Zarf Updates

We learned yesterday that we lost game designer Kory Heath.

I set up a Bluesky account at the beginning of September, just to see what the process was like. (Easy, turns out.) But I didn't give it a push until around October 23rd. That's when I pinned an intro and started following people.

My motivations, I admit, were mercenary. I was two weeks out from launching Leviathan and The Beyond, and I figured I needed swing all the social media oomph I could reach.

Well, the launch happened. (Went okay for small narrative games. Not going to pay the mortgage.) I'm still on Bluesky. It's been a sociologically interesting few weeks. I figured I'd write down my impressions.

Over on Bluesky, someone asked whether everybody's blog traffic has declined over the past few weeks. (Original message requires Bsky login so I won't link directly.)

This got me looking at my blog stats, which I normally never, ever do.

Short answer: I don't think so? But my blog is tiny and the data is noisy, so how would I even tell. Some of my posts get popular -- though never what you'd call "viral". Most don't.

But why not peek at the data? I have logs going back to June 2023, when I moved off of Blogger.com. Yes, it's navel-gazing. But now that I'm shifting some weight onto Bluesky, I might have some followers who haven't seen my older posts.

Several months ago I write about making a new little photo tagging app. It's called phogg (for, I guess, "photo bloggor") and I've been diligently using it ever since. I now have about 2150 photos stacked up on my home media server.

That's great, but does the world care? My home media server is firewalled. You can't see it.

But occasionally I want to show off my photo collection to somebody. I mean, not the whole collection -- there's a lot of chaff and random food photos and photos of the people in my life, and I don't share that stuff without permission. But a curated subset.

Surely this is easy, though? I already have a widget in there to generate as the catalog as a static web page. I just need to tag some photos as "public", and then write a script to upload the tagged set to my public web site.

"I just need to write a script" is a dangerous phrase. I got a rough draft up quite quickly, and then realized two things:

• Public photos need titles as well as tags. So I had to add a title-editing field to the phogg UI. (I could have gone full Tumblr, with hyper-descriptive tags, but I decided not to. I curate my tag set too.)

• A photo site needs an RSS feed. Obviously.

So that was a bit more work, but I did it, and look! Photos! Feed!

Enjoy! A couple of warnings though:

I expect to update this page in batches. I take photos. Every few days, I sync them off my phone to my home media server and tag them. Every few weeks, I'll curate the recent acquisitions, tag some "public", and push them to the web site.

Also, nothing about this system tracks when a photo was uploaded. The metadata only shows when the photo was taken. The good news is that when a new batch of photos appears, they'll have correct dates. The bad news is that if I add a batch of old photos, they won't show up in the RSS feed -- the feed only lists the most recent 48 photos.

Also, while I've titled every image, I'm afraid I haven't provided alt text. I apologize for this. Alt text is a different job and it's rather a lot more work. Maybe later.

And now, a few favorites from the collection. Click for full-size.

I posted all the links last week, but today is launch day so let's have 'em again! Playable right now.

The Beyond is now available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Steam Deck!

Your death was a tragedy... your afterlife is a mystery. Unravel the secrets of death with the help of Xochitl, your guide. Can you find your way through the doors of the great library of the Beyond?

• The Beyond on Steam
• The Beyond on Itch.IO (launch sale link here!)
• The Beyond as a hardback book
• and for iPhone/iPad? Hopefully early next year...

The Beyond has been selected as an exhibitor in the AdventureX Steam Festival for 2024!

(Among august company, to be sure. I've played part or all of Lil' Guardsman, Murder on Space Station 52, Two Falls, Your House, and of course Highland Song. Not to neglect honorable mentions Slay the Princess, Observation, Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, OPUS Starsong, Monkey Island, and Talos Principle 2. All worth a look. And, again, those are just the ones I've tried. I'll be adding many more of the AdvX selections to my to-play pile.)

Leviathan is now available for iPhone and iPad! (As well as all the desktop platforms.)

A seaside village – and a monstrous threat. Explore as you choose, by day or by night. Can you unravel the secrets of history and defeat the Leviathan?

• Leviathan on the App Store (iPhone/iPad)
• Leviathan on Steam
• Leviathan on Itch.IO
• Leviathan as a hardback book

Whew. That's all for now. Happy launch day, and, you know, good luck with everything else this week.

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 (update: available!)
• 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!