The French interactive fiction competition went live over this last weekend with ten games maintaining a fairly consistent ratio of about ten to one with IFcomp over the last few years. A variety of authoring systems were employed including Moiki,...

From the blurb, and to some degree from the title, I had expected this to be a raunchy in-the-gutter joke entry, but was happy to discover it was a sincere entry in a sci-fi vein. The story takes place in...

I really admire the effort it must have taken to write an entire game in limerick meter and even more for finding a way to incorporate puzzles — also in limerick meter. Additionally, I was impressed that the game managed...

Some of the entries in this IFComp are novel size, but this one is the ideal length for a short story. In a few screenfuls of text, the author lays out the scene, gives some insight into key characters through...

There was something cinematic about this story. Yes, I was occasionally clicking on my mouse, but mostly I was watching this go by, fully immersed and emotionally engaged in deciding whether to steer the story towards more dramatic but potentially...

This story is told from the point of view of both a superhero and her arch-nemesis, and although the player has to consider whether to punch or energy blast the opponent at some points, the game is not about super...

After forty-five minutes, I found that I had explored a large number of competently implemented but bland locations in this parser-based game, but felt like I had made no real progress. I dutifully searched all the places that one searches...

The blurb describes this as a move-in simulator, and that’s exactly what it is, or for full disclosure, it is a single-room paranormal move-in simulator. As is the case in approximately fifty percent of interactive fiction, give or take, the...

I’m sure it isn’t necessary, but it probably helps to have played some of Ryan Veeder’s games before, and perhaps to have listened to a few episodes of the Clash of the Type-Ins podcast. The podcasts, so you can hear...

Deezlebub is an ambitious parser-based game that was developed in TADS by three people, two writers and one coder. As many IF developers have learned, conversation is hard to implement, so kudos for using conversation rather than object manipulation to...

This is listed as a choice-based game, and it very literally is: the player is presented with a series of very short prompts and can answer yes or not to each. After a certain number of responses, the end of...

I was a little put off by the blurb: a dark picture, horror genre, described as bloody. An awkward choice to follow Stuff of Legend, like orange juice after mint toothpaste. Structurally, this is a short Twine piece with two...

This parser-based story channels some of flavor of Buster Hudson’s Wizard Sniffer, although it is a smaller, faster game with about a dozen locations and one central puzzle. The game has a nice rhythm of lighthearted banter, internal thoughts, and...

This a four-point peak about an hour and forty-five minute drive from Nicosia. There are a few other peaks “in the neighborhood”, so if one wanted to string together some activations, it looks like CY-030 is about 25 minutes away,...

I expected the sun to make the day difficult in terms of mid-Summer Cyprus heat, but I had not planned on having such poor propagation conditions, which I blame on a coronal hole stirring up the magnetosphere. In almost two...

This six-point peak is near the town of Omodos, known for its wine production, right along the Limassol-Paphos border. It is about an hour and a half drive from Nicosia whether you choose to go through the mountains or along...

I set out for this two-point peak from 5B/CY-027. Although they look close on the map, it took more than an hour to get from one to the other. Most of that driving was towards the coast, and I began...

I had initially planned to activate this mountain on the same day as 5B/CY-005, but following my GPS instructions, I ended up way off course along some tenuous mountain roads and scrubbed the activation. Instead, I headed for the Kykkos...

This is a ten point peak towards the northwest corner of the island. There is a road that goes right to the peak, but vehicles are not permitted up the road, which is maintained by the Forestry Department. I believe...

It occurs to me that I got ahead of myself with my last post about operating on six meters from Cyprus — I forgot to mention that about six weeks ago, I acquired a Cypriot callsign: 5B4APL. Up to this...

I just experienced three days of six meter activity like I have never seen before. I have no idea if it is related, but the weather in Cyprus went from seasonal daytime temperatures in the 20s to three days in...

This one was a bit more off the beaten track than I had expected. Looking at the site from aerial photos, it appears that a road wraps around the summit, however, a look at a topological map makes it clear...

Since I will not be heading out to any mountains for a bit thanks for pandemic-related movement restrictions, it’s a good time to catch up on posting my last couple expeditions: 5B/CY-009 and 5B/CY-018, which I managed to activate earlier...

This past weekend, I made the rounds of three more peaks in southeastern England: Ditchling Beacon (G/SE-006), Chanctonbury Ring (G/SE-009), and Black Down (G/SE-003). Butser Hill should have been part of this itinerary, but the advice on Sotawatch is to...

I am emerging briefly from my IF cave to post some quick reviews of games from this year’s Francophone IF competition. The competition is open for judging through 1 March for anyone who is willing to rate at least three...