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So much beauty compressed into a small game, January 20, 2024This game would probably be great as a freestanding artifact, but it is especially poignant when you consider the context in which it was created: as a bonus for people who bought a deluxe copy of 50 Years of Text Games.
The game has 5 parts, each a reflection of interactive fiction technology at a certain point. The whole game has been compressed to fit into a very small amount of memory, both so that it could be distributed on a floppy disk but also because it was part of the author's love letter to IF technology. As many authors before, this author struggled against the constraints of the medium but found a new beauty that could only be expressed under those constraints. The use (and reuse) of technology and text, delivered by a skilled writer, is truly moving.
The story is a short one of joy, building, destruction, and loss. The medium and the text some together in a way that no other form of media would allow. Exploring the story is also an exploration of what interactive fiction has meant to others, the promise of building a world all your own, the sadness of a world decaying, and finally what interactive fiction means to you, the player.