I don’t even know where to start!

When Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder took fourth place in IF Comp 2013, I was lucky enough to pick the prize I had been eyeing for the duration of the judging period: a translation of the game into French, donated by Hugo Labrande.

Well, just in time for my birthday, Hugo has finished the translation, and now Le butin du Capitaine Verdeterre is available for your francophone enjoyment! I’m freaking out over here!

At my request, Hugo also translated all of my comments in the source code, and included comments in English on the translation: There are puns that don’t make any sense in French, puns that make more sense in French, all kinds of stuff. In the first section there’s a long series of words I wrote (in English) about my decision not to fix a bunch of bugs. You should be checking it out right now.

Thank you so much, Hugo!!!

A second episode of Clash of the Type-Ins is live. That is all.

My friend Jenni Polodna and I have a new podcast where we play text adventures. “Parser IF”. You might enjoy it even if the phrase “parser IF” means absolutely nothing to you.

Go ahead and check it out.

(I anticipate that new episodes will be released on a “whenever we feel like it” basis.)

How very nice: My game The Horrible Pyramid has won EctoComp 2013! There were 24 games entered this year, and a lot of them were really well-done and enjoyable, especially considering this is a “SpeedIF” competition and you’re supposed to write the whole game in three hours or less. (I freely admit that I took very slightly longer than three hours, but the competition organizer said it was okay.) The best place to see all the other entrants might be… here. Yeah.

I’m very proud of this game and I thought it deserved more than three hours and twenty minutes of my time, so I’ve released a revised edition that you can play in your browser. The source code is also available, if looking at that kind of thing amuses you.

FINISHED. Here are the results.

The winning game, Coloratura, definitely deserves its victory and its .41-point margin over the second-place game. If you haven’t played it yet you have got to get on that.

I am very proud of the second-place game, and I’m immensely grateful to Emily Boegheim for all the hard work and genius she contributed.

I’m also very glad and kind of astonished that my other game got fourth place. If you look at the statistics, Captain Verdeterre beat Tex Bonaventure by only a hundredth of a point, and Tex beat Solarium by the same tiny margin. A very serious and interesting game was edged out by two very goofy games by a very narrow margin. You ought to give Solarium a look is what I’m saying.

With 35 games in the running, one will naturally expect some games that are not that great, but a lot a lot of these games are quality pieces of work that deserve your attention. Go ahead and direct your attention to these games.

I’m planning on releasing the source code from both games I worked on, and I have some words and thoughts about Captain Verdeterre to broadcast, and maybe I could stand to pretty up this page a bit, and now this post has become a checklist purely for my own benefit. This post is OVER.

The 19th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition is going on right the heck now. Go look at it. I’ve entered two games:

Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder is about pirates. The cover art above was created by Caitlyn Harris.

Robin & Orchid is about high school newspaper students who are looking for a ghost. I wrote it with Emily Boegheim.

There are a ton of other games as well. You should play as many as you want, and then you should vote in the competition before the voting period ends on November 15.

I’ve got a new text adventure for you! It’s called “Wrenlaw”.

You can play it online here. It’s a pretty tiny game, as IF goes.

I’d love to say more about it but I should probably just let you experience it for yourself!

I’ve uploaded some browser-playable versions of my IF games—the ones that aren’t already hosted at PR-IF.org (since the versions there are so pretty already). Crucially, Taco Fiction didn’t have any online play available anywhere, at all, so that has been fixed.

If you haven’t had a chance before, I hope you’ll give them a shot. There’s an introduction to Interactive Fiction (c/o the authors of Inform 7) that might help you if you haven’t played this kind of game before.

And please let me know if something is screwed up!

Play Taco Fiction

Play Nautilisia

Play You’ve Got A Stew Going!

You can play Dig My Grave or The Statue Got Me High at The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction, and while you’re there you should check out the rest of the Apollo 18+20 Tribute Album games.