Erebus
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2008
- Messages
- 4,768
(I was wondering if I should post this in the Library, but it seems that the previous threads about the IF Comp were in Adventure Gaming.)
The 2018 Interactive Fiction Competition has ended a bit more than a week ago. There were 77 entries, almost as much as the previous year.
I tried to play all of the entries and I pretty much succeeded... but in some cases, I gave up extremely quickly.
I wasn't always very patient with parser-based entries (in part because I'm not very good with them). They're fairly diverse, with some of them offering choices so limited they might as well be described directly to the player, while others require advanced guesswork that makes it very easy to get stuck. Some of them, including the winner of the competition, are well-balanced.
I spent more time on the choice-based entries. Several of them were so unchallenging that you can't really call them text adventures. I guess "interactive fiction" can be a pretty broad genre.
My personal favorite was "The Master of the Land" : it has a good setting, an intriguing plot, and an impressive freedom of movement and time management. "The Origin of Madame Time" and "Dynamite Powers" are both pretty fun adventure games, and would be excellent if they offered more freedom. "Devotionalia" is almost completely unchallenging, but I enjoyed it because of its unusual setting and main character. "Dream Pieces 2" is an entertaining little game. There were several others I enjoyed, though they were sometimes flawed : "Grimnoir", "Dungeon Detective", "Railways of Love"...
There were some parser-based entries that seemed pretty good, but that I can't fully judge because I got stuck at some point : "Alias 'The Magpie'" (the winner), "Erstwhile", etc.
I can't help but mention that I did enter the competition myself and that my entry got the 13th place. Since I don't usually write fiction in english and my entry was a bit unusual by the competition's standards (too gamebooky), I'm fine with that.
The 2018 Interactive Fiction Competition has ended a bit more than a week ago. There were 77 entries, almost as much as the previous year.
I tried to play all of the entries and I pretty much succeeded... but in some cases, I gave up extremely quickly.
I wasn't always very patient with parser-based entries (in part because I'm not very good with them). They're fairly diverse, with some of them offering choices so limited they might as well be described directly to the player, while others require advanced guesswork that makes it very easy to get stuck. Some of them, including the winner of the competition, are well-balanced.
I spent more time on the choice-based entries. Several of them were so unchallenging that you can't really call them text adventures. I guess "interactive fiction" can be a pretty broad genre.
My personal favorite was "The Master of the Land" : it has a good setting, an intriguing plot, and an impressive freedom of movement and time management. "The Origin of Madame Time" and "Dynamite Powers" are both pretty fun adventure games, and would be excellent if they offered more freedom. "Devotionalia" is almost completely unchallenging, but I enjoyed it because of its unusual setting and main character. "Dream Pieces 2" is an entertaining little game. There were several others I enjoyed, though they were sometimes flawed : "Grimnoir", "Dungeon Detective", "Railways of Love"...
There were some parser-based entries that seemed pretty good, but that I can't fully judge because I got stuck at some point : "Alias 'The Magpie'" (the winner), "Erstwhile", etc.
I can't help but mention that I did enter the competition myself and that my entry got the 13th place. Since I don't usually write fiction in english and my entry was a bit unusual by the competition's standards (too gamebooky), I'm fine with that.
