Make It Good is a dark detective mystery from Jon Ingold: there's been a murder, and everyone who was in the house at the time is a suspect. The protagonist is a cop whose drinking career has all but eclipsed his career on the force. His sidekick doesn't bother to conceal his contempt at having to serve such a useless master.
On this description, Make It Good looks like a classic style of interactive fiction, in the tradition of Infocom's Deadline and Witness. Those early commercial mysteries involved some of Infocom's most innovative character work: the non-player characters in Deadline give a strong impression of independent purpose as they move about on their own schedules.
Make It Good improves on this tradition.
Not only do the characters wander around and work on their own goals, they have complex knowledge about the world around them, and they remember what they've seen and heard in considerable detail. Bringing the investigation off will require making sure that they all see the right things in the right order at the right time, and get into the right state of mind.
But the game is more than an experiment in modeling character knowledge. Ingold's previous work is diverse -- he's written short and long-form SF, fantasy, and horror -- but if there is any consistent theme, it is how he explores the distance between player and protagonist, between protagonist and viewpoint character. Make It Good is no exception. During the course of play my feelings towards the protagonist ranged quite widely, and included pity, annoyance, distrust, dislike, sympathy, desperation on his behalf. But all those feelings are suitable: the detective doesn't especially like or trust himself all the time, so why should I? The alienation and cynicism of genre noir all come out here, presented in a uniquely procedural and interactive way, an outgrowth of how the player is forced to figure out what the protagonist already knows.
A few words of warning apply.
First: last I checked, there were still a few bugs here and there, a few combinations of NPC actions that didn't make sense. Jon has been releasing new builds fairly steadily, so the game is progressing towards a stable state, but, at least when I looked, it wasn't flawless.
Second: this game is hard. It may play in a browser and give helpful hints for novices and in general appear initially more welcoming than many a work of interactive fiction, but the challenges within are suitable for even the most hardcore devotees of the form.
Despite all that, I strongly recommend trying it out. The flexibility of the game world allows for play that feels more like forming a plan than like solving a puzzle, and the difficulty level suits the subject matter.
Big Thumbs Up
This is just fantastic! I clearly need to follow the IF scene more closely if this is the kind of work it produces these days. I'm amazed by how well the game interprets my input and how complicated the character interactions are. Old IF games featured such simple NPCs that they basically felt like computer terminals awaiting my input. Make It Good's characters feel more alive than probably any character I've encountered in any game. The maid's nervous movement about the house while cleaning, the policeman's constant annoyance at making runs to the station... the characters really feel like they're in the world and have lives outside of the game. I took my hat off the hat rack after giving it to Angela, put it on, and walked into the living room. Remarkably, I received a little bit of text regarding Angela glancing at my hat and briefly scowling. The author did an amazing job considering the possibilities.
How awesome! I hope this technique can find its way into other games, IF or otherwise. Awkward NPCs ruin a game's immersion for me, no matter how convincing the setting and landscape may be.
I still have yet to finish this game, but every time I play I discover some new clue. I strongly recommend playing it in bursts and taking breaks (of several days if needed) to think through the situation. Great fun.
Oh, and I should say: thanks for bringing this to my attention!