intfiction.org

Hi all,

I've been searching the internet to no avail for the latter part of the evening, trying to find the name of a piece that I'd like to reference for an upcoming article on interactive fiction.

I feel like I first played it about ten years ago, give or take, and what I remember most is there was a dog NPC that would follow you around the game world, age as you moved through the story, and eventually die. It was modeled after the PC's memory of their childhood dog. I believe the game also featured the PC's father as an NPC, and the crux of the piece was the unresolved issues between he and the PC. I also think the outdoor areas were snowy.

Can anyone help?

I believe that's Losing Your Grip, by Stephen Granade.

That is most definitely it! Thank you so much.

Hijacking this thread in what may prove to be a misguided attempt at forumic tidiness. Chastise as necessary.

There was a shareware (freeware?) game that I played on DOS in the mid to late eighties. I think you might have been some sort of jungle explorer. The two bits I remember were an encounter with the goddess Maya, who kills you if you try to smooch her up, and the Wit's End Construction Company, a maze of rooms with a broken painting of a different different-colored animal in each (like, a red donkey). After giving the room description it would say

You are at Wit's End!

which scared the motherloving grapes out of me as a child. Please tell me someone else played this and I am not crazy. Or, rather, that I am crazy because this game is real and I played it when my brain was forming.

Well, there seems to be a real home improvement company called Wit's End. Sure that wasn't your real life?

Could it be Escape from Maya's Kingdom (made by Wayne Boyd in 1985)? I don't remember most of the details, but one scene certainly seemed familiar - I'm attaching a screenshot.

Does anyone know where that game could be available for download? I didn't know it existed, and it's missing from my collection.

It's available from the website of the Sytax Adventure Magazine, in a bundle with some other short games.

This game would have been perfect for IF Comp in every way. The opening screen of release 2 states that you now, you can actually escape, so I would assume the first release had a bug which prevented the intended ending from being reached

Wow. Lots of games there... I'll have "fun" trying to figure out which ones I'm missing.

Ah well. Comes with the territory. Thanks!

Yes! God! Thank you! Although crap, I think the Wit's End Construction Company must have been in a different game. It's probably somewhere on that page with the rest of my childhood, though. Man, the Kroz games were good.