It’s that time of year again, the annual Interactive Fiction Competiton. My entry this year? Packrat.

They call you Packrat, but who’re they sending to wake the Princess? Not only has the faraway Prince failed to deliver, but it’s just come out that a hefty royal loan has had twenty years to accrue in default, and the repo giants are on their way.

This game is much shorter than my entry last year, Manalive, and should be playable within the competition-required two hours. Last year I recommended a few free interpreters: this year, unless you’re on a Mac, I highly recommend Gargoyle. Gargoyle actually makes interactive fiction look typeset.

But don’t just play Packrat! Get all this year’s games, and you only need to play 5 to cast your votes and be a judge! (Imagine that on your resume: Judge, IFComp 2007.) Aside from the occasional porn entry (which can usually be scented from the description alone), the competition games are one of those unsung freebies on the Internet. After all, in the eighties, you could shell out fifty bucks for an Infocom game (search on Fifty dollars in this 1984 edition of the New Zork Times). Not that every entry’s quite as top-notch as Infocom, perhaps, but then, that was 1984 dollars.

But I have to go buy some bikes. Bye.