Following Freeware – October 2014 releases
Interactive fiction competition 2014
Though they’ve long since been replaced as the dominant commercial adventures, the classic text adventures that were so popular in the 1980s and early 1990s still have a thriving fanbase and an active indie developer community. There are many text adventures still being made today, and their authors compete every year in the Interactive Fiction Competition. This year was the 20th edition, and no less than 42 games were submitted. Here is a small overview of the three games that came out on top.
[b]First place:[/b] Hunger Daemon by Sean M. Shore
In a magical world that looks uncannily like the real one, you are a servant of the cult of the Great Old Ones. During a long and boring ritual, you nip to the kitchen to grab a bite. There you find the guard unconscious and the Heart of Something or Other stolen from the Ark of Whatever! (You never were good with Mythos names.) You’d better get that Heart back or it could be you who becomes part of the ritual! But it will take a lot to find it: magical rituals, getting blood from a giant dead serpent and asking a favor from your ex-girlfriend are just a few things you must do in this slightly surreal and funny game, which is not very hard and features handy HINT and SAVE commands, making it ideal for beginners in the genre.
[b]Second place:[/b] Creatures Such as We by Lynnea Glasser
In this game about relationships, you play a steward in a company that offers tourists a week on the dark side of the moon at a specially constructed base. You don’t like your job very much, but in your spare time you find solace in the computer game “Creatures Such as We”. As you play the game (a violent fighting game with zombies and the like) you develop a special relationship with your ghost companion Elegy. After you and the ghost die in an ending that you find particularly unsatisfying, you go to bed and find out the next morning that the next group of tourists consists of the game’s development team! During their stay, which is shortened by one of the group being ill, you develop a relationship with one of the members of the team. As time passes, your relationship with that person and the circumstances surrounding it turn out to be remarkably like those in the “Creatures” game. Can you save the group member? Can you save the ghost in the game? These are some of the questions you discover the answers to in this intricate and very philosophical interactive story.
Instead of typing commands, this game lets you choose your next action from a list of options every time input is needed. The game also lets you choose your looks and gender and the person from the team you like best. This is quite a long game with no save option, so be sure you have 2 – 4 hours to play it.
[b]Third place: [/b] Jacqueline, Jungle Queen! by Steph Cherrywell
As 20-year-old Jacqueline McBean, you are chosen as a foreign correspondent for a special assignment (though you’re never told what exactly the assignment is). Unfortunately, on the way to Golanaland’s capitol, your pilot abandons the plane in a hurry with the only parachute, and you are left to crash into the jungle. Fortunately you survive, but you land in a tree very high up with no visible way to get down. When you get out of the plane, you see a green idol set in the bark of the tree. You don’t know why but you just have to touch it, and doing so gives you the ability to acquire the special powers of animals by mimicking them. Armed with this knowledge, it’s now up to you to find a way down the tree and out of the jungle. On your way, you’ll have to deal with many perils such as a piranha that guards a key in an aquarium, climbing steep walls and cliffs, and getting past a ferocious ape. While playing this fairly straightforward game, a map of your surroundings forms at the top of the screen, and there are compass pointers that indicate where you can go, along with lists of your inventory and the objects you see. There is also a link to a walkthrough that can be found in-game using the HINT command.
Other new releases
Not all games are created equal, and freeware games especially come in all shapes and sizes. Not to be overlooked, the following list might also be of interest, though these games may be significantly shorter or less polished, more experimental titles than those detailed above, some perhaps only borderline adventures to begin with.
Proxy by Sonoshee – A group of people trapped in a lift find themselves in a battle of wits with a murderous spirit.
Why Am I Dead?: Rebirth by Peltast Games – Solve your own murder in this improved version of a game from 2012.
Grimma by microsheep – A brave guard takes on a wicked witch in this playable demo for a light fantasy game.
Ugal’s Embrace by formica – Can you persuade more acolytes to hurl themselves into oblivion than the leader of a rival cult?
It by JakTube – Escape from a man-eating humanoid in this 1980s-style text adventure.
Eien by Mateusz Skutnik and Jacek Witczynski – Find hints, solve puzzles, and explore a towering, strange structure.
That’s it for this month. Think we’ve missed a gem or want to tell us about your own game? Then pop in to our Adventure forum and tell us about it!
Stephen Brown and Willem Tjerkstra contributed to this article.
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