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SpeedIF​_YIs1OverX.zip
Contains finalassault.gam
Requires a TADS interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links. (Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.)
Walkthrough and map
by David Welbourn
speedIF​_y1x.html
contains older solution by David Welbourn

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Final Assault of the Big Green Cliches

by Sam Kabo Ashwell profile

2001

(based on 4 ratings)
1 review

About the Story

In this short work, it's last stand time. You're pinned down with your companions, Waptrap, Mindbraid, and Aur in a bad position behind a fallen pillar. The infidels are well within range, but you can't see them. Take as many of them down with you as you can.


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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Intriguing little vignette., October 23, 2014

This decade-old SpeedIF entry takes only a few minutes to complete, and is not a fully-developed work by any means. Still, it seemed worth it to put together a quick write-up, since it demonstrates a narrative device from which would-be authors can learn.

The interaction here is done in the style of a combat scene in a typical war movie, though the setting is a strange blending of fantasy and modern (or possibly sci-fi?) tropes. The action starts in media res, with you pinned down, low on ammo, and basically doomed.

What's interesting here is the way that you, the player, are not given a complete description of your environment; instead, significant new elements are injected serially over the course of several turns.

This is a clever trick, in that it takes advantage of the deeply-ingrained player's instinct to examine everything new to encourage him or her to "play along" with the developing narrative. (A similar "pointillist" style can be seen in Ashwell's Ugly Chapter, but in that case it is used more for the background than the foreground.)

While this piece is almost over before it has begun (it only lasts 10 turns or so), and there doesn't seem to be any possibility for meaningful interaction with the scene playing out, I was struck by how cinematic the sequence feels. Forcing the player to constantly reorient to the PC's situation this way seems similar to the technique of fast panning used in cinema to draw the audience "into" the action.

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This is version 6 of this page, edited by David Welbourn on 1 June 2018 at 6:50am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page