Due to a last-minute scheduling conflict, the XYZZY awards ceremony is being rescheduled for Saturday, March 28th at 3PM EDT. Same location, on ifMUD (http://ifmud.port4000.com), which itself is a fun experience. Come check it out if you’re interested to hear about some of the best IF of the past year.
Enjoyed this article? Subscribe to The Monk's Brew RSS feed.
Forging onward with the next batch of IFComp entries, as I review my initial impressions of each game’s opening (introduction, “About” screens, and the first location), summarized by the Capture Score from 1 (intriguing; a definite play) to 4 (dreadful and forgettable). Just a reminder, no spoilers here, just early impressions.
Games covered here include “A Date With Death”, “When Machines Attack”, and “Berrost’s Challenge”.
“A Date With Death”, by David Whyld
Whyld’s game, subtitled “being the further adventures of the king who wished to die but whose subjects just weren’t ready to let him go”, is the third game in a series that began in 2004 with “Back to Life… Unfortunately” and continued in 2007 with “The Reluctant Resurrectee” (second place, Spring Thing 2007). I never played either one, but Whyld includes a short summary in the “About” screen of their bizarre premise: a king who had been [More...]
After a brief intro yesterday, my filtering of this year’s IFComp entries shifts into gear as I continue to walk down my randomly generated list of games. No spoilers here, just some initial impressions of each game’s opening, which includes any introduction, “About” screens, and the first location, summarized by the Capture Score. The range is from 1 (intriguing; a definite play) to 4 (dreadful and forgettable).
Bear in mind that my intention is not to judge the the complete piece, only to report my first impressions of the entries to see which ones engage me enough to pull me in for more. I’ll play the ones that do to see if the experience matches the anticipation, and afterward if any games that I pass on place high in the competition, I’ll go back and see what it was that I missed.
“NerdQuest”, by RagtimeNerd
So my random game [More...]
The second day of AGDC was pretty fun, although perhaps not quite as informative as the first day. For me, the day started off with a lecture by Andrew Walsh on the topic of “On-Demand Storytelling” as it applied to Prince of Persia, subtitled “The Death of Linearity.” It seems that non-linear storytelling is all the rage these days, with all sorts of mechanisms for implementing it, some of which sound very creative. I have no idea if they work, though — or, if they do, how effective the resulting story is.
One thing that was clear from Walsh’s talk is that he falls on the side of those who support and promote the use of cutscenes, when used properly. I’m a cutscene fan myself, so that was good to hear. But at one point, Walsh hammered developers who allow cutscenes to be bypassed (like with a “skip” [More...]
I Wanna Hold Your Hand: This month’s Blogs of the Round Table invites you to explore a relationship within a game that you found compelling or memorable.
As Corvus has admirably asserted numerous times, “it’s not the characters themselves that make for compelling stories, but character relationships.” I still contend that compelling stories owe at least part of their success to interesting and deep characters themselves, although admittedly I lack the skills to make a coherent argument to this effect. Nevertheless, I do agree that character relationships are the core of any good story, and it’s a great topic to focus on for the Round Table since so few games have really embraced this concept.
Relationships certainly do exist in games, but they exist in much the same way that characters themselves typically exist in games: as relatively thin implementations that lack any significant depth or complexity. Part of [More...]
I would be remiss if I did not mention the new IFBeginnersComp, organized by David Fisher and inspired by (and running parallel with) the Interactive Short Fiction Competition. The comp consists of games that are suitable for beginners to IF, which I think is a great idea for getting more people interested in IF.
There are five entries in the comp:
- Connect, by James Hudson
- Germania, by Vicente Munoz
- Limelight, by Justin Lowmaster
- Mrs. Pepper’s Nasty Secret, by Jim Aikin and Eric Eve
- The Sleeping Princess, by Molly, Alex, and Mark Engelberg
All were written in either TADS3 or Z-code, so they should run on most interpreters. I recommend Spatterlight for Mac users and Gargoyle for Windows/Linux users.
The public judging period goes until March 15th, and instructions for voting can be found here.
The important question, however, is whether the [More...]
Like many nerds, I get nostalgic when I think back to my childhood in the mid-late 70s and 80s and the computer games that I played during those years. Best I can remember, it started with the original Colossal Cave adventure on my dad’s enormous NorthStar Horizon computer, with its wooden case and dual 5.25″ floppy disk drives. Later, it was some of Scott Adams’s great text adventures like Adventureland and Pirate Adventure, and a host of other text-based games like the old Star Trek grid game and even an old game about the Battle of Midway very similar to this one. Not to mention a whole mess of games that I typed in by hand from David Ahl’s incredibly awesome book from 1978.
Then it was on to the famous Apple ][ days. I spent countless hours with so many games, I couldn't possibly remember [More...]
Welcome to The Monk’s Brew.
This is a blog about a number of things, but if I had to summarize it, I would say that it is a blog that presents an indie game developer’s perspective on computer game design, development, and play. Although not limited to one game genre, the focus will tend to be on adventure games, including a focus on interactive fiction and its contributions to indie gaming and design.
The main context of this blog is the ongoing development of Vespers, an indie game project that I started back in 2006. As with many indie games, Vespers is an experiment. This experiment attempts to answer the question, “What would happen if you took a traditional interactive fiction game and dropped it into a 3D first-person graphic engine?” It is based upon the interactive fiction game of the same name, written by Jason [More...]
Like this post?
Austin GDC Submission Deadline Soon
As I cram for tomorrow’s combined Indiecade/Utah Indie Gamers Night deadlines, another looms close on the horizon. The deadline for submissions to the Austin Game Developers Conference, or AGDC, is coming up in a little over a week. This is not a deadline for game submissions, but rather submissions for lectures, classes, or panel discussions.
I went to last year’s conference and had a great time. It’s much smaller than the main GDC in San Francisco, but there’s a lot of great activity and opportunities to meet and talk with people. While GDC is probably overwhelming, AGDC is considerably more welcoming and relaxed (and less expensive). I’m planning on going again this year, and depending on when the IGF Showcase deadline is, perhaps submitting a demo of Vespers.
But one thing I thought about doing for last year’s conference, and am now planning on submitting [More...]