IF Interaction

Interactive Fiction is a form of literature that is like no other kind of literature, It has a very unique feeling to it. instead of reading all about a character and watching what they choose to do throughout the story, you actually become the character. you choose the path that you have to take throughout the story. you as the character have to reason and figure out how to make it farther in the story. it seems like it would be a walk in the park but IF is the exact opposite. IF has so many little puzzles that can stump you and it becomes very frustrating after a while. for example, say you are stuck in a room, you can not just say leave room, you actually have say things like find the key, use the key, open the door, go outside, etc. i decided to write about my interaction with "all Roads" because i liked that one a lot more than "Galatea" or "Whom the Telling Changed". I liked all roads a lot more than the other two because it was an adventure. you had to be sneaky and find your way around using directions and try not to get caught. when i tried "Galatea" i was bored and confused, i did not like talking to that statue at all. when i read "whom the Telling Changed" i was upset because it was just like a regular story, all you had to do to interact with it was type in "ask" and the narrator told you about the story just like in a novel. the one thing that i did like is that you could choose the narrator but that was the only thing that really grabbed me with this IF. That is why i chose to write about "All Roads". when i first started this assignment, i was very confused as to why we had to why we needed to install a program and download something just to do an assignment. i spent a good half hour just trying to figure out how to get the IF to work. once i got that started, i decided to try this out but i made the mistake of not taking the time to read the directions first. i was very confused as to what it was going to be and i was not ready to have to work as hard as i did to actually get through the story. when i first started i was just pushing random buttons and seeing what happened. i realized that i was not getting anywhere when it kept saying that it did not recognize my command. i exited out of the IF because i was getting so frustrated that i wanted to throw my computer out of the window. i open it up later and i saw "Directions" and i felt like a moron. i opened those and that is when i really started to like IF. when i saw the commands, i got excited about the possibilities that i had and could not wait to get started. When i started "All roads" and i was on top of a building about to be hung and the detail was awesome. it was telling me that there was a crowd of people below me roaring and i did not know what to do when it asked for a response so i just yelled the whole time until suddenly it went back to a menu screen which said press any key. once i pressed a key, i ended up in an empty room tied up and i had no idea how i was going to get out. it specifically said that there was a pile of dust in the corner so i decided to blow the dust away because they would not have said anything about it unless it was important. under the dust was a bottle of wine and a note. when i saw that i had no clue what i was going to do with either of those to get out of this locked room. when you are put in situations like this, you really feel like you are the character and you need to find the way out so you start to think like you would if you were in the situation. i decided to break the bottle to get glass shards to cut the rope but i did not think that breaking the bottle would work, i thought that it was to in depth for the IF. to my surprise, the bottle thing worked and i was shocked. right then i realized that this IF thing was actually gonna be a lot of fun. i thought of it as a video game with all words. as the story went on there were a few parts that i was stuck on. once i got out of the ropes that were tied to my hands, i grabbed the key that was in the room and unlocked the door, once i got out of the door, there was a guard outside. i tried everything in my power to get by this guy, i tried sneaking, running, yelling to distract him, i even tried singing but nothing worked. after all of those efforts i went in the basement to get the glass shard. i was going to kill this guard. no matter how i put it,(cut, kill, slice guard) it kept telling me that he was to big and it was easier another way. then i remembered that there was a note in the basement so i went back to read it. once i read it, nothing happened and i was still stuck from this guard that seemed to be invincible to any action i said. after yelling at least twenty times, it told me to just go and cut him. by that time i was so frustrated that i wanted to give up but something kept me interested, i wanted to see what was going to happen next. i played the story for a really long time until i ended up in the basement again but this time i just yelled until i ended up in a dark hotel room with a random girl. i struggled in that room for at least a half hour and then i gave up. "All Roads" was a very good piece of IF but it was missing a few things. It was more like a video game in that it was all about the actions and reactions and not about the little stuff in between that helps you understand the characters and what is going on in the story. even tthough it was lacking those elements of the story, i would definitely rather read a story with to much interaction rather than a story with too much reading and very little interaction. I feel that this Piece of IF was very interesting and it made me really want to get started on making one of my own.