Open Sorcery is a cyberpunk hypertext adventure. You play as BEL/S, a fire elemental who has been bound by C++ code to serve as a firewall. Your job is to scan the local environment and detect any other elementals or poltergeists who could be interfering with your creators or neighbors. As you identify their material and motive, you will learn more about the world around you and gain sentience — possibly posing a threat yourself.

In this episode of IndieSider, I chat with Abigail Corfman about her first published game. We talk about how she used Javascript to expand the Twine game engine used in Open Sorcery; how the game evolved from open source to mobile to Steam, and the code bases she merged to make it happen; why hypertext is a natural evolution of text-parser adventure games; the difference in exhibiting at GaymerX East vs. PAX East; why Abigail’s games, despite having dark qualities, focus on emotional connection and gentleness; the emotions she was experiencing that led her to create both this game and her webcomic, A Moment of Peace; and what we can expect from the game’s sequel, Open Sorcery: Sea++.

Watch the video above, or download the audio edition below or from Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Pandora, Amazon Music, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. A complete transcript is provided after the shownotes.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Abigail Corfman on Twitter


• Open Sorcery
  
  
  
  • Steam
  
  
  • iOS
  
  
  • Android
  
  
  • Interactive Fiction Database
  
  
  • Twitter
  
  
  
  


• <a href="http://www.twinery.org/" title="Twine / An open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories" <="" a="" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener">Twine


• Interview with Abigail Corfman by Leonardo Faierman of Black Girl Nerds


• A Moment of Peace webcomic

Transcript

[Announcer] Welcome to IndieSider, where we go beyond the game and meet the developers behind today’s indie hits.

[Ken Gagne] Hello, and welcome to the IndieSider podcast, where I play indie games and then interview the developer. I’m your host, Ken Gagne, and this week on episode number 57, I’m playing Open Sorcery, by Abigail Corfman of Open Sorcery Games. This game was released on February 22nd for Steam, that’s Mac, PC and Linux, for $3.99, and previously was released for Android and iOS for $2.99.

Open Sorcery is a point-and-click text adventure based on Twine, an open-source text adventure game engine. In Open Sorcery, you play as a Fire Elemental, one of those living embodiments of nature that you often find in Dungeons and Dragons-type settings, except you are a Fire Elemental who has been enslaved to serve as a computer firewall. This game is set in some sort of modern-day melange of Dungeons and Dragons, and Shadowrun, and cyberpunk. So you are a living firewall, charged with scanning certain areas of the network, and identifying other Elementals who may have invaded the area. You have to pay attention to the clues and deduce which of six Elements it is: just earth, fire, wind, water, light or dark. And then you have to deduce what their motive is. Are they here to instill order or chaos? Life or death? Once you have identified the Elemental, you are given a variety of menu-based options, such as should you speak to the Elemental, and convince it to leave the area? Should you cleanse it with fire, the substance of which you are made? Or more. As you have these interactions, what impact does it have on your own consciousness as you start to learn more about the world around you? Will you, eventually, yourself become a threat?

The game has a Spartan aesthetic: it has white text on a black background, and any text that appears in red, you can click on with you mouse and choose that option, or to see what branch, either permanent or short-diversion, it takes you on. At occasional points in the game there is some background music, but mostly it is silent. There is no voice acting. However, what the game does have a lot of are words. 90,000 words, that’s 9-0, 0-0-0. That’s a lot of text, and a lot of different endings. You’re not expected to play the game all in one sitting, you can save to one of multiple slots and load and restore, so if you come to a choice and you’re not sure which one to take, just like the old choose-your-own-adventure games, you can stick your finger on that page, see where the path takes you, and then go back and try again.

I really dug this game, because I felt like I got to know the inhabitants of this world. There are only four locations that you are constantly scanning, and you get to meet their inhabitants and see how they go about their day-to-day lives. And as you interact with them, you develop relationships with them, which are graded on a scale from zero to a hundred. As they get to a certain point, you can actually use those relationships in some of the decisions that you make later on, as those colleagues, partners and friends become available to you.

And so, in this episode of IndieSider, I’ll be speaking to the game’s creator, Abigail Corfman, at whose website, abigailcorfman.com, you can find Open Sorcery. You can also find links to Open Sorcery and all the other resources mentioned in this episode of IndieSider, at our own website, <a href="https://www.gamebits.net/2017/03/22/indiesider-57-open-s