Interactive Fiction, etc

[Mrenda]

Have there been any or many games that are purely or heavily based on dialogue? (and maybe a little directive text?)

The one game that comes to mind is Cause of Death on the iPod but surely there are more examples going back. I cab think of the likes of MUDs but they were more about interacting with the environment, other players and memorising directions like U,N,N,W,S,W, attack fish with rod. And then there are adventure games but most of the ones I've played had exploration, minigames and items.

Interactive fiction seems to have remained a distinctly amateur thing. Is it that decent writers see such an endeavour as beneath them? Are gamers less likely to enjoy dialogue and text with words being the thing to skip over? Or is it a logistical thing where the choice needed to make a textual decision significant simply amounts to an impossible expanding narrative that is too hard to write coherently.

This is all based on my tabletop rpg thing. My favourite games have always been where the physical clues and actions are minimal and most of the impetus comes from a dialogue and interviewing people.

I fully accept that my age could be showing here and most of you have great nostalgia for games like this made in the eighties and early nineties but which you came to realise were actually terrible games.

[Ex-S Woo]

Have you already played all the Phoenix Wright games? I haven't played Cause of Death but it looks to be inspired by that series from what I saw of it.

[malkav11]

If you mean that IF has remained strictly amateur in the sense that it's being done by people as a hobby in their spare time rather than as a successful business venture, you are correct. If you mean that it has remained strictly amateur in that nobody with much talent is doing it, you are playing the wrong IF.

[Mrenda]

Have you already played all the Phoenix Wright games? I haven't played Cause of Death but it looks to be inspired by that series from what I saw of it.


I played the first Pheonix Wright for the DS, but I didn't particularly enjoy it. It was too Japanese for me. It came across as quite weird in how its logic was structured, and like a lot of adventure games it didn't sync up with my own thought pattern. I have played the free introduction to Cause of Death, the first murder. It was quite different to Pheonix Wright, there seemed to be a lot less control over what you did and said (less adventure and more text.) But the story was more cohesive and the logic was more satisfying. Also it came across as more realistic (that could mean more Westernised or more CSI, etc. I haven't fully processed the idea.) I'd recommend you give it a try, at least the free part. Although I'm waiting on a Steam like sale to pick up the rest. I didn't realise the last sale CoD was happening until the end of it, and my snap decision was to wair, although I sometimes regret not buying it.


If you mean that IF has remained strictly amateur in the sense that it's being done by people as a hobby in their spare time rather than as a successful business venture, you are correct. If you mean that it has remained strictly amateur in that nobody with much talent is doing it, you are playing the wrong IF.

I appreciate there's probably some, and maybe alot of good IF out there. However I get the feeling that I, like a lot of other people, don't know where to find it or how to seperate the wheat from the chaff. The last time I tried looking at it I took an age to get to grips with dodgy software from even dodgier looking sites, and the tale ended up being some form of slashfic. I meant amatuer in the sense it hasn't been marketed or capitalised on, to a general audience. Surely with the huge budgets for games out there, more people would see IF as a potential low risk business opportunity. EA took the chance with Cause of Death. I figure they're testing the water with it and deciding whether to push it further with a bigger business strategy behind it. And the Android and IOS markets seem like the perfect place to try it.

Is it something that's going to happen soon, or is it going to remain the pursuit of "bedroom coders?"

[malkav11]

People have tried it in the past - consider for example the game "Once and Future", which was shareware for a while. And Andrew Plotkin, one of the most acclaimed IF authors, is supposedly working on an iOS IF game that will be pay-to-play. But it's not really been particularly successful and I think there's a certain undercurrent in the community at this point that charging money for things they're used to getting for free is selling out.

As for a good starting point: go here (http://www.ifcomp.org/) and check out past winners. Generally speaking anything in the top 3-5 in a given year will be well worth at least looking at, and there may be enjoyment to be had further down the list later. There are other significant games, especially longer ones, that were not IFComp entries, or are expanded over their entry into the competition, but the competition is a good place to start and has built-in chaff winnowing.

There are also apparently amateur visual novels and of course Adventure Game Studio games, but I've little experience with those.

Note that a lot of these aren't going to be purely dialogue - the genre has its roots in puzzle-heavy games like Zork - but it's certainly something some authors have spent time exploring.

[Inactiviste]

Adam Cadre's Photopia (http://adamcadre.ac/if.html) might be my favourite interactive fiction. It's a true classic of the genre : well written, moving, metaphysical in its scope. The focus is more on narration than puzzles.

Andrew Plotkin's Shade is also pretty good, even if the parser can be tricky (maye it's because I'm not a native english speaker though).

For something more recent, there is Digital : a Love Story (http://www.scoutshonour.com/digital/) from Christine Love (whom I was the first to interview, yeah me), which captures the atmosphere of the early internet and has a cute story. I didn't care much for her last game (Don't Take it Personally...), but people seem to love it.

[Dan Lawrence]

There are plenty of enjoyable IF games out there. One IF game, called The Baron I think, is particularly haunting and should be played with caution. The one where everything gradually turns to sand is also a bit disturbing and has clearly stayed with me. More enjoyably, I also liked the one where you only have a few seconds/actions to do something and you have to keep replaying to figure out exactly what is a good outcome for you.

I think people are just a bit reluctant to pay for IF because it's seen as a relic of the past, fashions have moved on or something.

[Warning]

If you have an iPhone, download Frotz and it comes preinstalled with several great games. Probably the easiest way to get started.

And definitely check out Anchorhead - it's a Lovecraft-inspired game that's a lot of fun.

[Alistair]

Perhaps here Buceph:

http://www.microheaven.com/IFGuide/index.html

[DeepT]

Planescape: Torment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape:_Torment) was heavily based on dialog. It was like reading a book where you got to make many plot choices. It also had a lot of action and exploration, so it wasn't all about the dialog.

[Misguided]

Time Hollow is an excellent work of interactive fiction on the DS, IMO. This is a game that got very little attention when it was released, but it has strong production values, and the story manages to have some nice twists to it while giving you enough so that you think you know what is going on. It's more serious in tone than the PW games and doesn't share their goofy sensibility.

I'd also highly recommend 999 on DS, but it is a different beast. While this could be called interactive fiction, it also has a strong puzzle element to it. This one has a much more "out there" kind of story that may not be perfect for you if you want something a bit more grounded.

[strategy]

Adventure Gamebooks (aka Choose Your Own Adventure) seem to be enjoying a renaissance on mobile format.

Tin Man Games (http://tinmangames.com.au/blog/?page_id=203) have a bunch of such products on iPhone, and there are certainly other offerings as well. Choice of Games (https://market.android.com/developer?pub=Choice+of+Games,+Inc) do similar Gamebook-type of games for Android (though with more diverse subjects than the classical hack and slash fantasy story).

I've been discussing with Gamebook writers myself in connection Pirates and Traders, as I have a built-in Gamebook system in that game, and the idea was always to add in adventure stories to spice up the basic pirate/trading gameplay. There is definitely a sizable community out there, and in-print Gamebooks are still going relatively strong, from what I gather. I'm thinking of re-using the story modules from P&T in some of my future projects, as I really like the combination of story-telling/narrative gameplay with more traditional strategy-like gameplay.

[Misguided]

The books that Tin Man makes are more like Fighting Fantasy than CYOA, in that you roll dice to fight things, find treasures, etc. I played the first one, and thought it was rather good. I loved the CYOA books back in the day.

[charmtrap]

At this point there are hundreds of IF works out there and some really excellent writers have made them. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the good modern IF games are far better than anything the Infocom or Level 9 made back in the 80's.

My two favorite works of amateur IF are from the mid-90's, but Jigsaw (http://www.wurb.com/if/game/117) and Christminster (http://www.wurb.com/if/game/43) were both brilliantly written and designed games. I haven't played the games from the IF competition in several years (not even sure it's still going), but there were two or three stand-outs every year from that.

[nothings]

There are a number of sites from people within the IF community with reasonable lists, although some are dated, and some are oriented torwards beginninger players:
http://pr-if.org/play/
http://nickm.com/if/rec.html
http://www.carouselchain.com/if/statistics.php

The IF author Emily Short (http://emshort.wordpress.com/my-work/) has pushed on conversations more than any other creator. A number of her games feature them prominently as the central interaction, Galatea being the most famous and oldest; on the linked page Glass and Alabaster are also conversational.

I personally haven't played any IF games in six or more years, but I'm still part of the ifcomp community and keep up with what's going on for the most part, but it means I can't actually recommend any specific games. (Although there are more semi-independent communities nowadays as more people have started playing them.)

[Nate]

So we want a choose-your-own-adventure video game? I used to love those books.

[Mrenda]

What's the best software for creating something like this?

I'm planning on eventually getting my "story" onto an android platform. I'm trying to learn Java, and once I have a few scenes down I'm going to write something up for it. But at the moment, I'd like to make sure the content of what I plan to put into the Android App is there.

The content will mainly be made up of dialogue. So something that's good for that. And maybe something that exports to an XML format, or even a plain txt file.

[Sten Friberg]

Have you already played all the Phoenix Wright games? I haven't played Cause of Death but it looks to be inspired by that series from what I saw of it.

I'm playing Cause of Death on my iPad, but it crashes every ten minutes or so. Is there anything I can do about that, or is it simply because it wasn't made for the iPad but the iPhone?

I rather like it, but the crashes (and replaying bits) overshadows what might otherwise have been a good IF experience.

[Mrenda]

It crashed a lot for me too, on the iPod Touch (latest generation.) I didn't do anything about it, just struggled through.

[razarok]

Also a phoenix wright game, but I would suggest the fifth game in the series, which is the first ace attorney investigations game. In it you play edgeworth, one of the prosecutors of the first and other games!

In my opinion they really improved the logic. Unlike the other games I never had to consult a FAQ during the entire playthrough.

[mkozlows]

Emily Short's Galatea is the best dialogue game I've ever seen, though there may be better. If you're interested in seeing how that could work, play it.

[strategy]

What's the best software for creating something like this?

I'm planning on eventually getting my "story" onto an android platform. I'm trying to learn Java, and once I have a few scenes down I'm going to write something up for it. But at the moment, I'd like to make sure the content of what I plan to put into the Android App is there.

The content will mainly be made up of dialogue. So something that's good for that. And maybe something that exports to an XML format, or even a plain txt file.

The Choice of Games (http://www.choiceofgames.com/) guys have an engine that they use for all of their games, which they allow others to create games with (for a share of the revenue, of course). They have a scripting language for this called ChoiceScript - you might want to look into that. They've built an engine both for web, Android, iPhone, etc. Not bad.

For my own games, I just rolled my own system using XML for the source files (which I write directly to). It's not particularly difficult, depending on what you'd like to do, and it's almost trivial to code the GUI for this stuff in Android, at least.

[Mrenda]

For my own games, I just rolled my own system using XML for the source files (which I write directly to). It's not particularly difficult, depending on what you'd like to do, and it's almost trivial to code the GUI for this stuff in Android, at least.

Yeah, that's partly why I've picked an IF style thing to do. I have grander, more game like things I'd like to do, but I'm not able to even contemplate how to do them at the moment. I figured with something like my IF idea I'd just have to let one bit of dialogue lead to another, make a few choice mechanics, and keep track of a few attributes to give further choices down the line. So this is manageable, which is good. In the past I found myself spending more time thinking about the game design, rather than how to implement the code. Something I shouldn't be doing, and which resulted in me stopping looking at Java for a while. I was simply daunted by my task. This way could work for me.

[GregB]

Some of my students have had success with Inform 7 (http://inform7.com/). It's fairly easy to get simple stuff up and running. It can get complicated fairly quickly, but there are lots of plug-in available.

[Misguided]

I'm playing Cause of Death on my iPad, but it crashes every ten minutes or so. Is there anything I can do about that, or is it simply because it wasn't made for the iPad but the iPhone?

I rather like it, but the crashes (and replaying bits) overshadows what might otherwise have been a good IF experience.

Have you tried shutting the iPad down completely and restarting? How about closing a bunch of your open apps?