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Essays and reviews on narrative in games and new media

In-depth: Is it time for a text game revival? For years, the traditional publishing industry has been telling us that nobody wants story-driven adventures or game forms oriented around interactive storytelling. But the Kickstarter age has been showing us something a little bit different, amid successful fundraising for developers of renowned adventure games of yore. But there's more than just nostalgia contributing to a potential revival for interactive stories. A broader gaming audience means appetites for game forms we might have once called "casual" in another time -- and furthermore, the popularity of tablets and e-readers means there's a real appetite for game forms that take advantage of a culture now habituated to reading on luminous screens in ways prior generations were widely not. In a market where books and games are close rivals for the most popular category on app stores, what happens when today's new gamers are hungry for something more than word puzzles? Text gaming: Back to the roots Playing with books, too

Fabled Lands Interactive Fiction: Playing, Studying and Writing Text Adventure Games (Dennis G. Jerz, Seton Hill University) inkle » blog | interactive literature It's finally ready, and looking more beautiful than ever: the first part of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! will be hitting the Google Play and Amazon App stores on the March 12th. Prepare to journey through the Shamutanti Hills, face deadly foes, and explore hundreds of different branches, areas, with thousands of choices, all of which are remembered. You can save as many different play-throughs as you want, ready to pick them up in Part 2 - which is over four times as long, and adds a host of new features. Originally released for iOS last May, Sorcery! A long time coming So - we promised this at least six months ago. Our developer, Iain Merrick, has managed to recreate the underlying iPhone and iPad systems used for user interface, imaging, audio and much more, in around three months. It also means Sorcery! Actually - it's not quite a copy. (The best thing about this port? What news on Part 3? We're typing away furiously, but we've got a few more months to go.

The Interactive Fiction Database - IF and Text Adventures Interactive Fiction Interactive fiction was the first great computer-game craze. Through the early 1980s, the most sophisticated, complex, involving games available were the text adventures. Everyone agreed. Go look up up old videogame rating charts; Infocom was always on the list — with several games. Of course, advancing graphics eventually washed away IF’s supremacy. By 1990, all the text game companies were closed, or about to be. I’ve been part of that community for a decade and a half. You can play my games freely (and for free). (Okay, except for Hadean Lands. If you’ve never played IF before... Everyone’s heard that IF is hard to play. Furthermore, most situations in every game are amenable to a handful of common commands. (Click for PDF version, HTML version, print-quality bitmap, or others. If you still feel overwhelmed, I recommend you start with The Dreamhold, listed below. Hadean Lands An interactive alchemical interplanetary thriller. This is my next game. Bigger Than You Think Cold Iron Shade

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