The more I look at this Field C, the more enthusiastic I get. So many promising games that I haven’t played yet.
I have two!
For my first course, I immediately saw Faute de Servo by Jack Welch on the bottom. I encountered this game when I was looking through past Concours FI Francophone lists, and it’s been on my pile ever since. Then up to The Anachronist by Peter Levine. I’ve looked at this one a few times, and intrigued though I was, it was never the right time to commit to it. The Marathon may change that. The IF superstar Emily Short’s Pytho’s Mask is a classic that I somehow never got round to yet. For First Draft of the Revolution the aforementioned Emily Short and the amazing writer Liza Daly worked together. It’s another game that I’ve played around with a bit but never sat down to finish. Above that, there are two games by the very talented Autumn Chenn. I picked the one I haven’t played yet: Pageant. The next one I have actually played all the way through, but it was very quick and I’m eager to revisit it: Tales of the Traveling Swordsman by Mike Snyder who also brough us Hallowmoor, one of the first hybrids. Making the turn on the top row towards Moon-Shaped by Jason Ermer, a fairytale-inspired game. Now I’m on a straight line back down, first to A Murder in Fairyland by Abigail Corfman, who gave us that creative vampire-killing romp at a burger-joint, and also the tale of Miriam Lane. Very curious about this one. Down again to Felicity Drake’s The Missing Ring, a Twine mystery game I had never heard about until now. Of Porpentine’s games, I have only played With Those We Love Alive. High time to play another one with CYBERQUEEN. Then another game I don’t know anything about: the Twine horror of Ravine by Joanna Berry. And finally a game that sounds very funny and well-written: Bill Belichick Offseason Simulator by Jon Bois, who is apparently a rather well-known sports writer in some circles.
This gives me the following tour:
F4 → (wandering around a bit after the start…) E4 → D5 → C5 → B6 → A7 → (turn and drop straight down!) A8 → B8 → C8 → D8 → E8 → (and a slight swoosh to the side to shed excess speed and land on…) F9
Looking for a starting point for a second tour, Draculaland jumped out at me. I love Robin Johnson’s Versificator parserclick engine, and I had a ton of fun with Zeppelin Adventure, so I’m pretty sure of a good time with Dracula in this one. Below that, I found Fingertips: Fingertips by Michael D. Hilborn, one of the Appolo 18 Tribute Album games. I’ve seen this series of games by different authors, but this would be the first one I play. Not once did I come across Save the Date by Chris Cornell on all my IFDB browsings, but it gets very good reviews that made me curious. A title like KING OF BEES IN FANTASY LAND gets a good chuckle out of me, and that’s all I needed to decide to put this game by Brendan Patrick Hennesy next. I actually started playing The Kidnapping of a Tokyo Game Developer by P.B. Parjeter during the last IFComp, but it was almost the end of the comp and I was tired so I didn’t finish it. Running this tour would change that. Next: Dragon Fate. I mean, come on, a CYOA RPG called Dragon Fate! How could I possibly resist this game by Kris Schnee? Good Bones by xyzoe and IronSerenity starts the way back up, an intruiging Introcomp entry. The next one, Ryan Veeder’s Reference and Representation, is a game that I have played a long time ago. Like with Tales of the Traveling Swordsman, I have positive but vague recollections of it, and I’d happily revisit it. Another one I’ve poked at a bit but never really started to play is 4x4 Archipelago by the creator of the lovely character Rosalinda: Agnieszka Trzaska. I’ve read very good things about it, and it’s patiently been sitting on my pile waiting for an opportunity like this one. I had never seen Xavid’s Future Threads before, but I’m intrigued by the premise. Changing the future to protect a threatened girl by somehow manipulating the present? I’ll do my best! Tristin Grizel Dean is an author whose games I have looked at before, but never attentively played all the way through. Perhaps on this tour. And the last game is Miss Gosling’s Last Case by the wonderful author Daniel Stelzer, whose The Wise-Woman’s Dog is among the very best games I’ve played. Like some games above, I’ve played a part of Miss Gosling, but not all of it and not thoroughly enough. Time to right that wrong.
This second tour would look like this:
A2 → B1 → (straight down a bit…) C1 → D1 → (bit of a zig-zag cross…) E1 → F2 → F1 → E2 → D3 → (and climbing straight up again…) C3 → B3 → (veering to the right to get that final game!) A4
It’s very hard for me to choose between these two tours. And that’s not even taking into account that for a while now, I’ve been planning to replay my favourite game ever: Suzanne Britton’s Worlds Apart. It wouldn’t be too hard to take a little detour to include it in one of my tours above. It wouldn’t even be a stretch to come up with a third tour centred on Worlds Apart, because adjacent games The Owl Consults and The Mary Jane of Tomorrow are also both still in my to-play pile. That would probably mean overlap with one of the tours above and/or picking games that I’ve already played, but still…
