External Links


Story File
Requires a TADS interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
Walkthrough and map
by David Welbourn

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 external links
All updates to this page

Indigo

by Emily Short profile

Part of fractured fairy tales
Fantasy
2011

(based on 54 ratings)
6 reviews

About the Story

"Years ago, a witch placed you in this tower and arranged for your upkeep, paying certain villagers well to keep you supplied with the most basic necessities, and no more.

Your years in the tower have changed you. You are more or less a grown woman now, with hair nearly to the floor. Your skills have developed as far as solitude and tedium can take them. You are ready to leave.

Take your time."

Written for the Indigo New Language Speed-IF, this is a short puzzle piece in TADS 3 riffing on the story of Rapunzel.


Game Details


Awards

Nominee, Best Individual Puzzle - 2011 XYZZY Awards

Editorial Reviews

XYZZY Awards Site
The puzzle here is two-fold. First, you have to discover that a system is present that you can manipulate. Second, you have to manipulate it to serve your ends. The first part is where the joy of solving the puzzle lies, and the second contains the satisfaction.... An altogether fantastic experience, all around. (Note: review is specifically a discussion of the puzzle and contains massive spoilers.)
See the full review

Tags

- View the most common tags (What's a tag?)

(Log in to add your own tags)
Tags you added are shown below with checkmarks. To remove one of your tags, simply un-check it.

Enter new tags here (use commas to separate tags):

Member Reviews

5 star:
(4)
4 star:
(22)
3 star:
(23)
2 star:
(5)
1 star:
(0)
Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 6
Write a review


Most Helpful Member Reviews


4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A timely game, June 6, 2013
by RedHatter (Vista, California)

Emily Short's games are always intriguing and original, Indigo is no exemption. It's a wonderful short IF. The story was compelling and the magic system interesting.

Please keep in mind that Indigo was written in a couple of days and is marked as unfinished. That being said, it did have a weakness: game play. For most of the game, I found myself playing 'guess the verb', though to be fair, the about did say it was unfinished and as such, was bound to have problems. The main thing I had a problem with was (Spoiler - click to show)correctly formatting the command to take time. I knew from the beginning I needed to transfer a month from the apple to the potion. Yet when I tried take month from apple, the interpreter informed me that the month was part of the apple and couldn't be taken. take month, the correct command, and take month from apple should produce the same results. The game, while brilliant, was riddled with small errors like this.

In spite of this, I would recommend indigo to any and all IF players.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Wonderful speed IF with innovative magic system, February 3, 2016

Sometimes I think Emily Short has a competition with herself to see how many different magic systems she can come up with.

In this short game, you can take amounts of time from an object and place them in another object. The game makes this fairly simple.

This is a speed-IF, which generally means messy implementation. That doesn't show up as much here, except for leaving the tower. Also, the ending took me a bit to figure out.

Beyond being just a speed IF, this was a new-language speed IF, which means that Emily Short learned TADS and made this game all in a couple of days. Extremely impressive.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
I was excited for this game, September 22, 2011
by Deboriole (San Diego, CA)

I really, really enjoyed Bronze so I was looking forward to playing this one. I enjoyed the whimsy of this game, although the manner of using objects was definitely unique and I needed hints to figure out what I was supposed to do. Once it was clear what commands to use, I was able to finish the game in a matter of minutes.

There was one glitch that got me completely stuck, I had to restart to be able to finish the game.
(Spoiler - click to show)I attached the hour to the window (which is on the top floor). 50 turns later, I was meticulously searching the middle level when my candle went out. Ok, I thought, I will just get another hour and restore the candle. I tried "get hour" but could not, because the hour was still stuck to the window upstairs. I went to the top floor and was able to take the hour. The text said that the candle was whole again -- but when I went down to the kitchen to light it, there was just a stub left. I was caught in a situation where my hour was on one floor and my fire source was on another floor!
I am sure I am the only person who would ever get in such a situation, but I guess that makes me a good beta tester? :)

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

See All 6 Member Reviews

Indigo on IFDB

Recommended Lists

Indigo appears in the following Recommended Lists:

Best fairytale/nursery rhyme games by MathBrush
A selection of fairy tale games, nursery rhyme games, or games involving the Fair Folk.

Polls

The following polls include votes for Indigo:

Speed IFs that are awesome by trojo
Expectations for Speed-IFs are generally low, but sometimes games written as Speed-IFs are in fact awesome-- not just "awesome for a Speed IF" but truly worthwhile. List some favorites here.

Games with aspect transfer mechanics by David Welbourn
One really cool thing about interactive fiction games is that they don't need to conform to normal physics. Sometimes, a game will let you take an abstract quality from something, as if it was its own object, and use it on something else...

Solved without Hints by joncgoodwin
I'm very interested in hearing truthful accounts of at least somewhat difficult games (or games that don't solve themselves at least) solved completely without recourse to hints, walkthroughs, etc.

See all polls with votes for this game




This is version 7 of this page, edited by Zape on 17 April 2021 at 4:55am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page