IF Comp ’11 – Andrew Metzger’s Fog Convict!

I’m back!  Did you miss me?  I missed me.  Let’s play a game.

The blurb on this one makes it hard to tell if it’s a thriller or a comedy.  A thrilledy.  A Phyllis Thriller.

I am ridiculously proud of that last joke.  Moving along!

[spoilers start here]

IF Comp ’11 – Lutein Hawthorne’s The Guardian!

Let’s see, what next?  We could play this thing that bills itself as an entry-level fantasy adventure, sure.  Isn’t lutein one of the fundamental building blocks of DNA?

[spoilers begin here]

IF Comp ’11 – Josephine Wynter’s Vestiges!

Let’s take advantage of the daylight and play something creepy-looking.  Hmm, fewer overt horror games on the list than last year, although I don’t trust the Australian hide-and-seek games at all.  They are no doubt working together to lull us into fond complacent nostalgia so they can get their squamous eldritch tentacles all up in our brainpan and feed off our energies and like that.  (Wasn’t that the plot of Needful Things?  I have pretty much zero memory of what went down in Needful Things.)  How about this one?

You awake in a grave, with no memory of who you are or what happened to you. Using the items around you, you must escape the entity pursuing you and uncover the astounding truth of your origin.
That’ll do, peg.  That’ll do.

[spoilers begin here]

IF Comp ’11 – Pam Comfite’s Playing Games!

I have not even the remotest idea what this game is about.  This is always an exciting time, filled with potential, but it makes it difficult to RSS-buff.  I should get a cat.  Or have a kid.  No one’s fingers would blister from the blazing speed with which they dialed social services if I had a kid, I’m sure.  I had a houseplant when I lived at the Asymmetric office, a schefflera, but it was sort of unhealthy-looking when I left, and had these furry white cocoons or some shit on its leaves, and I didn’t want furry white God-knows-whats hatching in my new apartment, but I didn’t want to just throw a living thing into the garbage, so I hid it behind a hedge in the front yard and sprinted for it.  I am not sure if me simply not knowing whether it’s alive or dead means it’s in a quantum state or if I actually have to set up a poison vial and a decaying atom, but yeah, I probably shouldn’t have kids, is my point.

What’s your point?

[spoilers begin here]

IF Comp ’11 – Jared Smith’s Luster!

In the outskirts of a deserted town, the adventurer carefully explore, looking for rare gems.
If there’s one thing I enjoy in a game context, it’s carefully exploring, looking for rare gems.  Actually, wait, if I only get one thing, I’m’a have to go with setting shit on fucking fire.  Oh, wait, no, unlockable hats!

Maybe I can trade the gems for hats and set them on fire.  Yeah.  That’s bound to be what this game is about.

[spoilers ignite below this line]

IF Comp ’11 – Lynnea Dally’s The Tenth Plague!

Why is Lynnea Dally’s name familiar… oh, she did last year’s cheerful zombie hospital game where many of the male players were surprised to suddenly discover they liked boys.  I enjoyed that one well enough.  Hopefully the tenth plague, the plague of cat videos, is equally peppy.

Let’s find out!

[spoilers thrust into earthly existence below this line]

IF Comp ’11 – Anssi Raisanen’s Ted Paladin and the Case of the Abandoned House!

Known for your text adventure skills, you have been called in for help to reveal the secrets of a locked, abandoned house scheduled to be demolished soon.
I enjoy the notion that my character is a gifted text-adventure protagonist.  Anssi Raisanen entered an odd, short, vivid puzzler to the competition three years ago back when people cared more about umlauts, and I am interested to see what he’s done now.  I am even interested enough to shut up and start playing the game.

[spoilers begin here]

IF Comp ’11 – Ryan Veeder’s Taco Fiction (Is A Game About Crime!)

Taco Fiction is a game about crime.**

I don’t think anyone else loves this sentence as much as I do.  It is driving a wedge between me and the outside world.  “Taco Fiction is a game about crime,” I tell the boy who comes by with the tray of fresh pineapple*.  He can’t get away from me fast enough.  None of them can.  They just don’t understand, goddammit, that Taco Fiction is a game about crime.

Taco Fiction is a game about crime.  I want it tattooed on my everything.  Taco Fiction is a game about crime.

* Shh, I’m pretending I live on a cruise ship.  You can pretend to live here too, just don’t remind me that I don’t.

** Taco Fiction is a game about crime.

[Taco Fiction is a game about crime.]

IF Comp ’11 – Joey Jones & Melvin Rangasamy’s Calm!

This is the one about how the future has been a happier place since the spores arrived.  I hope it doesn’t make me shit my pants.

(On proofreading this from the future which is a happier place since the spores arrived, I am not sure if these are some long-ass unreadable Dickensian sentences I’ve written, or if it’s just 7 AM and I should go to bed.  Taco Canyon is a cave from the future.  Yes.  Thinking that sentence means I should go to bed.)

[spoilers begin here]

But Let’s Look at the Blurbs for a Moment

I have to say, the blurbers this year were in fine fettle.  Here are some of my favorite excerpts.

You are thrust into earthly existence to fulfill the tenth and final plague.
I sort of wish someone would say this to me, because then I would at least know why I’d been thrust into earthly existence.  “To watch all these cat videos” seems unlikely.

One minute you’re at your office worrying about your finances and the next you’re face to face with Merlin the wizard of Camelot.
Who, oddly enough, is worrying about his finances.  Recession is tough.

Your new job as a time traveler may be harder than you thought.
I love both the understatement and the implication that you had a thought along the lines of “Sweet, time traveler job!  Easier than Kinko’s and you never get fired.”

Schlig is kidnapped by aliens and turned into a mutant eyeball freak by their experiments. Now Schlig must use his eyes in ways that no human was ever intended to in order to escape from the aliens and find a way back to Earth before he gets eaten.
This sounds like pretty much the most awesome game ever written, and I say that knowing full well Victor Gijsbers has an IF/roguelike hybrid in the comp.

Your dog is gone. She must be brought. You have a beet (and some other vegetables).
The joy of these three sentences lies in their simplicity, the inexplicable noteworthiness of the beet compared to the other nameless vegetables, and in wondering what you’re going to wind up doing with the things.

A creep kidnaps you, a blind woman.
The first time I read this I thought I’d been kidnapped by a creepy blind woman, which made it pretty interesting up in my brain for a second there.

There is the wind, a bleak and chill thing.
Atmospherey!

Since the spores came the future has been a happier place.
I’d been trying to work out why this one made me giggle, then I realized it’s probably the classification of the future as a place.  (Time:  2037.  Place:  The Future, In Space.  Mood:  Much Happier Since the Spores Arrived, Thank You For Asking!)

My absolute favorite, though:
Taco Fiction is a game about crime.

Taco Fiction is a game about crime.