Photopia

Ever played a text-based adventure (interactive fiction) before? If so, this is a must-see. If not, now’s the time to start. I’ve just finished playing a short IF called Photopia, which won two prestigious (in IF circles) XYZZYnews awards back in 1998.

It’s not… great as an adventure game, but it’s amazing as a story. It’s… so amazingly clever and well thought-out. If you’re an experienced text-adventurer, you’ll be able to see it all in under an hour (and there is, of course, a SAVE and LOAD function). Wow. Just… just go play it. Go on.

Two good ways to get it:

  • Option 1: Download photo201.zip, packaged for Windows – download, extract to a folder, run the batch file (“play_the_game”, or something) – do this if you’re not experienced with setting up your IF enviroment.
  • Option 2: Get Photopia 2.01 (Glulx Edition) and a Glulx interpreter for your favourite operating system. You’ll work out the rest.

A Weekend Of Lockpicking

Following up the arrival of my new lockpicks, I’ve spent the weekend picking pretty much every lock I’ve come across (and helping to teach JTA and Bryn how to do it for themselves). The result: six of nine attempted locks picked, feeling significantly more well-practiced, and very, very sore fingers. I need to get some rubber sleeves or something for these picks, ‘cos holding them for several hours in a day actually begins to bruise.

In other good news, I’m aware that there’s a planned RockMonkey social in which RockMonkey people will go out for drinks and take photos of the various locations featured in TromaNightAdventure. Sounds like a giggle to me, if ever I heard one.