Necrotic Drift

Necrotic Drift is one of my favorite games to bring out whenever discussing the relationship between player and protagonist.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I've been flamed just for saying that before, because someone found the opening sequence so unpleasant as to be angry I had caused him to have any contact with the game at all.

So consider yourself warned: this game includes heaping helpings of profanity; copious references to drug use, sexuality, and violence; misogynistic and otherwise seriously unenlightened characters; and at least one grotesque misapplication of every secretion the human body can produce. There's an artistic purpose to it all, but I wouldn't want anyone thinking this was a good game to introduce to their Sunday school class.

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The player character is one Jarret Duffy, a serious loser. His great life accomplishments are limited to winning RPG tournaments, and even those are a few years in the past. He works a minimum-wage, dead-end job. He lives with the most noisome, hygienically-challenged roommates on the planet. The one good thing in his life is his girlfriend Audrey -- but she, quite understandably, is getting fed up with the level of maturity and commitment he's able to bring to their relationship (viz: none). Combine that with the generally cheap and nasty atmosphere, and you have a protagonist you really want to keep at arm's length (and that only if you haven't got a ten-foot pole handy).

Then -- well, then he and Audrey and their friends get locked into a mall one night when the undead come out to play, and suddenly those RPG skills become useful for a change. We, as players, buy into Jarret's view of the universe after all and start playing along. Despite the extremely unpromising opening, it's hard not to develop a certain respect for Jarret as this segment of the game plays out, and he gets to demonstrate his wits and his physical courage in the real world. We start to share a little of Jarret's personality.

The ending takes the character failings we've known about all along, and makes them count against Jarret -- but only after, as players, we've been lured into respecting and sympathizing with the guy, and wanting him to do well. What's more, Necrotic Drift uses its medium to full effect in earning that sympathy. In static fiction, it might be possible to stand apart from Jarret's approach to life while reading about it; in IF, our only way forward as players is to accept the rules of the universe that the game lays down. The complicity required by interactive fiction makes us participate in Jarret's flaws; it makes his tragedy ours.

People talk about feeling gut-punched at the end of Photopia. To my mind, Photopia is a bit arbitrary, a bit manipulative. Necrotic Drift is sadder because it is about much more nuanced forms of human failing, and more avoidable kinds of disaster. That despite its raw beginning, its survival-horror mid-game, and its totally over-the-top treatment of absolutely everything.

N.B.: Like most interactive fiction, Necrotic Drift is a story file that needs to be played on an interpreter; it was created in the somewhat unusual Hugo system, which allows for sound and graphics as well as text. (The exception is Windows: a playable Windows .exe is included in the game download.) Links to interpreters for other major systems are given above, but you can find interpreters for more esoteric systems here. If you're unfamiliar with interactive fiction, you can also find an introduction to playing such games here.