Islands Far Away by Shanon Fernald Humor 2010 Web Site

About the Story

Islands Far Away is my first work of interactive fiction. I created it as an entry for the Ludum Dare 48 Hour Game Competition #17.

The game is about a programmer who is trying to create a game in the Ludum Dare 48 Hour Game Competition, but is constantly getting distracted by various things. The game has dark humor, strong language and lots of toilet humor. I think it should appeal to programmers and techies.

I would not recommend the game for children because of the nature of some of the puzzles. The game is short and I consider it very easy. I don't think it would take anyone familiar with interactive fiction more than 15-30 minutes to finish the game.

I'm very satisfied with the work considering that I only had 48 hours to create the game and more importantly I had never used inform 7 before. The stuff I was doing with the language by the end of the 48 hours was 100 times better than the stuff I was doing at the beginning. I really wish the inform IDE had a spell checker though. I think the big problem with the game after reviewing what I had accomplished was that the parser is weak. I didn't have time to try to figure out all the responses players would come with, so I imagine the frustration level of the game might be high, even though the game is super simple.

Finally, I do think the ending is particularly inspired and I would like to hear any feedback you might have on it. If anyone cares or likes the game, I may do some cleanup and improvements on all the problems and things I left unfinished. Thanks.

Game Details