Category: about

Pardon my dust

~ wisprabbit ~ Leave a comment

I’m planning to do some work revamping this blog so that I can use it as a general website for the puzzles I’ve been posting on Twitter, as well as for my interactive fiction reviews and other stuff. If the website looks scrappy and half-finished, that’s because it is.

At some point, I plan to cross-post all my puzzles here. I intend to schedule them so that they’re drip-fed onto here and not just dumped all at once, but if you’re subscribed to this blog and you’re not here for puzzles, you can unsubscribe. It’s okay, I won’t be upset. I pay no attention whatsoever to my WordPress metrics.

(I’ve mentioned before that I want to build my own website. I still want to do that. I don’t like being reliant on WordPress or Twitter or some other big tech company who could just delete my web presence immediately for whatever reason. But, well, learning how to build websites is hard. And I think I want other websites to handle the database and security stuff for me until I’m sure I know what I’m doing.)

IFComp 2020 – I’m an entrant this year!

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The Interactive Fiction Competition 2020 is open for judging!

Last year, I wrote a bunch of reviews on this blog. I won’t be doing that so much this year, because I am an entrant! My game is called Vampire Ltd, and it’s an hour-long parser comedy (with vampires in it). I won’t say any more than that in public until after the competition ends, to make sure I don’t make the Author’s Big Mistake or say anything that could influence the vote in my favour.

For similar reasons, I will not be posting reviews of other games here until after the competition has closed. I think I might write reviews in the private author’s forum on IntFiction, but if they ever show up here it won’t be for a couple of months at least. Sorry!

I’ll also use this space to thank my game’s beta-testers, and point you towards their entries:

  • AKheon, Dark Star, Mathbrush and Mike Russo are entrants in the IFComp who beta-tested my entry. The other beta-testers were Peter M. J. Gross and Christopher Merriner. Many thanks to all of them!
  • I beta-tested Dark Star and Mike Russo’s entries, Entangled and the Eleusinian Miseries respectively. (They are both excellent and I highly recommend them! I’ll write a little about them when I get around to playing the competition entries.)
  • AKheon has entered Ascension of Limbs, and Mathbrush has entered The Magpie Takes the Train. I haven’t touched these yet, but I’m looking forward to them!

Play all these entries, and a hundred others (including mine too I guess) on the IFComp website!

Good luck to all entrants, and enjoy the competition! And to all those authors who I gave negative reviews to last year: I’m sorry. It is harder than it looks.

Spring Thing 2020 – About my reviews

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Spring Thing 2020 is here, and goodness knows we needed it. I haven’t played much interactive fiction lately*, so I’m going to write a few reviews this month. I have to remember how to use WordPress first, but after that I want to get through a lot of the ballot. (God knows I have time right now.)

I’ve never participated in the Spring Thing before, so please excuse me as I figure out how to approach this. Here’s what I’m thinking I’ll do:

  • I’m going to play games in a random order, as I did for IFComp. I’m not going to post my list, because I don’t want to annoy any authors if they notice I’ve skipped their game for the time being.
  • There doesn’t seem to be a time limit for judging games (unlike the two-hour limit in IFComp), so I’ll take advantage. I will make an earnest attempt to finish each game, and I’ll try to see multiple endings if I know a game has them. If there are endless / procedural games, I’ll keep playing until I get tired or I feel like I’ve seen a majority of the content. I reserve the right to bail out of a game I’ve lost patience with.
  • I won’t be scoring games, partly because I don’t like committing to scores right away, mostly because Spring Thing doesn’t seem to have a scoring system. Spring Thing uses a ribbon system, where players can suggest ribbons like “Best Puzzles” and authors can choose which ones to show off at the end of the festival. I’ll suggest possible ribbons at the end of my reviews, and I will be earnest and positive in my nominations, even if I did not like a game very much. (That is, no “Worst Puzzles” ribbons or anything like that.)

I understand that Spring Thing 2020 is going to have a secondary Late Harvest festival later in the year, due to disruption caused by the state of everything. I’d like to review those games too, but I can’t commit yet.

Looking forward to getting back into the swing of interactive fiction this month. Good luck to the Spring Thing entrants!

*I’ve been playing a little bit on and off, mostly seeing how far I can get through The Mulldoon Legacy without hints. I’m like 10% of the way through it after two months. It’s a difficult one.

About me

~ wisprabbit ~ Leave a comment

Hello! I’m Alex, or rabbit, or wisprabbit. I’m based in the UK, and I’m interested in games and game development.

I made this blog as a nice-looking space to share things I’ve written or that I’m working on. I’m using it to post interactive fiction reviews for now, but I’d like to create more things in the future.

Here are some other places you can find me:

Twitter: @wisprabbit
Itch.io: comfortcastle

The name “Comfort Castle” comes from the short story “The Town Manager” by Thomas Ligotti. You’ll understand why when you read it.

If you are a prospective employer who is here because I put this website down as evidence of my skill with CMS, hello! Thanks for your interest in my application! Please hire me.

While I was writing this, WordPress sent me an email titled “One last thing for your site” like it’s Columbo about to confront me with the evidence.