Trying My Hand at Interactive Fiction
I worked on converting my story “Choice, In Sequential Order” into an interactive fiction story using a program called Twine. It was somewhat easy to learn the basics, but I want to learn more about both Twine and Inform.
I would love to be able to create something as complex as the old Infocom games using Inform. I remember countless hours in our school’s computer lab, either typing in commands, or huddled around three or more friends watching the story unfold in all its green-screen glory.
This dynamic continued with stuff like Ultima III. I was the cartographer, pushing pins into the cloth map “gimme” the game included to mark locations of secret places, dungeons, etc.
I still have a soft spot in my heart for interactive fiction. I learned that I was not alone. Every year, there are the XYZZY Awards to honor the year’s best in that field. There’s also a new online magazine for interactive fiction short stories called sub-Q Magazine.
At sub-Q, there are several different flavors of interactive fiction, but if you want a head-scratching experience, I can recommend “Lime Ergot” (listed under the horror submenu there). This one awakened the old puzzlehound in me, and I failed to grok it until I noticed one, tiny discrepancy in the descriptions. Go try it out!
I will post something about the Hugos in the next few days, so keep an eye out for my next post!
No Comments