Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)
Fredrik Ramsberg's recent post about the Game of the Week refers to
a list of games on http://week.ramsberg.net. As I understand it, the
dates given are meant to be the dates of weeks during which
games are meant to be discussed, so "The Fire Tower" is the game
we'd start discussing tomorrow.
Anyway I've now downloaded it and played through it and made some
notes, and since there's not a current game of the week I'll be
encroaching on, I assume no one will mind if I jump the gun by a few
hours and set the ball rolling by posting some thoughts on it
straight away. I don't think anything I say really constitutes a
spoiler, but I'll add a spoiler space just in case anyone would
prefer to play the game before reading my notes.
-- Eric
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The Fire Tower was an entry in the 2004 IF Art Show, in which it was
(deservedly) well received. I
played it when it first came out, but took another quick look at it
(it only takes about 30 minutes
to play through) to refresh my memory before writing these notes.
The Fire Tower bills itself as "A Virtual Summer Hike", and this is
essentially what it is. There's
no plot, no puzzles, and no goal save to complete the circuit and
enjoy the walk along the way. The
game can virtually be completed using movement commands alone,
although it would be rather missing
the point if one did not also make liberal use of EXAMINE and
perhaps some use of LOOK. Other
interactions are possible, not least with the items in the PC's
inventory, but they are completely
inessential.
The game seems to do well what it sets out to do, namely to capture
the experience of walking a
particular route in the form of a work of IF (I say "seems" because
I have no first-hand experience
of the terrain it describes, and so cannot personally vouch for the
game's accuracy, which I simply
take on trust). It works for a number of reasons: the first is that
the author evidently knows the
area well and cares about it, and that she clearly has the literary
skill to describe it. Her
knowledge extends not only to the general topography of the area,
but also to its flora and fauna,
the PC being able to identify the precise species of each she
encounters along the way. The second
is that the author has worked, not only at describing the terrain,
but at describing the experience
of walking it, conveyed mainly through the messages displayed as the
PC moves from one location to
the next. The third is that the author has taken the trouble to
implement not only most of the
obvious objects one might try to examine (at least, most of those I
tried, although I wasn't
playing it in beta-testing mode) but also responses to several other
interactions the player might
attempt, even though few of them are actually allowed. The fourth
reason it worked for me (and this
is a much more subjective factor) is exploring space, where the
space is well laid-out and
engagingly presented (as here), is something I happen to enjoy doing
when playing IF,
I deliberately didn't look back at the reviews written by the art
show judges before writing this,
though I have some recollection of them, which may well be reflected
in my comments. One criticism
I recall concurring with at the time was that the signposts on the
trail could be confusing; if
you're told that the sign faces southwest and it's described as
pointing right towards the way you
want to go, which way is that? For some reason I didn't find it so
confusing this time round,
perhaps because I'd played it before, or perhaps because I finally
got the hang of what the author
meant. But this does perhaps relate to an issue that's been
discussed on these newsgroups more than
once, namely whether using compass directions is the easiest way for
players to navigate in IF. I'm
among those that think it is, and in a sense this game partially
illustrates this: once one I have
to start translating "A sign facing northeast pointing to the right"
into the direction I need to
move in, I start to feel a bit directionally-challenged; at least it
seems to need considerable
more processing than "The sign points southeast towards Bloggs
Hollow" or whatever. That said, the
way the signs were presented in the game probably gave a better
indication of what the trail signs
actually looked like than a description explicitly naming the
compass directions would have done,
although, ironically, that made them a little harder to follow than
they would have been in real
life.
In practice this didn't matter, since the game doesn't allow the
player to take a wrong turn, and
ends up carefully nudging you onto the correct route if you look
like going astray. Again, IIRC, at
least one of the Art Show reviewers last year felt this to be a bit
restrictive, but I didn't
really feel that when I played it through again recently. The point
of the piece is to reproduce
the experience of walking a particular trail, so allowing the player
to roam at random would
undermine what the author is trying to achieve. In any case, the
author could hardly be expected to
implement the Appalacian Trail all the way to Georgia (a couple of
thousand miles, apparently), so
there had to be some mechanism to stop the player wandering too far
afield.
I had one or two minor niggles on my recent play-through. At various
points on your journey the PC
sits down for a rest. That's fine, but the game then makes you type
STAND on each occasion before
allowing you to go anywhere, which I found mildly irritating; I
would have preferred to see an
implicit STAND action in these situations. But perhaps the author
wanted to emphasize the end of
the rest-period as part of the experience. Also, there were one or
two places where I received a
sub-optimal response, e.g.:
You hear the distinctive sound of a woodpecker in the distance.
>listen to bird
Hm... you can't hear any birds at all just now.
>listen to woodpecker
In the distance, you hear a woodpecker's familiar drilling.
Although I'm probably in no position to be casting the first stone
about this sort of thing!
Also, I was a little disappointed when the view from a particular
location named several mountains
that could be seen, but the descriptions of the differently-named
mountains (or at least, of two of
them) turned out to be identical: I'm not saying I could have done
this better myself, but rather
that this felt a bit out of keeping with the rest of the piece.
In the main, though, The Fire Tower seems to have been implemented
very solidly, with some very
nice and occasionally surprising touches (which I shan't elaborate
on so as not to give any
spoilers).
Does the piece work as a work of Interactive Fiction? There's no
fictional element to speak of, and
the interaction is limited more or less to following a set trail. On
the other hand experiencing it
in the form of IF definitely adds something one would not get from
merely reading a transcript or a
guide-book, and I'd guess that something is the particular
immersivenes that comes from having to
move the action foreward by one's own interactions. There is, to be
sure, an element of adventure
in setting off for a solitary walk in uninhabited terrain, and some
of that comes through in the
writing; it is an element that's largely minimalized, however, since
there seems to be no
possibility of getting lost or of having to beat a tight time
constraint (e.g. getting back before
dark). It is made apparent from the outset that the NPC knows
exactly what she's doing and knows
the terrain well, so that the likelihood of mishap is minimal.
Clearly this is a deliberate choice
on the part of the author, to encourage the player to savour the
experience without any distracting
anxieties.
This does leave me with one small doubt, however: the fact that one
complete the game in about 30
minutes without encountering any significant challenges perhaps
makes it fall a little short of the
actual experience of hiking for several hours. Of course the
physical effort of typing on a
keyboard is never going to match the physical effort of going for a
long walk, but maybe having to
overcome a few obstacles on the way would have at least help
simulate some kind of effort. As it
was, arriving at the end of the game after a fairly quick
run-through left me with a slight sense
of anti-climax. But perhaps I should have spent more time savouring
each of the locations along the
way, which may have been what the author intended.
-- Eric
Fredrik Ramsberg's recent post about the Game of the Week refers to
a list of games on http://week.ramsberg.net. As I understand it, the
dates given are meant to be the dates of weeks during which
games are meant to be discussed, so "The Fire Tower" is the game
we'd start discussing tomorrow.
Anyway I've now downloaded it and played through it and made some
notes, and since there's not a current game of the week I'll be
encroaching on, I assume no one will mind if I jump the gun by a few
hours and set the ball rolling by posting some thoughts on it
straight away. I don't think anything I say really constitutes a
spoiler, but I'll add a spoiler space just in case anyone would
prefer to play the game before reading my notes.
-- Eric
*
*
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
P
A
C
E
*
*
The Fire Tower was an entry in the 2004 IF Art Show, in which it was
(deservedly) well received. I
played it when it first came out, but took another quick look at it
(it only takes about 30 minutes
to play through) to refresh my memory before writing these notes.
The Fire Tower bills itself as "A Virtual Summer Hike", and this is
essentially what it is. There's
no plot, no puzzles, and no goal save to complete the circuit and
enjoy the walk along the way. The
game can virtually be completed using movement commands alone,
although it would be rather missing
the point if one did not also make liberal use of EXAMINE and
perhaps some use of LOOK. Other
interactions are possible, not least with the items in the PC's
inventory, but they are completely
inessential.
The game seems to do well what it sets out to do, namely to capture
the experience of walking a
particular route in the form of a work of IF (I say "seems" because
I have no first-hand experience
of the terrain it describes, and so cannot personally vouch for the
game's accuracy, which I simply
take on trust). It works for a number of reasons: the first is that
the author evidently knows the
area well and cares about it, and that she clearly has the literary
skill to describe it. Her
knowledge extends not only to the general topography of the area,
but also to its flora and fauna,
the PC being able to identify the precise species of each she
encounters along the way. The second
is that the author has worked, not only at describing the terrain,
but at describing the experience
of walking it, conveyed mainly through the messages displayed as the
PC moves from one location to
the next. The third is that the author has taken the trouble to
implement not only most of the
obvious objects one might try to examine (at least, most of those I
tried, although I wasn't
playing it in beta-testing mode) but also responses to several other
interactions the player might
attempt, even though few of them are actually allowed. The fourth
reason it worked for me (and this
is a much more subjective factor) is exploring space, where the
space is well laid-out and
engagingly presented (as here), is something I happen to enjoy doing
when playing IF,
I deliberately didn't look back at the reviews written by the art
show judges before writing this,
though I have some recollection of them, which may well be reflected
in my comments. One criticism
I recall concurring with at the time was that the signposts on the
trail could be confusing; if
you're told that the sign faces southwest and it's described as
pointing right towards the way you
want to go, which way is that? For some reason I didn't find it so
confusing this time round,
perhaps because I'd played it before, or perhaps because I finally
got the hang of what the author
meant. But this does perhaps relate to an issue that's been
discussed on these newsgroups more than
once, namely whether using compass directions is the easiest way for
players to navigate in IF. I'm
among those that think it is, and in a sense this game partially
illustrates this: once one I have
to start translating "A sign facing northeast pointing to the right"
into the direction I need to
move in, I start to feel a bit directionally-challenged; at least it
seems to need considerable
more processing than "The sign points southeast towards Bloggs
Hollow" or whatever. That said, the
way the signs were presented in the game probably gave a better
indication of what the trail signs
actually looked like than a description explicitly naming the
compass directions would have done,
although, ironically, that made them a little harder to follow than
they would have been in real
life.
In practice this didn't matter, since the game doesn't allow the
player to take a wrong turn, and
ends up carefully nudging you onto the correct route if you look
like going astray. Again, IIRC, at
least one of the Art Show reviewers last year felt this to be a bit
restrictive, but I didn't
really feel that when I played it through again recently. The point
of the piece is to reproduce
the experience of walking a particular trail, so allowing the player
to roam at random would
undermine what the author is trying to achieve. In any case, the
author could hardly be expected to
implement the Appalacian Trail all the way to Georgia (a couple of
thousand miles, apparently), so
there had to be some mechanism to stop the player wandering too far
afield.
I had one or two minor niggles on my recent play-through. At various
points on your journey the PC
sits down for a rest. That's fine, but the game then makes you type
STAND on each occasion before
allowing you to go anywhere, which I found mildly irritating; I
would have preferred to see an
implicit STAND action in these situations. But perhaps the author
wanted to emphasize the end of
the rest-period as part of the experience. Also, there were one or
two places where I received a
sub-optimal response, e.g.:
You hear the distinctive sound of a woodpecker in the distance.
>listen to bird
Hm... you can't hear any birds at all just now.
>listen to woodpecker
In the distance, you hear a woodpecker's familiar drilling.
Although I'm probably in no position to be casting the first stone
about this sort of thing!
Also, I was a little disappointed when the view from a particular
location named several mountains
that could be seen, but the descriptions of the differently-named
mountains (or at least, of two of
them) turned out to be identical: I'm not saying I could have done
this better myself, but rather
that this felt a bit out of keeping with the rest of the piece.
In the main, though, The Fire Tower seems to have been implemented
very solidly, with some very
nice and occasionally surprising touches (which I shan't elaborate
on so as not to give any
spoilers).
Does the piece work as a work of Interactive Fiction? There's no
fictional element to speak of, and
the interaction is limited more or less to following a set trail. On
the other hand experiencing it
in the form of IF definitely adds something one would not get from
merely reading a transcript or a
guide-book, and I'd guess that something is the particular
immersivenes that comes from having to
move the action foreward by one's own interactions. There is, to be
sure, an element of adventure
in setting off for a solitary walk in uninhabited terrain, and some
of that comes through in the
writing; it is an element that's largely minimalized, however, since
there seems to be no
possibility of getting lost or of having to beat a tight time
constraint (e.g. getting back before
dark). It is made apparent from the outset that the NPC knows
exactly what she's doing and knows
the terrain well, so that the likelihood of mishap is minimal.
Clearly this is a deliberate choice
on the part of the author, to encourage the player to savour the
experience without any distracting
anxieties.
This does leave me with one small doubt, however: the fact that one
complete the game in about 30
minutes without encountering any significant challenges perhaps
makes it fall a little short of the
actual experience of hiking for several hours. Of course the
physical effort of typing on a
keyboard is never going to match the physical effort of going for a
long walk, but maybe having to
overcome a few obstacles on the way would have at least help
simulate some kind of effort. As it
was, arriving at the end of the game after a fairly quick
run-through left me with a slight sense
of anti-climax. But perhaps I should have spent more time savouring
each of the locations along the
way, which may have been what the author intended.
-- Eric
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