The Gameshelf

Here’s an intfiction.org forum thread with folks sharing their favorite bits of output from this web-toy by Juhana Leinonen. The program mashes up the titles of IFComp entries since 1995, creating some surprisingly evocative results; the forum writers had some fun listing and grouping the best results, and speculating what the notional games they suggest might contain.

And at least one team of creators took it a step further than that. Spurred by a poster of this program’s output hanging up in last month’s IF enclave at PAX, Rob Dubbin, Darius Kazemi, and Courtney Stanton — all of whom are professional creators from outside the IF-enthusiast core — made A Scurvy of Wonders. They wrote this hallucinogenic game on the spot for that weekend’s SpeedIF contest, and I happen to know that Darius was so pleased with it that he set its URL as his IM status message for the next couple of weeks.

Even though Juhana’s toy and the goofy-fun Scurvy are less “serious” examples of what one can do with IF, they still serve to remind me how much work has been produced in the medium over the years, and how fertile it’s made the soil for all the work to come. May the community continue to find creative ways to till it!