DISCLAIMER: THE GAME ATTACHED HAS HIGH LEVELS OF GORE IN ITS CONTENT
Hi everyone, my name is Tom Garner and I’m new to the Interactive Fiction Community. Although, I have had an one and off obsession with the idea of text adventures since I was a boy. My grandad gave me an old Tandy TRS80 colour computer with no cassette device to load games but using some old Marshall Cavendish INPUT magazines my dad had kept from when he was a kid I taught myself the basics of programming (without being able to save anything on tape!) and shortly after followed the text adventure tutorial in those magazines which massively captured my imagination. By the time I was in college I discovered earlier versions of Inform and have dabbled on and off since attempting to implement text adventures of my own with Inform, QBasic, Java and even Commodore 64’s version of Microsoft Basic.
Lately, I decided to get a little more serious as an IF writer and try and do something with the intention of sharing it. I still see myself as relatively new to IF game design as I’ve never formally written a completed a game. However, to address this I’ve recently started an Inform 7 project, inwhich I attempt to revisit some of my older ideas and I guess rewrite them into my first serious game. I want to approach this in an incremental and iterative manner and thought there would be nothing better than getting some early feedback from the IF community on what I have put together so far!
I have written a very short piece so far, which is the beginning of the game (which is based on a previous game I started a long time ago, with the intention of expanding, rewriting and also finishing it!) and this will expand over time as I iterate over the design and add more rooms, more narrative etc and address any points based on feedback.
So I would be extemely grateful if anybody would play my first room and provide some valuable, critical feedback. I am not a sensitive soul so feel free to tear this thing apart with your honesty so I can drastically improve on my ideas and get better!
The game is yet to be titled, and the working title is ‘The Furnace’ for now, but this is simply based on the first room and will be swapped out for something much more fitting later on. The attached version of the game requires an interpreter that will play gblorb files as this is what Inform released the game as.
I am more than happy for comments to be put straight into the thread or simply PM’d to me.
I thank you ahead for your kind contributions and I would also just like to take this opportunity to say, “hello everyone, I look forward to chatting on the forums about interactive fiction. I am also playing Anchorhead at the moment, and I think this is a great game! I am quite stuck at the moment, on day 2 but I’m forcing myself to plod along without using any hints.”
The Furnace.gblorb (711 KB)