I finally played "Shade" yesterday.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

The IF game Shade, I mean.

I was too thick to understand that, at the end, everything you touch ... well, one sec. I am going to do a spoiler warning. If you ever want to play this game, don't read any further. My enjoyment was lessened by knowing what to expect.

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OK. I didn't know you had to pick things up to turn them into sand! I think I needed a "touch (object)" implementation, I don't know. Plotkin does require you to think in his games, however and to top it all off the last IF game I played recently was a replay of "Rameses." So I wasn't in "I have to figure shit out" mode.

I will now answer your questions about "Shade."

[Lysander]

The Ready, Okay! link in there is just weird. (Yeah, let's just put spoilerspace on this entire thread.) The game on the main (... only) character's computer is some IF interpretation of RO, and the character you're playing in that is MOlly--you can tell because it says you keep dying without insolin. Molly being the one who was deathly afraid of water, water being the one thing that would save your character in the game from dying of, ah, sand. I don't know. I'm not smart enough to figure out any surrealist fiction, let alone surrealist IF, let alone Plotkin IF. *Shrug* Over to you.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

My eyes are burning in their sockets and I would do anything to escape being in front of a monitor for the rest of my natural life, before I die trying to push goo on a stack and FIFO off the servlet.

kill me