Twisty. Little. Different.
At End Of Road
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.
>which end of the road is it?
I don’t understand the question.
>I mean, if this is where the road ends, did I walk down the road to get here? How else would I get to the end of the road? Or is it the other end of the road?
Why does it matter?
>I don’t know if I should walk up the road, which might be repeating myself, or walk past the end of the road and see if it goes somewhere.
It doesn’t matter which end of the road it is, and you didn’t come from anywhere—you’re just here.
>how is that possible?
Possible isn’t important in this game.
>Oh.
Which reminds me of a bunch of other stuff I mean to catch up on when I’ve got the time.
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Ah, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Certainly a game to make you pull out your own hair, but fun in that hair-pulling way.
One of the best examinations I've ever seen of the IF gaming structure is Spider and Web.
The game starts out meekly enough; you're in front of a door you can't open. When you decide that it must be something to do later and (logically) walk away, your story line is interrupted -- by your interrogator. Who tells you that obviously you did walk through the door, so how did you do it?
So much of an IF game is trying to determine the answers that the game designer was looking for. Here, you are looking for the answers that your interrogator will accept. Each wrong answer gives you a little more information with which to construct your new story.
It's beautiful, brilliant, and short (for those of you with little time to devote to interrogations).
(For many IF games, you can play them on your own computer if you download the z-file execution program, but you can get there from my link above)