End the game saying “Grue win”
The voting deadline approaches for TWIFcomp, “a competition for tweet-sized interactive fiction.” You can view all of the entries here, and most of them can be played online. It’s amazing what the entrants have managed to do inside the constraints of the competition. I’m especially a big fan of the entries that work both as clever games and as expressive source code (utilizing Inform 7 to its fullest). A few of my favorites:
Tumbleweed Hero by Warp Skip colleague Rob Dubbin is among the most laconic entries in the competition, but also among the funniest:
"Tumbleweed Hero" by Rob Dubbin Desert is room. Description is "The desert is arid."; Instead of going nowhere: say "You roll [noun].";
FGBG (quoted in this entry’s title) does a great job of encapsulating the total grue experience, and is very satisfying to play:
cave is room a man fumbling is edible in cave instead doing something other than eating, looking: say "Shh. Eat." before eating anything: end the game saying "Grue win"
You See Chaos Here. by Andrew Plotkin wins my vote for technical proficiency and general mindbendingness (especially if you know a little bit about how the Z-Machine works):
"You See Chaos Here." by Zarf
Madness is room
Chaos is in it
Before doing anything: x
To x:
(- action = ActionData-->(1+11*random(64)); if (~~noun) noun = player; -)
Finally, Adam Thornton’s Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis deserves an award. It somehow manages to adhere to the letter of the rules while extravagantly skirting the spirit. I won’t reproduce the source code here, since it’s around five hundred megabytes, but it’s worth downloading and trying out. (If you’re wondering why the game wasn’t disqualified for its size, read the rules closely.)
—Adam
