Let me announce the game I will be making for this year’s IFComp.

The Interactive Fiction Competition is probably the oldest IF event, this year being the 22nd. It’s been described as the Superbowl of interactive fiction, and while this sounds perhaps a bit too grandiose, it definitely is the biggest event. Last year I participated for the first time with Pilgrimage, and while it didn’t place very well, the experience was definitely very positive and the insights quite useful.

My initial plan for this year was to finish a first chapter of Mistress of the Labyrinth and submit it as my entry in IFComp. But as I am still learning the rudiments of Unity and how to integrate Ink in Unity in a way that is minimally appealing at visual level, it’s obvious I am not going to have enough time. So I’ve decided to do something smaller and parser-based, but still based in the same universe.

Enter Ariadne in Aeaea. This will be a short parser game made with Inform 7, perhaps a couple of year before the events in MOTL, when the titular Ariadne is still an initiate priestess in Aeaea, the hub of the Minoan religion. This will give me some space to do some worlbuilding that hopefully will be useful for MOTL and create some lore for later use. The pace will be more relaxed than MOTL, since the Achaean invasion is not a direct threat yet. Meet a younger Ariadne, her mentor the old and wise Circe and probably a few more friends from the Cretan culture.

Wish me luck!