Science Fiction game

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Here's a new text adventure game that you might want to try if science
or science fiction intrigues you.

The game isn't ready to be submitted for an official review (still in
the late beta-testing phase) but it's clean enough so that players can
simply enjoy it on-the-fly without signing up to be an official
beta-tester. If you have suggestions that you want to e-mail me about,
I'd consider that to be icing on the cake.

This game takes more than two hours to play, so you won't ever see
"Finding Martin" as a competition entry. It's just for fun!

One of the more original aspects of the game involves the use of time
travel. You can cooperate with (and interfere with) the actions that
you took on previous trips to the same time period. There's space
travel and extraterrestrial life forms to encounter as well.

The game includes some tongue-in-cheek homages to "Hitchhikers Guide to
the Galaxy", "2001 A Space Odyssey", "Wizard of Oz", "Lord of the
Rings", "Star Trek", "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure", and other
fictional works. Cameo appearances by Isaac Newton, Werner Heisenberg,
Avogadro, Archimedes, and Fibonacci. One extra credit point is given
if you can get some of the brightly colored machine tools back into the
Klein bottle.

By the way, the five penguins involved this game are NOT an homage to
the four penguins appearing in the movie "Madagascar". Any resemblance
is coincidental. Mine are cuter anyway, although it is common
knowledge that all penguins appearing in fiction are hilariously funny.

You can get more information about the game and an option to download a
free self-installing game at www.qrivy.net/~gayla. (If you prefer to
use an interpreter rather than downloading a stand-alone game, just
send me an e-mail and I'll send you a TADS 2 "gam" file.)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

This is great! I'm having fun. Without giving too much away, I love a
game which lets you do a lot early on; an hour in and my arms are full
of things I've found, and I'm still not stuck because there are so many
avenues to follow. It has the feel of a big, wide, traditional game;
I'm reminded of Curses or Humbug.

I also like the way you've promoted the game; the web page and the
little collage certainly whetted my appetite. I've often said that
what's really lacking from most post-commercial era games is the box
cover art. And the collage provides clues, of course.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know I'm enjoying the game so far. I
think it's a shame when somebody announces a new game and nobody
comments, because I know that if it was me I'd be checking here every
day.

Speaking of penguin related fiction, I highly recommend "Death and the
Penguin" by Andrey Kurkov. Both funny and moving.

J. J. Guest

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Thanks so much for your encouraging comments!

The collage was a gift to me from my daughter and her fiance who live
in Los Angeles. They e-mailed it to me as a Mothers Day Card, and also
sent me a hand-made clay statue of a penguin named "Chuck". And my
son, who lives in Phoenix, shipped me several small cardboard boxes
(one arrived each day for almost an entire week), each package
containing a can of spam. Of course the last can of spam had a special
secret that I can't reveal since this would be a spoiler.

I suppose that it gives my kids fertile ground for coming up with gift
ideas when they have a mom who has been obsessed with writing a
text-based game for past year and a half.

Now if I can only get my husband to play the game! I've heard that
procrastinating about playing your spouse's game is grounds for divorce
in every state of the US except Nevada, but unfortunately we live in
Vegas.

By the way, I've recently added a few "extras" to the "Finding Martin"
web page:

1. You can now play the game online using a TADS2 java-interpreter
named Jetty, written by Dan Shiovitz. Playing this game online is
basically just an "intro" to see if you like it. Serious players will
want to install the game on their own computers in order to get "save
and restore" functions.

2. I've added some walk-through files, organized in small pieces so as
to not spoil too much in one file.

3. I've started posting chapters of a "story version", which is a
somewhat more entertaining way to get walk-through-type assistance. Or
it could be of interest to anyone who decides that the puzzles are too
challenging for them but they like the writing and want to find out
what happens next. So far I only have two chapters written, so this
will have to be considered a work in progress.