Lots of IF lately is written for competition play and is therefore designed to be completed in two to five hours, and more deserves the name of interactive short story. Aaron Reed's Blue Lacuna triumphantly defies that tradition: Aaron calls it an interactive novel, and that seems entirely fair, because the game contains enough text for several full-length novels and is likely to play over 18-25 hours. The result is that it feels gratifyingly spacious, as less ambitious IF cannot, and there is room for emotional effects to build gradually.
This is a great place to start if you've ever been intrigued by the "novel you can play" promise of interactive fiction but stumped by the puzzles or thwarted by the parser. Blue Lacuna comes with a built-in tutorial introduction; it has an extensively reworked parser that offers friendlier messages than average, and corrects many typos automatically; and it allows much of the navigation and interaction to be done with simple keywords, which it will highlight in the text (unless you don't want the highlighting, in which case it can be turned off). Furthermore, it offers your choice of "story" or "puzzle" modes: both explore essentially the same narrative terrain, but story allows you to do so with less fiddly work, so that you can focus on the events. (Personally, I'm finding I prefer story mode even though I enjoy puzzle games, because this particular tale has enough going for it that I just want to find out what happened.)
For navigation purposes, Blue Lacuna lightens the burden of remembering where everything is: it comes with a sketch map of the main area of the game, and provides a system of movement by landmarks so that the player can wander from place to place without having to remember exactly how he got there.
I'm breaking with my usual tradition by recommending this game before playing it all the way through. I still have some distance to go. But the opening sequences are sufficiently impressive to qualify for a recommendation all on their own. The first chapter is a sort of prologue, establishing your character, but already it allows a great deal of player choice. These choices are not about meaningless kinds of character definition ("should I have blue eyes or brown?") or even RPG-like qualities ("should I be a rogue or a magic-user?") but about important aspects of your background story: what happened to you, why, and what you feel about it. There's quite a bit of latitude to change how all this comes out.
Go on to the second chapter and you'll find yourself in a spacious world to explore -- by modern IF standards, a vast one. The imagery of this world is striking, and it further evolves with the time of day and the variations of the weather, all lovingly simulated. People who enjoyed Worlds Apart will likely find Blue Lacuna very satisfying, because it offers the same extreme attention to the details of a fantastic and visionary landscape.
the first chapter impressed
the first chapter impressed me a lot; finally arriving at the blue lacuna and discovering it was myst island put a damper on my excitement. i found a locked door with a set of six colors and a set of six buttons, each with a picture of one of the creatures that live on the island. i think that puzzle is actually in riven. and i'm playing on "story" mode besides.
i wonder whether asking the player's preferences really improves the work. i appreciate that the game allows me to be a dyke, but is this really the story of a relationship between two women, or is it just the story of the young bachelor and the woman who asks him to finally settle down with the pronouns swapped? (and i noticed a few instances where the author missed a he or his.) does my choice of gender change the voice of the story is what i'm getting at.
the same with my choice of story over puzzle mode: am i just playing a puzzle-adventure game with the puzzles edited out? (or not edited out, or maybe the door puzzle is just the idiot-simple version of the convoluted puzzle the author invented for the "real" game.) if my preferences are just patches to the story that the author intended to tell, why ask for them at all? why not just tell the story as the author envisioned it?
i do intend to play the game more, but at the moment i feel as though i'm stuck (in the sense of having lost momentum) in a puzzle game, despite having chosen "story" mode.
The door puzzle is
The door puzzle is definitely easier in story mode, but I agree it's still kind of odd to have it there.
I've now finished the whole thing, and I think the gender choices do affect the dynamics a bit (though I'd need to replay a few times to confirm my suspicion about where and why). There is also quite a lot of less-overt effect that your behavior has on the development of the story, especially your relationship with Progue. Not all the choices you get to make are overtly labeled LOOK, THIS IS A CHOICE. It's neat when something you did semi-thinkingly much earlier in the game turns out to have a later significance.
I did have some quibbles with the pacing as well, but the game picks up again substantially, and becomes a lot more plotty, in the second half.
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Emily Short