Blast from the past
This last Sunday, 'Club Floyd' (a group that plays IF games collectively on a MUD I frequent) played my own game, "The Edifice", a game I wrote when I was in grad school in 1997. This game, and the article I wrote about it, turned out to be instrumental in getting me a position at the UW years later as a post-doc: Mary Kuhner, my new boss, had happened to play and review the game back in the day herself, and the article proved to her that I could program.
Happily, the group managed to get through the whole game without resorting to hints, and the general consensus was that it held up well. The transcript of people playing the game is up at the Club Floyd site, but of course you will find spoilers there. If you haven't played the game yourself and are interested in doing so, you can try playing it online directly using Parchment, or you can go visit the IFDB to download the game file directly and get an interpreter (click the 'Show Me How!' button in the upper right).
It was fun watching people play the game--back when I wrote it originally, it wasn't yet common for testers or players to send transcripts to the author, so this was only the second time I've seen a full transcript at all, and the first time I've seen anyone play through in real time, complete with extraneous comments and chatting about what they were thinking. I was generally happy that it didn't take too long for people to get the idea for how to solve the puzzles relatively quickly, and that most of the time, when people had an incorrect but reasonable idea, the game would respond appropriately. It didn't all the time, of course, and those times were really annoying for me--I wanted to go back and fix it!
Sara keeps telling me I should write a new game, and I have had a few ideas over the years that are languishing in some state of not-actually-a-game-yet-ness. It'd definitely be fun. And who knows, I might need a new job someday.
I should also remember to thank Rob Wheeler for the cover art, and Emily Short for hosting the IF Cover Art Drive which inspired Rob to make it. Thanks again, you two!
Happily, the group managed to get through the whole game without resorting to hints, and the general consensus was that it held up well. The transcript of people playing the game is up at the Club Floyd site, but of course you will find spoilers there. If you haven't played the game yourself and are interested in doing so, you can try playing it online directly using Parchment, or you can go visit the IFDB to download the game file directly and get an interpreter (click the 'Show Me How!' button in the upper right).
It was fun watching people play the game--back when I wrote it originally, it wasn't yet common for testers or players to send transcripts to the author, so this was only the second time I've seen a full transcript at all, and the first time I've seen anyone play through in real time, complete with extraneous comments and chatting about what they were thinking. I was generally happy that it didn't take too long for people to get the idea for how to solve the puzzles relatively quickly, and that most of the time, when people had an incorrect but reasonable idea, the game would respond appropriately. It didn't all the time, of course, and those times were really annoying for me--I wanted to go back and fix it!
Sara keeps telling me I should write a new game, and I have had a few ideas over the years that are languishing in some state of not-actually-a-game-yet-ness. It'd definitely be fun. And who knows, I might need a new job someday.
I should also remember to thank Rob Wheeler for the cover art, and Emily Short for hosting the IF Cover Art Drive which inspired Rob to make it. Thanks again, you two!