14th Annual Interactive
Fiction Competition
2008
I've known about the Interactive Fiction Competition for a few years now, but haven't been eager to get involved. These people have been involved in the Interactive Fiction scene for over a decade, and I'm sadly out-of-touch. But this year I found Inform 6 and decided to give it a go. I started a game I thought I could finished by late summer and by George I was right.
One criterion for the competition is that the game must be finishable in two hours or less. Or at least that's the time alotted for judging. If the game was longer, the judges had to judge only on what they managed to play in two hours. I knew my game could easily be won in two hours or less, if the player "got it" early, and figured it out. Otherwise, it could have taken longer than the two alotted hours. I knew this going in, and I opted to enter it into the competition anyway, and I'm very glad I did.
My goal was not to win. That would be highly presumptuous say the least. I did have some goals, though.
- To finish in the top half
- To put a game out there - I often say people who criticize should put their money where their mouths are and instead of just commenting on things, put something new out there. I try to do this as often as possible.
- To give myself a deadline and an incentive to finish the project
- To not embarrass myself
- To see if an Infocom-style game would fly in this modern era of story-and-character-driven IF
- I like getting involved in things
- To have people I don't know play my game
So on October 1, the 35 games in this year's competition were revealed, and the starter gun fired.
And then it was an anxious time waiting for judges and players to write their review blogs.
First let me say this about Piracy 2.0. It is a dated game concept. It is modeled after those games I loved so much - the INFOCOM games. I know that in the modern era of post-professional IF, that the INFOCOM games still hold a lot of respect from players, but in a nostalgic way. I fully expect that most early INFOCOM games would not do well in the Interactive Fiction Competition. The genre has moved on. It is now more about character interaction, story and atmosphere than about logical puzzles.
It is with that in mind that I entered Piracy 2.0 into the Interactive Fiction Competition - knowing full well that its reception would be lukewarm. But I threw it into the ring anyway - my very first Inform project. And that's another thing. I'm so grossly inexperienced in this field that I didn't even change the default response to ">examine me". Who knew that it is often the first thing jaded players try?
And who knew, me being such a latecomer to Inform, and not having heard of the Interactive Fiction Competition, that every year someone submits a Pirates-In-Space type game? Despite the fact that I wrote this Pirates-In-Space type game originally back in 1984, which would allow me, I believe, to claim to be the pioneer of the genre. Even INFOCOM hadn't done that in 1985.
But as I write this, we are now just about exactly one month into the competition, with two weeks to go. And color me chuffed. This dated game, with such a cliché premise, has actually gotten pretty good critical response, perhaps the most appreciated coming from none other than Emily Short, recognized as one of the leading figures in IF today.
Now to some specific reviews:
- I got an e-mail from a player named Jack Welsh from Belgium. Said there was a bug in the code that resulted in a stuck condition. He sent me a transcript of his play session, and I found it was driver error. He had forgotten twice to confirm the NavCon course after setting it, thereby just languishing in a lost section of open space forever. At any time he could have confirmed the course and finished the game. But it was interesting that his transcript revealed a more serious error on my part. When entering any of my hand-coded palm-touch-pad-driven doors, using ShipMode directions (starboard, port, aft) would not work, and resulted in bad behavior. However, since this is not a game-sticking situation (you can still use east, west and south, which work fine), I didn't worry too much. Logged the bug, though, and will fix it post-competition. Thanks for the report, Jack, and the thoroughness of sending the transcripts.
A couple of notable lines from a very entertaining review:
"Oh, wow, there are feelies! Sean Huxter does not fuck around."
"This is not one of your newfangled interactive fictions, this is a bloody text adventure, goddammit. My opinion is that the world needs both."
- Another blog by a gamer working for the same company, apparently, and boyfriend of aforementioned reviewer, gave me a fairly good review. MinimumSafeDistance reviewed Piracy 2.0 here. Not quite as bubbly but very positive, and both reviewers seemed to really love the fact that I provided "feelies". Why is it that ">examine me" is a lithmus test for games? If I had known that, I would have changed that command to give a more detailed description of you, complete with a description of your uniform, and perhaps branch into a health report. Who knew?
His summary is worth posting:
"Summary: Writing is competent. Implementation is pretty good — I didn’t notice any real bugs, and with a couple small exceptions, the descriptions were reasonably complete (though of course you can always have more descriptions). The enviroment was well-realized, particularly the computers. The plot is pretty simple, but you could also call it straightforward, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. And feelies! Glee!"Good stuff. High marks, Sean Huxter."
- Got this review from George Dorn. First, let me state that I really appreciate a thoughtful review. A lot of people would just do a dozen commands, decide a game is not for them, and write an off-handed paragraph or two. George did not. However, George did mention two "pet peeves" of his, and said that Piracy 2.0 had both. When in fact it has neither.
He didn't like time limits, and he didn't like infinite enemies.
"A second pet peeve of mine: Time limits. These can be done well, or they can be done unfairly and penalize exploration."Piracy 2.0 has both of these, and they combine in a particularly annoying way."
Piracy 2.0 has neither, in fact. (With the exception of a timer that starts when you set and confirm a course for home, and a few timers you can initiate by giving the computer certain commands.) Otherwise, no time limts. Reviews based on false assumptions or misperceptions are harder to take. So I fired off an e-mail to him. I hope I wasn't out of line.
We exchanged a couple of very friendly e-mails, but for some reason he didn't correct his review, which is still factually incorrect, but did correct it in a comment below the review.
Still, I liked this part: He found something that I'm sure not a lot of players will:
"The first few puzzles are well-implemented and intuitive. Escape from the jail cell, arm yourself, and try to recover the ship. There's a well-implemented plot tree that allows you to make decisions to direct the plot - for example, when you cause an explosion in an room adjoining the jail cell, the captain announces that someone is coming to investigate. If you go back to your cell and wait, the pirate that arrives notices nothing amiss, buying you a little time before you need to engage the pirates directly."
I'm glad he found that little tidbit. It's not something I think a lot of players will do, but he's right. If you go back to your cell after opening the Freezer door, in time for a Pirate to check on you, the pirates' general alarm level stays very low, giving you more freedom to move around the ship.
- Christos Dimitrakakis writes this fairly succinct review. Not sure what he meant in places, I think perhaps English is not his first language, and if that's true, then his characterization of my language as slightly awkward is a bit suspect. Still, not a bad review. I still don't know what he means in that first sentence.
Piracy 2.0
----------I cannot examine all that I could. The prose is mostly technically correct, but slightly awkward. I like the backstory, and the game is paced nicely.
The puzzles are moderately difficult, but they are also hampered by the lack of adequate coverage of possible commands - more synonyms would be nice.
At some point in the game you have a rather explicit choice between five (apparently) possible endings. In fact, however, the number of possibly endings is considerably larger, and they all appear to be making sense. I ended up drifting aimlessly in space, but hey, at least I escaped.
Overall a very well thought-out puzzler, with a nice atmosphere and plot, outcomes that make sense.. but it would need a bit more attention to detail for it to be truly outstanding.
Story: 7
Puzzles: 9
Technical: 7
Interest: 10
Overall: 8
- I got this one from Russia. This is an auto-translation using Google's translation tech:
Piracy 2.0Another oldskulnaya toys. You - the captain of a ship seized by pirates. On the realism and depth of story it is not, there is a fault implementation. Riddles good, but like anything special ... The game is clearly designed for a longer time than the regulatory 2 hours (at least if you do not use the passage): a good hour certainly will go only to figure out how to manage multiple systems of the ship. Certainly require, and "setbacks" - many things, unless the player is not clairvoyant, could be misleading.
In general, I repeat, the game like anything special from ourselves is not, but against the backdrop of a weak chain frankly works, which have had to deal before, pleasantly surprised.
Ok, this gets better. On October 17, Emily posted her summary of the year's competion. Piracy 2.0 made it into her top 5, which is far beyond my expectations. And I have to love the last sentence of the Piracy mention:
"The best pure-game experience of the competition."
Considering that was what I was shooting for, this is great feedback. I didn't enter an arty story-driven fiction, like many do, often to great success. I entered an old-style Infocom-like game. It's nice to have that do well in a competition like this. After all, Piracy 2.0 was conceived in 1984 and written (in BASIC) in 1985, so comments about this being an over-used genre are to be expected, and I certainly expected them. What I didn't expect is for people to actually like it despite its dated format. Yes!
"What makes the game a standout is how many and interesting are your options once you've escaped confinement. The ship has a lot of different features -- weapons, navigation, abilities to shut off parts of the ship from one another, etc. -- and there are a number of different ways to use all those features to produce different outcomes. So the main part of the game feels not so much as though you're working through a stack of set puzzles, but as though you're really coming to grips with a complex system and then inventing ways to use it against the pirates. This is hugely satisfying. To make this work, the Ceres has been designed in a lot of detail (feelies for the game include a very classy-looking diagram of the ship, which is useful)."
Currently I have two votes. Come on, people! Go vote for Piracy 2.0!
One thing he noted:
"The game takes place entirely on U.W.S. Ceres, a name taken from the Starcross' registration, and it's a ship that sort of feels like a Klingon Bird-of-Prey. Once you escape the brig your free to roam around the ship, which is now filled with smoke from an electrical fire, running into a few pirates now and then that pop in and out of the haze."
Right on both counts. The Ceres is named from documentation from the INFOCOM game "Starcross", and the ship was intentinally designed to be very similar to a Klingon Bird-of-Prey from the Star Trek films.
He did note some of my more annoying bugs that got by me, but I'll use that data to hopefully improve a post-comp release.
During the competition's six-week judging period, many people posted reviews of the game. Below is a fairly comprehensive list of those reviewers. Those in bold reviewed Piracy 2.0. Those not bolded did not, or have not as yet.
JDC - Review here
Peter Nepstad
Victor Gijsbers
Aric Maddux
Gemma Bristow
J. Robinson Wheeler
“Newlin” - Review here
Michael McMartin - Review here
Skeet
ralphmerridew - Review here
“Another Mr Lizard” - Review here
Joshua H - Review here
Wesley Osam
Nick Bronson
Mike Rubin - Review here
Nitku
Sarah Morayati (Lucea) - Review here
Stephen Bond
Russian reviews (if your grasp of Russian is like mine, namely nonexistent, you may want this comical Google translation instead) - Review here - Post #22 (Translated)
Merk (Mike Snyder) - Review here
http://mybloglovesme.tumblr.com/ - Review here
http://minimumsafedistance.org/ (warning: reviews don’t seem to be cut-tagged) - Review here
“Imrihamun” - Review here
Carl Muckenhoupt - Review here
Cesia (no cut-tags here either; the author claims there are no spoilers, but if you’d rather avoid seeing any information about specific games before you play, you may still want to be cautious)
Octopus Overlords forum (brief, largely unspoilery reviews; no cut-tags) - Actualy, no reviews at all here yet.
Wintericecrystal’s Youtube reviews
N. B. Horvath (detailed comments are cut-tagged; overview of comp scores are not)
Lucy - Review here
Dan Shiovitz - Review here - Oooh. For the longest time this hadn't changed, but now he's reviewed Piracy, and put it in his short-list of Highly Recommended! YES! Short review, not all positive, but hey, Highly Recommended!
Jacqueline Lott - She's trickling some in, but may hold back until the end to post all reviews.
Jake Wildstrom (no cut tags) - A text file. Review here
George Dorn - Review here
Christos Dimitrakakis (no cut tags) - Review here, near bottom of page
Ben Deane (no cut tags)
“Scatmania” (I confess to a little nervousness about the title of this blog, but it does contain reviews for “Violet” and “Grief” so far, and may eventually develop others. No cut tags.)
Auntie Pixelante (no cut-tags, review of Violet only so far)
On November 16, Stephen Granade, the competition's moderator, announced the results. And they are:
1 Violet, by Jeremy Freese
2 Nightfall, by Eric Eve
3 Everybody Dies, by Jim Munroe
4 Afflicted, by Doug Egan
5 Piracy 2.0, by Sean Huxter - Hey, ho! I took fifth place! Not at all shabby!
6 Snack Time!, by Hardy the Bulldog & Renee Choba
7 Opening Night, by David Batterham
8 April in Paris, by Jim Aikin
9 A Date With Death, by David Whyld
10 Berrost's Challenge, by Mark Hatfield
11 Cry Wolf, by Clare Parker
12 Escape from the Underworld, by Karl Beecher
13 Buried In Shoes, by Kazuki Mishima
14 Magic, by Geoff Fortytwo
15 Recess At Last, by Gerald Aungst
16 Grief, by Simon Christiansen
17 Trein, by Leena Ganguli
18 The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom, by Anssi Räisänen
19 Red Moon, by Jonathan Hay
20 Dracula's Underground Crypt, by Alex Whitington
21 Channel Surfing, by Mike Vollmer (writing as probabilityZero)
22 Ananachronist, by Joseph Strom
23 When Machines Attack, by Mark Jones
24 The Lucubrator, by Rick Dague
25 A Martian Odyssey, by Horatio
26 The Hall of the Fount of Artois, by Simon
27 LAIR of the CyberCow, by Conrad Cook (writing as Harry Wilson)
28 Search for the Ultimate Weapon, by SHARON LYNN CHU YEW YEE (writing
as Sharilynn)
29 The Missing Piece, by C.Yong
30 Freedom, by Anonymous
31 Riverside, by Jeremy Crockett, Victor Janmey
32 Project Delta, by Emilian Kowalewski
33 Nerd Quest, by gabor de mooij (writing as RagtimeNerd)
34 The Lighthouse, by xyzzyman
35 The Absolute Worst IF Game in History, by Dean Menezes
Piracy ©1985,2008 Sean Huxter