Check out this banger of a game-poem analysis! lavieenmeow takes a 6.4K-word deep dive into the stylistic habits around the text of text adventures, and how Drew Cook manipulates those expectations as a poetic form: the-rosebush.com/2026/06/pars...

Check out this banger of a game-poem analysis! lavieenmeow takes a 6.4K-word deep dive into the stylistic habits around the text of text adventures, and how Drew Cook manipulates those expectations as a poetic form: the-rosebush.com/2026/06/pars...

I'll just keep having fun implementing obscure quarter- to half-century-old algorithms by hand, thanks.

Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne v0.22: Added special mechanics for infiltrating piloted mecha.

When indie game developers put #blind protagonists in their #games, it's always good to have an #actuallyBlind #gamer check it for accuracy. Exactly what I did in this #youtube #react video www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE81... #blindness #disability #accessibility #representation #gaming

How about some more cheerful stuff? The Spring Thing Festival of Interactive Fiction is open, with 22 new games to play. www.springthing.net/2026/play.html

Made a quick bookmark for the case when "was I on the left page or the right page, and which paragraph was I looking at?" is a relevant question...

OK, this is very clever (source from the Game Narrative Kaleidoscope ebook).

I'm only a quarter of the way through, but what a banger of a book. Dense academic prose interspersed with everyday examples for understanding, amusement, and surprise. Bravo. Pity it's > $100, but I that's academic publishing for you.

Finally did #EnigMarch day 2: color (just after the day 3 prompt is up, huh). Haven't fixed any of the rough spots in the puzzle player; hopefully tomorrow. Some of the interesting deductions fell apart with the last couple clues, but oh well. Same URL: joshgrams.itch.io/enigmarch-2026

I made a half-baked logic-grid puzzle editor a while back and keep meaning to finish/polish it, so... #EnigMarch day 1: Season. joshgrams.itch.io/enigmarch-2026 I don't expect these'll be anything to write home about but eh, practice. That's the main point anyway, right?

Outside vs. inside. Also, ugh, 2 inches is such an annoyingly small amount of snow.

This is why I basically never review; I'm almost entirely interested in what doesn't work, or how they could be better. And when buying, I know if I'm interested; I'm asking if a game does things that hit my pet peeves: so positive reviews are almost 100% useless and I only read the negative ones.

Congratulations to Drew Cook's *Portrait with Wolf* for winning first place in the #InteractiveFiction Short Games Showcase! A lovingly crafted piece of interactive poetry (?) that plays with a bunch of aspects of the form of parser IF. kamin3ko.itch.io/pww

StoryNexus is going down for good Jan 27 (they've been http-only for years, but if you add a browser exception you can still play them now). storynexus.com #InteractiveFiction

Ugh. We're supposed to get freezing rain and wintry mix tonight into tomorrow ...at 20F/-7C. Weird weather. Also man, that last snow storm: sounds like southern Maine got 2 feet. By the time it got to us we got less than 7 inches. Not that I'm complaining too hard, but... c'mon, winter!

IFComp feedback form if you, say, want to express an opinion about LLMs or volunteer to help next year... forms.gle/uzCX1MUQ8mUS...

The farm takes most of my interest in reliability and responsibility, so my hobby time is usually chaos, but... I've been self-indulgently tempted to make an #InteractiveFiction engine for at least 15 years now and I'm hoping to focus on that for the last three months of the year.

I did extensive Twine gardening on William Rous's Type Help, finally putting timecode on the y-axis and intended deduction progress on the x. Pretty cool how it's almost like a gauntlet structure, but for a totally different purpose (give some freedom while controlling the possibility space).

‪@philippawarr.bsky.social‬ I *just* realized that this is the year the book amnesty took place (hopefully you're not utterly fed up with people pointing this out already). Thanks for all the delightful captions!