Interactive Fiction Cover Art Drive

By: Terry

On: April 26th, 2008

For the last two months or so, Interactive Fiction veteran Emily Short has been running a cover art drive. The basic idea is that attaching something visual, like a cover, to various works of Interactive Fiction would make it easier for sites (like ours, I guess) to promote the brilliant and very overlooked interactive fiction scene to a wider audience. It’s gone pretty well – including alternates, there are currently 98 submitted covers in the photostream (some examples are included in the side image), but there are still quite a few games outstanding.

I know there are officially only a few days left, but after seeing all the artistic talent on display in tonight’s iScribble session I figured that there are probably quite a few people reading this that could help out with a final push! To take part, all you have to do is create a cover like the ones on the side for any interactive fiction game and send it to Emily. A good place to start would be this post on her blog which lists a few games which have requested cover art but haven’t gotten any yet. Even if you’re not familiar with those games (or any interactive fiction), I’m sure someone on the forums would be more than happy to give you a synopsis or describe a scene. Full details about the project (including detailed clarifications) are collected here. As of right now, here are the games still looking for cover art:

A Dino’s Night Out, by Aris Katsaris
Breath Pirates, by Mike Snyder (to replace existing art)
Goldilocks is a FOX!, by J.J. Guest (to replace existing art)
House of Dream of Moon, by IF Whispers
Learning to Cross, by Mark J. Musante
Legerdemain, by Nathan Jerpe
Luminous Horizon, by Paul O’Brian
Revenger, by Robb Sherwin (to replace existing art)
Tales of the Traveling Swordsman, by Mike Snyder (to replace existing art)
Waystation, by Stephen Granade
Wearing the Claw, by Paul O’Brian

There are officially only three days left, so if you’re interested, get cracking!

Posted in Community, Interactive Fiction | Tags: EmilyShort

Pacian

That Snowblind Aces cover is both surprising and awesome.
Zaphos

No one has done cover art for “A Dino’s Night Out”? I’ve never played the game but, if it’s anything like the title, the cover art should be awesome! :)
ryan

needs more rybread
Shih Tzu

Covers! Neeet.
Jamie Newbigging

Derek Yu, if your reading this I’m solely responsoible for most of the piracy of Aquaria. The day it came out I put a copy on rapidshare/megaupload etc for my buddies on 4chan. I then uploaded a torrent to pretty every tracker around. By my reckoning my copy has been downloaded more than 25000 times. Assuming even just a small fraction of those who pirated the game were intending to buy it how much money have I cost you?

I just wanted you to know that, you yellow cunt.
Sigvatr

Games?
The Truth

Man, Sigvatr’s such a badass.
haowan

Is he wrong? We call them games, but are they? Is a straight up puzzle actually a game? I would say not. That said, most IFs have many layers and many allow you to screw up and/or die, so it’s not a black and white issue.
http://www.adamatomic.com/ Adam Atomic

Man I wish I’d found out about this a few weeks ago, I’d have bent straight over backwards to put something together for Dino’s Night Out!!
http://trumgottist.com Rikard

I find haowan’s comment interesting. I’ve heard people object to the “game” label before (it happens now and then in the IF community) but then they usually come from the other direction. The people who don’t want to say “game” usually downplay the puzzles and are more interested in the narrative part of IF.