18 Rooms to Home

18 Rooms to Home is an experimental work of interactive fiction. It’s a day in the life of Yesenia Reed, whose life is far from ordinary, no matter what she might prefer.

This story takes place over the course of 18 updates, which are presented in reverse chronological order. With every update, the story moves further back in time – so the first update includes room 18, the second will include room 17 and 18, the third will include 16, 17, and 18, and so on.

18 Rooms to Home: Room 18

Interesting. So when the next update adds room 17, we might obtain therein knowledge or items that could be useful in room 18?

Indeed.

Room 17 has been released!

http://www.sibylmoon.com/room-17/

I’ve just played it, and it’s really cool! It took me a while to figure out how to get a variation (couldn’t think of the solution) but I eventually managed to find it and explore some more. I really like the structure, the idea of discovering new things by rewinding events a bit… but still getting the same scene but with a much different context… Ah! :smiley:
It’s very cool and i’m very curious to see where it’s going to go and how you’re going to pull it off!! :slight_smile:

Thank you so much!

Seriously - it means a lot to me. 18 Rooms is a big commitment, and if people aren’t enjoying it, I’m not going to complete the game (because I’d rather do something people are enjoying more). So it really brightened my morning to see your post.

I’ve been interested in what you have so far!

Yes, do complete it. It’s unusual, and I’m interested to see how you’ll keep the “old” rooms from feeling repetitive. I mean, I know you will, I just want to see “how”. :wink: I haven’t played it in depth because with anything serialised I usually prefer to wait until all the episodes are out - I hate having to wait for the rest of the game to be released. In this case I’ll probably start playing when you release room 10, roundabouts.

Thank you both for the extra encouragement!

I’m enjoying the game as well and look forward to playing each room the hot second it comes out.

Room 17 reuploaded to fix a bug. (The bug did not interfere with completing the room.)

Thanks to matt w for the bug report!

Room 16 is now available!

Yay!

Cool! That’s great! :slight_smile:
It only took me two tries to figure it out this time :slight_smile: I liked that puzzle, it’s well-integrated to the story; and the bus feel alive because of the number of extra messages commenting on the situation (like standing on the bus, forgetting to pull the suitcase out of the way, etc). Also, I’m excited about living the event the news are talking about! (which is also cool because I realize writing this that maybe the event never happens in some branches, it all depends on the choices that come before… really excited about the bird’s-eye structure of all this :slight_smile: )

I noticed a few typos/bugs:

[spoiler]* "
Considering the contents of her suitcase, Yesenia really isn’t inclined to unpack in the middle of the 20 bus.
here.

Apart from that, she doesn’t have the key. It’s in her purse, and her purse is at the restaurant.
"
-> the “here” ; and also, she only realizes she doesn’t have her purse when she gets off the bus

  • weird response to “stand up” (normal message + “yesenia is already standing”)

  • “Yesenia can’t see the sceren from this angle.”[/spoiler]

If that’s not too much hassle, could there be a way in each game to know how many endings there is? (Maybe at the end? maybe number each of the paths?) It’s partly because I’m kind of a completionist, but also partly to give the reader an idea of how big the game is (and how big it grows). Like, for this episode, I was trying to get the ending that I had last time, which I liked, and then I got a bad ending because I didn’t solve any of the puzzles satisfactorily; but then I don’t know if there was more to it than that (like, maybe it’s ok to fail the first one and i can solve the second one somehow and get something different? or were there even two puzzles), which feels like I’m missing out on stuff you wrote. But then again it’s kinda cool that there could be so many paths one could have no idea, and then talk with others and hear about a totally different ending. Either way, it’s up to you! :slight_smile:

We played room 16 on Clubfloyd today, and got three endings:

1. Successfully go undetected on the bus, go home, get the success ending from Room 17 where we drove away our unwanted visitor.
2. Attract notice on the bus, be surrounded by press, but get rid of them and go into the apartment; this is the same as the failure from Room 18.
3. Attract notice on the bus, be surrounded by press, bring them along into the apartment. This is a new bad ending unique to Room 16.

I’m really fascinated by what this does to the structure of the experience; I feel like we’re being encouraged to experience a lot of possible narrative branches, with a thoroughness that a player might not have patience for if playing through a single game file that contained all these possibilities. I also like the way we’re gradually finding out more information about who and what our protagonist is.

New information about our protagonist’s identity especially came from outcome 3 listed above – in fact, that was much more informative from a story perspective than success was.

My main fear is that each episode will be more demanding on the author than the last… but I’m keen to see where it all goes.

I’m delighted to hear that Club Floyd tried 18 Rooms! This news brightened my evening, and it was already a pretty great day.

Thank you very much for the bug reports, mulehollandaise and ralphmerridew! I’ll get a fixed release out tomorrow.

That seems like a reasonable request. I’m not sure yet whether I want to incorporate the information into the game (will need to consider), but I have no problem with releasing it here.

Ending counts for the first three installments/last three rooms:

[spoiler]Room 18: 1 ending
Room 17: 2 additional endings
Room 16: 2 additional endings

5 endings total. (I’m defining “ending” here as an action leading to a different bolded message. There are a couple different ways to finish Room 18, for example, but they’re essentially the same.)[/spoiler]

This is getting pretty deep, and I’m getting pretty attached to these characters. I’m happy to see I found all the endings so far!

I have a few bug reports to offer:

[spoiler]In room 17, the sleek black car supposedly leaves, but it’s still possible to interact with it afterward.

In room 16, examining some things is a bit odd. In the first case, I was trying to look at the stripe of the bus:

x stripe
It’s a handmade friendship bracelet in a simple stripe pattern, threaded in pink, purple, orange, yellow, and blue.

x bus
You can’t use multiple objects with that verb.

x bus token
You can’t use multiple objects with that verb.[/spoiler]

Rooms 16 and 17 have been updated to fix bugs. Thank you so much!

I added a bug hunter thanks section at the bottom of the main game page. I’m going to keep squashing bugs as fast as I can, and I really appreciate the help.

I’ve used forum handles for most of the intfiction bug reports that I’ve received, but if you’d prefer to be listed in some other way (or not to be listed), please let me know!

Room 18 also updated for a bug fix.

Rooms 17 and 18 updated to add ending information (not an ending count, but whether or not the player is at the “best” ending available - the same information that became available in Room 16.)

Wow. With all these bug fixes I’ll definitely hold on until you release room 10 or so to start playing.

In the meantime, keep on truckin’! I like the feedback you’re getting. It just increases antecipation.