The Shadow in the Cathedral (Kindle)

Brilliant yet oddly overlooked interactive fiction The Shadow of the Cathedral has happily been ported to the Kindle. You can grab it over at Amazon and enjoy a well-written steampunk adventure in a world of clocks, gears and ornithopters.

Kindle Infocom Wallpapers

If you are a happy owner of a Kindle, you'll be an even happier one if you change its wallpaper/screensaver collection to something more gamer-friendly. Something like a selection of Infocom's covers. Happily, you can grab a few and find out how to install them (for free of course) over at the excellent Z-Machine Matter.

The King of Shreds and Patches (Kindle)

Well, the first proper piece of interactive fiction has arrived on the Amazon Kindle and it's none other than Jimmy Maher's The King of Shreds and Patches. And, yes, when I say proper, I do mean proper, as in featuring a fully working parser and a deep, interactive storyline. You can find out more about it over at the Digital Antiquarian and grab a copy over at Amazon.com. As for me, I will be waiting for Amazon to release the thing for Europe too.... Here's something to further enlighten you on this lovely new game:

When you receive a note from your old acquaintance John Croft, you expect nothing but an evening of good food and drink and tall tales. Instead, you quickly find yourself plunged into a conspiracy of black magic that involves not only Croft but some of the most powerful and important men in London – and possibly even someone else, someone much closer to your own heart.  

The King of Shreds and Patches is truly an interactive novel. Set in a meticulously recreated Elizabethan London, its story and writing can stand proudly beside conventional mysteries and historical thrillers in both length and quality, with one crucial difference: YOU play the protagonist.  

A brand new approach to interactive fiction on the Kindle, this experience is deeper and richer than anything you have seen before. Rather than choosing from a few limited options, you will use a natural-language parser to choose from a universe of possibility every step of the way. Simply tell the story what you want to do using simple English, and it will respond with rich prose of its own.  

In the process of playing, you will write your very own novel; no two players will have the same experience. And after you have finished your adventure, a process that will likely absorb many hours, your story will remain on your Kindle, to reread and share and compare with others.  

Lovers of historical fiction, mysteries, or horror can now experience a story from the inside, while fans of puzzles and adventure games will also find much to enjoy here. Will you be able to thwart the darkness that threatens London?

Vacationing with Life Support

Well, the time has come for poor ol' me to take a few days off and check whether the sea still is where it's supposed to be. This, precious readers, means that Gaming on the Go wont be updated for the next 10 days or so and we can all take a break. Before I leave though, I'll let you in on a little secret: Life Support. It's a science fiction story by Verena Kyratzes and it's already been loaded into my Kindle and waiting to be enjoyed somewhere lovely. I do suggest you give it a look. It's almost free and judging by author's previous work (yes, that would also include games) Life Support has to be great.

See you all in September!

Inheritance for the Kindle

I frankly haven't tried Inheritance just yet, but I definitely intend to both play it and -eventually- provide you with a review of the thing. Inheritance, you see, labels itself as "a new kind of text adventure" and can be played on the Kindle; the device whose audience is bound to love interactive fiction. The game itself costs a mere 1$ (for the time, that is; the price will be raised after the 25th of July) and sports an interesting-sounding interface, where no real typing is required - verbs, actions and objects can be selected from a list.

As for the plot and setting, well, they might not be the most original ever, but they could definitely work:

In the game, you play a character whose crazy uncle Osmo passed away recently, leaving you everything. But there's a catch. He has turned his house into a series of crazy challenges that you'll have to overcome if you want to see a dime! What is the deal with that elevator? How do you get past the tiger? And most important of all, where can a person find a decent pair of sneakers?

You can find out more about Inheritance and grab a copy over at Amazon.

Flaws for Kindle

I've yet to play some proper interactive fiction on my Kindle, but I'm pretty sure that Flaws should fill that gap rather nicely. Truth be said, it isn't a proper text adventure, but more of an interactive sci-fi short story (closer to a choose-your-own-adventure book) with a rather impressive number of branches. Grab it via Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk and find out more about it here. It's a really well written thing, mind.

Number Slide free for the Kindle

The Kindle besides being a most excellent reading device (here is a handy review of the thing) is also the perfect handheld for enjoying text adventures. Then again, it also seems pretty capable of handling a variety of other, mostly word and puzzle, games. Number Slide is a pretty perfect example of the sort of stuff currently available for Amazon's handheld. It's a number-sliding puzzle game with simple graphics that can be grabbed here. Oh, and it's happily freeware too.

A brief Kindle review

The Kindle -my very own Kindle- is the first ebook reader I've ever seen, and can't thus review it in comparison to the other devices of this sort. I can instead review it -it being the 3G version of Kindle 3- as somebody who loves books, reads a lot and has a modest passion for handheld gadgets.

So, what is the Kindle? Well, it's a handheld device that sports an e-ink display, mainly designed to allow you to read books without having to suffer looking at LCD pixels. It will impressively also allow you to listen to audio books, surf the internet, browse Wikipedia, play some rudimentary games, experience interactive fiction and even enjoy some mp3 music. These things it does admirably, though its most impressive feature is -by far- its amazing display.

Looking at the Kindle screen actually feels like looking at a proper printed page of the highest quality. You can thus actually read in direct sunlight and still be impressed. I for one was, as I simply couldn't imagine just how beautiful this little grayscale display could be. It really is the only suitable way to read digital books. What's more, you can freely change the text's spacing, font size, margins etc, while intuitively flicking them virtual pages, instantly accessing dictionaries, bookmarking stuff, adding notes and, yes, underlining. Should you be so inclined, the Kindle can actually read your book out loud too. Impressed yet? I definitely was.

Well, truth be said. you should be too, for the Kindle effortlessly connects to Amazon (via its very own 3G Whispernet or Wi-Fi) and lets you purchase and instantly download a huge variety of books, but also lets you enjoy your pdfs and the thousands of freeware -mostly classic- ebooks that can be found on, say, Project Gutenberg. Reading Jack London's Iron Heel just couldn't be easier... Oh, and by allowing you to globally and freely connect to Wikipedia, this is indeed the closest we have come to getting our hands on The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

You can find out more and of course order your truly excellent Kindlevia Amazon.

The Kindle plays Poker

Interestingly the rather excellent e-ink Kindle reader has just gotten one more game to call its own. What's more this is a release by the behemoth that is EA. The game itself, EA Texas Hold em, seems like a particularly interesting version of everyone's favourite poker variant. The game sports 3 difficulty levels, 6 AI opponents, a practice mode and ton of other features including multiplayer.

Indie Kindle Gaming

I can officially admit to being this close to actually grabbing a Kindle. Not only is that amazing e-reader about to get its brand new text adventures, but indie developers have already started coming up with interesting ideas for its crisp black & white display. Amazon has already launched its devkit and (as discovered by the pretty excellent develop site) the first indie game has already appeared on the device. It might not look incredibly innovative -it is another match three game as you can see on the pic posted above- but it certainly is promising. And I do love them black & white graphics.

Mobile Interactive Stories

Textfyre is a truly unique company and the sole developer and publisher of quality interactive fiction (a.k.a. text-adventures) for Windows and Mac computers. Happily, they seem to have decided to go mobile and getting their games to run on iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone 7, Kindle, Blackberry, and Palm. To help them make the rather indie delights of intellectual gaming on the go a reality, you should visit their Kickstarter page. Here's what you will be supporting:

Textfyre will be publishing interactive stories to all mobile devices. Stories will be developed internally at Textfyre, but also licensed from any author or company that wishies to publish their content on our platform.

The platform will allow free and paid content while offering a central repository. The reader can interact on a Kindle, then open up the same story on their iPhone and start where they left off. They can move to their Mac or PC and do the same. Stories will come in all genre's and lengths, leaving those details to the story designers. Textfyre's stories generally offer 10 to 20 hours of interactive time and include hints and introductory assistance.

We plan to have our engine and user interfaces implemented by the end of 2010 with your help. This will include native Mac OS X, iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone 7, Kindle, Blackberry, and Palm Pre devices (barring unforseen technical or other factors).

And here's an online demo of The Shadown in the Cathedral to help you understand what kind of games we're talking about.

Amazon Kindle gets playful

I've been this close to grabbing a Kindle e-reader by Amazon for quite some time now, but finally it's been decided! I'll be getting a Wi-Fi one as soon as possible and will very soon be enjoying a ton of digital books on the closest thing to paper a screen can come up with. Possibly on the beach. As an added bonus, I guess I'll be gaming on my little portable device too, as Amazon has already started providing the Kindle with games.

They might just be relatively simple puzzle, card and word games for now, but Crosswords, Backgammon, Remove-A-Pair Solitaire, Mathdoku, Sudoku and the rest are a good start. And I can really feel it in my bones, that they will soon be accompanied by some excellent interactive fiction (you know, text adventures) soon. Possibly even some ports of Infocom and Level 9 games too, or at least the emulators needed.