#intfic

[kudakii]

looks like they could kill you, is a cinnamon roll vs looks like a cinnamon roll, would kill you (please don’t mess with the second children of westerlin and zaledo, they could tag team and bulldoze you to another continent) 

(i love javi so dearly. they’re so cute truly my everything. mwah mwah @ javi. somehow my mc ended up getting super close to javi... they’re besties now <3)

[adz]

Drew Cook's brilliant Repeat the Ending has swept the 2023 IFDB awards, tying for Outstanding Game and winning Author's Choice, Outstanding Debut, and numerous other categories. Do yourself a favor and dive into this intelligent, beautiful, and deeply rewarding game.

[manonamora-if]

Another neat thing happening in the IF space! Voting for the best IF of all time!

[loressa]

Been learning how to make images look more snazzy as I poke away at the update to Starcrossed!

Expanding out dialogue so you'll learn a story about each character as you get to know them, and the exploration sections will have puzzles!

Check out the original jam game version of this game, bugs and all, here:

[ectafoole]

I'm really sorry for like-spamming you just now 😅 I came across Bloom not long after its completion. I was a young trans boy who'd always been sure of his identity, but it was the most comforting thing in the world to me. It still is - I go back through it several times a year, when my dysphoria rises up and I begin to feel trapped. Despite several years of following your content, it only occurred to me today to see whether you were on Tumblr. I was overjoyed to find that you were! Thank you 💕

so i failed to check my asks for several years running

and wow

thank you anon <3 i hope you see that i saw this and it made me happy. I love that an old partly-done project could serve you emotionally for years. It makes me happy

[ode-to-odes]

IFComp 2024 Reviews: Traffic by D. S. Yu

It's that time of year again! I'll be crossposting these reviews on intfiction.net, where you can find reviews by many other interactive fiction freaks such as myself, links to the comp website, and other such information. Onto the review.

I'll put this all under the cut because it's... very long, but please be aware that there are spoilers in the technical section!

Time played: About an hour Completion: 2 out of maybe 3 endings? I got to the normal ending, a bit of a silly ending, and I know there’s a third ending that has a bit more substance, but I was satisfied with the run I had. Could be more “try it and find out” endings than the one I found, but I have no clue.

TLDR; Conceptually, I like this game a lot, but there were a few things that prevented me from enjoying the gameplay experience as much as I could have. Solid entry.

The writing: No noticeable typos or grammar errors, and the writing style is consistent, with some great touches of deadpan humor which I found entertaining. The characters were distinct enough to not be flat, even with the limited descriptions and interactions there are.

The gameplay: I love a time loop when done well, and I think the ability to change the timeline by switching perspectives is a really great way to keep the game engaging and interesting. I also enjoyed the variety of different puzzles – some based on interaction with others, some with the environment. It’s a small game, so there’s not very many, but none of them felt like reskinned versions of each other, which I appreciated.

The technical: I struggled a lot with interactions with other people. Different authors and engines do dialogue in many different ways, without an ABOUT or a HELP menu to explain how to talk to people or ask people things, I found myself blindly trying dialogue options, mostly to no avail. You can talk to people directly with the “person, verb” structure, or you can ask someone for something, but only rarely about anything, which I found unusual – an explanation of this early on would have gone a long way to alleviating some of the frustration I had. The biggest problem I had was similar to the verb-guessing issue, but which probably would have made the game impossible for me to finish without the walkthrough; there are some objects which aren’t mentioned in the text (that I could find) but are required. This was most evident to me with the taxi, which I hadn’t seen in the text at all, but which was necessary to examine in order to continue. Examining the street it was on yielded no description beyond the direction the traffic was going, and I never would have known to look at it. This is also applicable to the traffic puzzle, which was particularly aggravating to me for being much simpler than I thought it was. I’d go so far as to say it’s a bit misleading. I’ll spoiler this one for anyone who doesn’t want to see the solution: If you ask John about the panel, he explains how it works, and says you need to input the correct number to fix the traffic lights. The solution to this is to unscrew the panel (which has no mention of being screwed in) with a screwdriver you get from John (who doesn’t appear to have anything on him except a clipboard). The solution is NOT to do the math required to algebraically find the correct number needed (which is very possible, and requires only addition and subtraction). I chose the algebra on my first time around. Frustratingly, when you correctly solve this puzzle via screwdriver method and press a button to set the number, it gives a number which is different from the one you get when you do the math. I understand that this might be a serious case of me paying way too much attention to one thing, but I think given that the actual solution to the puzzle is much less obvious than the one which requires the player to do algebra with a pen and paper, it might as well have been a puzzle with two different ways to get to the same solution. If the number provided in the game matched the one you get with the correct math, this wouldn’t have been nearly as annoying to me, but the in-game math being wrong in conjunction with the puzzle having completely unmentioned components drove me kind of bonkers.

Misc notes: Don’t sell yourself short! Saying things like “this game is unlikely to change your life in any meaningful way” in the description of the game won’t do you any favors in convincing people to play it. It’s a well-written game, and only a few edits short of being something really polished. You should be proud of it. Plus, when combined with the depressing attitude of the main character, the game starts to feel a little too dreary, in my opinion. Despite my algebra rant, I did like this game a lot, and I’m really glad it was the first entry I tried this year! It’s setting a good bar for the rest of the parser games.

[decepticonfessional]

I’ve been working more on Cybercattle Ranch this week, as well as a shorter prequel game for Hypnovember.

Updates on progress for CCR include:

- Adjustments to the way time progresses. Now at end of day the herd is rounded up and a brief scene for recharging will play out rather than having the player wander around unable to do much for half the time. This shrinks the game map slightly, removes the recharge actions and energy tracker, and helps in keeping track of where everyone is.

- Removed medications and treats as random item drops from kicking the ranchers, eliminating the need for a separate eating function.

- Figured out how to give the bulls a preference in which cows in the area they’d like to mount and in what order. There’s now a cooldown for each cow and a refractory period for the bulls (that can be adjusted by the ranchers). If a cow has been recently mounted by a bull, they will wander off to an adjacent space allowing for any other cows in the area to move up the priority list.

- Adjusted bull movement behaviors so that they will try to avoid other bulls but seek out cows. This will be handy for building future confrontation encounters and also pairs well with the post-overload wandering the cows will be doing.

- The pumping station and wash station have been moved.

- Added a dirt counter in place of previous grime mechanics. When it tops out, the ranchers bring you to the wash station for a bath.

- Biggest shift is in bull/cow transitioning. Previously, there was a single variable determining whether the player or an NPC was a cow or bull. Now I’ve built out two player characters for each mode and will simply have the game switch between them should a transition occur. The same will apply to NPCs that do so as well though not every NPC will be able to. This took a bit of restructuring.

- Status line now adjusts itself based off of the player’s current cognition level.

- NPCs limited to three characters while building out the remainder of the game. These are Bull!Optimus, Cow!Optimus, Cow!Prowl, and Cow!Jazz. Once I’m satisfied that the major functionality of the game is working, I’ll release a version with these three and then slowly add more.

As for the Hypnovember prequel - it will basically just be the ‘cattle conversion’ process prior to being placed on the ranch. It’s very straightforward and doesn’t have many extraneous systems built into it.

That’s my updates for now!

[lodestarrush]

I have a vague idea for the plot about the necklace emblems but by jove the writing

[micamone]

i keep forgetting that bg3 is a dnd and like fighting game the way you guys all talk about it whenever i see a post i'm like ooo yeah what's going on in my friends romantic/fantasy chose-your-own-adventure-book today

[today-i-am-thinking-about]

the void

[unsettlingcreature]

Btw if anyone has good recommendations for slowburn romances in games PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE hit me up

[kudakii]

have i told everyone that i’m insane about royal affairs yet. because i’ve been thinking about it all week. oh the “everyone seems like a chess piece, i only have soft spots for those close to me, especially this sunshine childhood friend that gives me comfort every time i see their smile” trope in my mc ezra and dominique.......

[adz]

just finished this remarkable game by my friend Manon (@manonamora-if). as much a marvel of creative styling and game design as it is thoughtfully and brilliantly written. please check it out if it interests you; it's playable in French and English.

[neointeractives]

Single Choice Jam!

The Jam where you only give one choice to the player!

The Single Choice Jam is a short unranked jam where you have only one restriction: you can give players only one choice or action in the whole game!

The rest... is up to you!

Constraints and Rules:

There should only be One Choice in the entire entry - only one page in the game may have multiple options to choose from.

For Choice-Base or Hyperlink entries: other links between passages are allowed, as long as there is only one link on each page (with the exception of the page that has the One Choice).

Non-story passages like Title Pages and Side Menu (settings, codex, etc...) are not restricted by this rule.

Parser-like games are allowed only one room with more than one action. Any other room can only have one action.

For Parser entries: Movement (NSEW), inspections (X/LOOK AT), etc.. all count as one action; HELP and WALKTHROUGH do not.

The Jam is open to any program/medium, as long as the piece can be considered Interactive Fiction (i.e. the game is interactive, and its focus is on the text).

The Jam is open to any language.

The Jam is open to NSFW content, as long as you indicate it in your submission.

Spam or hateful content will not be accepted.

Join the Jam!

We will track entries on tumblr with the #singlechoicejam, but you can also tag @neointeractives!

We also have a Discord to discuss the jam (and other jams we organise)! And an IntFic thread.

At the end of the Jam, we will create an IFDB page for every entry. The IFDB, or Interactive Fiction Database, is an IF game information catalogue, creating a historical record of the IF landscape. You can also create this page yourself before the end of the Jam! Contact the organisers for questions or if you'd rather not be included.

You can also opt-in to see your entry submitted to the IF Archive (the entry will be playable from its IFDB page) or submit it yourself!.

[loressa]

Development on an update of Earthsong continues slowly. We've had a heat wave here in Australia and our aircon broke, so staying in the house at all, much less using the computer, has been hellish.

I'm sitting outside writing this - the heat broke this afternoon with a sudden brief bout of rain - and the creature I've heard on my roof for the past few months finally hopped out to say hi. It's a quenda (bandicoot)!

I take it as a good omen - I spent a lot of time today on Earthsong, but I really do need to write about what I know... And that's Australia. The setting is shifting to a pretend village or island in Western Australia with a quokka as the guide. Quokkas are not only adorable and known world-wide, they are also a vulnerable species, with their mainland numbers and spread diminished greatly in recent years, so it will still serve the same role as the kākāpō did in the original jam game!

https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/biodiversity/threatened/action-plan/priority-mammals/quokka

Visiting creatures will still include birds such as cockatoos, magpies and ibis, but also creatures like my backyard's quenda helping keep pests out of crops or an echidna serving as a bioturbator.

The game has shifted to more of a simulation game as a way to work through grief/depression, with hobbies you can choose, changing room descriptions based on things you do as well as time of day/seasons, a village to participate in and nature to explore.

I've been updating the UI. The background images feel too busy and the icons are placeholders so I'm not done with it yet, plus I will be swapping this all for Aussie creatures!

Today I added this unskinned (it will look nicer when done!) journal system - the eventual goal is to give players a way to work through feelings as they experience them, to help process grief. Take a look in the video below!

Check out the original jam version, set in New Zealand, bugs and all (please read the itch.io page for details on how to bypass those bugs):

Follow me here for updates!

[manonamora-if]

One week left!

Post on the thread or send an email!

Another neat thing happening in the IF space! Voting for the best IF of all time!