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Current News

1 December 2005
And my new game is out: Consequences, the fourth and (supposedly) final game in my adult CYOA series. I remember saying a few months back when I wrote the third game in the series (Options) that the series was going to end with game three... and then here comes game four. But this time I'm serious. It is the last one I'm writing. Definitely...

As usual, it's available from my games page.

Many thanks to all those who offered to test it, and an even bigger thanks to the four who actually did test it.

25 November 2005
The final two IFComp game walkthroughs have been added: Escape To New York by Richard Otter and Vendetta by James Hall.

24 November 2005
Two more walkthroughs added, this time for my game Mortality and Cannibal's excellent The Plague: Redux which really ought to have done better in the recent IFComp.

Progress on A.L.D.F.A.: 139 KB; progress on A Spot Of Bother: 65 KB.

23 November 2005
A little late, but the five entries from the recent IFComp have been added to the Games Archive.

The competitions page has been updated to include all the recent IFComp entries, as well as a combined chart showing ADRIFT placings over the years. Clearly, 2005 was the best year for ADRIFT by a long way with three of the highest placed games being from this year.

It's a while since I last did any walkthroughs so today there are three: for Arnold 'Ace' Rimmer's Jack Of Shadows, Richard Otter's Pathway To Destruction and Robert Street's Take One; all entries from the recent Finish The Game Comp I organised.

On the games front, Consequences is getting nearer to completion. A number of bugs have been fixed (thanks, testers!) and it ought to see light of day either at the end of this month or early next month.

After a long hiatus, I've finally gone back to writing the third game in my comedy fantasy trilogy which began with Y.A.D.F.A. and O.N.N.A.F.A.. A.L.D.F.A. (A Last Damn Fantasy Adventure) was a game I started way back in 2003, but lost interest in and abandoned. It's sat on my hard drive ever since, occupying valuable space, with the intention somewhere in the back of my mind to return to it one day and get it finished. It's now jumped up from the 122 KB that it was at when 2003 closed to 136 KB and is going very well indeed. Heck, I might even enter it in the Spring Thing 2006...

18 November 2005
A whopping 32 reviews have been added to the Reviews Archive, most courtesy of David Welbourn on Baf's Guide, but a good number also from the AIF Newsletter.

16 November 2005
Another year, another IFComp over with. This time I came a pretty respectable 12th, quite a bit up on last year's poor showing of 23, but still missing out on the magical top ten. Oh well, there's always next year...

My reviews for the majority of the Comp entries (I meant to review them all, but ran out of time) have been added, and collected reviews for all the ADRIFT entries have been added to the Reviews Archive.

Consequences is now finished and being tested. Feedback so far has been pretty positive so hopefully the finally version will be completely bug free.

My main game in progress at the moment is A Spot Of Bother which is coming along pretty well. Just topped the 40 KB stage and ought to be done in time for Christmas.

2 November 2005
The main page has been given a bit of a reworking, as has the main IF page. Grouping the various parts of the site under "Adrift" and "Various" seems to make it look just a bit tidier.

I've now finished playing the games in this year's IFComp. Still alive as well. Still sane? Well...

Nothing this year that impressed me as much as Luminous Horizon did last year although one game came close and a few others were definitely worth playing.

Testing still going on with Consequences, and A Spot Of Bother is coming along very nicely indeed.

31 October 2005
Consequences is finished... well, almost. The basic game has been written and it's now just the long and laborious task of running through it a few dozen times to test that it all works out properly. And then getting it betatested. Then bugs fixed and maybe some more testing... Fingers crossed, it ought to see light of day at the end of November or early December. In the end, it topped out at just over 500 KB.

Other than that, I've started a new game called A Spot Of Bother and also work on Couch Potato is coming along nicely.

I've played pretty much all the games in the IFComp this year and, in all honesty, haven't been impressed with the majority of them. Maybe it's just me imagining things, but the average quality of the games entered in the IFComp seems to get lower each year. A few decent games, one I really liked, and so many half finished or downright terrible games that I'm kind of amazed they were entered in the Comp in the first place.

23 October 2005
My birthday. Another year older. A year wiser? Well...

Finally got round to adding the reviews from the recent ADRIFT Spring Comp to the site.

Work on Consequences is slowing to a halt now as the game is just about finished. Just the testing phase to go through now, so in theory it ought to be ready sometime during the next month.

15 October 2005
The Finish The Game comp is over. Well done to Richard Otter whose Pathway To Destruction narrowly took first prize ahead of Robert Street's Take One. Full results on the Competitions page.

3 October 2005
Issue 6 of the Reviews Exchange is out, complete with reviews for my games Lights, Camera, Action! and Regrets.

I've so far played only a few of the games in the IFComp 2005 and have yet to hit upon one I like. Then again, I think I played half a dozen or so games last year before coming across a good one so there's still hope yet. The worst game by far is, unsurprisingly, Ninja II by Paul Panks. If it was anyone else, I'd think it was some kind of joke entry but as this is the usual standard for the games he writes, who knows?

Consequences is now standing at 261 KB... and still going. I've passed the halfway point now so the overall thing should weigh it at a tad under 500 KB (about twice the size I anticipated when I first started writing it).

1 October 2005
The IFComp 2005 is officially go, and this year has no less than five ADRIFT entries (one, admittedly, by a troll, but the others are genuine entries). Good luck to everyone who entered!

25 September 2005
The Finish The Game Comp is going ahead, with no less than six entries (twice what I had expected if the truth be told). The submitted games were:

The Demon Hunter by David Parish
The Hunter by Red Assassin
Pathway To Destruction by Richard Otter
Shadowjack by Arnold "Ace" Rimmer
Shadow Of The Past by Catharine Post
Take One by Robert Street

Good luck to everyone who entered a game!

The games can be downloaded from http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/download.cgi?881.

22 September 2005
The first update for a couple of weeks... Fortunately the Finish The Game Comp is all set to go ahead as the minimum number of entries (three) have now been received.

The Reviews Exchange might have died with me at the helm, but Robert Rafgon has decided to take over running it. Check out his website at http://adrift.sitesled.com/

26 August 2005
Due to lack of participation, the Reviews Exchange has been cancelled. Strange really. The last issue boasted a massive 32 reviews yet with just a week till the deadline for the next one, not a single review had been received. Not even one. So RIP the Reviews Exchange. It was fun while it lasted...

I said Options was going to be the final game in my adult CYOA series, but as I started work on the sequel - Consequences - earlier this year, I guess I misspoke. This game ought to see light of day towards the end of the year as I intend to get it rigorously tested before release, thereby hopefully avoiding the bugs and errors that have plagued the other games in the series.

18 August 2005
A very nice review of Back To Life... Unfortunately over at IF Review.

Lights, Camera, Action! is now finished and submitted to the ADRIFT Summer Comp. It was looking a bit dodgy for a while there as to whether I was actually going to get it finished it time... but it's now done. On with the next game...

Which is actually two games: The Rage, a sequel to Shards Of Memory, and The Case Of The Scarlet Suspender, an adult comedy detective game. Several other games in the pipeline as well but those are the two I feel most confident will be finished.

16 August 2005
My ADRIFT Summer Comp entry - Lights, Camera, Action! - is just about finished. Just bits here and there to tidy up before the deadline which falls sometime next week.

The first entry to the 'Finish The Game' Comp has been received. Always nice to receive the first entry as that means someone is at least interested enough to take part. Hopefully it'll be the first of many...

6 August 2005
My new game Options is out. It's the third (and final, for the time being) game in the series that started with Choices and Decisions. Available from the my games page.

3 August 2005
As you might well have noticed, I've redesigned the front page of the site making everything a little neater... and putting the FOM's Diary back. I'm not intending to carry on writing it but, sooner or later, I plan to write a game of his exploits so it made sense to put the Diary back.

All the various files for the last four versions of ADRIFT can now be found on the ADRIFT Files page. V3.7 and V3.8 probably won't be a lot of use to people in themselves but it's interesting to see how much the program has changed over the years.

A new AIF game added to the Games Archive - X-Men: First Day At The Institute. As seems pretty much average for a new AIF game, the Yahoo AIF Archive is currently filling up with people complaining over the bugs in it.

31 July 2005
Walkthroughs have been pretty thin on the ground recently, so today we have four of them: my own game In The Claws Of Clueless Bob, BBBen's Normville, and Mel S' Chicago and Zombies Are Cool, But Not So Cool When They're Eating Your Head (definite forerunner for silliest title for an ADRIFT game).

30 July 2005
A few more updates to The Journal with Lights, Camera, Action! getting pretty close to finished. Probably just as well with the ADRIFT Summer Comp deadline looming...

Three more reviews added to the Reviews Archive.

Two new games added to the Games Archive - The White Singularity (a CYOA-style game, but awkward to play due to some bugs) and Crawler's Delight which is apparently a proper game despite the fact that it's written by 'A. Troll'.

26 July 2005
Added a new section to the site: The Journal which is, basically, a journal of the various games I'm working on at the moment and a little piece about each of them. Three games are included so far - Lights, Camera, Action! (my entry in the ADRIFT Summer Comp), Blood Relatives (finally approaching completion after nearly three years of on and off fixing and improvements) and The Shadow (an adult game, but one with more emphasis on storyline than sex). Other games to be added as and when I get the time.

17 July 2005
Six further reviews added to the Reviews Archive courtesy of TDS. Check out his website at The Dominant Species which looks to be coming along nicely.

Sprite's first game - with the great title of Crazy Old Bag Lady (!) - has been added to the Games Archive.

Options is now done and going through testing. Ought to be out just before the end of the month, fingers crossed. Other than that, I've started making real inroads on my ADRIFT Summer Comp game - Lights, Camera, Action! - a comedy set in the high-powered world of terrible film making. What would Lawrence Of Arabia have looked like if it had been filmed in a broom closet? You're about to find out...

13 July 2005
A further 30 reviews added to the Reviews Archive, the majority from the fifth issue of the Reviews Exchange. The grand total of reviews now stands at at a massive 459 and ought to hit 500 by the end of the year.

My IFComp entry Mortality is now finished and undergoing testing to get the last few (dozen/hundred/thousand) bugs ironed out prior to the Comp deadline.

Games in progress:

Options - 237 KB.

Lights, Camera, Action! - 20 KB

Hampstead - 15 KB.

10 July 2005
Issue 5 of the Reviews Exchange is out, featuring no less than 32(!) reviews! Thanks to everyone who contributed. For a while, it was actually looking like it might even get cancelled due to lack of reviews...

All my reviews have been added to the Reviews section.

Added a walkthru for Richard Otter's retro remake of Escape To Freedom.

Games in progress:

Mortality - 63 KB.

Options - 205 KB.

Hampstead - 15 KB.

Lights, Camera, Action! - 12 KB

26 June 2005
Added a walkthru for Decisions. Also tidied up the Facts & Figures page. It was about six months out of date by the look of things!

26 reviews added to the Reviews Archive, most courtesy of DIY Games.

The 'Finish The Game' Comp is now underway. Fingers crossed it fairs better than my last two attempts to organise a comp.

Games in progress:

Mortality - 48 KB.

Options - 158 KB.

Hampstead - 14 KB.

18 June 2005
Decided to split up the Updates page as it was getting a bit too long. Older news can be found, surprisingly enough, by clicking on the "old news" link above.

The Links page has also been given a much needed update. Gone are several old sites that are either missing in action or just not been updated for a long, long time, and several new ones have been added.

Several games in progress at the moment:

Mortality - my entry in this year's IFComp (and here's hoping it does a bit better than my entry last year did). Current size: 43 KB.

Options - a sequel to Choices and Decisions and probably a bigger game than both of them combined. Just over a third of the way through now and it's panning out nicely. Current size: 101 KB.

Yee-Haw! - a short and silly game about an uber-violent cowboy intent on causing mischief and mayhem in a small Wild West town. Think Yosemite Sam minus the annoying rabbit. Current size: 12 KB.

Shattered Memory - a game based partly on Planescape: Torment a wonderful (if somewhat wordy) RPG. Expected to be a huge undertaking so unlikely to be finished any time in the next year. Current size: 9 KB.

Hampstead - yes, a remake of the old Spectrum classic. Amazingly basic game but still got a kind of charm to it all the same. Ought to be done in a few weeks. Current size: 3 KB.

Blood Relatives - my first ever ADRIFT game, from way back in 2002, gets a much needed update. Pretty close to being done now. Current size: 166 KB.

5 June 2005
Decisions - a sequal to Choices - now finished and available from the my games page. I'm thinking of writing another game in the series soon but, right now, I've really got to concentrate on my IFComp 2005 game if I'm going to get it finished in time.

30 May 2005
Added my article from the recent Inside ADRIFT Newsletter (issue 23) to the Articles section.

28 May 2005
The Intro Comp is over with and the winner was Silk Road Secrets by C. Henshaw. Well done to her! I came second with The Final Question. I'm still not too sure about the voting system used but at least it worked better here than in the recent Spring Comp. Full results on the Competitions page.

18 May 2005
Decided to upload my new game: In The Claws Of Clueless Bob. As you might have gathered from the title, it's a comedy game. It's available from the my games page.

Also added a new section to the Facts & Figures section listing the KB size of all Adrift games under the heading of their respective authors.

14 May 2005
Finally finished updating the Facts & Figures pages, which now includes statistics for almost every ADRIFT game out there.

8 May 2005
For the second day, I've added several more entries to the Facts & Figures pages. Hopefully soon the entire thing will be finished.

7 May 2005
Another walkthru added for my game, Second Chance.

4 May 2005
Three reviews - including one positively glowing one! - for Second Chance added to the Reviews Archive.

Also added the walkthru for Robert Rafgon's Frustrated Interviewee.

2 May 2005
Another day and another competition over with. This time it's the Spring Thing 2005 in which I came fifth out of a possible sixth. (Not too bad. After all, I could have come sixth...)

Two more walkthrus added, for my own game Private Eye and, courtesy of the author himself, Richard Otter's Fire In The Blood.

1 May 2005
Results of the ADRIFT Spring Comp 2005 are announced and the winner is... me! Well... jointly anyway. Five games in total were entered - three came joint first, the other two came joint fourth. Clearly a change to the comp rules is called for, as well as a few more people to vote next time. Full details on the Competitions page.

24 April 2005
As you might have noticed, the site has undergone a bit of an overhaul. There is a new section - Gamebooks - which will feature all of the gamebooks I am currently writing. Only one there at the moment: a short book called Choose Your Own... (no relation to my ADRIFT game of the same name) which was written more to get something done than for any other reason.

22 April 2005
The previews section has been a massive overhaul. No ADRIFT games in progress at the moment due to the continuing problems with the main forum and my questioning as to whether it's really worth writing games with it anymore. ALAN looks to be an interesting possibility, and then there are always the main contenders in the field (TADS and Inform).

For the time being, writing a gamebook holds a lot more interest for me than does another ADRIFT adventure.

Updates to the Database, Facts & Figures and Most Prolific pages.

17 April 2005
The Adrift Spring Comp 2005 is underway with five entries:

A Day At The Seaside by Matthew Hunter
Fire In The Blood by Richard Otter
Frustrated Interviewee by Robert Rafgon
House Husband by C. Henshaw
Private Eye by David Whyld

Unusual for a comp, it's actually attracted entries by a couple of newcomers. Good luck to everyone who entered.

10 April 2005
After a long hiatus, I've finally gotten around to writing another gamebook review. This is for the new Fighting Fantasy book "Eye Of The Dragon" which wasn't quite the resounding masterpiece I was hoping for.

2 April 2005
The Spring Thing 2005 is now underway with my entry - Second Chance - the only ADRIFT game. While it's disappointing that no one else entered an ADRIFT game, at least now I can claim bragging rights to having the best ADRIFT game in the comp...

Second Chance is available from the Spring Thing website and will be available from here as soon as the comp has finished.

31 March 2005
My article from the third issue of the AIF Newsletter has been added to the Articles section.

23 March 2005
Another walkthru added, this time for Richard Otter's massively complicated and massively difficult Ticket To No Where. I didn't finish it myself, incidentally, the writer sent me the walkthrough.

Private Eye, my entry in the ADRIFT Spring Comp 2005, is now finished and sent off for testing. With that out of the way, I've gone back to The Rage, with the intention (hopefully) of getting it done over the next few weeks.

20 March 2005
Thanks again to Timmon for sending me a further 9 games for the Games Archive.

13 March 2005
Added a walkthru for Kevin Treadway's How It All Started.

Several games on the go at the moment:

The Rage: KB 120, Locations 52, Objects 255, Tasks 743, Events 4, Characters 16.

Private Eye: KB 166, Locations 284, Objects 0, Tasks 875, Events 0, Characters 0. Private Eye is a gamebook/text advenure in the same format as Choices.

05 March 2005
The Reviews Exchange hits issue 3, complete with ten reviews. All my reviews have been added to the Reviews section and the ADRIFT game reviews to the Reviews Archive.

Big thanks to Timmon for sending me another 14(!) games for the Games Archive, several of which I'd never even heard of before. (Although after playing them, I don't think I'd missed out on much... :) ) 344 games now in the Achive.

26 February 2005
A new section added to the site: Facts & Figures.

22 February 2005
Added a walkthru for my latest game Choices.

21 February 2005
Several more games added to the Games Archive.

With big thanks to Robert Rafgon, there's now a walkthru for The Adventures Of Thumper: Wonder Wombat on the site.

20 February 2005
The Games Archive seems to be coming along nicely. 315 of the 330 (I miscounted before and a few others have come to light) Adrift games now added, with several others to be added over the next day or so.

Walkthrus have been pretty thin on the ground lately so today I've added two: for my game A Day In The Life Of A Superhero (the basic walkthrough - I'll get around to the one that allows you to capture all the supervillains at some point) and Christopher Cole's Lara Croft: The Sun Obelisk (non-adult version).

17 February 2005
Added another section to the website: Games Archive. Hopefully one day it will be a complete archive of every single Adrift game. For now, it's got a nice round 300 of the overall 326 titles.

14 February 2005
I wrote another game. It's called Choices and it's available from here. It's an adult game in gamebook format.

Updates to the Calendar, Database, Facts & Figures, Links and Most Prolific pages.

04 February 2005
My entry for the Spring Thing 2005 - Second Chance - is finally at the beta-testing stage. In the meantime, I've decided to go ahead with Sophie's Quest and see if I can bring it to completion.

29 January 2005
Added my article - The Retro Appeal - from the 21st issue of the Inside ADRIFT Newsletter to the Articles section.

24 January 2005
Work on Second Chance is coming along *very* slowly but surely. Hopefully it should be done about a month or so before the Spring Thing deadline rolls around so I can get some testing done beforehand. Current progress: KB 110, Locations 43, Objects 312, Tasks 907, Events 8, Characters 23.

I've also gone back to working on Sophie's Quest which seems to be coming along nicely. By the time it's finished it'll probably be around 250 KB, half the size of Sophie's Adventure but still a massive game in its own right. Current progress: KB 54, Locations 18, Objects 49, Tasks 524, Events 0, Characters 11.

Other than that I've got about half of the storyline written for The Reluctant Goblin (expected March-April time - probably in time for the ADRIFT Spring Comp) and I've been giving serious consideration to finally getting the rewrite of Blood Relatives (my first ever ADRIFT game from way back in 2001) finished. The original game was 80 KB, the rewritten version is (so far) 151 KB, pretty much all of which is filling in some of the huge gaps in the original.

23 January 2005
The ADRIFT Site seems to be going through yet another of its down times :( . Fortunately there's a backup forum over at Inside ADRIFT for the time being. Fingers crossed the forum soon becomes a web-based forum and hopefully this sort of thing won't happen again.

The fourth and latest version of Back To Life... Unfortunately is available from the Games page. It seems pretty much as stable as a game can get right now so I suspect this might well be the last version I release.

Updates to the Calendar, Database, Facts & Figures, Links and Most Prolific pages.

20 January 2005
Added a new section: Tutorials containing a couple of guides for how to create a simple and slightly more advanced conversation system.

11 January 2005
Several more reviews added to the Reviews Archive which seems to be coming along nicely at the moment.

I've finally started to make progress on the ending of Second Chance, my entry in the Spring Thing 2005, after it's been lurking on my hard drive for the past couple of months almost untouched. I've also started a third version of Paint!!! which should take care of some of the timing issues with the current version and another version of Back To Life... Unfortunately, a game which is proving quite popular at the moment.

7 January 2005
Issue 2 of the Reviews Exchange is done. Containing a grand total 12 reviews (including two for AIF games and two for non-ADRIFT titles) it's quite a bit bigger (and hopefully better) than the first issue.

All the reviews have been added to the Reviews Archive.

Updates to the Calendar, Database, Facts & Figures and Most Prolific pages.

3 January 2005
7 reviews added to the Reviews Archive courtesy of The Non-Comp Review Project 2004.

2 January 2005
Results of the Adrift End of Year Comp announced and the winner is... me! Paint!!! came first and Shards of Memory came joint second. Full results on the Competitions page as usual.

Yesterday I did the my games page and now it's the previews page's turn.

1 January 2005
A new year and a batch of updates. First off, three walkthrus from the recent mini-comp: my own game Buried Alive, Richard Otter's We Are Coming To Get You and Robert Rafgon's Veteran Experience.

Gave the my games page a big overhaul and also added a bit of information for each of the games in question, as well as putting them in the correct release order.

The Facts & Figures pages have all been redone so the formatting is a little less painful to look at. I had them in tables at one time but for some reason decided a change was in order. Well... now they're changed back and I think they're a lot better this way.

Now that the Reviews Archive is well underway, I've removed the links for reviews from the old Database Games page.

Current progress on Dark Legacy: KB 18, Locations 44, Objects 1*, Tasks 248, Events 0, Characters 8.

* Yes, that's "1" there. Not a typo. The game will feature descriptions for lots and lots of different objects but I'm getting the basic map of the gameworld done first before I worry about objects.