Ideas for other games to read closely
Unit ideas
AI and Cyberpunk - September
memorably weird
see also consciousness hologram and Computerfriend by the same author
same author as Absence of Miriam Lane
10th place in 2020 IFComp
cyberpunk sex work
Occult/magic and bodily transformation - October
"puzzles" in Twine; also free range of movement
"feminine" topics in videogames (could go in a unit with Space to Grow and Creatures Such As We)
game that engages player in physical ritual of drawing on their arm
make sacrifices, get weird body
Removed and We Know the Devil by Aevee Bee
accompanying essay
about lacking body parts
chapter in Videogames for Humans
interview with Aevee Bee from a book called The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games
General horror (I can't remember if it deals with corporality): My Father's Long, Long Legs; five paragraphs on familial memory in the game by Kevin Snow
Mama Possum by Kevin Snow
Nature/environmentalism - use as interludes/intermissions?
Alba (adventure game - not just text-based)
Free bird (and other games on this list of games about birds; also You Bird and (Birdland--kinda long and drawn out))
Adaptations of literary works - November
game that re-imagines the 80 days book
lots of criticism of 80 Days, including "Around a more diverse world in 80 days" in the Offworld game journalism PDF on diversity and an entry in IF50 https://if50.textories.com/portal/games/80Days.html
this game got a LOT of attention from news outlets and stuff
Ethics and Adaptations in 80 Days from Writing for Games: Theory and Practice by Hannah Nicklin
Animal Farm - VN
The Cherry Orchard - VN
Omen Exitio: Plague is "Lovecraftian", has a gamebook "feel"
The 39 Steps - based on a novel, is a visual novel
The Whisperer in Darkness - based on a Lovecraft story; a visual novel
Dagon, One Summer Night, and the Tell-Tale Heart in one VN bundle
Humor - December
humor, playfulness, examples of non-human characters
won an XYZZY award for best use of media, it is really cool-looking
it gets a bit silly, I guess that's the point
Unusual choice-based designs
Theory: Form-led Design from Writing for Games
Tarot as procedural storytelling by Cat Manning mentions Emily Short's project to create a procedurally-created tarot: https://emshort.blog/2018/06/26/parrigues-tarot-draft/#more-38472
Text here https://www.dropbox.com/s/o9hrwrdv7zcnv2e/ShortDeck.pdf?dl=0
Update https://emshort.blog/2021/07/18/the-uncanny-deck-co-authoring-with-gpt-2/
dev thoughts from Liza Daly
games about writing, how can we make the player feel that they have a choice, but also how to show a character's personality through their writing
sidenote: I want to play Harmonia (also by Liza) for its utopian connections?
Penrose - in-browser demo and on the App store/Google Play
experimental form with changes to the story based on "choices" to change things in the text
Solarium - still need to play this Cold War nonlinear story
The Domovoi and the author's chapter on Uncanny Text from Procedural Storytelling in Game Design
Slice-of-Life
-Concierge game
-
Beyond text
Disco Elysium
The Sea Will Claim Everything - point-and-click text adventure, I am just a big fan of Jonas's work (also it's interesting how he includes his political ideas about Greece)
not IF, video and keyword-search adventure/mystery
check out that GA Wikipedia page
Lists to look at
Overview of 2010s in Aaron's book has lots of choice-based games on it
Mathbrush's list of Twine games on IFDB
IFDB Top 100 (includes a lot of parser-based games)
Horror recommendations:
List of other games I'm thinking about
I highly recommend that we each judge 5 games in this year's IFComp in October
horror, browser-based, freemium
it is nsfw. not a lot of choices. A really good example of Twine as a personal game though (a new iteration of the perzine?).
offworld article by the author
also has a chapter in Videogames for Humans
A Long Way to the Nearest Star also from IFComp2022, also appears to have free range of movement
use Nephi's Journey in Twine Tutorials to do two things: 1) figure out how to download and look at a game and 2) examine the branch-and-bottleneck setup/code
Your Lover Has Turned Into a Flock of Birds
poem, short
chapter in VfH
there's an alien in it, but actually it's not as weird as I hoped
chapter in VfH
short, "action" game. example of player-chosen gender and sexual identity
Games with articles about them
Offworld games journalism collection
"The new mistress of horror" by Leigh Alexander looks at the games of Kitty Horrorshow: CHYRZA, Hornets, and Rain, House, Eternity. Hornets is a Twine game.
Notes on outside readings
IF Theory Reader
craft-centric chapters on map management in games with large locations and puzzle design
"Landscape and Character in IF" will go well with a location-based game (actually, maybe for Absence of Miram Lane)
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