I was a little preoccupied last week, so I didn’t participate in the fourth and final week of IF Writing month, where the assignment was to implement a new verb, and get your game beta-tested. However, I nevertheless did get a lot out of the preceding three weeks, to the point that I’m now starting to flesh out an idea for a slightly bigger game that I can enter into a competition. The Annual IFComp looks like my best bet in terms of getting exposure, though Rikard also suggested the IF Art Show, which I’m also considering.

For those of you who prefer my point-and-click graphical adventure stuff, don’t worry; I won’t be abandoning GUIs and crazy artwork for good. I’m simply expanding my horizons a little bit, and my hope is that I’ll be able to design better graphical games the more I learn about what people have been doing in the IF community as of late. It is, after all, the community that’s produced the best examples of interactive storytelling I’ve seen over the past several years. IMHO, of course.

It’s Round Table time again! Continuing with the theme of literary games, this month, we’re focussing on the role that the author’s “voice” plays in a game design. To what extent is it important, and to what extent should we do without it?

The answer, as always, tends to depend on personal taste, and mine, as always, is heavily biased. Of course the author’s voice is important! Isn’t that why I myself develop games in the first place? So that I can express myself? If I’m not supposed to express myself at all, then what’s the point? What am I making? Why am I doing this? Who am I and what am I doing here?

Yes, I know. They’re selfish motivations. You may be asking “but what about as a player, Deirdra? Don’t you want freedom? Don’t you hate it when other authors try to force their voices down your throat?” And my answer to that is… well, no. In fact, what I’ve noticed about my play preferences is that I happen to prefer games with a definitive authorial slant. Because here’s the thing: what do you get when you remove the voice of an author entirely from a game? Essentially, it’s a simulation. A sandbox. The Holodeck. A carbon copy of the real world for testing purposes. You pretty much end up with something like Second Life.

But wait! There’s more…

This week’s assignment was to develop an interesting NPC. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I fulfilled the criterion of “interesting” in this case, but at the very least, I did play around with (rather minimally) implementing a conversation system. As always, you can play online here, or you can download the z-code file here. Enjoy.

Corvus was ever-so-kind enough to invite me to participate in this month’s Blogs of the Round Table podcast dealing with literary themes in games, and I thought it sounded like fun, so I ever-so-kindly obliged. It’s now up, so if you’d like to hear me saying “um”, “er”, “like”, and “pretty much” a lot and completely failing to correctly pronounce “Galatea”, do give it a listen.

In other news, I’ve joined Twitter, so if you’ve got an account there, feel free to follow me. At the moment, it’s eating some of my updates, which is a little strange, but hopefully that’ll get fixed in the long run.

My second entry to IF Writing Month is now up. This week’s assignment was to develop a winnable story with a unique player character, so I made mine about a woman with extreme social anxiety making a trip to the grocery store. It’s based in part on “Freedom”, an IFComp 2008 entry that purportedly stuck you in a day in the life of a person with social anxiety disorder — that game itself was poorly implemented and placed rather low in the competition, but I thought the premise was interesting, so I tried to put my own spin on it. Of course, since this once again was written in a couple of evenings or so, it’s far from perfect, but hey, I tried.

Anyway, you can play “Grocery Shopping” online here, or you can download the z-code file here. Have fun.