paololucchesi.it/at/angolo.html
Hello there. I know this will be of limited interest to people here - if you speak Italian you already know about it, and if you don’t you won’t be able to play it anyway. But I thought I’d bring it up.
“Dietro l’Angolo” (“Around the Corner”, I think) has been recently released. I’m enjoying it immensely, I’m finding it just the sort of story I can dig my teeth into, like Imajica or The Longest Journey - loving it. But it’s also very interesting because it’s an Inform 7 choice-based game with a world model and an inventory.
Guys/gals, I play your web-based games mostly on my iPod, and even when I play them on my desktop I always have the same issues - font size and word wrap (the only web browser I can use for offline playing in my iPod doesn’t word-wrap if I just pinch-zoom). I am, however, able to play DlA perfectly, because it plays using iFrotz which is customised for the text size that’s best for my eyes.
In fact, since I can play it in LANDSCAPE mode and turn off the keyboard entirely, I can just play it by tapping the hyperlinks.
The overall experience is, to me, FAR superior than the experience of playing most web-based games.
Plus, you know, it’s a great story so far.
Another thing - it has a most interesting visual system. The inventory is always displayed on the right-hand side. I don’t know if this is properly supported in its online incarnation - I thought it was, but checked it now and it didn’t seem to - but you can CLICK an inventory item to start USING it, and then if you select a hyperlink that you can use it on, you get that option.
F’rinstance, if you have some screws, you always get the option to unscrew them, but it won’t work unless you have the screwdriver AND have clicked on it, indicating it is an “active inventory item”, i.e., the thing you’re ready to use; in effect, clicking the object and then the target for your actions, like a graphical adventure.
Furthermore, at the bottom of the sidebar, there’s a great little map.
I’m bringing this up because discussion of choice-based/hyperlink in I7 sometimes comes up, and the overall consensus is, it’s nice to have a world model but there are better suited tools for making CYOA.
This is an example of choice-based in I7 done superbly right, and I thought I should share.
PS - As an additional nicety, you can play it all without the graphics, in a simplified manner where if you merely have the screwdriver then you will be able to unscrew the screws just by selecting them. Accessibility-wise, this is superb. I really think this game deserves a look for its technical merits even if you don’t speak the language.