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.

8 thoughts on “The Bryant Collection Released

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

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