Vicious Cycles, and HTML text adventure

May 27, 2011 8:37 PM

Vicious Cycles is a text adventure converted into HTML, and the results are pretty great.

(Any resemblance to a certain Jake Gyllenhaal movie is purely coincidental)

posted by The Devil Tesla (22 comments total)

Very clever use of the medium. Still, I was a bit surprised at how much the latency of loading a web page for each "move" broke the immersiveness of the experience. (Especially since some sequences consisted just of statically reloading the same three pages in sequence.) It made me start to dread each time through the cycle.
posted by grimmelm at 9:41 PM on May 27, 2011

Source Code
posted by surewouldoutlaw at 10:03 PM on May 27, 2011

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CASE in /home3/bloomeng/public_html/cycles/story.php on line 901

Riveting.
posted by Deathalicious at 10:52 PM on May 27, 2011 [5 favorites]

Yep, broken for me in Firefox 4.
posted by auto-correct at 11:19 PM on May 27, 2011

And Chrome 12. Sorry.
posted by anigbrowl at 11:56 PM on May 27, 2011

The title is a reference to some kind of vicious cycle of website errors, right? Although I only see one and can't work out how to get to the next one.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 1:09 AM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

I'm also getting the error with Opera, Firefox and IE.
posted by bjrn at 1:58 AM on May 28, 2011

Vicious Cycles?

What I thought of initially.
posted by wires at 2:12 AM on May 28, 2011

You can also play the original IF game in your browser via Javascript z-code interpreter Parchment.
posted by seikleja at 2:57 AM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Meta.
posted by hudders at 4:20 AM on May 28, 2011

Busted in Safari, too. Nice game.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 5:40 AM on May 28, 2011

Uh, does this work in any browser, or am I missing something here?
posted by yeoz at 6:01 AM on May 28, 2011

There was a Pan-American Airways label attached to the grip. It said Miss T. Case. T?
Bond walked back to the chair. Teresa? Tess? Thelma? Trudy? Tilly?

James Bond will return in unexpected T_STRING.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:19 AM on May 28, 2011

Getting that error in Chrome. Email sent.
posted by doctornemo at 8:57 AM on May 28, 2011

huh, weird. This worked for me last night, but I'm seeing that same error now; maybe we broke it.
posted by vorfeed at 12:43 PM on May 28, 2011

Oh no we broke it D: Try to imagine it working and then comment on how awesome it is.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 2:01 PM on May 28, 2011

Hey, it started working again! And it's a neat little game.
posted by bjrn at 12:38 AM on May 29, 2011

I tried it and it does look interesting, although after about 8 tries I still can't get past the train part.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 4:39 AM on May 29, 2011

It took a while but it was fun...
posted by schyler523 at 6:21 PM on May 29, 2011

I tried it and it does look interesting, although after about 8 tries I still can't get past the train part.

You're suppose to fail a few times. Just get off the train; just watch, don't interfere.
posted by Deathalicious at 7:34 AM on May 30, 2011

It's back up. Bloom designer emailed me back, after I complained.

This is going to eat the next hour.
posted by doctornemo at 8:11 AM on May 30, 2011

Nice story. I needed to hit the hint button a couple of times.
posted by doctornemo at 10:26 AM on May 30, 2011