A Review, and a Request for Suggestions!

Hey there!

So, I’m pretty new to the world of IF, but as soon as I discovered it was a “thing” it was like finding my home after years of wandering the desert. (That may be a bit overdramatic)

I’ve been writing branching storylines for games made by a developer called Black Chicken for a few years now, which got my foot in the door. I’m working on developing some IF of my own. And in the process, I’ve been trying to read/play widely and get a feel for the medium.

I did a video review of three Twine games I thought were particularly interesting for different reasons: youtube.com/watch?v=qED0bcBAM80

I’m hungry for more games to study and review, so I was hoping people could give me some suggestions. I’m especially interested in some parser-based games since I have less experience playing those and would like to see some of the best of what’s out there.

Um, I’m open to anything, but my tastes do tend to skew toward horror. But, seriously, toss suggestions at me. I’m hungry for more.

“I want to play parser, and my tastes skew toward horror” -

Caelyn and I wrote a game like this! One Eye Open is a psychic horror game with time travel elements, with inspirations from the Silent Hill franchise and P. F. Sheckarski’s sadly incomplete Storm Cellar. (OEO is definitely on the longer side - we’ve heard play times ranging from 3-8 hours.)

http://www.sibylmoon.com/one-eye-open-with-caelyn-sandel/

Apart from that, EK has a great list of ten parser horror games at the IFDB.

“Storm Cellar” rocks. It’s an IntroComp game that I wish got completed.

Storm Cellar was amazing. The night I played it, a visiting friend startled me (I didn’t realize my housemate had let him in) and I leapt out of my chair yelling “YOU CAN ONLY COME INTO THIS ROOM IF YOU AREN’T CREEPY.”

some pointers from games I played. some short, most long, all amazing:

Anchorhead

The King of Shreds and Patches

Divis Mortis

Babel

Shade

The Lurking Horror

Slouching Towards Bedlam

Dead Cities

Ecdysis

The Horror of Rylvania

the winner of IFComp 2014 is tongue-in-cheek with Cthulhu’s mythos:

Hunger Daemon

funnily enough, most are Lovecraftian in nature…

you can find more:

ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu … for=horror

Yep, this one was great, I wish too it had been completed. About the only time a text adventure actually made me jump.

ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=rqpt1xqds7red6zm

Thanks for all the suggestions! Definitely starting Storm Cellar first.

I will also plug my IF Comp entry TRANSPARENT, then duck out of sight before anyone notices.