External Links
- Story file
The latest version of the game, playable on a standard TADS 3 interpreter.
Requires a TADS interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links. - Story file for online play
The latest version of the game, compiled with WebUI. To play online, please click the Play Online button above.
Legacy WebUI format for TADS. No known interpreter can play this type of file on modern operating systems. On older versions of Windows running Internet Explorer with Flash, you can download the HTML TADS Player Kit for Windows to use this file. - Source code
This is a pseudo-format used to represent download adviser records that apply to multiple formats. (Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.)
Have you played this game?You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in. |
About the Story
"The rules of the game are easy. I'm It, so I go and hide. You and the others count to 50, then you have to look for me. If you find me, you have to get into the hiding spot with me. If you're the last person still looking for me, then you lose. Got it?"
(You can play online by clicking the Play Online button in the top right-hand corner of the page, or download the latest version of "it.t3" to play offline. Please note that versions of It from 2.0 onwards require a recent TADS interpreter, and not all interpreters are up to date at the moment. Gargoyle will not currently run the game, as its TADS interpreter is too old. I recommend using QTads instead.)
Awards
16th Place - 17th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2011)
Ratings and Reviews
| Average Rating:    Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 2 |
Emily Boegheim's It explores the social dynamics among four girls (one of them the protagonist) engaged in a children's game like hide-and-seek. My first impressions were good, largely because the hiding game itself is well implemented. Room descriptions make spatial relations clear and have an appropriate focus on potential hiding places. SEARCH and LOOK IN/UNDER/BEHIND seem to be treated as synonyms, avoiding guess-the-verb problems. The other girls are realistically visible from a distance, and react to the protagonist's actions.
After the first playthrough (which doesn't take long), it's clear that the hiding game really isn't fair (at least not if you play by the rules), and that the characters have a personal and emotional stake in the outcome. Replaying several times is expected, and It is polished enough to make that enjoyable. NPC actions are not randomised or especially complicated, so with knowledge from replays, engineering a desired outcome isn't too difficult. It's also possible to disregard the hiding game, and some of the most memorable endings can be found this way.
It feels genuinely interactive in that the player can try nearly any plausible action, and more often than not be rewarded with a novel outcome or further insight into the characters and their relationships. In my case, the result was that I ended up trying to find as many endings as possible – still treating It as a game even when not trying to win the internal hiding game. Someone less concerned with exhausting the available possibilities might be satisfied by finding a single appropriate response to the unfair situation that It portrays. On either approach, It ought to be rewarding.
In this game, you play a girl playing hide and seek at a party. The party is at Emma's house, and Emma's mom is the employer of your mom and some other people's mom. Emma is well-dressed and you other three are not. There is a poorer red haired girl you don't know, and Emma's croney Yvonne.
The game ends very quickly, but you can find a lot of endings. I found at least 5 or 6. The most satisfying ending to me ignores Emma and finds you a new friend.
The programming and NPCs are quite well done. It's a fun little take on girl's social structures.
1 Off-Site Review
Paean to Wanderings
[...] it's a good piece, but I found myself wanting something richer and more involved.
See the full review
News
Version 2.2 releasedApril 6, 2014
Version 2.2 of It is now on the IF Archive and making its way to a mirror near you! Changes in this version include:
- The "last time you saw [NPC] she was in [location]" functionality now actually works
- The WebUI version uses the correct HTML entity for emdashes
- A workaround for an obscure adv3 bug with commands that contain both a comma and a word that is not in the dictionary
- [SPOILERS]
- Stuff
More interestingly, I have now also released the source code! If you were considering desperate measures to see all the endings, you can forget those desperate measures, because the source code package contains a neat list of endings and test scripts for each of them. Marvel at the heretofore unknown density of Stuff To Do! Wonder at the design choices that led to many endings being effectively undiscoverable! Steal my wobbly code for your own TADS projects!
Version 2.1 releasedMay 2, 2013
Version 2.1 went up on the IF Archive last night (Australia time) and will hopefully percolate through to all the mirrors soon. It's a minor release with just a few bugfixes:
- Fixed an icky bug with listing the contents of a room you're not in
- Removed a typo that had been there since the beginning of time or so
- Fixed a minor problem with presentation of the status line in the online version (I bet no one else noticed this, but it was bugging me)
Thanks to NR Turner and ralphmerridew for spotting and reporting a couple of these bugs, and to me for spotting and reporting the other one!
Version 2.0 releasedFebruary 13, 2013
The main change is that there is now also a WebUI version of the game that you can play online. If you want to play offline, I would suggest downloading the standard UI version of the game, not the WebUI version, since most TADS 3 interpreters don't yet support WebUI games. But it's up to you. The two versions should be equivalent, apart from a few trivial differences in presentation, mostly related to how they present the title screen at the beginning of the game.
Unless any major bugs appear (please let me know if you spot any), I'm calling this the final version of It. Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on the competition version! I hope you enjoy(ed) the game!
Tags
Game Details
First Publication Date: October 1, 2011
Current Version: 2.2
License: Freeware
Development System: TADS 3
IFID: 35EBA4CB-D2A3-6097-2240-F088C8AEDE85
TUID: clox1mlffo37xf2z
It on IFDB
Recommended Lists
It appears in the following Recommended Lists:Great games in a mostly realistic setting by MathBrush
These are games that for the most part don't contain magical elements or futuristic technology. This includes games where there might be magic or futuristic technology, but you don't know until the end. So several of these games do...
My Personal Fave Parser Games by doodlelogic
Just a list of parser-based games that I rated 4 or 5 stars, in alphabetical order.
Polls
The following polls include votes for It:The most underrated game you've authored by Anya Johanna DeNiro
Interpret "under-rated" however that means to you. Perhaps it's one that's simply not played very much for whatever reason. Or it's a game you consider flawed but still worth playing, or an early effort that you are fond of.
Games with multiple endings by tggdan3
Obviously not counting "death" as an ending, but non-successful ends can count if there are other successful ends. Variation in endings should at least vary the ending somewhat (as opposed to be an extra word or two).
Australian Setting or Characters by Rhetta_Lynnea
I've played several good games with Aussie characters or setting, and I was wondering if there are any others. It doesn't have to be the main focus of the game, just a little extra colour.
RSS Feeds
New member reviews
Updates to external links
All updates to this page
This is version 12 of this page, edited by Lance Campbell on 17 May 2020 at 8:01pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page
