#repeat the ending

[golmac]

I'll be occasionally posting updates about my upcoming game, I Thief, which attempts to illuminate the venn overlap between gonzo meta IF and Zork. Please look forward to it!

I, Thief development diary: a pre/se-quel

AUTHORS SAY THE DARNEDEST THINGS I’d like to do something closer to the Infocom games. A fan fiction, maybe. A sequel to Zork Zero! “If

[adz]

A page for the game Repeat the Ending by Drew Cook.

"Repeat the Ending," an interactive fiction game I playtested, has won a Best In Show award at the Spring Thing 2023 festival. The game is visionary science fiction, delightfully rife with meta-commentary and puzzles, but it is more importantly beautifully written and deeply moving.

please join me in congratulating Drew on his very successful release, and give the game a play (for free, online) if you're interested!

[golmac]

A NEW PINNED POST 🐈‍⬛

I'm Drew Cook (aka kamineko or biting cat)! I make content about narrative games. Some bullet points:

making stuff ✨

talking about making stuff ✨

IF is for everyone, games are for everyone 💫

In terms of raw numbers, I think I might be best known for some of my game criticism, but I love making games more than anything. Click on for some links and stuff!

I'm the author of Repeat the Ending, an Inform 7 (parser) game that has gotten some nice reviews. It is a "critical edition" of a 1990s IF, so it includes footnotes, essays, and other memorabilia. You can learn more about it (and read some reviews) here:

Repeat the Ending

Explore an all-new "critical edition" of a 1996 Inform 5 game about mental illness, magic, and the second law of thermodynamics. When D, a

I write game criticism and Inform 7 tutorials here:

top expert

a biting cat website

I write about 1980s parser games here, focusing on a publisher called "Infocom:"

Gold Machine : Games as text, text as games

Gold Machine : Literary readings of interactive texts.

I sometimes podcast about older games (link, but it's on other platforms, too).

Gold Microphone: Stories and Games • A podcast on Spotify for Podcasters

Drew Cook (and sometimes cohost Callie Smith) discusses narrative games past and present with a humanities and craft writing emphasis.

You don't need a special invitation to send me an ask. Feel free to ask me anything, anytime! If you are new to IF, that's cool, everybody was new once. I still feel new, tbh.

Let's make IF 💫

[golmac]

weird, ergodic, metafictive parser game about magic, mental illness, and the second law of thermodynamics is on a list

The 2023 Interactive Fiction Top 50 – The Rosebush (the-rosebush.com)

Repeat the Ending by Drew Cook (Gold Machine)

Explore a "critical edition" of a 1996 Inform 5 game about loss, magic, and the second law of thermodynamics.

[golmac]

Looking for people to "read" Repeat the Ending

With the final (I hope) release of Repeat the Ending around the corner, I am looking for players to evaluate an all-new "story mode."

What it is:

Read the story comfortably, with walkthrough commands automatically entered.

Pause the walkthrough to explore, examine, etc. at any time!

Read a comprehensive critical guide to the story without interrupting the walkthrough.

This mode was inspired by my many friends who do not enjoy parser gameplay or find it inaccessible. If that's you, please consider trying this out. You are my target audience. If you know people who might be interested, please pass this along!

Repeat the Ending is a recipient of a Spring Thing "best in show" ribbon and placed in the Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time poll.

Every reader that gives feedback will be credited in game.

[golmac]

You can read Repeat the Ending!

Repeat the Ending is now available at itch.io. I'm not completely satisfied with the way the embed looks, but I'll have a chance to improve that soon.

I want to draw attention to a way to experience RTE for people who, for whatever reason can't play the parser version.

Just download the zip hosted here, then read the following texts in this order:

Read a full transcript of the game ("RTE 2003 Transcript.txt")

Examine the artwork ("RTE 4k images.zip")

Read the feelie document ("feelieRTE.pdf")

Read the "Player's Companion". Just launch the game on itch, and type "FG". General Questions under in the Hints section is probably the most important.

Optional for you tech people: take a look at the I7 source code ("RTE R3 Source.txt)

I hope some of you find this helpful! If you know someone who is curious about RTE but unable to play, please pass this on.

[golmac]

Repeat the Ending: R4 update

Release 4 of Repeat the Ending is now live. It is primarily a feature update. I've extensively revised the hints regarding the game's 33 points.

Perhaps more significantly, this is the first release with story mode, an accessibility and tutorial feature. If you've never played RTE, this is a good time to try. I intend for this to be the final, definitive version.

Repeat the Ending by Drew Cook (Gold Machine)

Explore a "critical edition" of a 1996 Inform 5 game about loss, magic, and the second law of thermodynamics.

[golmac]

Well, it's official; I won't get my expanded RTEverse game (D, Marbles, and the Sinister Spotlight) done in time for Ectocomp. It became clear that I could get something working mechanically, but the game would have lacked the polish that I (perhaps unreasonably) expect of my work. I'll hopefully release it in January, as part of my official announcement for the next big game.

Tangent: I'd like to do the final release of Repeat the Ending in December. Release 4 is a feature update, with a revamp to hints about the scoring system as well as an all-new *story mode*.

Speaking of: I will need a few reader-testers for RTE's story mode in the second half of November. If that sounds interesting, let me know. People who aren't into parser games are preferred; that's the intended audience for this update. Anybody's free to check it out, though. The content is already public, just not the tech.

If you're not familiar with RTE, you can find some reviews here.