Ice-Bound is a novel about an AI recreation of a struggling writer, brought to life to finish his now-legendary novel. The player looks at the printed compendium via their iPad to unlock the hidden reality between the lines; at the same time the pages that the player shows to AI writer that ‘lives’ in the iPad determine the story that he will write.
It is running a Kickstarter campaign that ends today; all the funds will go towards a print run of the print book. The list of backers includes all the usual suspects of the tiny world of interactive fiction, which is kinda sad at the same time, as I believe this kind of project deserves wider publicity.
Just to add to this recommendation, Aaron Reed’s Blue Lacuna is one of the best pieces of interactive fiction I’ve read/played. It’s practically novel-length, well-written, contains some interesting puzzles to solve (or skip, if that’s not your jam), and has some pretty rich world-building. And it’s free.
Also, for those interested in interactive fiction, Andrew Plotkin’s long-delayed commercial IF Hadean Lands is finally available. I haven’t yet finished it, so I can’t offer a fully informed recommendation, but I’m enjoying it so far. It’s very puzzle-dense, and a lot of the puzzles center around its extremely elaborate alchemy system. Figuring out how alchemy works in the game has a sort of HPMOR-esque “apply rationalist methods to a magical system” feel. Avoid if you don’t like having to sort through a deluge of information in order to solve puzzles and make progress.
And, finally, if you are unfamiliar with Plotkin’s work, I highly highly recommend Spider and Web, which is free to play. It also has the theme of figuring out how things work in an almost-but-not-quite-familiar setting (technological rather than magical, this time around). It has a very clever narrative hook, where you’re a captured spy being inerrogated and the game is your (often unreliable) account of what happened. And it has probably the best narrative-integrated puzzle in any game I’ve played (you’ll know it when you see it—or solve it, rather).
You’ll need to install a Z-code interpreter like Gargoyle to play any of these.
Ice-Bound: A Novel of Reconfiguration is an upcoming indie game combining an iPad app and an augmented reality-enabled print book by Aaron A. Reed and Jason Garbe.
Ice-Bound is a novel about an AI recreation of a struggling writer, brought to life to finish his now-legendary novel. The player looks at the printed compendium via their iPad to unlock the hidden reality between the lines; at the same time the pages that the player shows to AI writer that ‘lives’ in the iPad determine the story that he will write.
It is running a Kickstarter campaign that ends today; all the funds will go towards a print run of the print book. The list of backers includes all the usual suspects of the tiny world of interactive fiction, which is kinda sad at the same time, as I believe this kind of project deserves wider publicity.
Help spread the word by upvoting: r/kickstarter, r/indiegames, and especially r/writing (look for post on ‘Upgrading prose’)
Just to add to this recommendation, Aaron Reed’s Blue Lacuna is one of the best pieces of interactive fiction I’ve read/played. It’s practically novel-length, well-written, contains some interesting puzzles to solve (or skip, if that’s not your jam), and has some pretty rich world-building. And it’s free.
Also, for those interested in interactive fiction, Andrew Plotkin’s long-delayed commercial IF Hadean Lands is finally available. I haven’t yet finished it, so I can’t offer a fully informed recommendation, but I’m enjoying it so far. It’s very puzzle-dense, and a lot of the puzzles center around its extremely elaborate alchemy system. Figuring out how alchemy works in the game has a sort of HPMOR-esque “apply rationalist methods to a magical system” feel. Avoid if you don’t like having to sort through a deluge of information in order to solve puzzles and make progress.
And, finally, if you are unfamiliar with Plotkin’s work, I highly highly recommend Spider and Web, which is free to play. It also has the theme of figuring out how things work in an almost-but-not-quite-familiar setting (technological rather than magical, this time around). It has a very clever narrative hook, where you’re a captured spy being inerrogated and the game is your (often unreliable) account of what happened. And it has probably the best narrative-integrated puzzle in any game I’ve played (you’ll know it when you see it—or solve it, rather).
You’ll need to install a Z-code interpreter like Gargoyle to play any of these.