“Photopia” has proven not to be my sole exploration of Interactive Fiction. After messing around a bit (and there’s a definite relationship between how we deal with real life situations and how we deal in our IF interplay, and messing around and messing up is part of both) with others such as “Schrapnel”, “Metamorphosis”, “Cave Adventure”, among others, I tried Muse: “An Autumn Romance” (Note, I’m too lazy to go back and ensure that I have the proper titles here, but IF fans will recognize them I am sure). I’m not drawn to Sci Fi or Fantasy—although Bizarre is good—so I decided to try to ascertain if the element of surrealistic adventure was a necessary part of the story. I’m not big on Romance either, but it seemed to offer a different sort of adventure, and I knew that it would not have been produced had it not had potential readership.
“Autumn Romance” does indeed create within the player a sense of involvement, and offers the same level of frustration, sense of accomplishment and interest of a more action-packed adventure. I have not gotten very far into it as yet (hey, I’m new at this!) but it has piqued my interest enough to go back again to this story as well as others out there. As with all IF, several ventures are necessary to complete the story, and as noted in a previous post, necessary to also come back with some understanding of the story line and structure. IF will, I’m sure, be an ongoing study, and an enjoyable one at that.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
IF Perspectives
During this morning’s coffee consumption and net-surfing to some of my favorite “haunts” (which I refer to as “doing reference work” to my peers when I’m at work/school), I came across an interesting article by Jim Munroe called “Professor Zork.”…