The Story So Far…
On the 12th January, we held the very first session of Hello Words. I went through the typical panics associated with this kind of endeavour. “No-one will come” or “five hundred people will come, and they’ll all be angry and armed.” Happily, the reality was somewhere in between. The NVA’s Toast Bar was positively overflowing with interactive fiction writers of all kinds and backgrounds, but not one of them had a sword or a cudgel. There were writers working on Inform 7, Twine 2, ChoiceScript and good old pen and paper choose your own adventures. Best of all, discussions quickly arose, on topics such as ‘does choice really matter?’, and whether puzzles are essential and whether we should be thinking in terms of ‘consequence’ rather than ‘choice’ anyway.
This was more of a ‘getting to know you’ session than any great undertaking of writing or critiquing, and yet we still had several brand new projects well underway by the end of our two (and a bit) hours, including some from people who’d never made anything before. Parser puzzle writer Victor Ojuel kindly offered up his game, ARIADNE IN AEAEA, for critique for the next session on the 9th of February.
February rolled around quicker than I could have imagined possible. Before I knew what was happening, I was back at the NVA getting to know Ariadne (granddaughter of the Sun, apparently). We did a group play first of all, partly because some of us hadn’t done our homework, and partly because some of us were new (the only acceptable excuse!). This quickly led us to agree that group plays are the way forward, because we notice things together that we might not individually. Reading aloud is also valuable to the writer being critiqued, as they are able to observe sentences the reader stumbles over, or misreads.
We all enjoyed the varied, vibrant characters of Victor’s story and the bustling, believable world he placed them in. Of course, feedback isn’t useful without a few constructive suggestions, so we raised the possibility of a glossary to help with some of the more unfamiliar Ancient Greek words, which led into a discussion of what types of game Inform 7 (the program Victor used to create Ariadne in Aeaea) was most suitable for.
Next month we’ll be doing it all over again when we meet on the 9th March at 6:30pm to discuss Will Ellwood’s Twine game, Nazi Punching Simulator 2017.
