Stick it to the man

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

So I spend about a half hour exploring that first scene as thoroughly as I can: checking out all the rooms, talking to all the characters, really digging it. My IF time is up for the night, so I save my game.

Next day, I restore. Things seem a little stranger. Some paragraphs are repeating, weirdly. Some of the dialogue doesn't exactly seem appropriate to the scene, and some of the scenes appear to lack the appropriate dialogue. About then is when I choose an option and -- bang. Interpreter crash. Oh, no! So I restart, try another route. Another crash. Another restart. El crasho.
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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 1 Write a review

This starts out unpromising, in the ultimate entry in the My Crappy Apartment genre, as you awake in a grody underimplemented squat. But it soon picks up. The game is played entirely through going places and talking to your friends— all fellow anarchists. It essentially has two short scenes: before and during the rally.

The core themes— ineffectual action and anxious micropolitics of an activist group— are underdeveloped and gestured towards. You can gather from the notes before and after the game ends that completing the game was a heroic effort by the author and much was left undone. From the bold use of colours, and the menu-based interaction, it's a shame Brendan didn't have Twine to use when he wrote this, as he would have been able to implement the whole thing much more smoothly and would have had more time to explore his narrative vision.

I think the original comp entry was quite buggy. I didn't have any real issues, and I thought the implementation of the conversation system was surprisingly elegant (e.g. you can use a two-letter shortcut command to switch between NPC conversations).

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