Well, we’re in good company, anyway. Here’s an entry from Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book:
187 Dream of awaking in vast hall of strange architecture, with sheet-covered forms on slabs—in positions similar to one’s own.
Maybe I should try to run a second Commonplace Book project next year? Lots of good entries left to be developed…
– Peter
I saw that, too, but the trouble was, the parser didn’t recognize your ability to ask about anything that wasn’t already in the room (or that wasn’t another person). So once I looked around and didn’t see a cigar, I didn’t ask about one, previous experience having taught me that the game wouldn’t know what I was talking about. I assumed you just asked people about other people, basically. Then it turned out it does recognize things not in the room, if you’re meant to ask about that thing to solve a puzzle.
There is a coding thing you have to do in TADS 2 to make ASK and TELL work for items not present in a room. It isn’t obvious, but it isn’t particularly hard. I assume there must be a similar mechanic for INFORM games to do the same.
– Peter
The Lighthouse by Eric Hickman & Nathan Chung
In the second room, I typed GET ALL and picked up the bed. That is all.
– Peter
Grief by Simon Christiansen
Apologies for the anecdotal nature of these reviews, but I have to share that a friend of mine contacted me about six months ago asking about tools with which to write Interactive Fiction. I was needless to say entirely thrilled, as none of my real-world, around-town friends have any interest. So I gave him the Inform or TADS details and links. A month or so ago I ran into him at a party and asked how it was going. He hadn’t started what he was going to create. So I asked him more about it. He said he wanted to write an interactive divorce, to help people role-play various scenarios and how to respond.
Which sounded like a bundle of laughs, though I tried to make a few encouraging noises anyway as best I could.
Well, if he wanted to be first in the IF-as-therapy sweepstakes, he’s too late by half because now here comes GRIEF.
GRIEF is the perfect game to give to any overly happy, well adjusted person you know, just to knock them down and make them feel as miserable as the rest of us.
Or, maybe it isn’t. Maybe therapy + IF isn’t a chocolate + peanut butter sort of combination.
Grief is a game which allows you to play through the horrible death of your child, through a number of means, none of them pleasant. I knew that was what the game was on about from about the second or third move, it was so blatantly telegraphed with overly cute descriptions of your little bundle of joy. You play waiting for the hammer to drop, and then, it does.
What is really neat about the game is that you can communicate with it using normal language. After walking into the game kitchen, and being told to make breakfast for the boy, I was all ready for a tedious exercise of opening refrigerators, turning on stoves, breaking eggs. But instead I typed “MAKE BREAKFAST” and it did. I liked that. The same thing happened with everything else, from driving your car to going to work. It was all made to work using actual English, not just IF-English. Which is pretty great.
To offset the fact that the game is well implemented, is the fact of its subject matter. I couldn’t figure out the optimal ending without the walkthrough. The problem is, the game is not adequately clued enough, nor pleasant enough, to make you want to play again once, let alone the number of times you would need to in order to get to the “correct” ending.
I think part of the problem here is that the first death is not a result of your negligence, or as a result of your error, in any way. It’s just an accident. So why do I need to do it over and over again to try to make it right? I don’t, it was an accident. Now, if instead the game set up a premise in which I’d been drinking, having an affair, blowing off work, oversleeping, or some combination thereof, it would have been interesting to try and overcome all those personal limitations (as in, throwing away all your beer and not drinking, etc.).
Overall, I found Grief to be well implemented, though personally I have absolutely no desire to play interactive therapy sessions, ever, and this was not an exception to the rule.
– Peter