Not really a game announcement, but we just posted Sorcery! to App.io here (https://app.io/Ojli7i), a weird site that lets you play iOS games via your browser. Naturally, they’re a little slow, and take an age to load, but the game is all there – so if you don’t have an iThing and you’re curious as to what Sorcery! is about, or want to see what I was talking about when I said that I think parser-games can be prototypes of choice-games, do take a look, as the Sorcery! project is pretty much my working example of what happens when I take the stuff I like about parser games, and mix in the freedom of a choice-based game.
Because this is a hacky browser thing, it doesn’t support multitouch, so you’ll miss one feature, which is being able to pan and zoom around the map and explore it properly. There’s also no saving. Of course, if you enjoy the game, and can, you should buy it.
What a strange and cool thing. Screen’s very small, though, makes it hard to read, shame…
Thanks for sharing. And let me just say, on the subject of Sorcery!, that one of my very favourite design features is the ability to undo, at any stage, to any previous point in the game. It’s like an UNDO and SAVE/RESTORE mechanism that detracts nothing from the original experience.
It’s quite awesome. And I mean all of it: the game, the prose, the polished interface and production, inkle and this browser magic. About the latter: is it a service akin to Gaikai?
I’m really willing to put my gaming money into good stuff like this for Android. I’ve bought Tiny Thief, Radiant and some Fire Maple plotless point-n-clicks…
Thank-you! Yes, we’re two years old now and counting, and doing pretty well. We actually gasp hired a new coder this week. Short-ish term contract, but here’s hoping.
As Dan F is always saying – there are actually people now genuinely making a decent living out of textual Interactive Fiction: Choice of Games, Tin Man Games, Versu, us. I’m constantly surprised about it - if you’d told me ten years ago I wouldn’t believed it. But that’s not me complaining.
Oh, I see it happening. Right down our noses, a new personal computing industry rising fast and furious from smartphones and tablets. It changed a lot of things, including the way we typically interface with it.
It’s an exciting time and the one place where indies can be as big as old behemoths: the small touch screen.