throwing something together. I like that things like Twine and Inky let you develop for the web, but I really enjoyed writing in Inform 7 ages ago. I’m disheartened that it seems like development on Inform 7 stalled in 2015. My question is, is the community still writing and playing games in Inform? Should I learn another system?
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I would say that yes, the community is still writing and playing in Inform. There were sixteen Inform games in IFComp 2018 (if my IFDb search is working correctly)–which is a relatively low proportion of the total entries, but there are a lot more entries than there used to be. And the winning entry was in Inform 7. Plus there’s the massive collaboration Cragne Manor, which was an Inform 7 community effort.
There are some exciting new parser options out there like Dialog and XVAN, neither of which I’ve really played with myself–but if you were able to make parser things with Inform back in 2015, you should still be able to do it. And there will be people out there who will try it.
(Also, it’s not true that development is stalled–Graham Nelson gave a talk about what he’s up to in further development. But as usual, I don’t really expect any movement to be apparent until Something Dramatic happens all at once, and I don’t know when that might be!)
Now, if you aren’t sure whether you want to do a parser thing or a Twine/Ink thing, there’s a lot of reasons why choice-based stuff may be more accessible to more people than just the community of parser aficionados. But my two cents is that Inform is still live as something people work and play with.
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