All Roads – interactive fiction

Games come in all shapes and colors, and while you might think that we’re now in 2008 and text mode games have died in the ’80s that is not quite true: there are still those of us who love a good story and are even willing to read text for it… especially when, unlike books, movies, and unfortunatelly most games, it’s a story that at least seems to respond/branch according to your input. In comes the interactive fiction competition, the 2008 edition being it’s 14th annual incarnation.
And all this was just the intro for my favorite interactive ficiton: All Roads: this game totally took me by surprise… i don’t want to spoil too much of the story for you, but a game which starts with you being the person being hanged, involves morally strange situations and time travel paradoxes… all through a personal emotional veil… well… let’s just say I never thought a political conspiration in medieval Venice could be so immersive (the image of entering the room of conspirators is still so powerful in my mind).
Winner for best story, best game, best writing & best setting awards for 2001.

PS: forgot to mention: to read the story you need an interpreter, but ther are tons of them, for all OSs, devices and environments imaginable. To go through the story you just communicate simple action words like "look" "stand up" "open" "wake up" "go north" …

PS2: amazing the variety of the stories and settings, from horror to emotional, from action to abstract (btw, I once played a mindblowing abstract one… i couldn’t believe the imagery)