To Burn in Memory was a bit of a mess. I honestly couldn’t be happier with this outcome, mind.
I finished a 10,000 word IF exploration game, and though it made only a little buzz in the IF community (Partly due to a botched submission that meant people were playing a completely unfinished version long after release) a couple of people really liked it, and there was little feedback that wasn’t of some use.
The games press never seemed to pick it up, except for one site that gave it a solid A rating and an excellent review (http://dailydpad.de/artikel/18697/to-burn-in-memory-im-test-ein-kunstwerk-in-worten/), entirely in German. Which is extra encouraging actually, since the game deals heavily with German/French history (Requiring at least basic knowledge of the region circa 1900.) and getting a thumbs up from them definitely makes me feel I did the history a degree of justice.
Anyway, more postmortem here if you’re interested: http://www.noctuelles.net/blog/2016/3/13/t.
So, now for a follow up from a better starting position, without those awkwardly integrated magical-realist framing devices. Here’s the description on my main page (Definitely looking for feedback on this):
The Silver Masque, an Interactive Fiction work due for release in late June 2016. A Raven leads a blind woman through the night, as she begins to doubt the impossible things it whispers in her ear. As Europe collapses around her, a young woman seeks refuge in the only nation open to her: Mussolini’s Italy. The heir to an industrial dynasty wanders the desert, questioning the foundation of his beliefs — under the African sun he is finally home.
As for this release date, I was intending for something 2x the wordcount of To Burn in Memory. I’m still finishing off the first fifth of the story and world, yet I exceeded To Burn in Memory’s wordcount weeks ago. However, the Interactive Fiction engine and accompanying code is basically feature-complete, barring any big features I might add (None on the horizon, though).
Thanks to the engine being written in HTML5, the current working version is always online, here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61703399/Inquisitor/index.html. Feel free to check this out, but this is not a release. The final work will likely be commercial.
As always, I’d feedback of any kind is of use. You can cross between worlds by clicking at the center of the gold rectangle (Provided you’ve explored enough for the bar to fill up), and there are about 5-6 chapters you can access this way. If the game breaks for some reason, hold ‘C’ then reload. Pressing ‘D’ will switch to the timeline, if you need to be filled in on the history (All quotes are written by fictional characters you’ll end up meeting. Occasionally under alias.)
If you’d just like to read parts of the story, you can find snippets here:http://www.noctuelles.net/blog/.