I’m still kinda sad that I wasn’t able to finish my entry on Gamejolt’s Axiom competition. But oh well, we gotta keep moving!

Right now I’m love with Inform7, “design system” for Interactive Fiction creation. Back in 2004 I started some IF sketching using TADS, but I found the programming language a bit difficult (or at least unintuitive), so it didn’t evolve into anything… But last monh I wrote a short story about a man trying to find a birthday present for his daughter, and I thought it would fit perfectly on an Interactive Fiction, so I started to look for the current languages and so I found Inform7…

The cool thing about it is that you write mostly in english! In order to program it, little to none experience in coding is required because things are very intuitive – yet the language is extremely flexible and powerful! For instance, if I write…

The bedroom is a room. “This is a regular bedroom!”.
The bathroom is a room. It is north of the bedoom. “The bathroom is very clean and tidy.”.
The shower is in the bathroom. It is fixed in place. “The shower doesn’t have hot water…”.
The sink is in the bathroom. It is fixed in place. “Sadly, the sink isn’t working.”.

…and run the application, the game will already be working, with two rooms and two items in the bathroom… Pretty simple example, I know, but I think you can understand how easy it can be to design an interactive story with this. Instead of wasting time trying to make even the simple things work, the author (game designer?) can focus on writing good stories instead of coding!

If you want information about Inform7, their website is very resourceful: www.inform7.com
The software documentation is great, and within minutes I was already designing my first tests. “The Fair”, my now-interactive-story is coming up great: So far I’m designing the whole world and actions, and only after this is over I start porting the story to an interactive narrative!