[IFComp2013] A Wind Blown In From Paradise
A Wind Blown In From Paradise, by N. C. Hunter Hayden, is a short parser-based interactive mood piece.
This is a brief piece in the genre of "rather vague character recalls vague memories about a woman who used to love him" - one of those genres that has a greater showing in IF than in most media. (Though, to be fair, I imagine that a significant percentage of unpublished short stories have this plotline as well.) This one is infused with imagery of trains and the wind. Actually, riding around in trains that don't seem to have a real destination is another common IF trope...
This piece doesn't really make it into the realm of "game" to me, because there weren't choices that affected anything, nor any goals to meet. The PC dwells on the same memory repeatedly, remembering lying on a beach with a nameless women, but his memory seems to be fading. The first time he recalls it, the prose is so purple it makes grapes jealous. "Glorious Apollo in regal transit graces each grain with a spark of his spirit, so that, lying side by side in the sand on the beach, you and she are caressed by the gentle warmth of ten thousand tiny suns." The second time, the same objects are described with only a slight overdose of Poetry: "The sun transfers to the grains of sand its warmth, so that, lying side by side in the sand, you and she are caressed by the warmth of many tiny suns." The third time, the memory is as factual as a lab report. "The sun warms the sand you both lie on." Words seem to fail him, and the memory slips away on the wind.
There was a core of something good here. As appalled as I was at the florid verbosity of the initial memories, once I realized that re-remembering the event made its vividness fade, I kind of liked that idea. However, I think this piece still needs some work before it would be really effective. I don't believe it had any beta testers or proofreaders, or even a run through a spellcheck, based on typos I found. (One of these that kind of tugged at my heart was in the "help" section, under "Who ARE you?": "This is my first interactive fiction, and if you've got critizim [sic], don't worry, I know you have a good heart.") There were a few bugs, too, generally minor enough for me to forgive, with the exception of this exchange:
> x train
A train car, waiting for its passengers.
> enter train
The train isn't here, idiot.
I wish the environment had been slightly more interactive; I could only interact at all with the objects that triggered my memories. While over-implementation of objects can lead to a game that's frustratingly full of red herrings, the sparseness of this setting left me feeling like I wasn't really in a place at all.
My last thought on the piece is about its help section, which included a subsection called "What IS this?" in which the author explains exactly the meaning he intended with the work and its imagery. While I recognize the desire to make sure your audience understands you, I don't think this section should exist at all. A work of fiction might have a prologue or epilogue to explain the author's inspiration or research, but it shouldn't be necessary to explain what the work is about or what the imagery means. If that isn't clear in the work itself, then something needs to change there. If it is clear, then such an epilogue makes the reader feel that the author didn't trust her to work it out for herself. Tolstoy didn't add a coda to the end of Anna Karenina to say, "The trains in this story are all a symbol for how destructive the transports of love can be!" - he let the readers make their own conclusions.
In short: Author, I hope you still feel I have "a good heart" about your work. This is a good first effort; next time, get yourself some beta testers.
This is a brief piece in the genre of "rather vague character recalls vague memories about a woman who used to love him" - one of those genres that has a greater showing in IF than in most media. (Though, to be fair, I imagine that a significant percentage of unpublished short stories have this plotline as well.) This one is infused with imagery of trains and the wind. Actually, riding around in trains that don't seem to have a real destination is another common IF trope...
This piece doesn't really make it into the realm of "game" to me, because there weren't choices that affected anything, nor any goals to meet. The PC dwells on the same memory repeatedly, remembering lying on a beach with a nameless women, but his memory seems to be fading. The first time he recalls it, the prose is so purple it makes grapes jealous. "Glorious Apollo in regal transit graces each grain with a spark of his spirit, so that, lying side by side in the sand on the beach, you and she are caressed by the gentle warmth of ten thousand tiny suns." The second time, the same objects are described with only a slight overdose of Poetry: "The sun transfers to the grains of sand its warmth, so that, lying side by side in the sand, you and she are caressed by the warmth of many tiny suns." The third time, the memory is as factual as a lab report. "The sun warms the sand you both lie on." Words seem to fail him, and the memory slips away on the wind.
There was a core of something good here. As appalled as I was at the florid verbosity of the initial memories, once I realized that re-remembering the event made its vividness fade, I kind of liked that idea. However, I think this piece still needs some work before it would be really effective. I don't believe it had any beta testers or proofreaders, or even a run through a spellcheck, based on typos I found. (One of these that kind of tugged at my heart was in the "help" section, under "Who ARE you?": "This is my first interactive fiction, and if you've got critizim [sic], don't worry, I know you have a good heart.") There were a few bugs, too, generally minor enough for me to forgive, with the exception of this exchange:
> x train
A train car, waiting for its passengers.
> enter train
The train isn't here, idiot.
I wish the environment had been slightly more interactive; I could only interact at all with the objects that triggered my memories. While over-implementation of objects can lead to a game that's frustratingly full of red herrings, the sparseness of this setting left me feeling like I wasn't really in a place at all.
My last thought on the piece is about its help section, which included a subsection called "What IS this?" in which the author explains exactly the meaning he intended with the work and its imagery. While I recognize the desire to make sure your audience understands you, I don't think this section should exist at all. A work of fiction might have a prologue or epilogue to explain the author's inspiration or research, but it shouldn't be necessary to explain what the work is about or what the imagery means. If that isn't clear in the work itself, then something needs to change there. If it is clear, then such an epilogue makes the reader feel that the author didn't trust her to work it out for herself. Tolstoy didn't add a coda to the end of Anna Karenina to say, "The trains in this story are all a symbol for how destructive the transports of love can be!" - he let the readers make their own conclusions.
In short: Author, I hope you still feel I have "a good heart" about your work. This is a good first effort; next time, get yourself some beta testers.