A Cabinet of Infocom Curiosities
ascii.textfiles.com
ascii.textfiles.com
There was some sentimental fun to be had, but these games take a tremendous amount of time to play and are difficult in a way that modern games are not. Their puzzles are almost unsolvable in some cases, or can only be solved by combining every permutation of every verb with every noun in every place to get the right answer.
Relative to what's available in the modern gaming realm as well as conventional fiction, I've also been pretty underwhelmed by what the Interactive Fiction community is putting out, especially the games that are purely web-based. There are some authors, Andrew Plotkin comes to mind, that have picked up the Infocom torch, but the feeling that you are using 0.1% of what your computer can do at about 5% of the rate your mind can work is difficult to shake for me in our modern era.
It's interesting how intolerable these games would be considered today. I have a choice of thousands of games on steam (not to mention other platforms), many for less than $5. I would give these games such a bad rating, not for "lack of graphics" or anything technological, but for lack of smooth gameplay. But I loved them, and they are considered foundationial to current games.
It's also interesting to me how much time I spent patiently trying different solutions. Nowadays, if I don't get a puzzle in ~30 min, I'm off to google the answer.
I think we're way better off now, but I think there was some dedication/patience/pure-effort that we've lost with our vast number of choices, and access to information.
The only loss here is that the reward in googling the answer will never come close to the high of figuring a puzzle out after 2 days.
And those were the days of "Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery". Not like ordering something on Amazon and getting it the next day.
I did find this...
http://www.resonant.org/games/infocom/Infocom_Homepage/Invis...
:)
(Although I know the various people involved I don't remember all the details.)
Mass market AAA FPS sequels are made and played by very different people. IntFic scene seems to have the producers and consumers a lot closer. Rogue-likes are the same way.
>I would give these games such a bad rating, not for "lack of graphics" or anything technological, but for lack of smooth gameplay.
Like anything else, some are better than others. In general, though, it's fair to say that the parser wasn't very smart (by modern standards), so solving puzzles could sometimes seem like an exercise to coming up with a specific incantation. And, in the absence of walkthroughs etc., that could be really frustrating. I gave up on a number of their games because I just lost interest in digging up how to get past some puzzle.
There is some novelty in solving some problem abstracted into written language, but I find it to be most analogous to reading a good novel. Calling these kinds of things "interactive" is a stretch to me, because the "interaction" is severely limited. It really is, an another commenter implied, more akin to solving a coding problem using a REPL loop.
On the other hand, the potential landscape of IF games is unlimited, bounded only by the author's imagination!
Still, at the end of the day, given an hour to play games after work, I'm going to reach for something new and shiny because some of the newer games are truly astonishing in scope, story, and technical accomplishment.
One of the real advantages of interactive fiction in the modern era is that it can afford to take more risks, narratively, than a AAA title. Since it can be the work of a single person as a hobby or small business, rather than needing mass-market sales to repay for its development, you can try out different things, some of which may not work out but some of which can be fascinating.
Beside Andrew Plotkin, I've always loved the work of Emily Short, like Galatea which couldn't even really be considered a game but is quite fascinating.
Have you played Blood & Laurels? I don't own and iOS device, but from what I've heard, it must be like Galatea with a whole city available to explore.
Adam Cadre is also good. One short game by him I loved and found hilarious is "9:05" ( http://adamcadre.ac/if/905.html ) -- please don't spoil it! -- and there is also the deeply moving "Photopia" ( http://adamcadre.ac/if/photopia.html ).
Interactive Fiction was a breath of fresh air to me. Experimental, funny, innovative, emotional. There was a time, a few years ago, when IF games were about the only kind of games which could hold my interest.
The first game I played by Adam was Photopia, and while it's not particularly interactive, I found it tremendously moving. It has it all, in my opinion: a moving storyline that doesn't necessarily tie all ends neatly, non-linear narrative, a novel point of view (it's not a big spoiler to say that almost every game segment is "narrated" from the point of view of someone who likes the main character, but we never actually play the main character), and some pretty clever moments (the maze, the exploration of the Red Planet). It's a game I immediately replayed once I reached the ending I finally had the full picture, because some scenes get a new meaning once you know what's truly going on.
Of course, the same applies to 9:05: it's amusing to replay it once you know what's going on.
More in general, I think the IF community is marvellous (I haven't followed it in a while, no idea if it's still active). To me, it was like a games rennaissance. There were authors truly exploring what narrative in games could do, and while there is a mandatory technical know-how -- some of the IF languages are programming languages after all -- it's way lower as an entry barrier than, say, almost anything with graphics, let alone 3D graphics. I think this "not caring about using the full power of the computer" was an advantage to game authors.
Going down another thread, have you been keeping abreast of non-parser IF? There are a lot of incredibly polished, beautiful pieces of choice-based IF for mobile platforms (check out 80 Days if you haven't), as well as a whole lot of wonderful, incredibly deep and personal works happening in Twine.
That's an interesting reaction. I spent my teenage years playing Infocom games and agree that some of the puzzles were quite difficult. But they always seemed logical and discoverable - the opposite of random. Several friends played as well, and I remember many a study hall spent noodling through solutions to various puzzles. Some took weeks, and the sense of pride we found when cracking something particularly vexing was immense.
I think there is a parallel in modern gaming: difficult raid bosses in MMORPGs. Solving the Babelfish problem in HHGTG = defeating Ragnaros for the first time in vanilla World of Warcraft.
I played a large number of these games as a youth, including the notoriously hard A Ming Forever Voyaging. And I find I have a hard time enjoying them as an adult. Maybe I need to give it another go.
Maybe it's the pace of the puzzles. I know I spent a long time solving individual puzzles in Spell Breaker and it took combined effort with another friend to make it through.
Modern IF can be emotional, suspenseful, hilarious, surprising, experimental. There is a downplaying of "gamey" elements, and more focus is there in the storytelling or using the textual platform in surprising ways.
For example, one game -- Fail Safe by Jon Ingold -- has the player trying to communicate with the single surviving crew member of a spaceship in distress. Communication is limited, and the game's parser is the crew member. Anything the crew member doesn't understand is turned into a comms error ("zzhghfz... sorry, can you repeat that?"). It feels natural because it means you're not simply typing verbs; instead, you are "giving commands" to a person! Anyway, play the game: it's innovative like only modern IF can be.
they're still commercially available on Gog.com
they were temporarily offered as freeware to promote a later game, but that neither makes them permanently freeware nor public domain.
if they are public domain and I've somehow missed that happening id love to hear about it
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml
(requires flash)
HN thread about it:
Instead, I recommend playing something more modern. There's a community of people making these games who hold an annual competition, and the winner is usually very good: http://ifwiki.org/index.php/The_Annual_IF_Competition
I particularly recommend the 2007 winner, "Lost Pig". You can play it in a Javascript interpreter here: http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fi...
(This may depend on your wordplay ability. A quick check on Wikipedia says fan consensus on the difficulty ranges from "Standard" to "Expert". Oh well. It's 2015. You're only about 30 seconds away from a walkthrough. Given the nature of the game, it won't ruin anything if you have to consult a walkthrough once or twice. In the meantime, it's the only Infocom I've ever beaten without a walkthrough at all. My brain seems to really, really not jive with text-adventure game logic.)
Granted, it's very different than a text "adventure", but I think if you've never played a pure text-based game, it's a very gentle and genuinely entertaining experience.
Well, if the copyright gods will forgive me, it should be in this collection, which I can find no particularly legal way to purchase in a way that gives money to any rightsholders: http://www.myabandonware.com/game/the-lost-treasures-of-info... I don't know, but it is likely the core z5 files can be found in there with a bit of hunting.
The first Lost Treasures of Infocom is legally available for the iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lost-treasures-of-infocom/id... Though, bizarrely, not for Android.
Is it still possible to buy hard copies of games from Infocom? Or are they all lost relics now?
Other games use it to a lesser extent. I recall a text game called T-zero where you earned points both for "leave no stone unturned" and "leave no tern unstoned".
One of my favourites was always Anchorhead, which is a Lovecraftian horror game that is excellently written.
http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fifarchive.org%2Fif-ar...
Two of the scariest games I've ever played. Perfect atmosphere.
Many, if not all, of the Computer Gaming World magazines can be found here: http://www.cgwmuseum.org
It's also pure gold for game designers.
As a disclaimer, I'm a financial backer of the upcoming 6502 documentary, looking forward to it.
Wow. I remember rushing to the store to buy Infocom games. Which were incredibly expensive on a student budget, by the way. Kids these days are so spoiled by how cheap games are.
I have the strangest feeling of pressure in my chest right now.
Client/Agency met to discuss Agency's recommendation
that Enchanter II should be called Spellbreaker (rahter
than Sorcerer), and that Enchanter III should not be
called Spellcrafter. After discussion, Client/Agency
agreed to proceed with Client's preferred name for
Enchanter II, Sorcerer. Name for Enchanter III will be
discussed at a later date.
It seems that not everybody at Infocom was 100% on board with G&R's work: http://i.imgur.com/WNBUY1w.png
Overall, these documents offer a really interesting peek inside the sausage factory. Thanks to Steve M. for making them available and to Jason for doing the legwork!
For better or sometimes worse, good agencies are about more than just coming up with ads.
Without getting too specific, let's just say that the titles of the games we were working on would not have been subject to delegation outside the creator's office, much less outside the company.
Sorry, that wasn't my intent -- I'm saying how impressed I was! That doesn't change the fact that they were knocking some really lame titles around.
That's me a few years back, in http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2172
I knew putting these up would show some rough feelings. I've done my best to keep that to a minimum - I hope that'll be the case. But be clear - G/R is EASILY one of the most important contributors to Infocom's success.
In the early 00's, I ended up with one of those little HP Palmtops running Windows CE. Could not figure out what to do with it, until I found it would run Frotz.
So I packaged up a few of the good ones, not too tough, and put in in the car for the kids. They actually played 'em. One would run the palmtop, reading it, and everyone would suggest options. They got through a few long trips doing that. Today, a phone would work much better than that old Palmtop did.
Somebody should make the voice input for these dead simple.