Rach has just released BiCon 2010: The Game, and it fully embodies everything that’s fabulous about BiCon. It’s also a really good bit of IF, for a first full adventure, and involves some fascinating hacking of the gender pronouns system for Inform. I tip my hat to the author.

(there’s some discussion going on about the game on the BiCon LiveJournal community)

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!

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)

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.

• On Windows, download and install Windows Frotz (the interpreter), download the game itself, run the former and use it to play the latter.
• On MacOS, use Spatterlight instead of WinFrotz, otherwise same as Windows.
• On other platforms, from the Nintendo Game Boy to the ZX Spectrum, start reading here.

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.