Five MORE Games From IF Comp 2023
The comp that just keeps on contributing
The Interactive Fiction (IF) train just keeps on a-rollin’. Five days remain in the 2023 Interactive Fiction Competition, or IF Comp. If you’re interested in voting, time is running out. If not, well, these games will remain available after the Comp, in order of popularity, so maybe that’s okay.
In the meantime, I offer five more recommendations from the comp that may bring you joy. Once again, all of these games are playable in-browser, meaning there is little to no barrier to entry.
If you want even more more recommendations, I highly suggest you listen to The Short Game Podcast, which does excellent coverage on the IF Comp every year. You can also find some recommendations from this week’s Adventure Snack newsletter.
1) The Whale’s Keeper
| Plotopolis | 30mYou wake up in the belly of a great blue whale, the memory of how you got here a little fuzzy. The good news is that you happen to be a cetologist, or whale expert. At least, you thought you were. The inside of this whale seems to defy scientific explanation. So now you have a decision to make: find a way out and return to the surface, or take this opportunity to explore the mysteries of this gentle giant.
Anybody who knows my namesake will understand why a story about being swallowed by a large aquatic mammal resonates with me. The Whale’s Keeper is a short experience full of discovery and wonder that shines, despite its sometimes awkward delivery.
The Whale’s Keeper is the first experiment in a new IF program developed by Ben Parzybok called “Plotopolis.” Designed to work in instant messaging platforms such as Slack and Telegram, Plotopolis games play out in the form of text messages sent in real-time. While the web-based version does not require either of these platforms to play, it is based on the Telegram architecture.
It is an interesting format, but comes with all of the drawbacks of instant messaging. Paragraphs are delivered in separate message blocks, meaning that you’ll be seeing a lot of ellipses as Plotopolis composes its messages. Worse, when a new message is sent, the previous message gets bumped up, causing you to lose your place. You can increase the speed at which messages are sent, but even at 2x speed, I found myself frequently losing my place in the otherwise well-written story. It is definitely a point of friction, but I love the storytelling potential of this new format.
2) All Hands
Natasha Ramoutar | Texture | 30m
You have a complicated relationship with the sea, and it only gets more complicated when you discover a ghost ship anchored to a hidden beach. As you climb aboard the mysterious vessel, you are approached by Albertina, the self-proclaimed “ringmaster” of the ship, who invites you to her ballroom for a night of festivities. What follows is a fever dream of self-reflection and discovery, with more than a touch of magic, as you try to piece together what is going on and what your place is in this story of the sea.
All Hands is built using Texture, a unique IF program where you explore the story by dragging specific words onto other words. It is a system that works well on mobile devices and lends itself to poetic word-association. All Hands uses only three verbs — reflect, approach, and take — which are always visible at the bottom of the screen. When one of these verbs are clicked on and dragged, certain words from the passage turn red, indicating that the two words may interact. All Hands stretches the definitions of these words in places (you can “take” a melody as easily as you can “take” a set of keys), but generally “Reflect” reveals more about your characters thoughts and tragic backstory, “Take” gives you access to items in the environment, and “Approach” moves the story forward.
All Hands is a mysterious and haunting experience with multiple, equally cryptic, endings. What it lacks in concrete answers, it makes up for in mood and haunting imagery.
3) 20 Exchange Place
Sol FC | Ink | 15m
A short bit of IF that feels unfortunately unfinished. 20 Exchange Place sees you take on the roll of a hostage negotiator on the scene of a bank robbery in progress. Things hit the ground running as you must deal with the crowd of spectators and journalists that have gathered outside the building, before formulating a plan of attack against the bank robbers.
Unfortunately, you seem a little incompetent, and frequent references to a previously botched negotiation seem to confirm this. You are given a lot more ways to fail than succeed, and after several playthroughs, I am convinced that there are no good endings. Your plans always end in horrible failure and a critical headline in the next day’s paper.
Despite that, it is a solidly written work, with lots of ways of going about the problem. You can get fired from the police force before you even get to tackle the problem of the robbery, or you can go one of three different routes in approaching the bank. It feels like with a little more time and effort this could have been a really solid story with some real tension. As it stands now, it is simply a good 15 minute ride.
4) One Does Not Simply Fry
Stewart C Baker and James Beamon | Choicescript | 1 hr
You've lived your whole live[sic] without reading the Silma by Real Leon and it's never slowed you down. But you're not here to try and convince Real Leon his Silma isn't essential reading to understand contemporary geopolitics. You're here to make a fancy-ass onion ring.
I considered leaving this one off the list, as the humor in One Does Not Simply Fry (ODNSF) didn’t really resonate with me and felt a little try-hard at times, but then I read the above quote and changed my mind.
One Does Not Simply Fry sees you take part in a cooking competition to fry the best onion rings in the Twelve Mostly Civilized Realms. Perhaps, with the right combination of luck and skill, you might even fry up the On(e)ion Ring. You choose one of four playable characters: Leggy Ass, Avis Barb, Froyo (with his companion Samfool), or the Which King? (who is unlockable after beating the game once), all of whom have their own strengths and weaknesses. Your opponents include Marcher and Sour Ron, and you compete at the top of Mount Boom, with or without the aid of the book “Silma” by Real Leon, the ancient tome of ultimate fry-lore that no one’s bothered to read.
In case you haven’t caught on yet, the majority of jokes in this game boil down to “hey, have you read Lord of the Rings?” Nonetheless, the game is completely earnest, and once you get to the actual cooking competition it offers you lots of choices for how to proceed. With four characters, a dozen branching options, and a little random numbers generation (RNG), there’s certainly a lot to explore in this goofy little adventure.
Also, there’s a vegetarian mode.
One Does Not Simply Fry uses the Choicescript engine, one of the most popular interactive fiction platforms today, supporting hundreds of titles through the Choice of Games storefront on both PC and mobile. Choicescript uses simple choice-based navigation and can track any number of statistics that may or may not have any impact on how a game plays out. In the case of ODNSF, statistics include breadcraft, speech, strength, and baking mastery, as well as a few hidden variables.
While not my personal favorite, ODNSF is a lighthearted adventure with lots to explore and will certainly elicit a chuckle or two over its hour-long playtime.
5) Eat the Eldritch
Olaf Nowacki | Inform | 1h 30m
If you want a classic interactive fiction experience, then Eat the Eldritch is a solid pick. Inform is one of the oldest IF engines out there, having been used in many popular titles throughout the decades. Eat the Eldritch is far from the only Inform game in the Comp, but it is a good starting point for players new to the platform.
You play the captain of the Tataki, a fish-processing ship struggling to fill its quota. The game gives you very little direction, instead giving you the freedom to explore the ship on your own. After some time, the game will prod you with hints as to your next goal, which prevents the game from ever grinding to a complete standstill when things are unclear. The story does pick up once the ship comes under threat and you find yourself faced with an Eldritch monstrosity that just might solve some of your problems.
The game is not really scary, though it makes overt nods to the works of Lovecraft, neither is it particularly funny, instead striking an irreverent tone as you and your crew calmly react to the horrific situations before you. There are many ways to die, but the game is forgiving, as it immediately takes you back to a safer passage when you reach a dead end, not even requiring an UNDO command.
It suffers the same roadbumps that many other parser-based IF games do, though it thoroughly rewards exploration of its eldritch spaces. I did get stumped at points, but the included guide was helpful and the solutions, though unorthodox, were never frustrating or impossible to figure out. The game is also unusual in that it uses ship directions (Fore, Aft, Port, Starboard) in place of the traditional North-South-East-West, which can be confusing. Thankfully, there is an option to replace these directions to ease navigation.
Eat the Eldritch is a fun and engaging puzzle adventure, with lots of space to explore and some cool set pieces to experience. It may be a little slow and directionless for new players, but with some patience and careful exploration, I think you’ll find it a rewarding experience.
Next Time…
We leave the world of IF Comp and jump into another genre of interactive fiction: the visual novel!