{"id":210,"date":"2008-11-02T19:18:59","date_gmt":"2008-11-03T01:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/?p=210"},"modified":"2008-11-02T19:18:59","modified_gmt":"2008-11-03T01:18:59","slug":"ifcomp-2008-opening-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/02\/ifcomp-2008-opening-night\/","title":{"rendered":"IFComp 2008: Opening Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This is another Interactive Fiction Competition review <\/a>.)<\/i><\/p>\n

I don’t have a lot to say about Opening Night<\/cite>—not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because, for whatever reason, I find myself not particularly voluble on the subject. It’s good, though. Spoilers past the link.<\/p>\n

My favorite thing about Opening Night<\/cite> was that it was functional<\/em>. I realize that sounds terrible… but it came late on my list, and by that point I’d played so many half-assed, untested games that something made with care and craft seemed a major event. I found the occasional rough edge (including my old unfavorite, the Thing Mentioned in a Description that Isn’t Really There), but nothing that knocked me out of the story.<\/p>\n

The best thing about Opening Night<\/cite> was the skill with which the gradual revelations were pulled off. A less artful game might have dumped you into the true situation as a twist ending. Opening Night<\/cite> starts small, interrupting a 1920s evening with the distant ring of a cell phone; from there the oddities pile up until you understand. Opening Night<\/cite> sits halfway between puzzle game and stream-of-consciousness. It’s an empathetic window into its PC’s mental state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This is another Interactive Fiction Competition review .) I don’t have a lot to say about Opening Night—not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because, for whatever reason, I find myself not particularly voluble on the subject. It’s good, though. Spoilers past the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[40,23],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","tag-ifcomp-2008","tag-interactive-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.superdoomedplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}