Grandma Bethlinda's Remarkable Egg: IFcomp 2021

Grandma Bethlinda's Remarkable Egg is a parser-based marvel created by Arthur DiBianca. The egg is a marvelous toy, both as an in-game object and as an entry in IFcomp 2021.

I really enjoyed the way that this work combined strong writing with strong coding. You might think that you want to pick things up, move to different locations, or interact with a bigger world through the parser, but the story provides elegant distractions to explain why you won’t be doing any of those things.

Grandma Bethlinda's Remarkable Egg has discarded a lot of familiar parser actions in favor of custom commands. There’s supposed to be a manual that explains how everything works, but… you’ll find out for yourself in short order. Meanwhile, the new commands introduce persistent changes into the environment that interact with each other in unexpected ways.

I thought this entry hit the sweet spot between creating challenges for the programmer and delivering enjoyable experiences for the player. Other entries have fallen flat when authors experimented with technical challenges instead of making design choices that support the story, but Grandma Bethlinda's Remarkable Egg seamlessly integrates its story and its mechanics with playful explanations.

It was a lot of fun.

RetroCON 2021: IFcomp 2021

RetroCON 2021 is a choice-based work by Sir Slice that was entered into IFcomp 2021.

The blurb for this entry encapsulates its entire story: the player is at a retro gaming convention in Las Vegas. Although the convention lasts for 2 “days,” you have as much time as you want to explore everything.

This entry has pulled off some feats of programming that are far beyond my own Twine capabilities. You can play 3 different games at the convention and gamble on 4 different games in the casino. Each of the 7 options presents a mini-game in its own right, including one that is a functional parser experience.

RetroCON 2021 was a little disorienting — the over-arching message of IFcomp is “come and enjoy this group of games,” so it gets weird and recursive to find the same message inside an IFcomp entry.

It reminds me of Jeff Goldblum’s line from Jurassic Park.

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. pic.twitter.com/Wo51vZTMgb

— Tom Campbell (@TomCampbell) February 22, 2020

RetroCon 2021 works as a proof of concept, but I would have enjoyed a narrative arc that offered more than arriving at a location and leaving when I got bored.

To be fair, engaging narratives are difficult to implement! Especially when you’re making a game about playing other games. It took a lot of work to build RetroCon2021, and that deserves to be recognized.

Enveloping Darkness: IFcomp 2021

Enveloping Darkness is a choice-based story by John Muhlhauser, Helen Pluta, and Othniel Aryee that was entered into IFcomp 2021.

This cleanly written fantasy adventure is light on details. For example, the protagonist's brother feels like less of a family member and more of a placeholder to provide motivation for the journey.

I did appreciate the number of choices that Enveloping Darkness offers. The passages are short, and the reader is presented with something to do at the end of each one.

However, it would have been helpful if choices hinted at possible outcomes. I got killed early by trying to rescue an innocent victim, and at one point I spent two inexplicable months in a boat on the lake. It was a complete surprise when the story ended and I was praised for saving the realm.

Enveloping Darkness also includes several fantasy creatures that don’t feel connected to the narrative. Orcs are used as generic outsiders: some are helpful, some are violent, and some are infested with parasitic brain worms. If they were replaced with Canadians, the overall experience would remain unchanged.

This story could use some developmental edits.

Kidney Kwest: IFcomp 2021

 

Kidney Kwest is an educational, parser-based adventure designed to reinforce lessons for children with kidney failure. It was created by Eric Zinda and Luka Marceta, with artwork by Kristina Ness.

I enjoyed the writing in Kidney Kwest. It has the unavoidable “after-school special” tone that you would expect from the subject matter involved, but there’s a clear challenge with some basic puzzles and multiple outcomes. I was also entertained by the Kidney Fairy's sense of humor.

I don’t normally quote the bible, but Kidney Kwest makes me think of the one about trying to serve two masters. This entry is trying to do a bit more than that when you consider that it’s:

• reinforcing key messages about taking medications and avoiding specific foods,
• giving people something to do during their weekly dialysis treatments,
• engaging an audience that is 8–18 years old,
• showcasing the “Perplexity” Natural Language Prototype that was designed by Eric Zinda, and
• being judged in the 2021 Interactive Fiction Competition.

Clearly, some tradeoffs have been made.

The overall experience reminded me of AI dungeon — specifically, the part where I endured a noticeable lag between submitting a command and receiving a report from that command. This added extra stress to my Kidney Kwest because a substantial part of the gameplay involves finding food and taking medication before bad things happen.

(I knew that the delay in sending and receiving responses wouldn’t really affect my character’s health, but it was rough having to wait through a sequence of commands before I could take care of immediate needs. And then it was only a matter of time before hunger became an issue again.)

I’d call this entry a functional proof of concept, but the real question is how Kidney Kwest is received by its target audience. If it encourages people to lead healthier lives, then my opinions (and its final score in IFcomp) are irrelevant.

The TURING Test: IFcomp 2021

The TURING Test is a choice-based work by Justin Fanzo that was submitted to IFcomp 2021.

The conflict at the heart of this entry is riveting: You are the only person on board the International Space Station, and you must determine which of the two newest arrivals is human. Will you make the correct decision and save the human race, or will you be tricked by robotic agents of destruction?

It’s a delightfully tense sequence, but the problem is that you have to wade through a few thousand words of apocalypse fan fiction — my least favorite variety of fan fiction — before you get there.

I would have preferred to see fewer passages concluding with a single link. This author is clearly capable of creating meaningful story branches, but most of the time they didn't.

In Twine, the story diagram looks like an enormous vertical column:

Many of the scenes in The TURING Test should be familiar for people who enjoyed With Folded Hands, Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Terminator franchise, and even The Mitchells vs. The Machines. If there was a larger message about intelligence, morality, or the ethics of interacting with sentient beings, I missed it.

Ultimately, your choice to determine who can access the space station will decide whether the story is disaster fiction or apocalypse fiction. It turns out that they’re separate genres.

Beneath Fenwick: IFcomp 2021

Beneath Fenwick is the Lovecraft-adjacent story of a remote New England town full of sinister, malformed humans lurking just out of sight. Pete Gardner created it for IFcomp 2021, and his goal was to create an experience that is “primarily choice-based but plays like a parser game.”

On the one hand, I didn’t encounter the branching storylines that are seen in a choice-based game. There is only one “correct” sequence of links that brings an audience through to the end of the story. Readers are free to explore detours on their journey, and they're also encouraged to save often, because the wrong links will end things early.

On the other hand, I didn’t receive the clues that a parser might provide when players struggle with specific puzzles. Beneath Fenwick has a “combine” command that feels a bit vague — sometimes it involves using one object on another, and at other times it merges objects together, but the error message is always “That combination does not work!”

I respect the amount of effort that went into implementing and polishing Beneath Fenwick. It’s a smooth experience! I didn’t encounter any broken links or inescapable dead ends, and things functioned consistently. 

My main issue was that the interface overshadowed the story, encouraging me to ignore the text and hunt for links. This problem has been discussed in Interactive Fiction communities before.

The writing in Beneath Fenwick is consistent, and fans of this genre might enjoy themselves. I recommend experiencing it for yourself to draw your own conclusions.  

The Corsham Witch Trial: IFcomp 2021

The Corsham Witch Trial is a choice-based story by JC Blair that was entered into IFcomp 2021.

The thing about The Corsham Witch Trial is that it contains no actual witches — and that’s fine, there weren’t any at the Salem Witch Trials, either. However, the blurb’s mention of a “worryingly urgent and irritatingly cryptic” request gets a bit confusing alongside IFcomp’s other stories of magic and supernatural horror.

The Corsham Witch Trial is a cleverly written courtroom drama. The author describes it as “a transparent attempt to enliven a disjointed and gimmick-laden manuscript with a few distracting interactive elements,” but I really enjoyed how this story was framed. Court transcripts and other documents are presented as .PDF files, and a workplace colleague asks questions about the evidence after it has been reviewed.

Every step of the Corsham Witch Trial works very hard to maintain an atmosphere of uncertainty. When the player analyzes the evidence to support a specific interpretation, their colleague explains how it can also support a different outcome.

Unfortunately, after a skillful buildup of tension and ambivalence, the entire exercise proves to be futile.

It doesn’t really matter what the player thinks, because the case was closed, the truth was discovered, and the newspapers reported the results. After such rigorously enforced neutrality, I was expecting a Broadchurch-style twist that might suggest alternative sequences of events. Instead, I got moralizing about doing the right thing even when it’s pointless.

The Corsham Witch Trial is well-executed fiction, but doesn't end up being very interactive. Other reviewers have made some good suggestions for improvements.

At King Arthur's Christmas Feast: IFcomp 2021

At King Arthur's Christmas Feast is a choice-based adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, entered into IFcomp 2021 by Travis Moy.

This is a niche piece — almost a Medieval Boy Scout Simulator — and I love it. To quote one of the story’s options: “I’m all in on this. Let’s do it.”

The first thing that an audience should know about the original story of Sir Gawain is that it makes no goddamn sense. A movie adaptation, Sword of the Valiant, came out when I was five years old. Scenes like this did not make it any easier to understand:

At King Arthur's Christmas Feast is written with choicescript, and it offers decisions that put Gawain’s thinking in a more relatable context. The reader is expected to uphold the virtues of a knight, remaining pious, courteous, magnanimous, and chaste throughout the entire journey while also embodying the spirit of fellowship.

The expectations make Gawain’s predicament more understandable: How can good manners keep you safe from an immortal giant?

I appreciated how much extra writing was necessary to humanize Gawain’s adventure. And the story notes many of the reader’s choices, referencing them in future passages. 

However, King Arthur's Christmas Feast doesn’t have a lot of branches, which means that people who stray from the correct path might find it less entertaining. I had fun pretending to be a rule-abiding poindexter, but I can see how that might not appeal to everyone.

The House on Highfield Lane: IFcomp 2021

The House on Highfield Lane is a parser-based work by Andy Joel that was submitted into IFcomp 2021.

The player begins by steering Mandy, the protagonist, into a creepy old house. The rest of the story involves trying to find a way out of it. I thought that the puzzles were engaging, but the story felt like the triangle of identities was out of alignment.

The player and the protagonist of The House on Highfield Lane are kept separate from each other. This happens through narrative details, like the third-person perspective of the writing, and also through design choices that isolate the player’s knowledge from the character’s knowledge.

I knew that brevity was the soul of wit, but Mandy didn’t know that, so one of the puzzles involved guiding her to a place where she could discover the answer. On the other hand, contraptions in the house were described in ways that made them seem familiar to Mandy and entirely alien to me.

As she explored the House on Highfield Lane, Mandy might have been fascinated by the experiments in reversing death and transferring consciousness. Maybe she was horrified. The narrative distance left me feeling detached and unmotivated. Escaping from the house became her problem, not mine.

Overall, this was a smoothly implemented parser experience. Many aspects of the house were confusing, but they were intentionally confusing and bound by consistent rules. I didn’t need to spend a lot of time guessing obscure verbs, and the parser generally understood what I was trying to do. The technical craftsmanship was solid, and the narrative choices might appeal to the right audience.

Brave Bear: IFcomp 2021

Brave Bear is a parser-based adventure by John Evans that was entered into IFcomp 2021.

Brave Bear is a child’s toy with a solemn duty to keep its owner safe. I liked the concept, I enjoyed playing with toys, and I liked the goal of bringing friends together to protect someone that they cared about. I just wish that some of the clues were easier to understand.

As a toy, the bear has a simple view of the world. As people who quote Steve Jobs will tell you, “simple” is difficult to implement. Brave Bear’s narrative voice describes an ordinary family home from a new perspective that felt unnecessarily limiting and confusing in a few places.

Some of this entry’s other design choices were unexpected — two toys have abilities that are hinted at but never used in the game, and a few of the locations have exhaustive lists of exits that are never used. They might have been red herrings, but that seems out of place in a story where the puzzles are so simple.

The experience reminded me of Samurai Lapin, which was an animated flash movie on the internet from (checks notes) more than 20 years ago.

…now I just feel old.

The Best Man: IFcomp 2021

The Best Man is a choice-based story by Stephen Bond that was entered into IFcomp 2021. It’s phenomenally well-written, which made it a challenge to enjoy.

The Best Man is initially told from the perspective of Aiden. He has been asked to stand in for the best man at Laura’s wedding, and that forces him to confront unresolved feelings about their past relationship. Their story is vivid and uncomfortable.

For the first few chapters, it looked like the author was a “Nice Guy” who had created an autobiography to process events from his own life. I was concerned that I’d spend the entire time watching someone wallowing in destructive behavior.

Then the perspective shifted, and I realized that the author wasn’t a self-pitying doormat — just unnaturally good at creating narrative voices. Laura’s wedding is viewed from several perspectives, and each one them feels distinct and internally consistent.

The Best Man also uses some clever writing and supporting mechanics to handle its character changes. Colored hyperlinks indicate that the reader has assumed a new perspective, while Aiden’s eye-catching white suit allows readers to track him through the scene.

The story is advanced with dialogue choices, and those decisions are referenced in later passages. I couldn’t tell whether it meant that I had any control over the narrative, but I managed to get Aiden to a final state that seemed healthier for him.

It’s possible that Laura’s wedding could have ended quite differently, but I lack the endurance that would necessary to find out.

Unfortunate: IFcomp 2021

Unfortunate is a parser-based puzzle by Jess Elizabeth Reed that was entered into IFcomp 2021.

I loved the premise of this game — it puts you in a short, repeatable scenario as an accretive PC (something similar was used for last year’s The Copyright of Silence), and you use your knowledge to make predictions as a fortune teller.

After three runs through Unfortunate, you have enough information for completely accurate predictions. It poses an interesting question: should you predict misfortune and then passively watch it unfold? Or do you want to take action for more positive results?

Unfortunate is an ambitious work, and that ambition may have created some implementation issues. I found exits that became inaccessible and descriptions that referenced non-existent objects. And I couldn’t predict misfortune and passively watch the results, because two characters completely disappeared from the game.

I would have appreciated it if Unfortunate set out its initial expectations more clearly; I approach puzzles differently when it’s clear that they’ll be a repeating sequence. This entry was fun, but more playtesting would have improved the experience.

Smart Theory: IFcomp 2021

 

Smart Theory is a short comedy by AKheon that was entered into IFcomp 2021. It encounters one of game design’s common problems: How do you simulate an unpleasant experience without driving away your audience?

Last year, Savor described repeated, excruciating pain. Accelerate expected you to actively participate in atrocities. And this year, Smart Theory wants you to endure a training session that blends all the worst aspects of motivational seminars and religious cults.

The writing is smoothly implemented and effective. It was fun to see how the “first rule” of Smart Theory was applied in the story. This entry works as a kind of power fantasy — you can mock transparent nonsense and criticize sloppy thinking.

However, the whole thing felt too plausible. A shamelessly inflated sense of self-importance is part of every management training course; they all discuss overpriced-but-revolutionary new paradigms. Attempting to debunk their transparent nonsense is just as futile inside Smart Theory as it is in the real world.

If you view it without irony, Smart Theory is interchangeable with a lot of the overpriced self-help literature that currently exists. That can be read as a declaration that there are no new ideas in this space, but it feels simultaneously correct and tedious. 

The Last Night of Alexisgrad: IFcomp 2021

The Last Night of Alexisgrad is a unique experience created by Milo van Mesdag for IFcomp 2021.

This entry is meant to be explored by two players who communicate with each other outside of the story. The strong characterization of each role (the Dictator and the General) sets a different tone for each perspective, offering vastly divergent interpretations from the same sequence of events.

It’s also a very lopsided experience. One player starts from a position of strength, and the other gets the rough end of the pineapple. If Last Night of Alexisgrad meant this to be an intentional message about different types of government and their relative strengths in a crisis, I ignored it.

I was fascinated by the unfolding meta-game in Last Night of Alexisgrad, which asks whether the player/reader wants to consider their own motives and the motives of their partner as something separate from their respective characters. It was tough to avoid sharing my reactions while the story unfolded. 

However, I felt much more distant from the story during the direct interactions between General and Dictator. As the players pass messages outside the game, their impassioned arguments and pleas for mercy get reduced to flat combinations of letters and numbers.

This entry was fun, and I can only imagine the work that was necessary to correctly implement different branches of the narrative while keeping them hidden from half the audience — the hard work paid off! 

I was entertained by the descriptive writing and the historical depth of The Last Night of Alexisgrad.

The Daughter: IFcomp 2021

The Daughter (alternately capitalized as “The daughter” in its IFcomp ballot listing) is a choice-based story created by Giovanni Rubino for IFcomp 2021.  

I had difficulty engaging with this work because of implementation issues. The pale gray text was difficult to read, most of the passages included spelling errors, and then it ended abruptly. (Right after I asked to be pointed to my room, everything stopped.)

The Daughter’s blurb makes it sound like The Children of Men meets The Eyes of Heisenberg, but its focus was uneven — some details were described exhaustively while other information felt like it was missing. This might have been translated from another language, which could explain some of its unusual phrasing and descriptions. 

If not, there were some bold style choices that failed to resonate with me.

Overall, I couldn’t find enough relatable context to understand the forces at work in The Daughter’s far-future setting. Yes, there were some jokes about the broken culture of the twenty-first century, like our fixation on true crime podcasts, but they were used to emphasize differences, not to build empathy.

The Daughter might be waiting to be discovered by the right audience, but at the moment I think it could be improved with more thoughtful editorial decisions.

My Gender Is a Fish: IFcomp 2021

My Gender Is a Fish is a choice-based work that Carter Gwertzman entered into IFcomp, and it is beautiful.

Maybe it’s not technically beautiful — MGIAF uses Twine’s basic Sugarcube format with default font colors — but I really enjoyed the writing. Your gender gets stolen by a magpie, and you make a sequence of choices on the path to reclaim it. Each playthrough sees the same choices, but the story is short and the text changes enough to make it worth playing more than once.

I'm reluctant to call My Gender Is a Fish an allegory. For one thing, it doesn’t take itself seriously. Also, I’ve never clearly understood what makes an allegory. But that feels like a good fit for this entry's affirmative message about being okay with ambiguity.

My Gender Is a Fish asks thoughtful questions and makes sharp comparisons: How much of your life is tied to your gender identity, and what would you do without it?