Scatmania

Scatman Dan's stuff

Posts Tagged if

Troma Night 300

Apr 12

Posted by Scatman Dan in Personal | 3 Comments

This Friday’s Troma Night will be Troma Night 300! It’s hard to believe how much time I’ve spent at this, our weekly film night. I wonder how many pizzas, in total, have been eaten? How many awful films we’ve groaned at?

I’m planning that for this special Troma Night we’ll temporarily revitalise some of the old traditions. I’ve already been in touch with Kit, and he’s happy to phone in the pizza order for us (“Kit, order the pizza!” // <sighs> “What does everybody want?”) in the traditional style. I’m hoping that Paul will be available to throw a sponge through a window (if he’s working, of course, we’ll try to arrange for him to fling a sponge around the cinema projection booth while we simultaneously throw a substitute sponge at The Cottage). We’ll aim to start a little early with a Flash Gordon short, for those who miss watching those before their Troma Night experience, too.

As for those of you who are no longer around, you’re welcome to join in from afar, too. Alec: why don’t you buy yourself a four-pack of beer and drink exactly three of them? “Strokey” Adam: perhaps you can arrange for somebody to molest you with unwanted physical contact on Friday evening? Liz: you ought to get a date for the night, introduce him to all of your friends, and then never see him again. See: traditions are great!

In other news: if you haven’t yet played Lost Pig (And Place Under Ground), you should. It’s a fun, puzzle-oriented piece of interactive fiction that’s full of charm, with a wonderfully lovable (and not your usual) protagonist. It’s a lightweight bit of adventuring that’ll take most of you under an hour, so go play! Install Gargoyle (for Windows or Linux) for the simplest-possible play experience, and have fun!

Tags: , ,

Grief (Interactive Fiction)

Oct 19

Posted by Scatman Dan in Personal | 1 Comment

It’s not as spectacular as Violet, but I’ve just enjoyed playing Grief, another IF Comp 2008 entry. Download the .z8 file (which you can play in Windows Frotz or your favourite Z-Machine).

Play it a few times to see a few of the different endings: if only you could have done things differently… but perhaps things aren’t inevitable. There’s over a half-dozen different endings: wait until you start spotting the pattern, then – if you haven’t found it by yourself – type WALKTHRU to see a list of achievable endings so that you can begin to understand the truth of the matter… and when you do so, remember the first scene…

But if you only play one IF this year, make it Violet. =o)

Tags: ,

Violet (Interactive Fiction)

Oct 18

Posted by Scatman Dan in Personal | 9 Comments

It’s been a long while, but I’ve got some more interactive fiction to recommend: Violet, by Jeremy Freese. It’s got all of the usual things I like in a modern piece of interactive fiction: a believable, detailed world that you can really feel like you’re a part of, and which “carries on” around you; a beginning that doesn’t need to explain itself (you can pick it up as you go along); an enthusiastic thoroughness as far as anticipating what a player might try (many of the “unusual” things you can try to do have been anticipated and have specific flavour text); and a story that’s emotive and clever. So far, so good.

But the way in which it really furthers the genre is in it’s presentation format. The narrator of the story – Violet – is the girlfriend of the protagonist, who – through a series of encouragements and discouragements, as well as ocassional asides and additional commentary – helps lead you through your adventure: it is, if you like, a second-person perspective text-based adventure. But it doesn’t take long to realise that she isn’t actually there at all: all of her dialogue is in your head – it’s what your character thinks she would say in response to everything you’re doing.

I thoroughly explored the game in about an hour, and I highly recommend that you do, too: it’s a fabulous piece of interactive fiction, wrapped around a reasonably good bit of fiction.

Fully expect your feedback on this one, JTA.

Update, 19th October 2008, 14:20: Fixed the link to Windows Frotz (previously pointed at WinFrotz, which – while a fabulous Z-Code interpeter, can’t cope with ZBlorb files like the one this game is packaged in). Sorry, Binky.

Tags: , ,