The Minimalist Game

The year is 2024. I just returned to my roots and reconnected with my deep desire to engage with all things interactive fiction. This is the first year during which I get to witness the grand event, which is IFComp. There are 67 entries total that year, the 67th one being Uninteractive Fiction by Leah Targic. "The only winning move is not to play", the description says, and it's true: pressing "Play" leads to the player losing. There is even a failure sound effect... and nothing more. Press play, lose.

Of course, the goal of the game was losing — both on the in-game layer and the meta layer, if I understand things correctly. It did, however, do much more: it sparked discussion and jokes within the community. Many wondered about secret hidden brilliance, combed through the source code, made detailed reviews. This isn't to say that Uninteractive Fiction was universally acclaimed. Some people still rolled their eyes at an obvious joke they found unfunny, and they had a right to do so. But now, two years later, we're still referencing it with a bit of humor-laced fondness. It was, in the end, just a joke: whether you consider it funny or not, that's up to you.

Yesterday, a dear friend sent me a link to The Minimalist Game and referenced Uninteractive Fiction. The similarity is very strong: The Minimalist Game combines in itself both the "you lose" aspect of Uninteractive Fiction and the "you win" aspect of Uninteractive Fiction 2. TMG, however, is a parser, which was a much more fashionable form at the time, giving the player a little more to do. Do you want to win? Type it in. Make contact with the keyboard. Make your will known. I believe typing might be a little more impactful than a simple click (I played the Twine version of TMG... it just didn't hit the same), so I enjoyed TMG a little bit more than UF1 and UF2.

I wasn't there in 2010s (I was too busy being 10, I think. I don't remember that well) and I have no way to check what the sentiments were back in the day, save for the reviews on IFDB, and those are scathing. "Do we have to make a listing for everything?", they ask, missing the point of a database, but okay I guess. "This is not a game", "there's nothing here", "pointless". You can argue they are correct, I won't stop you, but one thing I noticed was a thin film of rage clinging to those reviews. You cannot read them without feeling that this was taken as a genuine affront to the arts, as a borderline sacrilege, a piece of trash placed upon the shining altar of the goddess of Interactive Fiction. IF is serious business! The only positive review comes from 2023 and engages with TMG in a way people would engage with Uninteractive Fiction a year later.

From this place, I started to wonder: was The Minimalist Game simply a victim of being made and published at the wrong time? Would it attract less rage if we've seen it appear a decade and a half later? I'm not saying it'd be rated higher, but I believe it would be received with more warmth and affection. Perhaps this would be what we would reference instead of Uninteractive Fiction while joking. And from here, I asked myself another question: how many games were met with unjustified anger just because they were made too early? How many games published now are overlooked or considered bad just because we're not ready for them yet? How many games are hidden, waiting to be rediscovered in a much friendlier future? Will their authors ever know the future is kinder?

We are constantly enjoying things which used to be considered terrible. Archeologists unearth and cherish what the ancients thought of as trash. Kids on Tik-Tok rediscover old/niche songs which were considered too strange or improper for the times they were released in. The Minimalist Game is, for me, yet another instance of the same, ages-old phenomenon. Is it good? Well, not really, but the times have changed. People of 2010s weren't ready for it but we, people of 2020s, are. Welcome home, The Minimalist Game. Welcome home.