Surgey
Scholar
Hey ya'll. Interactive Fiction is cool as heck. A lot of people think it's like, old-ass piles and stuff but people make them all the time! Probably because there's a highly-interpretive IF programming... program called Inform. So pretty much anybody with a brain and the ability for abstract thought and hands can make one.
But that doesn't mean there aren't a bunch that own!!! There are old IF games too so if you're new to them I'll introduce you with them.
A bunch of the old ones were made by Infocom. You might have heard of a game they made called, oh, Zork. I guess Zork was one of the first if not the first interactive fiction games and it really shows because it's not that good. It has lame puzzles, annoying "features", and a relatively primitive parser. It's kind of like "teh" Space Quest 2 of IF i guess. But not really if you think about it.
Anyway much better than Zork was Planetfall and its sequel Stationfall. These are the games Space Quest started as an homage to, mostly because in Planetfall you played a hapless janitor aboard a starship. It also introduced heavy character interaction with a robot sidekick named Floyd. They're not particularly long games once you know what you're doing but then again what is?
Now I'm going to give a list of IF games I've at least played (I haven't beaten many) and describe them in short.
Suspended- This game is hard! It was also made by Infocom but it's very detailed even if the text parser can be frustrating. You play as a guy in cryogenic sleep who controls this big station when theres an earthquake that sets off a bunch of alarms and stuff and destroys a bunch of equipment and starts killing random people somewhere, so you have to use a motley crew of robots to fix the place before a team arrives to unplug and kill you because they think your the one killing people (your not!). It's a very tough game that encourages a second playthrough because the shorter time yo utake the less people that die
Planetfall- I didn't get far in this game because I got stuck but it's cool and has interesting scenery if that makes sense. I got turned off by it because it required you to eat food and drink, artificially giving a game a timelimit, and I don't work well under pressure!!!!! Your a janitor thats down on his luck on a ship when suddenly an alarm goes off and you have to jump in an escape pod and launch it to a planet that has a dark secret!!! Also you team up with a robot.
Stationfall- This was a lot like planetfall but the food and water thing was a little more lax and the puzzles not as contrived, it was more about exploration and deductive reasoning. It's good!!! After planetfall your character is promoted to a guy who handles paperwork and is down on his luck, and your mission is to go to a nearby station using a big space truck (with floyd) to go pick up some new forms that are not needed. But something bad has happened on the station and there's nobody in sight! Oh no!
Anchorhead- This is a really long but much newer IF game. You play a woman married to a cute guy and you recently traveled to this town called anchorhead i think where your husband's distant relative recently died in, thus making him inherit the relative's creepy old mansion! This game is scary!!! It's got Lovecraftian horror stuff and it's a really long game so keep multiple saves! As far as I know it's hard to fuck yourself over in this game like you could in old infocom games or sierra games
One Girl- This game is totally sick! It's twisted as a pretzel but spicy as a habanero. It doesn't really so much have story as it's a demonstration in character interaction, mainly sex. You inexplicably play a guy and there's this girl in a room and you can do things to her. It's totally gross like you can put your penis in her holes or pee on her face, but it's a good demonstration of the power of Inform engine. There's a few secret things you can do, one of them involves you being tied up and being penetrated by a strap-on and there's just one way to die but it's gross!!! If you're homosexual sorry but there's no one guy version of this game, but you could mod it maybe!!! That would be cool + cute!!! I don't know how much of this stuff happens irl or what it's like at all though, I'm a virgin. I think of this game as my first time
All Things Devours- This is a relatively short IF but it's cool! You play a woman who has been working on this weird project with some scientists and you think its bad and have to blow it up. It seems simple at first but after your first playthrough (which won't take but a minute) you realize you'll have to do more work! There's like five possible endings based on a few different things you can do. The name of the game makes sense the first time you die or if you have trouble working things out, you'll know what it means by about 1/4 through the game. Keep multiple saves!!!
there are a few others but i dont feel like posting them, help!!!
But that doesn't mean there aren't a bunch that own!!! There are old IF games too so if you're new to them I'll introduce you with them.
A bunch of the old ones were made by Infocom. You might have heard of a game they made called, oh, Zork. I guess Zork was one of the first if not the first interactive fiction games and it really shows because it's not that good. It has lame puzzles, annoying "features", and a relatively primitive parser. It's kind of like "teh" Space Quest 2 of IF i guess. But not really if you think about it.
Anyway much better than Zork was Planetfall and its sequel Stationfall. These are the games Space Quest started as an homage to, mostly because in Planetfall you played a hapless janitor aboard a starship. It also introduced heavy character interaction with a robot sidekick named Floyd. They're not particularly long games once you know what you're doing but then again what is?
Now I'm going to give a list of IF games I've at least played (I haven't beaten many) and describe them in short.
Suspended- This game is hard! It was also made by Infocom but it's very detailed even if the text parser can be frustrating. You play as a guy in cryogenic sleep who controls this big station when theres an earthquake that sets off a bunch of alarms and stuff and destroys a bunch of equipment and starts killing random people somewhere, so you have to use a motley crew of robots to fix the place before a team arrives to unplug and kill you because they think your the one killing people (your not!). It's a very tough game that encourages a second playthrough because the shorter time yo utake the less people that die
Planetfall- I didn't get far in this game because I got stuck but it's cool and has interesting scenery if that makes sense. I got turned off by it because it required you to eat food and drink, artificially giving a game a timelimit, and I don't work well under pressure!!!!! Your a janitor thats down on his luck on a ship when suddenly an alarm goes off and you have to jump in an escape pod and launch it to a planet that has a dark secret!!! Also you team up with a robot.
Stationfall- This was a lot like planetfall but the food and water thing was a little more lax and the puzzles not as contrived, it was more about exploration and deductive reasoning. It's good!!! After planetfall your character is promoted to a guy who handles paperwork and is down on his luck, and your mission is to go to a nearby station using a big space truck (with floyd) to go pick up some new forms that are not needed. But something bad has happened on the station and there's nobody in sight! Oh no!
Anchorhead- This is a really long but much newer IF game. You play a woman married to a cute guy and you recently traveled to this town called anchorhead i think where your husband's distant relative recently died in, thus making him inherit the relative's creepy old mansion! This game is scary!!! It's got Lovecraftian horror stuff and it's a really long game so keep multiple saves! As far as I know it's hard to fuck yourself over in this game like you could in old infocom games or sierra games
One Girl- This game is totally sick! It's twisted as a pretzel but spicy as a habanero. It doesn't really so much have story as it's a demonstration in character interaction, mainly sex. You inexplicably play a guy and there's this girl in a room and you can do things to her. It's totally gross like you can put your penis in her holes or pee on her face, but it's a good demonstration of the power of Inform engine. There's a few secret things you can do, one of them involves you being tied up and being penetrated by a strap-on and there's just one way to die but it's gross!!! If you're homosexual sorry but there's no one guy version of this game, but you could mod it maybe!!! That would be cool + cute!!! I don't know how much of this stuff happens irl or what it's like at all though, I'm a virgin. I think of this game as my first time
All Things Devours- This is a relatively short IF but it's cool! You play a woman who has been working on this weird project with some scientists and you think its bad and have to blow it up. It seems simple at first but after your first playthrough (which won't take but a minute) you realize you'll have to do more work! There's like five possible endings based on a few different things you can do. The name of the game makes sense the first time you die or if you have trouble working things out, you'll know what it means by about 1/4 through the game. Keep multiple saves!!!
there are a few others but i dont feel like posting them, help!!!
