IFcomp etc
Hello valued subscriber. Just thought I'd check in since we haven't chatted in a little while.
I entered my game Universal Hologram in IFcomp, a really cool interactive fiction competition, and it came in 23rd out of 71 games! (tying with Grandma Bethlinda's Remarkable Egg, a parser game with twice as many reviews. Exciting stuff.)
Because of IFcomp's gently curving prize structure, I made about $140 in prize money. That plus the $65 or so from the game's itch.io page makes uniholo my best seller ever! These competitions are nothing to sneeze at if you're poor as shit like me.
Anyway, a writing update: I have nothing new to show you, but I've been working on a game I think will be really interesting. It's about a shoddy '90s computer program tasked with keeping a suicidal person alive. I'm hoping to release it as part of the interactive fiction Spring Thing competition, but I'll send out another email when that's approaching. For now, here's one passage of code:
1: The Black Street Tearing A Seam Through Godfield … @@#black; continuing northwest into orange hills cluttered with sand, beetles, and dead twigs.@@ <<silently>>
<<cont keypress>><<replace '#black'>>\
plus 2: The Soft Green Glow Of Sunlight Halating Through The Trypophobic Wall Of A Rudimentary Home Built From Stacks Of Recycled Plastic Bottles
3: Collected Condensation Pouring From A Makeshift Gutter
4: The Broken Freakishly Glitching LED Mini-Billboard Sign Of A Local Dentist
5: Pale Hands Glimpsed Through A Tinted Apartment Window Pulling Closed The Heat-resistant Shutters.<</replace>><<cont keypress>><<goto '4'>><</cont>><</cont>><</silently>>
I hope people like it. In many ways, it's similar to Universal Hologram (primarily featuring interactions between a human and a computer program, interested in "cyberspace" consciousness, science fiction) but in other ways it's quite different. There's no swearing, little philosophy, not a lot of interesting technology or futurism, and few jokes; and the mechanics of play are quite demanding: you have to really role play (as a character or yourself) when answering the program's questions.
One more thing: I have an exhibition at the Groton Public Library in Groton, Massachusetts, 01450, USA. The curator, Ken Hanson, wrote a very kind summary of my work based on a couple scant sentences I sent him. It's a dual show, my psychedelic artsy film photos next to the spare and chilly b&w film photos of Ed Birch, who lab-develops his photos himself, I'm told. We haven't met but I like his work very much, particularly his photograph of an avocado.
This is getting long so I'll go now.
-kit