23.3.09

Dead Like Ants: Make Rocket Go Now

For EnvComp, the IF environment competition...


Dead Like Ants
An IF fairy tale, of sorts.

Dead Like Ants is a low-fi, fairy tale-ish game for an Interactive Fiction (i.e. text game) environment competition. Explore your surroundings, meet strange new people, try to stand-out from your thousands of identical sisters... And perhaps at the end of it all, you'll grow some wings.


-Download Dead Like Ants as a .t3 file [mirror] [random mirror] (350kb)
-Download Dead Like Ants as a windows executable (1Mb)
-A download page for both competition entries can be found here.

--INSTRUCTIONS--

-If you have Windows, you may prefer to download the zipped executable. Just click the link above, unzip the download and double click the application.

-Alternatively, if you're a seasoned IF player, or you're using Linux or a Mac, download the .t3 version. Unzip the file and run it with an interpreter from this page.

-(You might also like to play the competition's only other entry. To my chagrin, this other game seems to be rather good, but you'll need to run it with a Z code interpreter. Before you get too confused, note that some interpreters can run both games. Try Gargoyle for Windows, or Spatterlight for Mac.)

--WHAT THEY SAID--

You can find the official EnvComp reviews here, as well as reviews and mentions from SPAG, Baf's Guide, Gnome's Lair, Auntie Pixelante, TIGSource and Jay Is Games.

Click here to read all my blog posts on Dead Like Ants.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Is this the game you've been working so hard on? I have no idea how to even download it, let alone play such a game - but it certainly looks and sounds intriguing. Congratulations on finishing, and best of luck on your competition!

gnome said...

Congratulations on another amazingly written and truly novel game Pacian. Dead Like Ants is indeed excellent!

Geosomin said...

Me heee...sunday afternoon's planned out now :)

Pacian said...

@Tinker: Thanks! Clicking the link marked windows executable would probably be the first step, were you so inclined.

@Gnome: Well thank you. Baseless flattery will get you everywhere.

@Geo: I would have something else planned as well, because it is not all that long a game.

Harbinger said...

Best IF ever along with Gun Mute, Lock & Key, 9:05 and Shrapnel.

Phyvo said...

I honestly don't know what to say. Strange, and touching. I hope you write more.

Anonymous said...

On the theory that authors always like seeing transcripts, here's mine:

http://spod-central.org/~lpsmith/IF/transcripts/envcomp/deadlikeants.txt

They also like seeing reviews, but since I'm a judge, you'll have to wait for that ;-)

Valzi said...

Any chance of me getting a look at the source for this? Your design is elegant and I'd particularly like to get a look at your method of restarting with new information each time. Probably just transporting the player to the start room and changing a variable for the altered room...

Pacian said...

Hi Valzi, that's pretty much it. My main design constraint was to keep everything simple so that I didn't have to worry too much about changing things either side of 'that event'.

If you've got any questions, you can email me: cejpacian at googlemail.com