Hunter, in Darkness is a 1999

1999 in video gaming

-Events:*British Academy of Film and Television Arts hosts the 2nd annual BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards*March – Game Over republished as “Game Over: Press Start to Continue”...

 interactive fiction

Interactive fiction

Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...

 game by Andrew Plotkin

Andrew Plotkin

Andrew Plotkin , also known as Zarf, is a central figure in the modern interactive fiction community. Having both written a number of award-winning games and developed a range of new file formats, interpreters, and other utilities for the design, production, and running of IF games, Plotkin is...

, written in Inform

Inform

Over the following decade, version 6 became reasonably stable and a popular language for writing interactive fiction. In 2006, Nelson released Inform 7 , a completely new language based on principles of natural language and a new set of tools based around a book-publishing metaphor.- Z-Machine and...

. It won the "Best Individual Puzzle" and "Best Setting" categories in the 1999 XYZZY Awards, and came in eighth overall in the 1999 Interactive Fiction Competition

Interactive Fiction Competition

The Interactive Fiction Competition is one of the best known of several annual competitions for works of interactive fiction. It has been held since 1995. It is intended for fairly short games, as judges are only allowed to spend two hours playing a game before deciding how many points to award it...

.

The game is inspired by Gregory Yob

Gregory Yob

Gregory Yob was an American computer game designer.Gregory was born in Eugene, Oregon. An article about his experiment on simulating gravitational fields with droplets of water on a soap bubble was published in Scientific American in December 1964, under The Amateur Scientist.His one published...

's seminal 1972

1972 in video gaming

-Events:*Pong was the first commercially successful video arcade game, as well as the first video game to be subject to a lawsuit*Following the poor sales of Computer Space, Nolan Bushnell leaves Nutting Associates to move his coin-op engineering and design firm with Ted Dabney in to a full fledged...

 computer game Hunt the Wumpus

Hunt the Wumpus

Hunt the Wumpus is an early computer game, based on a simple hide and seek format featuring a mysterious monster that lurks deep inside a network of rooms. It was originally a text-based game written in BASIC...

. As in Hunt the Wumpus, the player's goal is to locate and defeat the title beast within its cave. However, Hunter, in Darkness emphasizes the setting, describing the cave in much greater detail than the earlier work.

Plotkin states in the About section of the game:

"This game was conceived of and fully outlined in early June of 1999."

And it was, too. All that discussion of compassless games, and mazes, and
whether "Hunt the Wumpus" was really IF, made me giggle. I already had this on
the drawing board. I didn't start any of that discussion, either -- although I
contributed a few comments that I knew would turn out relevant.

The game features an experimental system of movement, being one of the few Interactive Fiction

Interactive fiction

Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...

games where mapping is neither necessary nor useful. Instead of typing compass directions, players move between locations by following clues in their surroundings, such as sounds and locations of objects.

External links

• Hunter, in Darkness at IfWiki
• Play Hunter, in Darkness online at ifiction.org