XYZZY Awards 2006

By: Derek Yu

On: April 11th, 2007

[Originally written by Shih Tzu for Independent Gaming; reposted with his permission. -Derek]

This actually happened a month ago, but the winners of the 2006 XYZZY Awards for interactive fiction have been announced! Top honors went to Eric Eve’s science fiction story The Elysium Enigma, while Andrew Plotkin’s Edward Gorey homage Delightful Wallpaper and Emily Short’s Floatpoint were among winners in several other categories.

The Elysium Enigma casts you as an Imperial officer charged with contacting a mysteriously technophobic settlement on a remote planet. I’ve only had a chance to play the first five minutes of it, but the premise seems intriguing so far.

For elegant multi-platform interpreters that should be able to run most or all of the nominated titles, I recommend Gargoyle for Windows or Spatterlight for Macintosh systems.

(XYZZY Awards 2006 summarized at Baf’s Guide and ifwiki.org)

Posted in Competitions, Interactive Fiction, Macintosh, Windows

Daniel

Gargoyle also works great on Ubuntu :)
Shih Tzu

I actually played about an hour more of The Elysium Enigma later on. The scenario is interesting and overall it’s very clean and well-implemented, but the NPC interaction started to get on my nerves. Everyone speaks in really unnatural expository dialogue, as if they were trying to out-information-drop each other.
Optrirominiluikus

I have this fantasy of becoming a successful (as in putting out at least one game, and one that people actually play through) IF writer, but when it all comes down to it, I just find the medium boring. I have seriously played three IF games since 1992, Hitchhiker’s, Zork 1, and A Mind Forever Voyaging. I liked AMFV best, but I didn’t play through it like I did the others. gonna try out The Elysium Enigma, but I dont have high hopes.
Optrirominiluikus

Would anyone mind e-mailing me TEE? Can’t seem to download it anywhere, all IF sites suddenly seem to run on 300 baud modems from 1984.
Optrirominiluikus

Grr. [email protected]
Shih Tzu

Some of the IFArchive mirrors seem to be working. Does this link work?

http://ifarchive.flavorplex.com/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXtads.html
Optrirominiluikus

Indeed. Thank you.