https://www.joltcountry.com/index.php/f ... #more-3077
I wrote that in 2015 when he was diagnosed with cancer. He made some iconic games.
Mike Berlyn has passed away.
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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Mike Berlyn has passed away.
the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!
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Roody_Yogurt
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Re: Mike Berlyn has passed away.
I've been meaning to reply to this post for several months now. To be honest, when it came up, I had recently reminisced on ifMUD and other places, and it just felt too sad to say it all again. Anyhow, here we are.
He was a very smart and funny guy, and over the years, I have come to appreciate some of his games more and more.
Infidel was a great game. The midgame doesn't quite match the excitement of the intro or ending (it'd be interesting to play it again and see how enjoyable I find the puzzles as an old guy adult). As a player, we want to be congratulated and celebrated when we finish a game, but Infidel was remarkable for providing the kind of thematically just ending that is rare even today.
Suspended had a great premise. It's been years since I've played through it, of course, but I kind of recall thinking, when I had finally finished the game, that the time limit within the game is not as harsh (nor is the goal as elusive) as it seems when playing for the first time. It's a shame that most people (I assume) never beat the game, as it's pretty cool when you are given the code or whatever that allows you to configure future playthroughs (where robots are located, times and such, etc), making it as easy or hard as you want.
I like to think of it as one of the earliest instances of New Game+ (or possibly a game construction kit), even if in terms of text game functionality, it was similar to, "hey, let me turn on the debugging verbs for you."
When he spent time on the ifMUD, I told him how, when I played through Suspended, I really thought that the fact that one of the protagonist's predecessors went crazy was going to end up being an important plot point (like, maybe everything was breaking down because of some long-dormant sabotage). Berlyn said that was never a consideration, ha. It's kind of funny how, with these old games, there are often elements of a story, but no one ever thought, hey, let's tie these things together!
When he was doing his Cascade Publishing thing, he released an all digital, ported-to-Inform version of his game Dr. DuMont's Wild P.A.R.T.I. I was one of his betatesters. In a way, I think it might be my favorite game of his. Even though it was a puzzle game written for children, I think many of us are bad enough at puzzles that a puzzle game written for children is basically our speed anyway.
I don't remember if I found any actual bugs, but I do remember that I tried to get him to change the winning text. I wanted it to be more triumphant and recall more of the characters the player had seen, to celebrate everything the player had experienced. To me, the ending seemed a little too "You have won!", kind of like how "The Pawn" starts you off by sending you to a mysterious land under some strange circumstances and the ending is just like, "well, I guess you win. We're not going to fix any of that stuff that sent you here in the first place, though."
Anyhow, he wrote up an alternate ending that hit the notes of everything I was saying, and I told him I liked it and he was like, "I think I like the original more." I'm always so self-conscious about offering my opinion on things that I even wondered if he had intentionally written some horrible text just to see if my taste was so bad that I like it anyway, ha.
He had kind of a joyfully brash personality so this seemed like a possibility to me, but at the same time, even if he was testing my terrible taste for his own amusement, his jokes and words were never malicious. Some people just have an interesting way of loving life, and he loved life.
I got around to playing through the game again some years later, and I actually thought the ending was great... I assume he had gone back to the original ending for the final release and, yeah, I was wrong and nothing needed to be changed, ha.
Near the end of his time on the ifMUD, he started writing a new game with a protagonist named Remy (which I had thought was cool since my brother had also used that name in some of his writings). I think the plot was going to be more narrative than puzzle. I told him the game should do the Infocom's Sorcerer thing where the game title isn't displayed until after the first scene is over, and he actually implemented that idea.
I still have that just-the-beginning game of his among all of my saved IF files. It's funny because many of us IF enthusiasts end up being little historians, keeping copies of this or that for fear that it will be lost to the world, but I'd guess that there's very little that I "save" like that that isn't also on many other people's hard drives. But Berlyn's "chameleon.z5" is one of the few things I have that is probably pretty rare.
A year or two before word got out that he had cancer, he released a couple games for tablets. I either didn't own the right kind of tablet or was especially poor at the time so I didn't buy them (sadly, they no longer are available), but I noticed that at least one of them involved a character named Remy so I wrote Berlyn to congratulate him on the assumption that chameleon.z5 had morphed into this other thing, years later. It turned out that it wasn't a super direct transition, but he made it clear that he was happy to hear from me and I was touched that he still looked back at the ifMUD days fondly.
After the cancer thing was announced, I never reached out to him because I figured I was not the kind of friend he needed to hear from, but in these situations, when the person in question does eventually pass, I always think, well damn, they probably would have liked to hear from me. I hope to get better at this.
Still, I'm glad we had that chat to catch up one last time, and like I implied earlier, he had a kickass personality and forged an interesting path.
And Michael and Muffy were one of the coolest real life love stories in both interactive fiction and gaming history.
He was a very smart and funny guy, and over the years, I have come to appreciate some of his games more and more.
Infidel was a great game. The midgame doesn't quite match the excitement of the intro or ending (it'd be interesting to play it again and see how enjoyable I find the puzzles as an old guy adult). As a player, we want to be congratulated and celebrated when we finish a game, but Infidel was remarkable for providing the kind of thematically just ending that is rare even today.
Suspended had a great premise. It's been years since I've played through it, of course, but I kind of recall thinking, when I had finally finished the game, that the time limit within the game is not as harsh (nor is the goal as elusive) as it seems when playing for the first time. It's a shame that most people (I assume) never beat the game, as it's pretty cool when you are given the code or whatever that allows you to configure future playthroughs (where robots are located, times and such, etc), making it as easy or hard as you want.
I like to think of it as one of the earliest instances of New Game+ (or possibly a game construction kit), even if in terms of text game functionality, it was similar to, "hey, let me turn on the debugging verbs for you."
When he spent time on the ifMUD, I told him how, when I played through Suspended, I really thought that the fact that one of the protagonist's predecessors went crazy was going to end up being an important plot point (like, maybe everything was breaking down because of some long-dormant sabotage). Berlyn said that was never a consideration, ha. It's kind of funny how, with these old games, there are often elements of a story, but no one ever thought, hey, let's tie these things together!
When he was doing his Cascade Publishing thing, he released an all digital, ported-to-Inform version of his game Dr. DuMont's Wild P.A.R.T.I. I was one of his betatesters. In a way, I think it might be my favorite game of his. Even though it was a puzzle game written for children, I think many of us are bad enough at puzzles that a puzzle game written for children is basically our speed anyway.
I don't remember if I found any actual bugs, but I do remember that I tried to get him to change the winning text. I wanted it to be more triumphant and recall more of the characters the player had seen, to celebrate everything the player had experienced. To me, the ending seemed a little too "You have won!", kind of like how "The Pawn" starts you off by sending you to a mysterious land under some strange circumstances and the ending is just like, "well, I guess you win. We're not going to fix any of that stuff that sent you here in the first place, though."
Anyhow, he wrote up an alternate ending that hit the notes of everything I was saying, and I told him I liked it and he was like, "I think I like the original more." I'm always so self-conscious about offering my opinion on things that I even wondered if he had intentionally written some horrible text just to see if my taste was so bad that I like it anyway, ha.
He had kind of a joyfully brash personality so this seemed like a possibility to me, but at the same time, even if he was testing my terrible taste for his own amusement, his jokes and words were never malicious. Some people just have an interesting way of loving life, and he loved life.
I got around to playing through the game again some years later, and I actually thought the ending was great... I assume he had gone back to the original ending for the final release and, yeah, I was wrong and nothing needed to be changed, ha.
Near the end of his time on the ifMUD, he started writing a new game with a protagonist named Remy (which I had thought was cool since my brother had also used that name in some of his writings). I think the plot was going to be more narrative than puzzle. I told him the game should do the Infocom's Sorcerer thing where the game title isn't displayed until after the first scene is over, and he actually implemented that idea.
I still have that just-the-beginning game of his among all of my saved IF files. It's funny because many of us IF enthusiasts end up being little historians, keeping copies of this or that for fear that it will be lost to the world, but I'd guess that there's very little that I "save" like that that isn't also on many other people's hard drives. But Berlyn's "chameleon.z5" is one of the few things I have that is probably pretty rare.
A year or two before word got out that he had cancer, he released a couple games for tablets. I either didn't own the right kind of tablet or was especially poor at the time so I didn't buy them (sadly, they no longer are available), but I noticed that at least one of them involved a character named Remy so I wrote Berlyn to congratulate him on the assumption that chameleon.z5 had morphed into this other thing, years later. It turned out that it wasn't a super direct transition, but he made it clear that he was happy to hear from me and I was touched that he still looked back at the ifMUD days fondly.
After the cancer thing was announced, I never reached out to him because I figured I was not the kind of friend he needed to hear from, but in these situations, when the person in question does eventually pass, I always think, well damn, they probably would have liked to hear from me. I hope to get better at this.
Still, I'm glad we had that chat to catch up one last time, and like I implied earlier, he had a kickass personality and forged an interesting path.
And Michael and Muffy were one of the coolest real life love stories in both interactive fiction and gaming history.