Games to Play

Like most geeks of my generation, I was introduced to interactive fiction around 1980 by a friend who gave me a floppy containing a game called "Adventure." The experience was magical, and I remained peripherally fascinated by the possibilities of text-based games. In 1999 I decided to find out if I could actually write a game of my own. The result: "Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina". While primitive in some respects compared to modern IF -- there's not much of a story, and the characters are not well-rounded -- the game was reviewed favorably. If you enjoy solving puzzles, you may like it a lot.

After a hiatus of only seven years, I returned to IF in the fall of 2006. The result was a game called "Last Resort." While it's available from the Interactive Fiction Archive (see the Links page), I wasn't entirely happy with it, so you won't find it here. I reworked it as "Lydia's Heart". The new game embodies the same story, but a few of the weaker elements of the original version were excised, and the scenario was expanded. Lydia's Heart was released on August 15, 2007.

Early in 2008, Eric Eve and I collaborated on a game called "Mrs. Pepper's Nasty Secret". This game was designed specifically to introduce interactive fiction to newcomers, and for entry in two Comps (competitions) for IF, the Interactive Short Fiction Competition and the IFBeginnersComp. I'm happy to report that the game won both Comps. You'll find both the game itself and the TADS 3 source code here.

A more recent game, "April in Paris", was an entry in the 2008 IF Comp. Responses were generally positive, but it was bested by half a dozen other games. My most recent release as of January 2010 is "A Flustered Duck". The duck, which is rather thoroughly silly, won the 2009 Spring Thing competition.