Zarf Updates

I am delighted to announce that The Beyond will be launching on Steam and Itch on November 4th. (Supporting Mac/Win/Linux/SteamDeck.)

The Beyond is one of Jason Shiga's interactive comic books, #2 in the Adventuregame Comics series. It's an adventure beyond the boundaries of life, death, and the covers of a book. Romance! Pirates! Probably a giant squid lurking somewhere!

• The Beyond on Steam (coming soon!)
• The Beyond on Itch.IO (coming soon!)
• The Beyond as a hardback book

But that's not all! We will also be launching Leviathan for iPhone and iPad on the same day -- that's November 4th.

Leviathan is Adventuregame Comics #1 -- a story of truth, lies, and yes, a giant squid. It's been available on Steam and Itch for a while; now it's making its debut on the Apple App Store.

I don't have a direct link for you, because Apple doesn't believe in "coming soon" pages for its app store. Watch this post or the Zarfhome site for the store page as soon as Leviathan goes on sale.

• Leviathan on the iOS App Store (coming soon!)
• Leviathan on Steam
• Leviathan on Itch.IO
• Leviathan as a hardback book

(Before you write me: Apple does believe in "prepurchase this game" pages. But I'm not a fan of pre-orders so I didn't set that up. Pay your money on the 4th and start playing Leviathan right then and there!)

Of course, Meanwhile has been available on all these platforms for years. You could call it AdventureGame Comics #0 if you wanted. Little Jimmy discovers a laboratory full of fantastical inventions: a time machine, a doomday machine, and a SQUID. What will happen next?

• Meanwhile on the iOS App Store
• Meanwhile on Steam
• Meanwhile on Itch.IO
• Meanwhile as a hardback book

A quick note: I realize that next week is a High-Stress Interval for Americans and, really, everybody else. I apologize for getting tangled up with that. I gotta launch sometime and that week is when the timing worked out. Maybe these games will serve as a Monday diversion? I don't know. I can't fix American politics (and I already voted by mail) but I can keep supporting narrative games. Do what you can. Vote if you're a voter.

Looking beyond this launch and, we devoutly hope, after some much-needed stress relief...

I will of course work to bring The Beyond to iPhone/iPad. I've got the artwork and the layout, so it's just a matter of importing them into my iOS framework. Hopefully that will be available early next year.

Then there's Samurai vs Ninja, Adventuregame Comics #3 -- already available in book form. We have not yet started on adapting this one, so I won't try to promise a release date. We'll make it happen, though.

Thanks for supporting Jason and me all these years!

You may recall that my term as an IFTF board member ended in March. I've now also stepped back as the chair of NarraScope; Matt Griffin and JD Calvelli will be running that show in 2025. (More news on that front soon!)

This leaves me with two big IFTF roles: Treasurer and IF Archive lead. I'm happy with the IF Archive job; I figure I'll hold onto that for a while. But it's getting to be time to hand off the Treasurer job. I've been doing that since, well, since day one.

In fact, I've been doing a lot of work for IFTF that's agglomerated under the "Treasurer" job. I'm the person who sets up servers, pays the bills, tracks donations, configures the email system, keeps most of the passwords for services like AWS... a whole litany of tasks where I've said "Yeah, I'll just do that real quick" because that was easier than delegating.

So we've decided that I should have two successors:

• Treasurer: Manage the bank account and Paypal account; track all expenses and donations; make sure the bills are paid.
• Tech Officer: Manage the core online services (web hosting, domain registrations, email); set up new services when needed; general sysadmin work.

Note that the Tech Officer does not have to administer IFTF's service sites: IntFiction.org, IFDB, IFWiki, IFComp.org, and so on. Each of those programs has a committee and admins to keep them running. The Tech Officer's job is to manage the cloud services we use (Linode, AWS, Github, etc) and make sure the committees have the resources they need.

Obviously these are high-trust positions! We will primarily be considering candidates whose names we know -- people have been active in the IF and IFTF community for a while. Yes, this is a clique-y thing to say, but it just doesn't make sense to bring in a total stranger and give them the keys to the bank account or the servers.

So it's a little weird for me to be posting this on social media. I know! But it's worth getting the word out, and after all, a lot of my followers are folks that I know.

To everybody else: you are awesome too! There's plenty of scope to drop into the IFTF forum or Discord and say "Hey, I'm new here, I'd like to help out, what can I do?" Just, you know, probably not Treasurer on day one.

Okay, awkward part over. Interested in one of these jobs? Check out our forum post! (Which I posted last week; apologies if you've seen it multiple times.)

The doc attached to that post has the info for applying. The post also has estimates of how much work each role takes. (Fuzzy estimates, because it varies quite a bit.)

Oh, and don't worry -- I will give my successors a good long ramp-up for the job(s). And then I'll stick around as advisor to explain any surprises. I don't expect you'll be completely settled in for a full year, since, you know, IFTF does a lot of things that happen exactly once a year.

Thanks for your interest!

I guess I'm going to have to change my mystery game tagline. I'm playing more of these and getting better at them. Or maybe more designers are picking up the Obra-Dinn-ish static deduction model, which is the format I'm most simpatico with.

(Speaking of that model, the next Golden Idol game will be November 12th. And the revamped Roottrees is coming on January 15th! With new material and new puzzles. I probably won't write a full review post, since I wrote up the original last March, but I'll definitely play it.)

But right now...

• No Case Should Remain Unsolved
• Thalassa: Edge of the Abyss

A couple of months ago, I posted this on the sociality:

Every once in a while I listen to “Hog-Eye Man”, a fine sea shanty. Lots of versions online:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfMhy-Er-_Y [Martin Carthy]
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCIM_shahkI [The Longest Johns]

But... it’s noted as one of the filthiest shanties ever collected.

Of course, every published and recorded version is cleaned up! Ass-cheeks and bit of double entendre are all that remain. (Maybe the N-word if you go back to 1960.)

https://mainlynorfolk.info/watersons/songs/hogeyeman.html

I have been curious about the truly filthy original version for years. Never found it.

[@zarfeblong, Mastodon post, July 14, 2024]

If you follow that Mainly Norfolk link, you'll see an amazing number of quotes about how unprintable the original was, but nothing about what the unprintable lyrics actually were. Such a folk-tease!

This is one of the Shanties where authors seem to be obsessed about obscenity. Whall: “much of this shanty is unprintable”; Terry: “Of the infinite number of verses to this fine tune hardly one is printable”; Colcord: “None of the versions can be printed in anything like their entirety”; Hugill: “Many other shanties were just as obscene, and even worse.”

[Quoted from the notes to an album called Short Sharp Shanties Vol. 3, 2012. Performance on that album sung by Jackie Oates.]

So, cutting to the chase, I've found some of the original "unprintable" text. But not all.

Obvious content warning! The rest of this post will have lots of crude language. Mostly genitalia slang. Racial slurs. The F-word will be deployed.

Now, I know this is mostly a gaming blog. I sometimes go freewheeling off into folk songs and other topics as may grab my interest. I hope you're along for that ride! But a blast of sailors' language may be more than you signed up for. Furthermore, I'm syndicated on Planet-IF (an IF news aggregator) and going blue there would really be bad manners.

Therefore, just this once, the full text of this post will not appear in my RSS feed. (I had to tweak my blog software to allow this! Yay writing your own tools.)

If you're reading this on Planet-IF or your RSS reader, please continue to my web site for the full post.

I am, in some weird sense, a standard-bearer for a kind of retro adventure game, a particular kind that I played obsessively as a kid. I sometimes realize how uncomfortably particular I am. Such as when I played The Crimson Diamond, a paean to a slightly later era of retro adventure game that I didn't play and have no nostalgia for.

He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" and I pushed him over.

[Emo Philips, of course]

I enjoyed TCD! But, look, EGA colors are ugly and giant pixel fonts hurt my eyes. The most important moment in Infocom's history was when they realized they could support the Mac's beautiful proportional fonts with only the slightest change to their virtual machine.

Okay? Now forget about me and let's talk about The Crimson Diamond.

Canada -- the 1920s. Junior museum clerk Nancy Maple is dispatched to investigate rumors of a massive diamond found in the boreal wilds of Ontario. You and your traveling companion Kimi arrive at the Crimson Lodge, where... mysteries ensue!

We're a little behind the book this time, but the game is now in progress!

Coming soon on Steam and Itch.IO! Wishlist today!

The Beyond is an adventure beyond the boundaries of life, death, and the covers of a book. Romance! Pirates! Probably a giant squid lurking somewhere!

When can you play The Beyond? No promises, but you might want to keep an eye on the AdventureX Steam sale in November.

The hardback edition is already available. (In fact, so is Samurai vs. Ninja, Adventuregame Comics #3. Yes, there will be a game release for that too -- probably next year.)

By the way, I apologize for the fact that Leviathan still isn't available for iPhone. I started the port last year, but something about the UI didn't work right and I just haven't managed to dig in and track it down yet. I promise it'll happen.

Anyhow, here's the traditional sneak peek of The Beyond:

Powell's is rightly famed as a destination for book lovers, and I finally made my pilgrimage last weekend. The perils of air travel limited the inevitable splurge -- I had to fit my haul into a single backpack -- but I wound up with some nifty volumes. Including this surprise:

The world is awash with choice-based gamebooks, each with its own clever paraphrase of "choose your own you-know-what". A book based on the old Oregon Trail idea isn't a surprise.

No, the surprise is that bit about "tabbed pages". Tabbed?

Yep! This isn't a "turn to page 8" gamebook. It's a pipe-and-tab gamebook, which is a very uncommon format. Meanwhile is the first and, I thought, the only example. Here's a second book that does it!

Let's back up a bit, though.

It was a sharp grey London morning that begins my story. I was meeting my friend at the Xenocrates Club -- not my habitual retreat, but Xerloc said he had a matter for my memoirs.

The doorward squinted and eventually allowed me to the Club's sanctum, an indefinite smoke-stained sprawl of nooks, books, and gaslamps. The low tables were covered with scraps of paper and half-eaten crumpets. But the only figure in evidence was Xerloc, peering around with evident satisfaction.

"Ah, you are just in time. Everyone has left."

"I know these social clubs are often more like anti-social clubs, but really, Xerloc. What are you on about?"

"I'm sure you are aware of the famous Chess Mysteries of my famous cousin Sherlock Holmes." (My friend is of the O'Xolmes branch of the family, distant relatives of Basque extraction.)

"I am, indeed. Chess problems of retrograde analysis. I find them impenetrable."

"As do I, as do I. Thus I thought we might repair here for a more tractable challenge."

I gestured him to continue, but of course he already had. "You stand in the meeting place of the infamous Xenocrates Noughts-and-Crosses Club!"

"You mean to say--"

"Yes! The most devoted Tic-Tac-Toe players in all of London. And this," (he waved around the room), "is the remains of their latest tournament. A fiendish affair!"

"Great Heavens, Xerloc. What are the stakes?"

"A round of drinks at the nearest pub."

"At ten in the morning!?"

"I said it was fiendish," Xerloc said, rubbing his hands. "At any rate, they have all decamped. We may inspect... the evidence."

I'm bad at mysteries but I love games where you're a detective. This sounds silly, but detective games aren't always about interrogating suspects and drawing conclusions. Sometimes it's all about scouring an immersive world for the evidence and letting the pieces -- or the narrative threads -- fall where they may. (See The Flower Collectors, Dahlia View, and yep there's Paradise Killer smirking in the corner.)

So I was happy to run into Nobody Wants to Die. Narrative-heavy, easy on the detectiving, and thoroughly soaked in rainy noir vibe. The devs are Polish but the scene is Times Square: a Gilded Age future where everybody lives forever thanks to "ichoryte". The catch? You spend your eternal life in eternal debt for the mandatory body subscription plan, hoping to scrape out enough savings for a replacement before your current clogs pop. Fall behind on your payments and your body is repossessed -- probably by the millionaires who glitter in New York's unreachable upper crust.

As promised, the Cyan report for 2024, straight from Mysterium.

Cyan update

We started with the fireside chat: Rand Miller, Hannah Gamiel, and Eric A. Anderson giving us an update from Cyan HQ. (Hannah is the Development Director; Eric is the Creative Director. Rand is still Rand; more on that later.)

We had some audio issues on Friday morning, but the entire session is now posted on Youtube.

No big surprises or announcements this summer. Riven is out! Yay! The reviews and responses are extremely positive, both from fans and from the greater gaming audience.

The sales (so far) are not, well, not extremely positive. "We hope that sales cover things. Riven response has been phenomenal from a review point of view. [...] But that doesn't necessarily correspond to equal amounts of sales," said Rand.

This is of course tricky to communicate. In game dev, you never say "sales are bad" to a journalist -- everybody knows this. If you do, every journalist after that will start by asking you "Why are sales so bad?" and that's what all the headlines will be about. In particular, Cyan didn't directly compare Riven's sales to Firmament or Obduction or even Myst. They're really just telling us that they need to work on the PR. And it's early days anyhow.

They talked a bit about the process of redesigning Riven. As I noted, much of the game is the same but the changes go deep. Everything from the progression sequence to the core puzzle structure has been at least rethought, if not always changed. Rand noted that they started with lots of wild redesign ideas. In development, they winnowed them down to changes that directly supported the game experience, the puzzles, or the narrative. "If we couldn't answer 'why', if there wasn't a good reason, we didn't do it."

They also talked about the launch, which was apparently a nailbiter. As late as mid-June, they were still fighting bugs and glitches. (Rand mentioned Atrus's closing cutscenes as having a creepily lipless "Doug Henning" look.) It was only a few days before launch that QA started coming back and saying "This is good, we can ship this."

What's next?