Zarf Updates

This morning, Cyan updated Myst (the 2020 release) to include the Age of Rime. This is a free update on Steam (Mac/Win) and Quest; the Xbox update is in progress.

Do I need to say more than that? Sure, why not. Context is life.

A few weeks ago someone quietly posted a link to Invisiclues.org, a new Infocom fan archive.

The site is dedicated to (1) archiving historical Infocom-related artifacts -- InvisiClues, of course, but also magazine articles, marketing material, packaging, artwork, literature, and the games themselves -- and (2) making the archives available in an enjoyable format.

-- About Invisiclues.org

The Net has a lot of Infocom fan archives (including my own, of course). And the Infocom Invisiclues themselves are well-preserved.

Where this new site excels, though, is its collection of articles about Infocom. These are gathered from contemporary game magazines (Softline, Computer Gaming World, ...), general computing magazines (Byte, Softalk, Compute!, ...), and mainstream sources (Time, NYT, ...). There were 250 articles when the Invisiclues site launched, and it's over 300 now.

This collection way, way outstrips our existing collection of Infocom articles at the IF Archive. I imagine that the material is mostly filtered from Archive.org. But it represents an intense curatorial effort, and I'm happy to see it show up. My congratulations and gratitude to the site maintainer.

(As to the "enjoyable" part, check out the working status line in the top right corner. Cute!)

I twooted about Type Help (William Rous), a new deduction-type game which is so full of awesome surprises that it's hard to review!

But, after mulling for a couple of days, I've come up with stuff to say after all. Lucky you!

You are handed an old laptop full of files concerning an old (1936) investigation. A houseful of people were found dead. What happened? You have audio recordings (or rather text transcripts of audio recordings) from the residents' last day. But most of the files are unlisted; you have to figure out the filenames to unlock them.

In October I wrote:

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.

Today the Board formally voted in Colette Zinna as IFTF Treasurer and Doug Valenta as IFTF Tech Officer. Both of them have been around IFTF for a while (and in person at NarraScope). They're cool. I've been getting them up to speed since December. Now they are, as it were, speedy.

So that's me done! As Treasurer and de-facto tech guy, that is. As I said, I'm still IF Archive chair; I expect to do that for the foreseeable future. And I'm helping with NarraScope. No doubt other tasks. But I've attended my last board-and-officers meeting.

Of course I'm still a resource for the new officers. There will be many more questions like "How does this thing work that you set up five years ago?" But that's just... helping out. We all do that, as we can.

Keep doing that, as you can.

Got a bunch of hey-have-you-seen-this about the "Ink Console", a prototype tablet which plays choice-based IF. There's also a crowdfunding preview page.

Yep, I sure have have seen that. On several different forums.

The response from the IF community has been a mix of "That looks like fun!" and "Um, more market research needed? Maybe?"

Two more, in a bit more depth this time.

I see that Stray Gods has a new DLC chapter. Definitely playing that next.

• Citizen Sleeper 2
• Caravan SandWitch

So I was thinking about a text game idea where paragraphs of text change between a handful of possibilities as you make choices. Sort of a cycling choices effect.

But maybe instead of just replacing one block of text with another, I could do something visually neat. Like cross-fading. Or, how about this, maybe all the words could rearrange from one text into another. Some of them would move, some would appear, some would disappear...

= The    |  = The
         |  + rough
         |  + beast
         |  + ,
         |  + its
= hour   |  = hour
- is     | 
= come   |  = come
         |  + round
= at     |  = at
= last   |  = last
- ,      | 
- but    | 
- not    | 
- the    | 
- beast  | 
= ...    |  = ...

Well, that's just a diff function, right? Sure, you have to do all the animation work on top of that, which means text-layout work for the before-and-after. But the underlying logic is diff on two lists of words. Old-fashioned stuff. Same logic you see every day in version control systems.

("A diff command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX," says my man page. That would have been 1975, if I'm reading the right timeline.)

Hang on. How does diff work anyway?

Three months ago, I released two new entries in Jason Shiga's AdventureGame Comics series: Leviathan for iPhone/iPad and The Beyond for Mac/PC/Linux (on Steam).

I am happy to say that The Beyond for iPhone/iPad is now available!

(Leviathan appeared on Steam back in 2022, and of course Meanwhile has been out on both platforms for years. So the porting matrix is complete.)

(...For these books. Samurai vs Ninja? You'll just have to wait and see!)

And now, a footnote.

One great thing about bringing Jason's comics to iOS is supporting VoiceOver. This makes the games accessible to people with visual problems. I mentioned this feature on social media last week and got quite a few responses! I'd forgotten how much of a draw it is.

I feel I should say more, though. The apps offer VoiceOver support, but I can't claim that it's perfectly supported.

Another great thing about Jason's comics (on screen or on paper!) is the sense of narrative context they provide. As you move through the story -- and the page -- other paths and panels drift through your peripheral vision. These aren't always related to your current state... but they often echo it, contrast with it, or even provide a subtle clue.

Unfortunately, I've never come up with a good way to represent this visual context in VoiceOver. The list of active VoiceOver controls includes the current panel ("review"), the next panel or panel choices, and the toolbar buttons. Adding "nearby" panels would bloat up the control list and make it harder to navigate.

Even worse: the narrative context sometimes includes pipes. (I don't want to give anything away, but The Beyond plays with this idea.) Pipes are never VoiceOver controls at all; they're purely visual decoration. Even if I had a VoiceOver representation of "nearby" panels, it would miss this bit out.

So I have a bit of a qualm recommending The Beyond for its VoiceOver support. Don't get me wrong; you can read the whole story and find all the endings. It's all there. But just as The Beyond is a slightly different experience on screen than in the original page-numbered book, it's a slightly different experience on VoiceOver than it is on screen. The adaptation isn't -- pardon the phrase -- perfectly transparent.

I just wanted to be clear about that. Footnote ends. I hope you enjoy The Beyond in whatever form you encounter it!

(And if you have any bright ideas about how to handle this narrative context business -- particularly if you have VoiceOver design experience -- feel free to drop me a line.)

Well, this is certainly a terrible time to play games, isn't it. It's not that I couldn't use the distraction. I need the distraction! The problem is being able to concentrate on the game at all. I want to appreciate these things as the author intended, but wow. Rough.

Here's what I've tried recently.

• Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure
• LOK Digital
• Pine: A Story of Loss
• Chroma Zero
• Discolored 2
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Look, there is only one thing I want from a Labyrinth sequel, and that's Jennifer Connelly as the Goblin Queen... Mother.

I know, it's tricky. David Bowie was this horny teenage fantasy of Magic and Freedom and Romance; he definitely wasn't a father figure. Do we need a retread of that? No.

So Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) as a single mom, frustrated with her teenage kid, and the kid is frustrated with her. The mom is busy with her job and is never home. The daughter wants to run around the back yard and play with her imaginary friends. Sarah is like "Look, I know! I was your age! The stories are important. But you have to do the laundry and make dinner too! Sorry, I have a late meeting, I have to run."

And the daughter screams "Yeah, go! I wish the goblins would come and take me away forever and ever!"

So they do. Welcome to the Labyrinth. But.

Sarah is the Goblin Queen. She always has been. That's her job. "Away at the office" is "off in the Labyrinth". Ever since Jareth disappeared, Sarah hears the wishes and Sarah cannot leave a wish ungranted. "I have done everything you've asked, turned the world upside down for you..." Only now it's her own kid, and what the teenager wants is for some Mom she doesn't know to save her from the Mom she does know, only they're the same person.

And what Mom wants is for her kid to understand that for sixteen years she has had the power to say "I wish the goblins would free me of this child" and she never said it. But now the kid has said it -- which means it has to happen.

And they're both exhausted by living up to each other's expectations.

Whatever they are to each other, it needs to change.

Sound about right?