In the words of Wikipedia:
Jon Ingold's interactive fiction is notable for its interrogation of the relationship between the player-character and the player, and most of his games explore this notion in one way or another.
His website holds a wealth of free fictional riches and I've been going through a number of them, trying to decide if I like his style enough to buy Shadow of the Cathedral from him. In brief, I've sampled Make It Good, Insight, Fail-Safe, My Angel, and very very briefly All Roads.
Suffice to say, play these things.
That said, some minor spoilers will be lurking in the paragraphs below as I try to formulate my impressions of the rather interestingly crafted games. If one does not wish to be spoiled, go play those things right now.
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It may be easier to begin our discussion with Jon Ingold's two works of hypertext fiction. Flaws is the shorter "game," and A Shaggy Dog Story is the longer, more elaborate one.
Ok, they're not really games. They're not exactly multi-branch narratives either. What they are is really hard to pin down. They meander back to the same ending, but undergo some shifts en route dependent on the reader's input. Some of the choices offered to the reader are meaningless, some of them have an effect on the text. Yet the exact expression of the narration is tailored to the reader's interest via the selection/choice the reader makes.
And yes, they play with your (as in the reader's) expectations. A lot.
Much of Ingold's work follows this overarching theme of the reader's origins in uncertainty building up to a slow, gradual sense of discovery, climaxing in a sudden shock/twist revelation that changes how one reads the story, and ends in some sort of denouement. Oftentimes, not quite satisfactory denouement. Which then drives a reader into a replay or repeat cycle, searching for something more. More meaning, more understanding, more satisfaction.
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The same occurs in the IFs that I have tried from Ingold (those that aren't labeled heavy puzzle-based, at any rate.)
Make It Good sets up a world so believable that it's a shame to have it knocked down. I recommend it highly for its strength in setting and NPC interaction.
Its weakness is in its reliance on timing (in moves and in situation), and for its lack of choice once the twist takes hold. In fact, I haven't completed it because the 'proper' ending is highly conditional. I was also discouraged when the world I so desperately wanted to believe in / roleplay in, twisted itself into something rather more sinister and not quite detective noir-ish.
That said, it is really a well crafted IF, even if the ending remains elusive. (Even an online walkthrough fell afoul of the conditionals, and I lacked the will to replay it once more since my initial impression of the protagonist I was playing had been radically altered.)
In Fail-Safe fortunately, I was not so vested in wanted to believe the story world as first presented to me. It is a fun short IF with very unique mechanics and a couple of different endings. I would describe the mechanics, but it would ruin the fun of discovering it for the first time. Suffice to say that it plays with the parser, and the typical first/third person narrated perspective of a typical IF.
It also sports the regular Ingold tricks with who you think you are as the...protagonist/controller/typer/interactor? and the rest of the world's situation as first presented to you. Weaknesses: It screws around with timed moves leading to an inexorable ending and no save/restore functionality. Ingold is very fond of forced restarts and replays that build up to eventual player discovery. Of course, this forces a lot of repeat typing and mysteriously psychic shortcuts as one skips all the "examines" that led up to the knowledge of the critical command in subsequent playthroughs. Not very immersive at all, and rather fourth-wall breaking...
...except in Insight. Where I gather it is part of the intended -design- that one should be psychic. One has undergone a frustrating number of restarts though, grasping towards any revelations whatsoever. Still no closer to any proper ending, and no online walkthroughs to cheat through, alas. It's more forgiving as it isn't really timed. Just linked to one's frustration and giving up-ness.
My Angel sports a very unique mechanic that bears sampling. It has a 'novel mode' that displays the interactive fiction in the form of a novel text, paragraphs and all. While one can still break the illusion with ease by spamming a bunch of commands, the fun is in trying not to.
Again, it plays with the whole unreliable narrator schtick and you as a player's knowledge of past events as compared with the protagonist or other people in the story.. There is also the mechanic of you and an NPC being linked telepaths, and communication with each other is done through thoughts and THINKing rather than via the usual ASK, SAY, TELL routes.
Weaknesses: Wow. That is one convoluted story. It is such a convoluted story that the author had to do an explanatory summary at the end of it all, and I'm still blinking in some disbelief.
I've not really truly played All Roads yet, so I won't comment on it. I just did one half of a playthrough that left me none the wiser because I was teleporting left and right, in and out of various scenes, leaving me utterly confused as to what was going on. This is, fortunately or unfortunately, very typical Ingold.
In summary, suffice to say that all the mechanics used in these IFs are really quite unique and nifty and worth playing once. The level of craft and programming that goes into leaving such convoluted games unbuggy is fantastic and worth playing, simply to respect the level of hard work that goes into it and to savor the polish. The worlds Ingold creates are self-contained entities, if a little surreal at times.
I haven't quite made my mind up about his stories though. They aren't quite the kind of stories or plots I like. They haven't yet left me with any smiling sense of satisfaction or good memories which is what I'd prefer to get out of these things. But certainly, they have made me think. And think. And scrutinize words with a fine tooth comb because the world is a lot less reliable after stories like Ingold's.
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