Suggested By:
JohnEvans9:05 is a tiny game, and everyone interested in interactive fiction should play it at least once.
This is true of most of Adam Cadre's IF work, actually: he is interested in the formal limits of interactive fiction design, and that means that even his smallest and least-known work tends to force the player to reassess what games can do.
But to say much more than that about this game would be to spoil the experience -- try it and you'll see.
N.B.: 9:05 was built using the Z-machine, an interactive fiction engine originally created by Infocom. To play the game, you need to install a Z-machine interpreter on your machine, and download the game file. We link to Z-machine interpreters for PC, Mac, and Linux above--you can probably find them for other devices, too.
Adam Cadre's work
All right, my suggestion was taken! I feel like I just "leveled up".
In all seriousness, there's only one thing I'd add to this review; A note that Photopia, another work of Adam Cadre's, was recently reviewed here on Play This Thing.
This is a very small game,
This is a very small game, and definitely worth a play-though. Well, maybe two. It raises questions about the way the player treats the player character and how they respond to tasks given.
Online Z-Machine interpreter now available
Just wanted to let you know that there's a VERY cool new project at Google Code; a webapp Z-Machine interpreter, built in Javascript. No interpreter download required if you're using a modern browser...it's fantastic.
Description here: http://www.toolness.com/wp/?p=49
Google Code project here: http://code.google.com/p/parchment/
Example link using 9:05:
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://mi...
Jazzy!!
Yup -- it is cool, though I
Yup -- it is cool, though I gather there are still some bugs in interpreting certain Inform 7 games, and last I heard some versions of Internet Explorer didn't play well with it.
Still, this is one of several very encouraging projects to make interactive fiction playable online.
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Emily Short