New walkthroughs for December 2023

On Thursday, December 28, 2023, I published new walkthroughs for the games and stories listed below! Some of these were paid for by my wonderful patrons at Patreon. Please consider supporting me to make even more new walkthroughs for works of interactive fiction at Patreon and Ko-fi.

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THE RUIN OF 0CEANUS PR1ME (2023) by Marco Innocenti

In this sci-fi horror game, you play as Colonel J.T. Thomas investigating the ruins of an underwater research facility on Saturn’s moon, Titan. Biofarm wants something called 73-Jon, and it’s your job to find and retrieve it. Lucky you.

Content warnings: foul language, physical and psychological abuse of children and animals, drug abuse.

This game was an entry in PunyJam #4 where it took NTH place. It is also a sequel to A1RL0CK, also by Marco Innocenti.

IFDB | My walkthrough and map

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The Haunting of Corbitt House (2023) by Arlan Wetherminster

In this game set in Baltimore, you play as the detective. A dark-haired beauty walks into your office with a case: she thinks her inherited tenement house may be haunted. You need the rent money, so you agree to investigate.

This game was an entry in Le Grand Guignol division of Ectocomp 2023 where it took 17th place.

IFDB | My walkthrough and maps

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SpAdventure (1996) by Jay Walton

This variant of the 350-point version of Adventure includes Balances-style spells like frotz and rezrov. You are a spellcasting adventurer. Explore the caves, find all 15 treasures, deposit them in the building, and maximize your score.

IFDB | My walkthrough and maps

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Cargo Breach (2023) by Garry Francis

In this game set during World War I, you play as a British sailor aboard the SS Cuttlefish. As you slept, a cargo breach of chlorine gas killed everyone else on board, and the ship is adrift. Find your gas mask, save yourself, and prevent the gas from killing anyone else.

This game was an entry in PunyJam 4 where it took NTH place.

IFDB | My walkthrough and map

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Bus station (2009) by Alex Mitchell

In this short story, you are waiting at the bus station for the last bus to Montreal to visit your parents. But there’s a blizzard outside and you don’t have your ticket or any money. Three possible endings.

This short story was a participant in the Interactive Fiction Writing Month event of February 2009.

My walkthrough and map

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Octopus’s Garden (2009) by Michael D. Hilborn

In this small game, you play as a woman’s pet octopus, and your aquarium sits on an ornate table in her apartment’s bedroom. You once loved the view of the city from the nearby window, but you’re bored with it now. Convince your owner to move. You need a change of scenery.

This work was a participant in the Interactive Fiction Writing Month event of February 2009.

My walkthrough and map

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Pharaoh (2023) by Gianluca Girelli

In this short linear game, you and your family were touring the Great Pyramid of Giza complex when the walls started shaking, a green vortex appeared, and your guide ran off, leaving you all in darkness. You need light, and you need to find a way out.

This game was an entry in PunyJam #4 where it took NTH place.

IFDB | My walkthrough and map

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Vampire Gold (2023) by Olaf Nowacki

In this small generic RPG, you play as an adventurer in search of treasure. Defeat monsters, improve your armor and weapons, then kill the vampire to win the game.

This work was an entry in the La Petite Mort (English) division of Ectocomp 2023 where it took 11th place.

IFDB | My walkthrough and map

Atmospheric messages as conversation

Recently, I was playing an RPG-style IF game called Glik I, and every turn while your character is outside, the game displays one of these ten messages purely at random. Every. Single. Turn.

• Dust seems to rise like footprints in the distance.
• It suddenly gets cooler.
• Nausea overcomes you momentarily.
• The hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
• You hear a soft rustling behind you.
• You hear a twig snap.
• You hear the whispering of voices somewhere nearby.
• You notice the distinct lack of life.
• You see something in the corner of your eye flit past you.
• You swear the shadows move on their own.

Okay, so, obviously, most authors would know to turn that down a notch and at least make the messages show up at most a third of the time, and perhaps tweak the randomness so the player doesn’t see the same message twice in a row.

Or maybe, the author could add more messages to the mix. If there were, say, thirty messages instead of ten, then maybe the messages wouldn’t seem quite so repetitious.

And yes, maybe those methods would be sufficient for most games where you want to establish a sense of menace or unease. But wait. Look at this message:

• You notice the distinct lack of life.

Which isn’t quite true. There are trees and even flowers, but what the author means is that there’s no people, animals, or insects. The backstory, when you discover it, is that a curse was laid upon the land, and as a result, gradually, everyone who used to live here died. The curse increases misfortune, causes crops to fail, and what does grow is sickly. And that sense of desolation and emptiness is very different from the bog-standard twig-snapping someone’s-creeping-up-behind-you sort of menace.

Anyway, I do think atmospheric messages are the way to convey the appropriate unease, but as I thought more about it, I don’t think just rewriting the messages to be more appropriate is the best option. What if the messages weren’t random, but sequenced? Or better, what if the messages were like a conversation, responding to your current environment?

I seem to remember an article by Emily Short that touched on this general idea, where you want to convey information to the player, but you’re not particularly fussy on who tells you that the prince is hosting a masquerade ball, for example. If you go into the bakery first, the baker can tell you about the ball. Or if you see the fishmonger first, she can tell you. It doesn’t matter who it is as long as the information is conveyed. So I’m actually reworking her idea, except instead of people telling you the plot points, the general environment is.

In Glik I, as you wander outside, you will find an orchard sign, a rope bridge, an abandoned hut, a newspaper, and a burnt tavern, all of which are clearly man-made. It seems to me that you could cue up a list of things to say about the lack of people, triggered to possibly display a message whenever you encountered or interacted with a new man-made item.

And when you first encounter the witch, perhaps there should be a sense of relief on seeing another person, even if she’s ugly, even if she’s mocking you?

How to speak about the lack of animals or lack of insects is less obvious, but I would target places where you might reasonably expect to see some. No fish in the river. No bees on the flowers. No ants on the trees. No twig-snapping animals in the forest. No birdsong.

You’d want to build this sort of thing up slowly, in layers. It’s difficult to notice something that isn’t there, after all. After the PC has reached certain levels of awareness of the problem, new messages can be offered based on the new awareness. They might even just be subtle variations on some of the previous messages, where nothing’s really changed to the landscape, but the PC’s reaction to it has.

Anyway, just my two cents on the issue. Much more work for the author, of course, but sometimes the payoff might be worth the effort.