Source
r/interactivefiction•
recursivefaults

Curious about you, IF, and people who play.

Hey all, I bumped into the topic of Interactive Fiction recently and became curious. I was kind of thinking about making one of my own, but wanted to learn more from the community first! I'm just really curious about you all, what you play, what you make, and things like that. If you're up for it, answer these questions in the comments.

  1. What's your favorite piece of IF so far and what really separates it from the rest?
  2. What do you look for when you want to play IF?
  3. When you play IF, is there a sweet spot in the amount of time it takes to play?
  4. If you write IF, can you post a link for me and others to read?
  5. If you write IF how do you get people playing it?
  6. If you write, what is something that worked really well, and something that flopped?
  7. What do you love about IF that you wish other people knew?

Posted Feb 29, 2016, 7:14 PM UTC

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m_bishop•

What's your favorite piece of IF so far and what really separates it from the rest?

Fragile Shells I just liked the story, the limited space it takes place in, that it really kept my attention throughout.

What do you look for when you want to play IF?

It should be a 'page turner', more like a book than an RPG. I should want to read through each section, but never feel like I'm forced to re-read or put up with anything tedious.

Too many games have lots of empty rooms, they want to be an RPG, where I walk around a big 'world', but it always just feels tedious and empty. If I have to get out a pen and paper to map it, it's because you haven't made each room memorable enough.

Too many games I play are just filler, trying to look bigger than they are, and giving me 'space' instead of 'content.

When you play IF, is there a sweet spot in the amount of time it takes to play?

I've found no more than a few hours to be sufficient. It really doesn't matter so long as the story keeps me interested, but I've found an hour or two to be about as long as I've played through.

What do you love about IF that you wish other people knew?

Just that they still exist, and are still a lot of fun.

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recursivefaultsOP•

Thanks for answering. I'll checkout Fragile Shells.

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m_bishop•

It's really great! I also nearly answered 'Violet', which is another incredible example of what it looks like when you do it right.

Like I said, too many people try to make a game 'big'. Violet takes place entirely in 1 room, and it's on of the most FULL IF games I've ever played. There's not a wasted word, object, or action. Everything pays off.

I'm not saying I like 'minimal' games, only that when you confine your game to as little as you can get by with, it makes the game feel less stretched out, sparse and empty ... which is, unfortunately, what most IF feels like. Like an empty MUD, where you wonder if no one has logged in in a long time.

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cunningjames•

Violet is great. Plus, I was a tester, so I can take full credit for its success.

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m_bishop•

Haha, nice ... well, just keep doing that!

Honestly, when I want to play IF, I just look at the winners from the IF competitions. I'm not sure that's a great way to find new content, but there's so little new stuff being released that's any good (maybe I just don't know where to look?).

I think limiting games to an hour, or to a room, is a great thing. Honestly, if even AAA game designers knew how few people were seeing the end of their games, I think a lot more people would be tempted to tighten things up a bit.

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recursivefaultsOP•

I think that's actually really interesting. I've always been drawn to movies and stories that have a small, well-connected feel to them.

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hopscat•

Have you played Caleb Wilson's work? His works, Lime Ergot and The Northnorth Passage, are both relatively constrained in terms of scope and rooms, but have the feel of a minutely detailed landscape.

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m_bishop•

I love a long novel, but it has to maintain a certain energy. It has to be more than just long.

I've played IF games where I'm walking around these more or less empty rooms, and I couldn't tell you much about any of those rooms. I can tell you more about the space outside the window in Violet, which is an area that doesn't even exist in the game, in a playable sense, than I can tell you about the entire game map of the last IF game someone asked me to try.

There's no connection between number of rooms, and how big the game feels. That's the hard thing to get people to understand. They think if they just make a slew of rooms, the world will feel big, and I think that's the biggest mistake people make when they create an IF game.

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jsnlxndrlv•

Howdy, and welcome top the community!

  1. What's your favorite piece of IF so far and what really separates it from the rest?

This will wildly contradict my later responses, but it's Andrew Plotkin's So Far. Few games so well blend a straightforward approachability with an alien perspective, a concrete theme, and (so far as my own skill is concerned) an insurmountable difficulty.

  1. What do you look for when you want to play IF?

Depending on an author's design goals, she can justify almost any approach to implementation and language use. Because of that, the most useful of the criteria I use is just whether I've found a recommendation from someone whose opinion I respect. I also tend to prefer to pick games with low difficulty and low time investment. EDIT: If I'm going into a game blind, I also find I prefer games with moderate breadth and depth of implementation. Having unique responses to the predictable commands and having scenery that's only mentioned in the descriptions of other objects within the room demonstrates thoroughness.

  1. When you play IF, is there a sweet spot in the amount of time it takes to play?

Yeah; the shorter the game is, the more likely that I am to play it. Once you start getting to games longer than the 2 hour IFcomp time limit, it gets pretty unlikely that I'll give out my time. All those one-move games like Aisle and Rematch? Those are the best.

  1. If you write IF, can you post a link for me and others to read?

Ugh, yeah. I have an IFDB profile, but let me save you some time by confirming up front that none of these games are worth playing. As an author, I have traditionally lacked the patience and the diligence required to make a complete game, and that is pretty obvious across all my published works.

  1. If you write IF how do you get people playing it?

I find the competitions are a pretty good method of getting a bunch of people to play your game. It probably also helps to be active in the IF community; I haven't been there in a while, but you might check out ifMUD. Alternately, Twine is among the most accessible formats available, and Twine games have a lot more visibility to people outside the traditional IF circles.

  1. If you write, what is something that worked really well, and something that flopped?

I had a Twine project that was scuttled by a hard drive failure in December that was going pretty well; with hypertext, you can direct the player's attention without worrying that you forgot to implement a lot of critical objects. I thought Is avoided that problem with The Green Rain, but instead I traded a thorough implementation for inarticulate symbolism.

  1. What do you love about IF that you wish other people knew?

Twine games are so easy to make.

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recursivefaultsOP•

Are you going to keep at authoring the games? I hope you do.

Also, I had never heard of one-move games, I'll look at those!

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jsnlxndrlv•

Yeah, I'm planning on entering IFComp again this year, but that will only work if I can actually get a game made. This 64 hour work schedule is a pretty big obstacle.

As far as one-move games are concerned, my favorite is actually a goofy crossover called Pick Up The Phone Booth And Aisle. It's absurd and full of in-jokes, but it's such fun.

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JasonZep•

1. What's your favorite piece of IF so far and what really separates it from the rest?

  I actually haven't played that much IF but I really liked Anchorhead. It had lots of atmosphere and you mostly played alone (few NPCs) just exploring the environment.

2. What do you look for when you want to play IF?

 Puzzles and keeping track of details. This can be tricky in IF (versus point-and-click adventures) but you really get a sense of accomplishment when you solve a problem in IF.

3. When you play IF, is there a sweet spot in the amount of time it takes to play?

 For me about 3-4 hours. 1 hour is a little too short and unless I'm really into it, 4+ hours is too long. I will forget things.

4. If you write IF, can you post a link for me and others to read? 5. If you write IF how do you get people playing it? 6. If you write, what is something that worked really well, and something that flopped?

7. What do you love about IF that you wish other people knew?

 That is exists I guess. That it has an awesome graphics engine :)
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recursivefaultsOP•

Are you new to IF as well then? Mostly a writer?

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JasonZep•

Mostly just very busy and don't get to play many games in general but I remember playing the Sierra 'Quest' games when I was younger. I've only recently gotten into IF/text adventures. (but to answer your questions I'm not a writer, just a player of adventure games and reader of books :) )

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hopscat•

What's your favorite piece of IF so far and what really separates it from the rest? Oh dear. Oh dear. So many favourites! Horse Master and Counterfeit Monkey I guess are some of my top faves :> Horse Master is devastating and desperately sad; the puzzles in Counterfeit Monkey are very smart and the story world is amazingly detailed.

What do you look for when you want to play IF? What type of IF (story-focused, puzzle-focused or both) is it? How long is it? (sometimes I want a morsel, sometimes I want to get stuck in it)

When you play IF, is there a sweet spot in the amount of time it takes to play? I always play in bits, so I really can't say. I have a short-ish attention span though, heh.

If you write IF, can you post a link for me and others to read? Here you are.

If you write IF how do you get people playing it? Relentless and widespread advertising! Well, announcing it on Twitter, r/twinegames or r/interactivefiction, intfiction forums, putting it on IFDB, telling IF-ish friends about it online or otherwise... anywhere.

If you write, what is something that worked really well, and something that flopped? People liked my environment descriptions in this game. I have a tendency to be too coy about plot points and puzzles though.

What do you love about IF that you wish other people knew? The community of IF writers is incredibly friendly and helpful!

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recursivefaultsOP•

Awesome! Out of curiosity, how long a have you been making these kinds of games?

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hopscat•

Hm, I think my first publicly released game came out last year for Introcomp, but my first complete (in-joke of a) game was completed in 2011 or 2012, I think. Not very long, and I'm a complete coding noob, so I'm still not super familiar with the more technical aspects of Inform 7 and Twine! You live and learn (:

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