{"id":8,"date":"2007-01-04T13:44:45","date_gmt":"2007-01-04T18:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/8"},"modified":"2015-02-22T18:46:18","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T02:46:18","slug":"city-of-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/8","title":{"rendered":"City of Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

City of Secrets<\/em> is\u00a0a\u00a0text\u00a0adventure\u00a0by\u00a0Emily\u00a0Short,\u00a0written\u00a0on commission for a band that wanted it as an extra on their CDs (although this plan fell through for various reasons). It’s one of the few games on the stack that I did not, technically, buy. \u00a0It was never for sale; it’s freely downloadable from the Interactive Fiction Archive<\/a>. \u00a0However, I did purchase the feelies<\/a>, and that gives me the same sense of commitment-to-play as if I had paid for the game itself.<\/p>\n

Feelies are tangible objects from the gameworld, a tradition dating back to Infocom and still indulged in from time to time. I purchased the CoS feelies back in 2003 because I enjoyed Emily Short’s previous works and wanted to do my part to support their production. Then I played the game for about fifteen minutes, got intimidated by how much information it was throwing at me, and didn’t get back to it until now.<\/p>\n

I shouldn’t have been intimidated. Although the game possesses a great deal of depth of detal, it does a good job of keeping the player from getting lost in it. Plot-crucial information is often available from multiple sources, so it’s seldom if ever necessary to ransack a particular NPC’s entire dialogue tree or read every book on a shelf. This is contrary to adventuring habits, but once you’re used to it, it’s quite liberating.<\/p>\n

As to the content: it’s set in a fantasy world with\u00a0both magic and high technology, trains and robots and illusions. \u00a0The player character is a visitor to a big city who gets ensnared in a conflict between the city’s possibly fascist ruler and a mysterious rebel, both of whom are magicians. There are plots and counterplots. One of the first things that I learned was that I had been drugged, although the drug turned out to be an antidote for another drug.<\/p>\n

I’ll say more when I’ve completed the game. \u00a0Despite the author’s estimation that it takes about three hours to play, I’m about five hours in now, probably because I spend so much time poking at inconsequential details, an activity which the game rewards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

City of Secrets is\u00a0a\u00a0text\u00a0adventure\u00a0by\u00a0Emily\u00a0Short,\u00a0written\u00a0on commission for a band that wanted it as an extra on their CDs (although this plan fell through for various reasons). It’s one of the few games on the stack that I did not, technically, buy. \u00a0It was never for sale; it’s freely downloadable from the Interactive Fiction Archive. \u00a0However, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[37,38,84],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-if","tag-city-of-secrets","tag-emily-short","tag-if"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2928,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/2928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}