Toeing the party line

Beyond Exile is Doug Shanahan’s adaptation of author Lawrence Johns’ epic poem, written in Quest. During most of the game, the player dons the role of Frank Glendover, continuing his philosophical and personal journey during the 1970’s which is said to have started out in Johns’ previous work Love and Hate. However, the game also puts the player into the shoes of such real-life characters such as convicted revolutionary Ilich Sanchez (“Carlos the Jackal“) as well as acclaimed poet/professor Billy Collins.

Beyond Exile screenshot

Beyond Exile is primarily a mouse-driven game, with most of the places’ and objects’ names and the required actions listed out in a neat little window on the right of the game window. The game’s text appears to have been copied directly from the book – the conversations between NPCs, the rather generalized object descriptions, even some of the game responses are rendered in double-spaced lines of free verse. The game is also quite puzzle-less, as there’s hardly a part where the player is required to solve out anything.

But then there’s puzzleless, and there’s nearly puzzleless, and then there’s this.

Crying Uncle

I recently spotted an IF game on the Artsy Games Incubator website called My Uncle George, written by Filipe Salgado (download page here; web version here). It’s a one-room piece written using Inform 7, which casts the player as 17-year-old Matt, trying to kill some time before school, having a “criminally awkward” breakfast chat with his uncle George, a former convict on parole.

The game on Gargoyle

Considering this was the only IF piece among the six games produced in Round 4 of AGI, I thought I’d try this and see.

Editor Releases Game, Gets Interviewed

Jimmy Maher, editor of the online magazine SPAG (Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games) and recognized IF historian, recently released his new game The King of Shreds and Patches.

And the winners are

The 14th Annual Interactive Fiction Comp is finally over! A huge applause to the winners of this year’s competition: Violet by Jeremy Freese, Nightfall by Eric Eve, and Everybody Dies by Jim Munroe. These games were also chosen as winners of the Miss Congeniality award in this year’s comp.

The rest of the entries and their rankings could be viewed here as well.

Congratulations to all the entrants! I hope to see these names (and more, too) again in next year’s annual comp.

Tool Updates, Part 2: TADS 2

Mike Roberts had recently posted on the IF newsgroups about the TADS 2 update. Those who have been more-or-less involved in the newsgroups are probably aware that the last version Roberts had released for TADS 2 was v2.5.10. This version consisted mostly of compiler and run-time engine bug-fixes, but nothing much in terms of UI had been changed.