Cut the Sky

Wow.

Sometimes a work of IF is so absorbing that when you finish, it feels like waking up from a dream. You sit there, blinking, and it takes a few moments to re-orient to the real world.

Cut the Sky is one of those works.

That's not due to the setting, which is a vaguely Vancian far future environment, of the type where the line between sufficiently advanced technology and magic has been functionally erased by a succession of epochs which have left the world studded with incomprehensible ruins and wonders. It's not due to the plot, which is about as basic as they come -- a drifter's journey through a weird world in search of a goal half-imagined, half-dreamt. It's the writing, which is of a class that author SV Linwood has not previously demonstrated in published works, that makes this work shine, coupled with a deep understanding of craft that intimately supports that writing in ways large and small.

The story here is minimalism done right; everything non-essential has been left behind, correctly deemed as irrelevant. Linwood wields a virtual pen like the protagonist wields a blade (or something like it), not as a tool or even as a weapon but as an extension of will. With a flick, a location is cut into virtual existence, the few sentences slashing lines through your attention like a razor. They seem like nothing, you barely feel them -- but then the associations start to well up, and the imaginary place blooms into a bright and compelling scene in your mind.

Everything is like that. Characters are archetypes, but you know them instantly because they are made up of everything your subconscious insists they must be. Machines and creatures are evoked in a handful of words, conjuring forms that match the contours of every assumption you hold, every connotation suggested by the author's choice of vocabulary.

With respect to craft, other reviewers point out the most interesting feature of the gameplay: The story progresses only when you, the player, are satisfied with the outcome of each scene. The frequent need to choose between the commands >WANDER (to move on) and >RETURN (to replay) elevates the interactor to a role that in some ways approaches that of co-author -- as your sense of the story develops you are given the power to continuously refine it as you go. Each scene seems to support several distinctive resolutions, allowing you to pick one that matches your own sensibilities about the tale being told. It's not clear that any of these differences have an effect on the game state that creates consequences for the evolving story, but it's definitely clear that they allow the player to at least partially shape narrative elements other than plot (e.g. mood, theme) in the evolving experience of the story.

It's an extremely powerful effect, one that changes the nature of the gameplay significantly because it puts the game in the position of having to try to align itself to your intentions. The skillful writing plays a substantial part here, guiding you toward the types of interactions that the program is prepared to offer like a magician forcing the draw of a card.

It took me a while to decide on a star rating for this one -- for several weeks I've thought of it as being on the cusp between four and five stars. In the end, its landmark/king-of-the-hill status as a story about a wanderer protagonist (a definite genre) earns it the highest marks. Definitely don't miss this one... as either player or would-be author there are things to marvel at here.