The Endling Archive

From the Author

I hesitate to call this interactive fiction. It has a much lower level of interaction than "mainstream" IF.

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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 3 Write a review

Very Slight, but Haunting, February 19, 2009
If you're anything like me, I'm sure you've enjoyed finding books and computers in IF games that let you wander through a menu of backstory. The Endling Archive is essentially the same thing, only without the containing game. So, yes, it is pretty much just reading static text from a menu that expands after you've select a couple of options.

The Endling Archive strikes me as a good germ of an idea. I'm surprised that I've never played an IF game before that exclusively treated the parser as a fictional computer system, and it seems to me that there should be a wealth of retro-futuristic (or just pretend unix console) hacking games. There aren't however, so for now we'll just have to enjoy this strange and haunting encyclopaedia of things that the future and present have lost.

Well-done, but..., June 14, 2009
I must admit I'm very puzzled. When you enter the Endling Archive, you uncover folders, notes that you can read, thus unlocking other notes. I really liked this mechanism.
At first I thought it was an introspective, autobiographical game, but I figured out a few minutes later where the author was going ; and then, nothing. I reached a state where obviously you can't unlock notes no more ; and I said "That's all ?".
Two possibilities : either it's a puzzle (I don't think so, I tried everything on my keyboard, and the author declares himself "tired of hard puzzles"), either that's the end of the game, and I'm really, really disappointed. The story is good, the writing is great, emotional, melancholic at times ; the system is orginal, and even if it's not exactly interactive, it's a good fiction. But the author had to continue ! I mean, with such a beginning, such a way to tell the story, the author could have made the game a long and very powerful story !
I give it three stars for the writing and the game's mechanism ; should the author had carried on this game would probably have had one or two more.

Ode to Things Lost, May 14, 2010
Technically this is a hypertext hack of the Z-machine rather than interactive fiction in a strict sense. The work simulates a database—“The Endling Archive”—that you (in the role of fictional reader) work your way through. However, such a description does no justice to the poetical nature (and value) of this short work.

The contents of the Archive is a melancholy reminder of things lost to neglect, to natural disasters, to violence and to hunger for profit. What we lost may not have been Paradise, yet it might have been worth preserving and may still be worth remembering.

(Spoiler - click to show)According to Norse mythology, Líf and Lífþrasir will be the only survivors of the Ragnarök catastrophe at the End of the World. Their names mean ‘Life’ and ‘Life Champion’.

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