Threading the Labyrinth

Baf's Guide

Somewhat in the style of Andrew Plotkin's Space Under the Window, TTL allows you to navigate by selecting words from the visible text; a new text is then presented. There's no world-model, narrative, or puzzle. The effect is more like hypertext than like traditional IF.

As for what it's about, it seems to be a sort of meditation on the nature of interactive writing in the broader sense (or ergodic literature, if you will).

-- Emily Short

An experimental work, in which you've got to address single words in a sentence to advance the story (story? Uhm, rather, the game author's thoughts and comments on various topics). Many reviewers pointed out it wasn't *that* groundbreaking, since Andrew Plotkin's Space Under The Window had used the same device a long time ago; however, I can't tell, for I haven't played the latter. Anyway, TTL is done sufficiently well to be enjoyable on its own, and is short enough to avoid making you feel bored. This piece represents what we call "puzzleless IF" alright, but you might have some troubles getting ahead nonetheless; to get around them, just remember that, in IF, some additional exploration never harms.

-- Valentine Kopteltsev

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

Too bad there just isn't that much here. I finished the whole thing and (I think) read all the text available in about 10 minutes. What's there is pretty cool, while it lasts. It doesn't take long to play, so why not check it out? I get the impression that if you leave the game thinking about the nature of interaction, it will have achieved its goal.
See the full review

SynTax
The writing is more poetry than prose.
See the full review

SynTax
There are some games I play where I think - is this game incredibly profound or is it total rubbish? It's a bit like modern art. Some people think piles of bricks, half a pickled sheep or an unmade bed are marvellous examples of creativity. Others, like me, think "What the heck is THAT about?"

Threading the Labyrinth, one of the games from the 6th Annual IF Comp, is one of those games which comes into that category.
See the full review

- View the most common tags (What's a tag?)

Edit Tags

Cancel

Tags you added are shown below with checkmarks. To remove one of your tags, simply un-check it.
Enter new tags here (use commas to separate tags):

Delete Tags

Cancel

5 star: (1) 4 star: (0) 3 star: (2) 2 star: (2) 1 star: (2)

Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 1 Write a review

This game displays some bold text at the top, and then you pick out keywords from that to type in, which then changes the text.

This is essentially a short twine game years before twine was developed. It has short but intriguing thoughts on the nature of IF games.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  

More Options

Promote this user

Demote this user

Plonk this user

Flag spoilers

Flag as inappropriate

Direct link

View my user filters

Explain these options

 | Add a comment 

Related Games

Recommended Lists