The Bryant Collection Released
Right on the heels of my last release, here’s my April game, The Bryant Collection. This one is a bit of a cop-out; it’s not actually my game. Instead, it’s a translation of someone else’s work into interactive fiction.
An excerpt from my release post on RGIF:
A few months ago, I found an old strongbox at a garage sale. The box was full of papers written by a woman named Laura Bryant. The majority of the stuff in the box was a collection of what she called “story worlds.”
These story worlds are akin to interactive fiction or roleplaying games; they’re designed for one player and one mediator who serves as the parser or the game master. The earliest date on a story world in the box is 1964, which means these works predate Crowther and Woods’s Adventure, Dungeons & Dragons, or Wesely’s Braunstein. The Bryant Collection contains the five stories that I found the most interesting and feasible to convert to IF:
- “The End of the World” is a story about lunch.
- “Morning in the Garden” is a story about dealing with annoying people.
- “Tower of Hanoi” is a rather interesting little puzzle, but not what you think. It came with a sort of feelie in the strongbox, which is included as an IF object.
- “Going Home Again” is a story about growing up.
- “Undelivered Love Letter” is a story about airports.
Download The Bryant Collection.
For more information, including links to interpreters that will run the game, see the game page.
Tags: bryant, game releases, Interactive Fiction, my games
It has just occurred to me that this may be an April Fool’s prank. If so, bravo. I haven’t gotten around to playing the game very much because it’s late over here, but what I have seen and read looks fantastic. The main reason I believed your ruse, if it is indeed a ruse, is because I truly wanted it to be real.
The game is very much real.
Isn’t “Morning in the Garden” also a story about lunch?
Not necessarily. It could be about too much breakfast, or about moderation in eating.
I was referring to the backstory. The game is obviously real, but the backstory has me torn. The orphaned note is too uncannily similar to Inform 7, but I still want the backstory to be true.
You had me going with the backstory for a bit. Sounded unlikely but plausible, merely a strange series of coincidences, a real life discovery of something incredible, almost Lovecraftian. I didn’t really question it until “a story about lunch.” Then it kind of struck me in the gut as too contrived. Good one though, gonna check it out now.
you should post all of the stories scanned as image files.
I absolutely loved this game. I half believe you about finding the strongbox, and I half don’t. But still, “End of the World” was epic and chilling, and “Morning in the Garden” was a nice retelling of the original. I think what I loved about it all is how you wrote it (or converted it into IF). I’ve always loved your prose, and this was no exception.
Anyway, whether inspired or original, I applaud you.