Wednesday 9 December 2009

Walker & Silhouette - Download

Misfits in a strange city; crime fighters grappling with the weirdest mysteries; rivals who become partners until the last:


Walker & Silhouette
A keyword only adventure.

Team up with a dashing detective and an iconoclastic flapper to solve absurd and unfathomable crimes in this interactive story - where you control the action just by typing or clicking highlighted words in the text.

Walker & Silhouette uses a similar keyword system to Blue Lacuna, and experiments with applying it to various forms of interaction: talk, investigate, solve puzzles and fight villains... using only single word commands.

--DOWNLOAD--

-Zipped Deluxe Package [Mirror ] [Mirror 2] [Randomised mirror]
-Contains: Windows version; story file for Linux and Mac interpreters; quick-start instructions.


--Release History--

Version 8: first release (update: amended the HTML docs for Linux).
Version 9: update that fixes two non-serious glitches.

18 comments:

George said...

great!

Unknown said...

Outstanding!

Valzi said...

Excited to play to the end tomorrow!

I am so very constantly hungry for source files for source's sake. Any chance of getting the source?

(If you'd like a specific reason, I'm thinking of playing around with TADS again after a long hiatus and am curious about making a game with a very simple interface like yours. Of course, there are others, but....)

Valzi said...

Start rating it, players! http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u0fzm0lxlt9vb4fi

(and add other info to the database)

gnome said...

Another excellently written game Pacian. On behalf of my -mostly literate- anti-war army unit, I salute you! And of course thank you!

Pacian said...

@George + Jonathon: Thanks, you two.

@Valzi: I do intend to release the code I used for my keyword system when I feel it's in a good state - although to get you started, I created a 'Keyword' action where the verb rule is just the name of an object.

@Gnome: *returns salute*

Healy said...

Pretty enjoyable! One problem I had was with the puzzle after you talk to the guy in the park. I thought you had to do something with the lever, when really you had to do something else. It didn't help that the responses I got for "push/pull lever" were misleading.

Pacian said...

"I thought you had to do something with the lever, when really you had to do something else."

Nate does tell you to focus on something else. :-P

"It didn't help that the responses I got for "push/pull lever" were misleading."

Ah, good catch! That'll be fixed in the next update. Thanks. :-)

Akaros said...

Just wanted to say that I just finished the game and it was excellent! The setting and the characters are really full of potential and I hope you make some more IF in that vein!

Malcolm Ryan said...

I've just started the game and am already enjoying it immensely. It is highly reminiscent of an idea I once had.

Kake said...

I really enjoyed this, thank you. Interesting background, interesting characters, and fun to play. The only disappointment was that it ended so soon! I hope there are plans for a sequel.

y4n said...

As always, a nice short story, thank you! Keep a good job :)

Definitely needs a sequel :)

Interesting achievements too (did 2/3 on the first play).

I'd suggest adding a link for a description of "myself" in inventory. I guess the game is supposed to be fully playable using mouse, but here player needs to input "me" or "x me".

y4n said...

Oh, and I had a feeling that this work has been probably influenced by Enki Bilal's "Nikopol Trilogy" comic?

Pacian said...

@Everyone: Thanks. :-)

@yandexx: You can get the PC description by clicking their name in the top right corner - but I also think it's a nice reward if players just find it when trying standard IF commands.

And that comic does look very cool to me, but I've never heard of it before now. ;-)

Ethan said...

I'm in the second "level". So far I am thoroughly enjoying your story! Thanks for sharing it.

Anonymous said...

I found time to play this after leaving it sitting in my bookmarks for several months now. I was impressed--well-written, and with strong characters and a whimsical story arc as well.

I'm sure we'd all love to see the further adventures of Walker and Silhouette, should you ever decide to return to their universe.

I'm particularly interested in the actual interface design: I've been thinking lately about the distinguishing characteristics between hypertext fiction and interactive fiction lately, and this game shows sort of an interesting middle-path. What I like about what you've built is that it's so amenable to the web as it currently exists--this type of game could quite readily be constructed in HTML, which is perfect for distribution (and lowering the barrier to entry, which furthers my nefarious scheme of gently sucking people into IF ;) ).

Anyway, thanks very much for the game and the ideas behind it!

Pacian said...

Thanks Ethan and Jason!

I definitely intend to come back to Walker and Silhouette at some point, and rest assured that web accessibility will be in my mind when I do.

ralphmerridew said...

Nice game. I noticed that the player can recover his hat with "get bowler", but can't (to my knowledge) do so through single-words. (Wasn't playing on an interpreter with hyperlinks.)