
Zarf’s Interactive Fiction (2017) - Tomte
https://www.eblong.com/zarf/if.html
======
SamBam
I haven't played a lot of IF since I was a kid, but I recently tried
Counterfeit Monkey
([https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=aearuuxv83plclpl](https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=aearuuxv83plclpl))
and was blown away by the cleverness and depth of the system.

It's many hours worth of adventure, and has a brilliant mechanic where you are
in a world where real objects can be transformed by modifying their spelling
(and, later, other linguistic tricks).

So you might have a Can, but you need to drive far away, so you turn your Can
into a Car with your Letter-changing Device. Or maybe you use your Homonym
Machine to turn the wooden Bat in your hand to a Bat that flies around. The
possibilities are endless, and the game has considered an amazing number of
them.

It's all set in a deep and realistic European island, with laws regarding
linguistic manipulation, etc.

~~~
Marazan
I don't know this game but I would be willing to bet huge amounts of money
that it was written by Emily Short.

~~~
HurrdurrHodor
<3 Emily Short <3 I should replay Savoir Faire.

------
zarfeblong
Hi! Thanks for the thread. :)

I'll accumulate a bunch of replies here, if that's okay...

First, I apologize for having a web page that implies that I haven't done any
IF since 2017. Cragne Manor actually came out in late 2018, and I added it to
my IF page, but I forgot to update the "last updated" date. (Fixed now.)

I'm still messing around with IF ideas. I'm working on a prototype for a non-
parser-based IF system. It's a work in progress and I don't have anything to
show off yet; we'll see how far it gets over the summer.

I suspect that dozens, nay, scores of people are trying to make IF work on
Alexa. It's not an area that I'm working on myself, but I know some of the
folks at Earplay (mentioned above). My understanding is that getting Alexa to
respond to commands is pretty easy; the hard part is designing a game that
plays well in narrated form.

Yes, I can sometimes be spotted wandering around the Somerville/Cambridge
area. We have a monthly IF meetup at MIT: [http://pr-if.org/](http://pr-
if.org/) Anyone is welcome to drop in.

And also! If I may spend a moment promoting a current project... we are
organizing an IF conference called NarraScope this summer. It will be held at
MIT, June 14-16.

[http://narrascope.org/](http://narrascope.org/)

It will be cool. People should come.

------
indigochill
Even as a long-time IF fan, Hadean Lands blew my mind. It remembers exactly
how you solved every puzzle, so if for instance you find a door locked again
after you figured out how to unlock it, all you have to do is say you want to
open the door and the game replays the whole process of unlocking it (to make
up an example so as to avoid spoiling anything). Some of the puzzles get quite
involved, so the depth of the system's memory is quite impressive.

Also the symbolic way it handles alchemy, such that objects are understood to
be aligned with various planets or aromas, allowing you to get creative with
alchemical recipes, is probably the closest I've seen to "real" alchemy.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I bought this for iOS just before I switched to Android so never got a chance
to play it.

Just checked again and still no android port, guess I should buy it again for
desktop as everything I've heard about it does sound amazing.

------
yig
Zarf is also responsible for reskinning the social game Mafia as Werewolves. I
find it fascinating that we know who invented both Mafia and Werewolves. It's
like knowing who invented Red Rover.

See Other Works:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Plotkin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Plotkin)

------
nathell
It's always nice to see IF featured on HN frontpage. Especially of such
quality as Zarf's. It's been a while since I last played "Spider and Web," and
there's a lot of new stuff for me to discover, too.

Even if you don't play, do yourself a favour and read "Lighan ses Lion".
Brilliant idea.

~~~
gjm11
If you like _Lighan ses Lion_, you should consider playing _The Gostak_:
[https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=w5s3sv43s3p98v45](https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=w5s3sv43s3p98v45)
(not by Zarf, but excellent even so).

------
mcphage
It's not on this page, but Zarf's System's Twilight is a fantastic puzzle
game, one of my favorites. It was the first shareware game I paid for, way way
back in the day (early 90s).
([https://www.eblong.com/zarf/twilight/index.html](https://www.eblong.com/zarf/twilight/index.html))

~~~
MrRadar
If you're never played System's Twilight before you can get a taste for it via
in-browser emulation on the Internet Archive[1]. Note that the emulator
doesn't support color or sound and the animations don't run at full speed, so
if you enjoy what you see there you should install a better-featured emulator
like Basilisk II to experience the game as it was intended.

If you have previously played System's Twilight and want a new game along the
same lines, check out System Syzygy[2] which is directly inspired by System's
Twilight (and similar games from the same era like 3 in Three and The Fool's
Errand). It's also written in Rust(!) and fully open source(!!)[3] in case you
want to get a peak under the hood (or cheat a bit).

[1]
[https://archive.org/details/SystemsTwilight](https://archive.org/details/SystemsTwilight)

[2] [https://mdsteele.games/syzygy/](https://mdsteele.games/syzygy/)

[3] [https://github.com/mdsteele/syzygy](https://github.com/mdsteele/syzygy)

~~~
mcphage
> If you have previously played System's Twilight and want a new game along
> the same lines, check out System Syzygy[2] which is directly inspired by
> System's Twilight

Oh, cool—I've never even heard of that. Thanks for sharing!

------
JoeDaDude
Zarf has a comprehensive list of references to the IF world, except for this
one book, a critical study of IF as both literature and game:

Twisty Little Passages - An Approach to Interactive Fiction By Nick Montfort

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/twisty-little-
passages](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/twisty-little-passages)

------
velcrovan
Every couple of years I drop in to see if there's a simple way to publish IF
games on the web yet. There isn't. It's a shame.

No one's going to pay for text-based IF games and no one wants to install
software to play them. The web is the ideal delivery channel for the medium,
but no one seems interested in making good publishing tools for it.

(To be clear, I’m not saying it isn't possible, just that the tools for doing
so are fiddly and ugly.)

~~~
robryk
I wonder why speech-based IF games are essentially nonexistent, given the
popularity of podcasts and existence of speech-only computers (e.g. Alexa).

~~~
jameswilsterman
I'm the founder of Volley (YC W18). We're working on games like this as well
for Alexa, check out [https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-
Infected/dp/B07JBKRRNP](https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-
Infected/dp/B07JBKRRNP) and [https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-Angel-of-
DOOM/dp/B07Q35LY8...](https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-Angel-of-
DOOM/dp/B07Q35LY8K)

------
gwillen
Zarf also invented the game Capture the Flag With Stuff, played twice a year
by hundreds of people at Carnegie Mellon University.

Current rules (2017 edition):
[http://www.cmukgb.org/ctfws/](http://www.cmukgb.org/ctfws/)

Zarf's original rules (1995): [https://eblong.com/zarf/capture-flag-
rules.html](https://eblong.com/zarf/capture-flag-rules.html)

Harvard's spinoff: [http://www.hrsfa.org/photos/lotze/ctfws/harvard-
rules2.html](http://www.hrsfa.org/photos/lotze/ctfws/harvard-rules2.html)

------
hirundo
Shout out to my favorite recent evolution of IF: 80 days. I found this a blast
to play ... and replay several times. Not shareware but at $4.99 on Android, a
heck of a deal per hour played.

[https://www.inklestudios.com/80days/](https://www.inklestudios.com/80days/)

------
sethish
I see Zarf around Cambridge from time to time. Either on the red line or at
PorchFest. He's a recognizable dude. I feel like I'm one of the few people to
fanboy at him in the real world. He's really nice!

~~~
4thaccount
What does he do at Cambridge? Student? Professor?

~~~
commandertso
They mean the city of Cambridge, next to Boston, MA, USA.

~~~
4thaccount
Thank you. As someone who doesn't live in that part of the US, I frequently
forget about Cambridge the US city.

------
andrepd
It's amazing that the community is still going strong. It's probably never
going to be more than a small subculture, but I smile everytime I see these
small but incredibly deep cultures staying strong, thanks to the internet.

------
harperlee
Can you play any IF through phone? Siri/Alexa/Google? It would be awesome to
be able to play while driving / walking / whatever, and could attract more
people to voice interfaces... IF seems very well suited to voice.

~~~
ddingus
Someone needs to use sound and voice.

You enter a dank, dimly lit room, water trickling off to the side, reflecting
the fire from your torch. You become aware of a disturbing, low grinding
sound, low growl... off to the north, and a cool breeze following you in the
exit to the east.

Two things:

Displaying text, with a soundscape would be amazing and, I'll bet, immersive.

The second order might be a mix of spoken word and soundscape that has
directionality. You hear most of it, details are spoken, say on move.

North.

Quickly spoken room details: exits to north, east, water trickle.

Soundscape is looping.

On next command, look, turn, move, repeat.

Voice and or text for user input.

I want to pop in earbuds and either speak or type, and let my minds eye fill
in the rest.

No time right now, so I just put it here.

Go!

~~~
pdfernhout
Twenty years ago, I wrote StoryHarp in 1998 in Delphi to do this, using
Microsoft Agent for speech and sound output and limited speech input (from a
small set of choices appropriate to the context). I recently ported StoryHarp
to JavaScript/TypeScript (using Mithril and Tachyons) to run in the browser --
but without speech input as yet.

Demo: [https://storyharp.com/](https://storyharp.com/)

Source: [https://github.com/pdfernhout/storyharp-
js](https://github.com/pdfernhout/storyharp-js)

------
tunesmith
I've found that when picking up a new IF game, it's harder to start getting
into it than it is with most other games, but that once you get over that
hump, the immersion I feel is greater than I feel with other games. The last
one I played was Anchorhead and I had a great time.

------
darepublic
I always wanted voice assistant/chat bots to feel like a work of IF. You can
kind of navigate a space textually, and perform spells/commands. Only
difference is that there is a connection between the text and some
representation of reality.

------
grappler
I missed this scene by a few years but Netflix's recent interactive experiment
Bandersnatch gave a good flavor of it :)

------
Razengan
Sorry for the tangent, but what is it with these odd new names for things that
have been around since forever?

 _Every_ video game is "interactive fiction." These are "text adventures" and
have been known as such since more or less the beginning.

Same for "MOBA" and the like. eugh. /peeve

~~~
zzo38computer
I have seen the term "interactive fiction" used in Infocom's documents.
Although, like you, I also prefer "text adventure".

Quoting from the XZIP documentation: "ZIP is the lowest level of Infocom's
multi-tier interactive fiction creation and execution system."

~~~
Razengan
Interactive fiction may have been used as an explanation for muggles, like "a
movie you can control", but I cannot recall seeing it as a category in any of
my gaming magazines from the 1980s.

~~~
zarfeblong
Infocom used "interactive fiction" as the marketing tag for their games. You
can easily see this on their box covers. I believe they started using the
label with the "grey box" packages in 1984.

I don't know how much competing IF companies, like Level 9, tried to use the
term. Infocom may have treated it as a trademark; I haven't checked.

Post-golden-age, hobbyists were congregating on the rec.arts.int-fiction
newsgroup starting in 1992 or 1993. The newsgroup wasn't actually started by
Infocom fans -- it was more serious literary-hypertext people who tried to co-
opt the term! But that didn't stick, and it was all parser/text games and
Z-code software by 1994. So "IF" was solidly held by that community through
the 2000s, when IFComp and the IF Archive started to clue in to Twine and the
larger space of text-based games.

As for the words "interactive fiction" \-- of course their literal meaning is
wildly off from how the genre is understood. Genre labels are always silly
when read literally. (Contemplate "science fiction" and "fantasy", which do
not mean "stories about scientists" and "made-up stories".)

(I have a soft spot for the term "adventure game", which -- for a few years --
literally meant "a game like Adventure, aka Colossal Cave." But it's changed
since then, and I mean since 1982.)

