#intfic

[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.

[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.

[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:

[manonamora-if]

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

[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

[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!

[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

[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!.

[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.

[thebeigeoverlord]

I hate when there’s a legitimately interesting topic i want to read or hear more about but i can’t because the name is mostly used for unrelated things or is incorrectly used or isn’t used with enough consistent nuance to be useful or has like four different ways to refer to it

Examples:

1) game design: often used as shorthand for game development or general design in a context of a game, or just brings up game dev stuff when searched

2) AI: used almost universally to refer to generative ai, which drowns out everything else

3) interactive fiction/intfic/if/adventure games/text adventures/parser games/parserfic: Just, everything about the naming of these topics is completely FUBAR

[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 now Australia, I suppose, ever since my move here. 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!

[golmac]

(IF thoughts, rambly)

There must be something in the air.

In the past two weeks I've seen maybe five links to dormant and/or locked threads on intfic about the encroachment (I am rolling my eyes quite hard) of choice games upon the sacred whatever of (parser) IF. These conversations have accumulated over the years, dating back to the breakthrough success of Howling Dogs, which, no, is not a coincidence. The best (meaning worst) thread contains a poster declaring himself a supporter of G@merG@te: they're just misunderstood, he says! It's sadly relevant, since Depression Quest was a Twine game, and Twine games were supposedly not "real" IF. Or rigorous IF. Or whatever dumb thing people happened to say in those days.

It seems silly to drive people away if you're worried about the future of your hobby, but that's how that saga played out. & I guess will continue to play out.

I just realized: it's gatekeeping a discourse that is rather fixated on gates. And keys. And keeping things. Wild.

There's also quite a bit of overlap between gatekeeping IF structurally and gatekeeping IF programming languages ("Inform 7 is not a real programming language" blah blah blah). Nothing like spending a few months learning Inform 7 just to have some rando let you know that real programmers (i.e., not you) use Inform 6.

That stuff drives me crazy. *sigh*

Now that Spring Thing is basically over, I don't feel bad advocating for my game. Even if you are ambivalent about parser games, I hope that you will consider taking a look at Repeat the Ending. There is a lot to do without ever engaging with the game's engine. So far as background reading goes, there is the "Reader's Companion to Repeat the Ending" as well as the 2003 play transcript (though that contains spoilers). Should you choose to play, it is a highly polished game with built-in tutorial messages and a hint system.

If that doesn't work, I will be publishing a play transcript of the 2023 game. You could read the transcripts (2003 and 2023), the guide, possibly listen to some playlist tunes, and have a very rich understanding of what the game is about and what happens in its narrative. I will also be sharing high-resolution versions of the in-game images, so they can be accessed as well. I'll announce that release here and elsewhere when the time comes.

I'm doing all of this for accessibility reasons, but those texts will be there for anyone who is interested.

If you have any questions about my accessibility efforts, why I chose Inform 7 for Repeat the Ending, the RTE project in general, or anything else, please feel free to ask me anything, either out in the open or as an anon ask.

[manonamora-if]

The Roads I Maybe Should Have Taken

The TRNT Post Mortem

Oye oye! As was promised, so it is! The Post Mortem for The Roads Not Taken (which hopefully won't be as long as the actual game...)

Follow me into my journey of once again speed-running my way through a competition, and coming out scratched and bruised and still not learning my lessons!

First, some links:

if you haven't played the game yet, I recommend you do before reading this!

you can find its IFDB page here (if you want to leave a review?)

and the STF version source code here for the code curious!

shortened version of the PostMortem on IntFic

Then, a little Table of Content:

The Idea

The Story

The Implementation

The Reception

The Do-Over?

And finally, we start! (under the break because it will be long - LoL at me writing 1/5th of TRNT as a Post Mortem)

I should preface this Post Mortem with I entered the SpringThing on a whim. I had just come out of a conga line of competitions and game jams since last Summer (log of release/update), and had plans on finishing working on other projects instead of this one (which I probably should have... sorry The Rye in the Dark City for abandoning you...). But I obviously didn't do that because here was another new fresh game! And then another two of those just after... whooops...

The idea for TRNT just popped into my brain one day and would not leave me until I implemented it, no matter what (yes, I am still weak willed, I have not learned my lesson from The Thick Table Tavern, the one about not rushing a project and publishing it at a later date when it is truly ready). I did have that thought in the back of my mind that if I do do this, it would be very likely I would end up with a repeat of TTTT, as in: half-full drink with too much ice, and expired garnish falling from the very pretty fancy glass.

Also I did not start working on the entry until the SeedComp was in its voting round (so around the 4-5th of March?). I really wasn't kidding about the speed-running thing....

Another thing: I had never created a parser game before this point AND suck real time at playing them! This was also indicated in my Author's comment.

Nothing obviously stopped me anyway, because here we are...

1- The Idea

A few weeks before the opening of the SpringThing intent, the French IF community was streaming some older parser entries, including Aisle* and Pick-Up the Phone Booth and Die, two games where the player can only do one action before the game ends. I'd never really experienced this kind of game before (the closest being having a sudden death/continue the story choice). It packed a punch, it was funny, and also so very weird. It left me dissatisfied and super intrigued. I wanted to try and do that too someday. *Funnily, someone on the French IF discord thought DOL-OS had been inspired by Sam Barlow's work (it wasn't, but TRNT def was).

Not, I am not going to be hella pretentious and full of myself by putting TRNT on the same level as those games (because I don't think I did a good enough job to merit a comparison), but the one-action-only gameplay and multiple endings drew me in (I love abrupt endings, cf P-Rix). I've mainly written longer form of IF rather than short bites, and I thought it would be fun to try to constrict myself as much as possible, by having just one thing, one action, one outcome.

And also: parsers. I had only dabbled with the Choice-Based/Hyperlink format, so I thought it was time to try the last unexplored part of my IF journey: parsers. Since the SpringThing Festival is a nice place to experiment, I thought why not try to make one then! I could not have survived the anxiety of the IFComp reviews for that one...

Still, it was not going to be without a challenge. I had very little experience with parsers, and I honestly didn't think I could learn how to use a parser program in such short amount of time*, when I had a lot of other stuff at the same time. So I thought, why not make it in Twine**, at least I know this program inside-and-out(almost). There would not be a steep learning curve there... What could go wrong? *lol at me, having made an Adventuron game in a non supported language in about 2 weeks after that, without ever having tried the program beforehand. I could totes have managed!! **Also, when I got set with Twine, I realised how fun it would be to maybe put people's expectations upside down by doing something you're not supposed to with Twine... or parsers!

Well, it was going right at first...

2- The Story

I really wanted to recreate the same gameplay of Aisle with its only-one-action-and-it's-over, so I started listing possible actions and put them into a context where this choice of action would mean everything for the PC - because it is the only action you have. Which might not have been a good take? Aisle works because the setting is incredible mundane, and there are no stakes.

The context pretty quickly drew itself as the player will chose a profession/career path, and if they do/choose something wrong, then...😬too bad for them, they made their choice, deal with the consequences. While, in reality, we are not stuck in a life because of one choice, but with a myriad of them (and still we can change this trajectory), it's still a big pressure you get as a youth, having to choose where to go and what to do when you are done with highschool, and what path to take. It's a lot of responsibility that sometimes feels like it will affect/haunt the rest of your life. Do I still have some of that school/parental pressure from when I had to make that choice ingrained somewhere inside? probably...

But the more foolish idea was to let my brain continue to think more about that context and create a world and story further than the choice. Instead of going forward with the consequences and the hints of what could have happened or just let the choice being the centre piece, the brain just went backwards and created a society (some sort of futuristic one) and vaguely described beings (that are not humans), and the ritualistic culture of this society, etc... While it was fun to think about all of those, and maybe provided a fun setting and enticing story for the player to go through the game, there might have been a bit too much of it. I think, in hindsight, this may have devalued the choice itself (which became even more watered down when I continued on writing the first screens).

And so, the job choice soon became the player is going through some sort of ritual (v trope-y) to determine their place in society. If it has a vibe of The Giver, it shouldn't be too surprising, the book is on my shelf.

So we still have the one-choice-to-rule-them-all, but now there is a also backstory and setting... and I have to include it somewhoeeven if it means cramming it somewhere, anywhere.

Oh wait, I thought, I'll just make it like a prologue to build anticipation for the choice!

And so the brain went on zooming again to create the waiting room, and the agonising walk in the corridor, and the finding your way to the altar, before you cant finally make your choice..... only to end up with two(-ish) paragraphs for each endings. wow - what a good balanced game this is becoming...

Speaking of endings, I had originally listed over 50 actions, each planned to have a different ending.... only to end up with about 11, 7 of those were actually related to the final countdown choice. It made me sadder than when I cut onions :(

It wasn't just the player that needed to make...

At this point, we were two weeks away from the deadline. I had the backbone of the code (-ish), a good third of the writing wasn't complete (and this was mainly those 11 endings), and no one had tested the game yet. There was no way I could have included all 50 original options if I wanted to make the deadline. might have been good in hindsight to remove those choices, especially with the current command system.

So choices had to be made and a buttload of planned things had to be cut. I narrowly managed to finish the needed endings in time (which required re-writing some of those into a fake choice), at least.

At the end, I strayed quite a bit from the Aisle concept of a mini intro - one action - an ending puzzle-y feel (and making the player piece the story together from the endings), to arrive at... well... this anxiously geolian walk to one's doom (or dream). Making the story quite... well... linear.

And from going somewhat wrong, it went a little wrong-er...

3- The Implementation

Wanting to avoid the headache of learning a new program, I had settled on Twine pretty much from the start (SugarCube, because that's how I've been rolling for the past almost 2 years!).

The big problématiques of this project were:

Twine is not a parser program (duh)

SugarCube has its limitations still (and macros that don't always work the way you want to)

I had never written a parser game before and suck at playing them (thank you, French IF streams that helps me enjoy them without experiencing the frustration of not finding the right combo!)

I still suck at JavaScript/jQuery to do weird things with the page (and probably fix all those issues)

and well did I already say Twine is not a parser program?

So I tried to get to the basic of parsers (an input box and text revealing itself onto the page when a command is entered) and prayed for the best. Easy, right?

WRONG!

SugarCube has an input box, but can only autofocus* inside one specific place (so you can't lock it somewhere else but the passage itself, which means you need to add it to every screen...) and when the passage is first loaded (doesn't work if the input box is added later on). *I have also hurt some kitten by overusing autofocus, which was only compensated by offering the the SugarCube God some bug reports about it so those issues could be fixed for the next update (TBA). But you really are not supposed to use autofocus as much as I did... 😬

SugarCube has an input box, but you can only move to another passage after you press Enter. So you can't have some fancy input checks, and you stay on the same page... without some custom listener macro* that is (Bless you Maliface and your Listen Macro) - or I guess some JavaScript code, but who has time for that... I had included a button as an alternative to confirm the commands (which was how I had coded it for DOL-OS), but it would have made the parser experience much worse if using Enter would not have loaded a response (this was a criticism from DOL-OS, which now that I know how to fix, I really should do so...). *at least until the next Sugarcube update which will include a listener.

SugarCube has an input box, but doesn't have a bank of commands, or set object indicator (like with the parsers). While you can technically separate the inputed words with some JavaScript**, whether you do so or not will end with the same amount of spaghetti code at the end, with the different conditional statements for each actions on each screen to show the correct text bits (mine amounted to almost 600 lines of code for 7 screens... without included the printed text! -> see the source code). Now that I've messed around with Adventuron, I can see how easy it is to make a parser game (set up commands and rooms and interactive object), when you have a bank of built-in commands and not have to worry about how to add the new text on the screen. Twine really added a new layer of complexity to this.... Was there a better way of doing this? probably, but don't look at me to find it. *this was how the name chosenname command came to be, and how it only printed the chosen name on the following screens. That and the autofocus being messy...

SugarCube can add text bits to a page, but unlike parser programs, it won't automatically scroll down to the bottom of the page, or at least to the added element. Adding a scroll down to the bottom or scroll up to the page was not too hard (I had some leftover js code), but it was not the solution: the UI is mobile/tablet accessible (smaller screens), which means scrolling to the bottom would make those players having to manually scroll back up (and I am usually quite verbose in my writing). So very much EH.... NOT GREAT! After quite a lot of testing, broken pieces of code, way too much swearing, and re-doing the base of the UI, I did manage to find a solution.... a month into the review/voting period.

But even with those limitations, I pushed through. I knew it was possible to make it work, so I either tried to find work arounds (and gave up the scrolling, at least until the deadline), and pushed through, banging my head against my desk because of what was achievable...

LIKE BUILDING A WHOLE COMMANDS SYSTEM...

Wanting to make things easy for myself (and the players), I thought maybe removing all verbs would make it easier to go through the game, even when having to interact with objects or people around. Enter the bolded word* from the text as the input, press enter, and read the new text! *It was important for me to have some sort of "easy" mode where the interactive things were obvious to the player, coming from a scene where parsers are not the norm/favoured.

Simple right?

This idea... stopped working as soon as I introduced physical actions (sit, stand, jump, etc...), directional actions (the story might be linear but it still has multiple rooms), but most importantly as soon as I wrote flavour texts for one same object. Even if I could get away with removing X/LOOK/EXAMINE*, adding verbs at the end was a necessity (I didn't want to see all the already written variation go to waste...). *I did include look in the code, but mistakenly didn't think about its synonym <- shows the no-knowledge of parser, and not having a bank of commands built-in.

So verbs were added, and then some of its synonyms (but evidently not the most important ones 😬), and then some prepositions just in case, and noun synonyms with adjectives because of how it is described in the text, and then.... so on and so forth. And because of how SugarCube is set, I ended up with lines like this at the end:

<<if ["initiate", "look initiate", "look at initiate", "remember initiate", "initiates", "look initiates", "look at initiates", "remember initiates", "recall initiate", "recall initiates"].contains(_cmd)>>

(and this is not even a correct or complete command list, since it is missing EXAMINE and X)

Et rebelotte for all the interactive words on the page, as well as the added variations requiring another set other verbs. There's not really a verb/noun aliases list to help...

BUT WAIT

Because I always like to make it difficult for myself and not think of the amount of work my ideas/plan will require, I had to make some bits of text appear only once (even if some commands could be used more than once on that page) OR removing the player's ability to make a different action when they do a specific one AND have some bits of text only appear after a command has been used on that page. Pushing the player through extra invisible gates on top of the different rooms. I could have made it easier on myself to break scenes further than I had already done, but nooooooo

And I did this not just once. BUT THREE TIME! When the player is called to get in line, in the corridor, and just before the big doors.

I could have fed myself for a whole week with the spaghetti that came out of my code.

But Manon, I can hear the little devil on my shoulder say, Why all the whining and excuses? You could have stopped if it turned out to be a bad idea, especially if you couldn't implement it properly. Why not have made the story in something else than a parser?

Well...

because Time (wa)s running out and I wasn't going to let all this hard work go to waste by changing everything up at the last minute (it could have worked/been easier, that's true)

because it was still a fun puzzle to solve, even if frustrating most of the time,

because you learn more when you fail than when you win

I'm not a quitter :P (hiding my too many WIPs waiting for me....)

Even if I doubted myself with finishing the game on time, I still pushed myself to cross the finish line, since I knew I would not have finished the project otherwise. Thought it could have been fun to get the 12 angry men passing judgement on my Twine monstrosity making a mockery of parsers had I submitted it to the very serious ParserComp instead. /jk lovingly

So after some "extensive" testing (rushed in the last week, because I am a nightmare to people, sorry @groggydog and @lapinlunairegames for making you go through this, but also thank you for your help!!), I made it to the end!

Well... barely. Ended up with a few bug fixes update along the way.

4- The Reception

(it was like that in my heart)

Like TTTT, this was not explosion of praise and accolades. And I fully expected it. You can't make experiments omelettes without cracking a few programs/rules eggs. At least my omelette didn't have too many eggshells :P

Looking at the numbers, at the time of writing this posts, TRNT is currently sitting at 5 stars (4 ratings) on itch, and 3-1/2 stars on IFDB (2 ratings)*, with 4 reviews on the Forum (bellow the median/average this festival). None of the ratings game with reviews/comments. *When some of the reviews will be moved to the IFDB, I do expect this average to get lower. The itch one is nice (really happy 4 peeps loved it!), but most people only rate when they didn't like it or when they loved it.

As for the feedbacks gotten, they came from a few sources: the people who playtested TRNT, dms on Tumblr and the Forum, the Twine server, and the awaited reviews on the Forum.

Overall, the people who liked the game really enjoyed themselves, from the writing and the worldbuilding being intriguing, or how pretty the UI was. Even with the issues raised during the festival, quite a lot of people (who sent me comments) thought the experiment was either a success, something really cool, or impressive considering the limitations (of the festival and/or of the program). Even in the more critical comments, this experiment was seen as an interesting one to be commended (with a bit of a why did you bother... sprinkled in there). Someone told me TRNT reminded them of the Divergent series (and fair comparison, considering the whole ritual to put you in one job for the rest of your life).

The most surprising thing was that people who never played parser before (or didn't really liked them) found the game entertaining and fun to go through, managing to get to the end without too many issues; while the reviewers with more experience in the genre had a bit more restraints due to the command system I put in place.

Whether my giddiness about verbose writing was to the liking of the player or not, I was honestly happy comments about my grammar didn't make much of an appearance this time around (yay, progress!), and that I would get kudos for the vague story behind the experiment itself, and the structure of the story itself.

But this doesn't mean that it was all sunshine and rainbow here. TRNT had some obvious issues, which should have been squashed during the testing phase had this one been longer (yet again, me speed-running through comps when I should take my time... when will I learn...). There were two main ones: the commands and the UI.

The biggest issue came from the commands, being either unclear or confusing, especially when it came to the cardinal direction, the choice of synonym for the actions, or special actions like the name input. Even if you could go along the story with just a noun or press C until you reached the end, missing important verb commands did not help the game feel complete (EXAMINE/GET/the shortcuts). This is where having some Parser knowledge/experience would have come handy, he.... As for the cardinal directions, it was probably most confusing because I used them as synonyms for forward/back/left/right instead of N/S/W/E (that and it wasn't clear where you were able to go in the text either). Quite a few players were also getting stuck in the corridor (after you come to a stop, you hear some thing up front and your choices are to move to the side/jump or stand still). Special actions like the name input or the final choice were felt a bit off/broke immersion. Party due to the way SugarCube is, partly due to how I organised the game. Having a simple input where the player is asked for their name before the game start and have a say name command, might have worked better there. That and a better hinting system. Fix for those TBD.

Closely followed was the UI being annoying (which ;-; bc I pride myself on creating good UI, but it was fair critique), from the scrolling being an absolute ass, to the confusing bolding of the start of passages being the same as the interactive words (if you didn't change the colour in the settings), to the back/replay last choice command on the END screen not going to the right spot, or the responses of computing an inputted command not appearing/being confusing (in relation to the scrolling), some quirks with the UI being wonky for some screen sizes, etc... Thankfully, all those have been fixed.... but too late for the reviews already published. A quick revamp of the UI base + solving the scrolling issue + slight reformatting of the printed new text bits solved if not all of those issues. Still... too little too late... That's what you get for making a UI in a large screen and only checking different width but not different heights....

A SIDENOTE ON WHY PARSER AND NOT HYPERTEXT

Or me going a bit on a rant. Scroll down to pt 5- The Do-Over to resume coherent levelled conversation.

Still, making a parser a Twine was a CHOICETM, which didn't work for everybody. I don't know if it was because the game was put forth as a Twine game before being a parser, or because the story was maybe a bit too linear/not very interactive compared to other parsers, or because I set out to make a parser before thinking of a story and it showed for some, (or probably because the parser system was not very well implemented) but I did have a few commenters wondering if my choice of making it a parser was the correct one, as in why would you use parser when hyperlinks would have probably worked better?

Maybe a cop-out answer would be Why not. Why not try to break the rules and the codes of what is a Twine game or what is a parser? Why not push Twine to where it is probably not supposed to go (sorry, TME)? Why not blur the lines of the divides between the subgenres of IF? I wrote some part while having a bit of a fever, and my notes had Why not make parsers less puzzle-y/more linear choice-based like? and oh boi is it good to re-read yourself... Cause yiekes what a load of BS.

The other part of the answer is Because experimenting and doing weird thing is fun! Doing weird thing, writing bad code that should probably not work but it does, putting the program on a lifeline, making up stories that are nonsensical, etc... and breaking people's mind in the process with what could be done. Also it was just fun to find out whether it was just possible to do it at all. The rush of happiness when you the puzzle is solved is so incredibly gratifying. It was really fun to try something different (for me but also for what Twine can generally do), to solve a puzzle of mashing two things that don't/shouldn't go together, to find what makes them tick and make it all work, and to challenge myself to do something new (did I mention before it was my fist time making a parser?). AND, having fun creating! And the SpringThing has always been a beacon to promote experimentation with the genre and more out there stuff. So it's was kind of like the stars aligned or something :P

Also Because it was possible!That one is pretty self-explanatory...

Maybe a bit more presumptuous of me: Because experimenting keeps Interactive Fiction fresh and exciting! I'm not trying to set a trend or anything here (honestly, it's not too strange, TRNT's weirdness kind of follows my previous work with TTTT and its mixology element, or DOL-OS with it computer interphase), but isn't fun to see what else can be done in IF, or what new area can be explored now that funky stuff has been tried, or what else should probably not be done (hopefully this doesn't apply to TRNT lol, I think it should be fun to have more parser in Twine). Even if my entry was not really a novel idea even in the gameplay (exhibit A, exhibit B, exhibit C), I still think there should be more weird stuff out there, so I contribute to that where/when I can! It'd be sad if IF became same-y and stale... It'd be fun if someone did something like this because they played TRNT and thought it was neat :P

And Because it didn't fit with my original vision of the game. Even if the game changed quite a lot along the way, the parser element was something I would not compromise with, no matter how good or bad the final product was. Sorry TME for the kittens lost in the autofocus of the textboxes...

I did wonder for a while how many people opened the settings at all 🤔

5- The Do-Over?

Ha.

Haha.

Hahaha.

No.

Honestly... If I was going back to the start, I don't think I would change anything. Even if the length of the testing was more than minimal (still haven't learned my lesson), even if I rushed into the competition (again, not learned my lesson), even if I made errors along the way (well, maybe fixing the UI earlier instead) or let the story stray that much away from the original idea (honestly it was probably for the best that it ended not being too close to Aisle at the end, I might have gotten eviscerated in the reviews). It did what it was supposed to do, and checked all the boxes from what I wanted to try. At the end, to me, it was a complete (and stressful success).

Will there be some changes in the future?

Just a bit, at some point, TBD and TBA. Just to fix the commands a bit, maybe rearrange some passages, add a bit more variation/hidden codex entries, maybe even a new ending or two! But it wouldn't go further than that. TRNT was an experiment through and throuh.

==================== THE END ====================

Anyway, my weird hybrid beast of a parser in Twine and I are done rambling about my awesome show of tricks that may or may not have landed badly and with a broken skateboard. We will go collect our ribbons, now!

Make IF weird, Do word crimes, Have fun

I do wonder if me submitting the game in the Main Garden rather than at the Back Garden played into the expectations of the reviewers, since the BG is meant for more experimental IF. But in the same vein, there was the Kuolema running on a Google Form and people flocked to it so 🤷 It's probably the quality that made things the way it is whooooops :P

[decepticonfessional]

The Emperor's Plaything - Test Build 2

Okay, I have compiled a second test build.

Following the above link you will find mediafire folder containing the read me, roadmap, changelog, and a short guide to the intro customization as well as all of the test builds so far.

If you have already installed the Gargoyle interpreter, then the only file you need to download for the second build is the gblorb ending in V002.

I'll post the text of the changelog here as well, below the read more.

THE EMPEROR'S PLAYTHING CHANGELOG - V0.0.2

Built security terminals for the Guard Stations, with monitors that show activity in rooms for the corresponding levels.

Fixed recharging so that it actually progresses until the player has regained full energy and does not report messages on every turn in between.

Fixed a bug that was occurring when the player examined themselves.

Built framework of reactions for maxed Player_Arousal when Megatron is present.

Filled in room descriptions.

Filled in a good chunk of various item descriptions.

Filled in the flavor text for generic washing up scenes.

Added items to the washracks such as towels, washcloths, soaps, and polish. Polish has no functionality yet. Towels are useful for mopping up puddles that may occur.

Added a monitoring board to Imperial Command. No access for the player yet.

Added a communications board to the Comm Center. No access for the player yet.

Tweaked some variables with introduction scenario three so that the 'escape' avenue is slightly easier to encounter.

Fixed some typos and paragraph orientation in introduction scenario three.

Fixed the confinement order so that once the player is confined to the Imperial Quarters they cannot leave without running into the proper checks. If you're past a certain amount of reprogramming when the confinement order is placed, you will not be allowed out.

Put Smokescreen in one of the Containment Cells. He does nothing right now.

Moved the Training Center to the west end of the Brig Corridor.

Built a new room attached to the Maintenance Hall called the Utility Room. It has stuff in it for service drones to use as part of their duties, which have not been implemented yet.

Thanks for checking it out and as always, I welcome any feedback/comments/ideas.