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Adventure Game News for 30 Mar 08

IF Art Show 2008

The IF Art Show is a yearly competition for works of IF that focus on a single aspect of interactivity and are judged by a juried panel. If you're interested in entering this year's competition, you have until May 2nd to write your entry. You should also take a look at last year's rules to give you an idea of what you'd be in for.

Emily Short Reviews Child's Play for IF Review

Emily Short has reviewed Child's Play for IF Review.

This game grew on me quite a bit as I played. The protagonist's ungrammatical English and the general cuteness seemed like they might become cloying by the time I was finished, but they really didn't. This is in large part because the game does have something to do other than be precious. The other characters develop distinct personalities, and the puzzles involve interacting with them quite a bit (in ways limited by baby communication skills, but still). By the end of the game I was harboring rather complex feelings towards the pigtailed Zoe.

New Game Recluse

Stephen Gorrell has released a new game, Recluse, which he describes as a "puzzle solver of average to above-average difficulty". Luckily it also includes an Invisiclues-style hint system. You can download it either from Stephen's site or from the IF Archvie.

NFrotz 0.3.2

NFrotz is a port of WinFrotz's core engine to the classic Unix Frotz terminal interface. The new version, 0.3.2, is a bugfix one, including a memory corruption bug that could occur on restoring saved games.

The Sleeping Princess Updated

The Sleeping Princess, Molly, Alex, and Mark Engleberg's entry in the 2008 IF Beginner's Comp, has been updated to include an interactive tutorial.

[O]ne recurring criticism among voters was that our instructions were too long. Honestly, we just used the default instructions that come with the TADS library, and didn't give it much thought. But the judges were right -- our "gentle" game didn't come with a suitably "gentle" introduction.

So my kids, inspired by the feedback, went back to the drawing board, and gave serious thought as to how to present instructions for IF to those with no prior knowledge. After some brainstorming, they struck on the idea of an interactive tutorial that teaches you as you play.

You can download version 2.0 of The Sleeping Princess from the IF Archive.

Weishaupt Scholars Source Code Released

IF authors using Inform 7 and who could really use more example code from full games, you're in luck. Michael Martin has released the source code to Weishaupt Scholars, his completed IntroComp game which was written in Inform 7.

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