You can’t judge a book by it’s cover. Nor a game by its title either, proved by the 2019 IntroComp entry Neurocracy. Basically this is a game which will revolve around Wikipedia it seems; a fictional future Wikipedia where China are running global affairs complete with the inevitable pollution problems. Yes, this is only an intro to the game, but it seems more like supplementary materials.
Deadline, on the other hand, commits a faux pas in naming itself after a famous Infocom game. Made with Elm Narrative Engine, it begins a bit conventionally with a laptop and a few items, though not necessarily badly.
I like the approach here, it’s graphical enough to be considered point-and-click as much as interactive fiction. You trek around the Underground, all realistically enough portrayed, trying to get back your briefcase containing your 9am presentation, snatched by some thief at Central Station. The writing lacks a bit of finesse for me, and I take a bit of umbrage at swearing so early in the game (and I’m not exactly prudish), and there’s a preposition error somewhere, but the atmosphere and plot are intriguing. The Underground stations and names are so convincing, I really thought it was part of the London Underground or New York City subway. Good stuff, especially for a browser game.
Intro to the Devil’s Music
Intro to the Devil’s Music is just a rudimentary outline of game screens. There’s some good writing though, and it’s nice for a change to be spared the big text dump about what the game is about. Show, not tell! Though I bet when the game is eventually released in its full glory, it will have the typical introductory blurb.
The writing is very evocative, and I got taught something, as the plural of “lichen” can indeed be “lichens” (though you can also have a collection of lichen)… Hmmm, trouble with lichen. The game looks pleasant enough, but there’s not much to comment on yet. EXAMINE a SCROLL in your possession, and you find you have made blood contract with Ezra Mayhew, and his final payment is due today. And X ME reveals: “After I fell, my brothers sealed me into a shell of flesh, like the other creatures of this world. The binding sigil slithers just under my skin, glistening ultraviolet.” Intriguing, although these type of plots seem a bit run of the mill now.
Memorosa
Oh, dear more html. Enrique Henstrosa Anguiano wrote this one. Use the incredibly minute arrow icon to begin. When you click on an html link here, it doesn’t even open an additional avenue of text, it just gives you a basically synonymous phrase for what you just wrote, and it looks like this is just aesthetic and has no story impact whatsoever.
It has some nice artwork, though. A few of them look like pics of the author’s chums,
and is that Chandler from Friends? I love the picture style, but this isn’t even mildly interactive fiction, it’s just a novella, so we can completely discount it from the competition.
Steamed Hams, but it’s a Twine Game
Oh dear, the title already says it all, a twine game. But wait, hang on, that’s a tidy intro screen, perhaps there’s something more here…
Well, whaddya know this is that famous Simpsons episode. Apparently it’s a meme in itself to make videos or games based on the Superintendent Chalmers “Steamed Clams” incident. We already had “Steamed Hams but it’s a visual novel…” (made with TyrannoBuilder), Steamed Hams but it’s Metal Gear Solid (awful video parody), an Itch.io version, a LucasArts video version, an Interactive DVD game, a Nintendo DS application, a Nintendo DS Ghost Trick Chapter (video only), Earthbound (another video). So, what of this one? Well, this is good for Twine, not as funny as the visual novel version, but it has a lot more frills. Though does it even qualify for IntroComp due to copyright reasons? I’ve always found those rules a bit anal anyway, as a lot of interactive fiction is not considered to have much commercial value anymore. Somehow I think it’s going to get finished regardless of whether it wins the comp.
Homeland
Homeland is a text-only Inform game, and it comes as a .z5 (so no need to do any unblorbing if you want to use that with an older application or old 8-bit computer).
You begin in the kitchen. There’s a newspaper, but READing it just reveals it’s your favourite paper. A painting on your wall is of Aragain Falls, which for people who don’t realise it (like me) is a location from Zork.
Nice, but there were games made by companies other than Infocom, you know? Also on the bed lies a steel box, “Property of the Bank of Zork”.
It’s all rudimentary for now, but there’s definitely the bare bones for a good quality game. You can explore your house, and apparently your neighbour doesn’t mind you inviting yourself in to make yourself a coffee, although once there it appears something more is going on. Not a sign of life. I guess those missing persons reports on the TV might be more than just background noise…
Not sure where the author’s going with it, but I’d like to see it finished.
Dungeon Alive
Hmm, the opening image for this one piques one’s curiosity:
Took a couple of seconds though to realise I had to scroll down the bottom of the screen to start, though. Once I did, I was greeted with some graphics. I’m all for using photographs in games. Does kind of look like the author chose their mates from the photo album though.
This game is a bit of a no-brainer choice-based narrative. The type of thing that irks me by winning competitions, so I’m sure it’ll do well.
We begin the game learning that something ominous has happened, and a large wall has been put in place somewhere nearby. Reminds me of the TV series Colony, which was a good watch. (Don’t know why it didn’t get picked up for a new season when Diana Gabaldoon’s Outlander seems to be gifted with an infinite number of series.) Back to the game, and at the start we get a choice of items to bring with us, which randomly changes each playthrough. Fortunately from this point we get some nice pencil art rather than the goofy photos.
A very mysterious individual at the motel invites you in, and if he wasn’t creepy enough, he commences asks you some testing psychological questions. Very intriguing where the game is going to go with this one. I’m pessimistic though, having seen one too many browser choose-your-own-adventures, and I’m almost always left feeling somewhat disappointed. There are a few different directions we can choose, but we quickly get to a point where the game lacks implementation. This has had a fair bit work though already. Likely to win, though I’m more keen on seeing where Deadline goes, and some elements of this game are a bit wacky.
Gallery Gal’s Architectural Aventure
Oh no, this is just why I hate these browser html games. The author himself, Damon L. Wakes seems an interesting enough chap. He kayaks, weaves chainmail, and managed to get his murder mystery novel crowdfunded. But here… Another bunch of trivialities, as you meet Clint Cark (a totally unfunny and overt reference to Clark Kent) and chat about super identities. Oh, and at any time you can vaporise the game by turning into an art gallery. Please kill me.
Hide and Seek
OK, so nobody has the time to play longer games these days because they have such extensive social media to trawl through, blogs to write, and games to criticise the hell out of. But please, spare us from another high school drama about your crush from sixth period Spanish. Actually, a game about finding your soulmate is not such a bad thing, and Leisure Suit Larry was quite a series – the second game, Looking for Love (In Several Wrong Places) was a pure joy to play. There’s not much to this game yet, but still my spider-sense seems to be tingling something rotten about it.
Sunder
I didn’t think it could get worse, but it did. Someone’s narrative poem with a few clickable descriptive links. It’s nice to hear interactive fiction with a narrator actually speaking the audio. But not in this case. I’d rather just play the mp3 files. Which are in the folder.
Imprisoned
OK, I like how Imprisoned doesn’t beat around the bush. You’re in the park, walking the dog and get abruptly chloroformed, before awakening in a box. It’s marred by the typical response, REMOVE LID > “You aren’t wearing the lid”, and you can GET OUT but not OUT. And you can’t CLOSE BOX, PUT LID ON BOX or REPLACE LID, but this is early game stages I guess.
Nevertheless, it needs a lot of work. HIDE > “What do you want to hide?” HIDE ME > “What do you want to hide yourself under?” HIDE ME IN STRAW > “I didn’t understand that sentence.” HIDE ME UNDER STRAW > “You cannot manage that.” HIDE BEHIND CABINET > “You can’t see any thing.” TURN TAP > “Nothing obvious happens.” (You must TURN ON TAP). You get the picture.
This game though presents a scenario which makes you interact with it, which the other text adventures on offer do not. So it’s inevitable that it requires quite a bit of playtesting. “Africia” for “Africa” definitely warrants changing.
This game holds a lot of potential though, and is good therapy after playing Bogeyman. In this game you have some agency, even though the kidnapper returns every few moves to confiscate your things. The atmosphere is eerie and tense, just the sort of thing that the old text adventures had with their sudden deaths and move limits. I like it a lot.
In fact, author Richard Otter cut his teeth on the ZX Spectrum with Delron and Wakemare, so I guess the game has some of that vibe, though his games weren’t well-known.
As to some of his most recent games, Unauthorized Termination was in the IF-Comp top 10 in 2006, Vague was second place in Spring Thing 2009 and he did actually win IntroComp once before in 2012 with The Blank Wall.
I certainly wouldn’t be against him winning this year’s. Hope he gets some good playtesters in, though.
Go on, get voting.
