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.
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SynTax
The writing is more poetry than prose.
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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.
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