Superluminal Vagrant Twin

Blast off!

Superluminal Vagrant Twin

A text-only space sim.

Ply the spaceways. Make five million credits. Buy back your twin.

(Superluminal Vagrant Twin is a shallow but broad exploration game.)

Play in your Browser

Click here to play Superluminal Vagrant Twin in your browser via Itch.io and Quixe.

Play Offline

You can also download the story file and run it with a Glulx interpreter.

(See this page for help finding an interpreter.)

Tips

• Type commands at the >.
• Sometimes the game will wait for you to press any key.
• When you hear about a new world, you can use the command "record [world's name]" so you don't forget about it.
• If you get stuck, enter the command "about".
• If you get lost, talk to Szymon.

Releases

• Release 6: Finally kicked it out the door.

Cover art credit: NASA Ames Research Center.

Jetbike Gang

I made a 300-word Twine for Twiny Jam called Jetbike Gang.

In this game, you are a member of a Jetbike Gang.

Meet the citizens of an outlandish metropolis and uncover its deepest secrets...

Weird City Interloper

An interactive tale of strange conspiracy.

Pull up your hood, lower your gaze and enter the city of Zendon. If you can gather enough information, you may just be able to change the course of history.

(Weird City Interloper is a shallow but broad conversation game.)

Play in your Browser

Click here to play Weird City Interloper in your browser via Parchment.

Play Offline

You can also download the story file (mirror|random mirror) and run it with a Z-machine interpreter.

(See this page for help finding an interpreter. I use Frotz, while others swear by Gargoyle.)

Tips

• Information is power. Gather more topics to progress.
• If you can’t remember what you can type, just press return at an empty prompt (>).
• A character you see frequently will let you ask for help if you get stuck.
• If you want to change the way topics are highlighted, enter the command "output".
• Sometimes the game will wait for you to press any key.

Releases

• Release 1: The portcullis is raised.

Cover art credits: Icons by Lorc.

Castle of the Red Prince

Terrible lair of an undying foe…



Castle of the Red Prince
An interactive land of darkness.

Welcome to Amaranth, foreigner. The Red Prince haunts your dreams, you say? If you want to overthrow our tyrant, you’ll need to consider this whole blighted land at once.

(Castle of the Red Prince is a small text adventure with a different perspective on how locations can work in a parser game.)

--PLAY ONLINE--

Castle of the Red Prince is available to play in your browser via Parchment.

--DOWNLOAD--

Or you can download the story file (mirror|random mirror) and run it with a Z-machine interpreter.
See this page for help finding an interpreter. I use Frotz, while others swear by Gargoyle.

--RELEASE HISTORY--
Version 5: First release.
Version 6: Fixed a bug with the final action.
Version 7: Fixed a couple of bugs that could prevent progression.

Cover art credits: Original image by Gustave Dor矇; Magic Forest font by Anna Anthropy.

...

Love, Hate and the Mysterious Ocean Tower

For the Speed IF Jacket 4 event...


Love, Hate and the Mysterious Ocean Tower
A brief story of love, romance and cosmic horror.

Originally written in a week, this interactive vignette whisks you through a world where terrible powers and inhuman foes threaten the very existence of humanity - and the only one who can save us is a magnificent bastard in pink trainers.

Since that initial week of work, I've spent some time fleshing the thing out (with plenty of help from my trusty beta-testers). It's still a small game, but the setting is much more fully implemented, and I threw in a few additional endings for good measure.

--PLAY ONLINE--

Love, Hate etc. is available to play in your browser via Parchment.

--DOWNLOAD--

Or you can download the story file (mirror|random mirror) and run it with a Z-machine interpreter.

See this page for help finding an interpreter. I use Frotz, while others swear by Gargoyle.

Okay

This week, seriously. Just want to pass it in front of a couple of testers first.

Coming Soon: A Small Something

Last week I took part in this little event. Kind of a game jam in which everyone makes a contribution to the ideas behind every other entrant's games.

I think my game was a bit too big for the time I had to work on it, so I'm not going to crow about it yet. It needs a fair bit more implementation, although it is basically playable as it stands (just a bit sparse and buggy as well).

Expect a proper release some time over the next week or two.

XYZZY Awards 2010

Rogue of the Multiverse was nominated for four XYZZY Awards, and won Best Individual NPC.

You can read a transcript of the awards ceremony here. If you want to skip to my acceptance speech, written by the Imbroglio's most wanted scientist herself, just search the page for "giant turtle".

Congratulations to all the other winners and nominees - especially Matt Wigdahl, who walked away with no less than seven awards for Aotearoa.

Drive to Succeed

If I don't release at least a demo for this, you may waft unpleasant smells in my direction.

Rogue of the Multiverse

Taking second place in the 16th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition...


Rogue of the Multiverse
A runaway adventure, careering through time and space.

Welcome to Dryzandia, convict 76954. Oh, you're a human? We don't get many of your kind around here, and when we do they don't last for long.

Escape? To where? There's nothing out there but barren wasteland and a saurian civilisation that'll eat you alive. But... every so often one of you alien inmates gets selected for some government programme or something. I don't know what they do there, but it can't be worse than this place... Can it?

--DOWNLOAD--

-Download the latest version (zipped) [Mirror] [Random mirror]
-Download the original competition version [Random mirror]

--INSTRUCTIONS--

-The latest version includes a Windows executable version that you can just double-click to run.
-Linux and Mac users can play the game by running the included .t3 file with an interpreter from this page.
-If you're not sure how to play, enter the commands ABOUT or INSTRUCTIONS.
-If you get stuck, just enter HINT.

Ready to Cram

In addition to fixing the bugs and small annoyances that I know of, I've also made the following changes: the full score option at the end will do something a little different (I'll let you find out what for yourselves) and examining yourself will list any body parts that are injured (just like in real life).

Now I just need to give it a once over and pluck up the courage to cram it into the intertubes.

Checks and Embellishment

I have met my deadline, in that I've fixed the bugs I know about and have a page ready to publish and link to the little sidebar image on the right.

But before that I want to play through the game to be reasonably sure I haven't broken anything. And I also want to add something that's been bugging me: a more flavourful response to FULL SCORE at the end of the game. Watch this space.

(One of the more dreary activities I engaged in was sifting through the different creature and structure types to make sure I've caught all the instances of objects with text copied and pasted from other objects. The worst part was finding the odd piece of prose I really liked and then realising that the chances of any given player encountering it are minimal.)

Oh Right

I keep getting distracted, so I've resolved that this weekend is when I'll finish a bug-fixed version of Rogue of the Multiverse and give it a proper release page.

Or your money back.

No, Really

I am writing up a post on Rogue of the Multiverse. But first I need to pour out a lot of words - and then, preferably, to delete half of them.

Huzzah!

The results are out: Rogue of the Multiverse came second in IFComp.


Now that the rule of author silence during the competition no longer applies, I suppose there's quite a bit I should post about: a proper release post for the game and an image in the sidebar, for example, and a discussion of my design decisions. I'd also like to post about some of my favourite entries to the competition. And a new release of the game with some bug fixes and a Windows executable version is probably in order.

Before I get around to all that, though, I'd just like to say a heartfelt thanks to everyone who played and rated my game, whatever rating you gave it, and to all those who posted reviews online. Please treat yourselves to a banana.

Some Relevant Images

All images public domain.
Bee image released into the public domain by Ferry Schneider.
Sad face released into the public domain by Harlekin96.

Well Then

So I found an object that responds to (and, half the time, refers to itself by) the wrong name. I'm too nervous to upload a new version now, especially because my Internet connection has suddenly decided to become extra flaky. It'll have to stay.

I really need to just walk away from the thing now. It is what it is. My testers did a fantastic job in a short timespan, but by its very nature this is a game where no-one (myself included) has yet experienced every situation the player can encounter.

So my game may be a little rough around the edges, but I like to think it has a strong personality and a sturdy constitution. It may not be a work of interactive literature, or a head-scratching puzzler, but it has something entertaining to offer you, and I hope you'll all enjoy delving in and discovering it for yourself.

Check the IFComp website on Friday, and, at some point, in some time zone, my entry should be available there for download. During the competition, I won't be able to discuss the game publicly, but there'll be an email link in the game and on the IFComp site if you want to contact me about it.

Thanks all.

Done. I hope.

My last tester found a couple of small issues that I almost didn't think were worth updating my version on the comp site, until I noticed that as part of my own testing I'd actually removed the fix for the worst bug in the game found by a previous tester.  D'oh.

But, what's there now is what's there. I have to stop working on it at some point before the deadline, so, well, here goes nothing.

Finish line in sight...

I've uploaded a tentative final version to the IFComp site, and passed the game along to my trusted final tester...

Come Thursday, the deadline passes...