"What Are Little Girls Made Of?" Version 2 - Twine!

“What Are Little Girls Made Of?”

To honor the start of Ectocomp 2014, I’m proud to announce the Twine re-release of my first Ectocomp game!

Two years back, I wrote a creepy little game called “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”, and I released it with great hope into Ectocomp 2012.

And lo, the judges rose up and said, “What the heck, why didn’t you write this in a choice-based format?”

And I said “Oh, you have a point,” and went away feeling a little doofy, though pleased that they liked it anyway.

But it was very good advice, and even though I’m more comfortable in parser, I realized this story would really benefit from a choice-based format. So I took a deep breath and gave it a shot, and this is the result. Feedback is welcome.

Also, this is my first solo Twine effort. If anyone has recommendations for how to make more effective use of the game engine, I’ll certainly listen.

Hope you enjoy!

Cool. I wonder if this is going to become A Thing. Late last year, I thought about re-visiting a really old game I wrote called Breath Pirates. I wanted to redo it in Twine (ala Hallowmoor; not CYOA) and then write the two sequels. I promptly lost interest, but this kind of thing seems like a great idea to me.

This is an awesome idea, both from an author’s point of view and a game player’s.

I could copycat and port my last-year game to Twine. There would be fewer unimplemented objects, for sure. Also a possibility for graphics.

I’ve never played Breath Pirates, but I’d be interested. Everything old is new again, and all that sort of thing.

Wonder if anyone has ever thought to create a game where a twine and a parser game are designed to be played side by side? Or had a parchment playable page come up in the middle of a twine. Or had an inform game that points the player to a website where twine is the conversation engine.

Or something whacky, like wizard of oz - black and white stuff in parser and fantasy color in cyoa.

Have thought of it! (Also keep making eyes at multiplayer Twine, where two people play the same game and pass each other info at critical junctures to update the engine’s awareness of what the other person is doing.)

Just haven’t acted on it… yet.

“Drop-in parser mode” has been used as a nostalgia gag segment in various games. (One of Telltale’s Sam&Max episodes; Frog Fractions.)

But, obviously, 100% of the accessibility problems of parser IF with only 50% of the game to justify it.

I built that engine.

Fair point.

Ooh. IF Hot Potato!

Zarf - I am an Uru refugee so I did check out Seltani and liked it.

Would it be an engine where someone could set up their own MUD?

I suspect that some people mightn’t be into the Myst overlay, or possibly feel that they shouldn’t stray far from the mold and make a futuristic cyberpunk game. I bet some people see parchment and apostrophes and immediately go “I didn’t like Myst, this isn’t for me.”

I just asked this question in another thread: https://intfiction.org/t/whither-seltani/7468/1

(I avoided apostrophes as much as possible!)

In its current form, you probably wouldn’t. It was a QuickBASIC home-brew (DOS) back in '97 or '98. It was mostly a puzzle-fest, but I did have a bigger story in mind. I think it could be fantastic in Twine, and maybe one day the inspiration will hit me again.

http://www.sidneymerk.com/breath.shtml

I have an idea… actually I’ve even written a little… for a conversation-based game that uses hyperlinks for some scenes and requires the parser in others. It’s pretty ambitious and I don’t know if I’ll ever manage to finish it, though. Also I’m not sure what’s the best engine to use. The TADS 3 parser is so much easier for me to understand and work with than Inform’s, which would be important for this project, but TADS’s hyperlink support is pretty limited. Possibly I could do some customisation with the TADS webui… not sure.