This actually happened a month ago, but the winners of the 2006 XYZZY Awards for interactive fiction have been announced! Top honors went to Eric Eve's science fiction story The Elysium Enigma, while Andrew Plotkin's Edward Gorey homage Delightful Wallpaper and Emily Short's Floatpoint were among winners in several other categories.

The Elysium Enigma casts you as an Imperial officer charged with contacting a mysteriously technophobic settlement on a remote planet. I've only had a chance to play the first five minutes of it, but the premise seems intriguing so far.

For elegant multi-platform interpreters that should be able to run most or all of the nominated titles, I recommend Gargoyle for Windows or Spatterlight for Macintosh systems.

(XYZZY Awards 2006 summarized at Baf's Guide and ifwiki.org)

Labels: shihtzu

Hello all, this is Shih Tzu. Tim threw an account at me the other day, apparently for me to deface his creation with profanities and screens from softcore mahjongg games. And don't think I won't! But until that day comes, I'll sporadically assist with... I don't know what. Japanese stuff, probably.



Anyway, I thought I'd add a few clarifications I (think I) was able to glean from the 3Hiki blog, 3Hiki ga Takuramu. The group, the new home of the members of GR3PROJECT (La Mulana), is working on a new project called "Death Village", as noted earlier here. According to some of the posts by members Naramura and Samieru:

* The group is now going to try their hand at releasing games commercially.
* The goal: "Sure, there are lots of companies churning out franchise games for popular systems with expensive advertising campaigns... But, we suggest, why can't there also be a company of artisans trying out things to see if they work, one where the graphics and advertising might be disheartening but the games are consistently weird?"
* Death Village is not a sequel to La Mulana, and the public shouldn't expect a similar experience.
* The group actually has two projects in the works. Samieru is concentrating on the second, "more experimental" one.

There is also lots and lots of commentary on Ys Eternal, R-Type, God of War II, Soul Blazer, retro games, freeware games, the Xbox 360, and probably everything in between.

Labels: shihtzu