|
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. |
Playlists and Wishlists |
RSS Feeds New member reviews
Updates to downloadable files
All updates to this page
|
|
About the StoryBrowse the Endling Archive to uncover the purpose of its creation. Game Details
Language: English (en-US)
First Publication Date: February 17, 2009 Current Version: Unknown License: Freeware Development System: Inform 6 Forgiveness Rating: Merciful IFID: GLULX-0-090217-71027D4A TUID: ms15e48egclycv3 |
From the Author
I hesitate to call this interactive fiction. It has a much lower level of interaction than "mainstream" IF.
Tags
Member Reviews
| Average Rating:  Number of Reviews: 6 Write a review |
Most Helpful Member Reviews
Very Slight, but Haunting, February 19, 2009If you're anything like me, I'm sure you've enjoyed finding books and computers in IF games that let you wander through a menu of backstory. The Endling Archive is essentially the same thing, only without the containing game. So, yes, it is pretty much just reading static text from a menu that expands after you've select a couple of options.
The Endling Archive strikes me as a good germ of an idea. I'm surprised that I've never played an IF game before that exclusively treated the parser as a fictional computer system, and it seems to me that there should be a wealth of retro-futuristic (or just pretend unix console) hacking games. There aren't however, so for now we'll just have to enjoy this strange and haunting encyclopaedia of things that the future and present have lost.
Oddly moving, June 21, 2013I was confused at first: "Load configuration file?" Well, okay, once I figured out how to start a game, it seemed like a database of little factoids, seemingly unrelated to each other. Then there were the personal notes, which made the unseen narrator an NPC in its own right. Endling tugs on your heartstrings because the triviality of some of the 'files' contrasts starkly with the gravity of the disaster the narrator alludes to.
Even though there is no story in the traditional sense of the word, even though it basically is a bunch of factoids, it is elegantly written, carefully constructed and moved me to tears.
A shortish inform game with an innovative file-tree interface, June 10, 2016The Endling Archive manipulates Inform 7 in a truly interesting way.
The game treats the player as someone using a database written in the traditional Inform menu system (using N, P, Enter, and Q to navigate). As you read more of the database, more and more becomes unlocked.
The game uses interesting pictures. The story is based on the idea of survivors, the last of their kind. The database starts out with different real-life examples of endlings, and then transitions to different material.
I really enjoyed it, although the ending fell a bit flat. It took 10 or 15 minutes to play.
See All 7 Member Reviews
If you enjoyed The Endling Archive...
Related Games
People who like The Endling Archive also gave high ratings to these games:| Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis, by One of the Bruces and Drunken Bastard Average member rating: (31 ratings)Stiffy Makane, or rather his ancestor Mentula Macanus, is here subjected to an increasingly-unlikely series of crudely sexual romps through the ancient world. It's sort of like the Satyricon, except not nearly as funny. |
| The Cavity of Time, by Sam Kabo Ashwell Average member rating: (11 ratings)An Undum-fueled CYOA through a surrealistic landscape of intertextuality and logorrhoea, starring Stiffy Makane in his usual pornographic, antiheroic groove. |
| Evita Sempai, by Florencia Rumpel Rodriguez Average member rating: (11 ratings)A woman in the fifties falls in love with an idealized version of a polemical political figure. |
Polls
The following polls include votes for The Endling Archive:Games with graphics and/or sound by eyesack
I couldn't find an easy way to search for this, so I figured I'd ask the hivemind: What games use graphics and/or sound to enhance the gameplay, similar to City of Secrets and Necrotic Drift?
Emotional IF by Sorrel
I'm looking for IF that inspires one or more strong emotions in the player – an IF that pulls on your heartstrings a little.
More than it appears to be... by dacharya64
I'm looking for games that aren't exactly what they seem. Perhaps they come across as simple or romantic or anything really, the point is that things take a turn for the worse (or perhaps the better) and everything begins to change....
This is version 4 of this page, edited by Dominic Delabruere on 15 March 2009 at 10:44am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item