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.
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!
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!!
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.
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”. 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.
Cool! That’s great!
It only took me two tries to figure it out this time 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 )
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!
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:
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]
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!
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.)