There’s more Interactive Fiction in the world than there are mad hobos, but Aisle stands out as both an approachable entry point to the form and as a fascinating, deeply affecting experiment in its own right. It’s from way back in 1999, so I can’t hope to defend against snotty cries of “OLD!”, but I’m guessing few of you will have played it. More of you should.
Unlike the spiralling storylines and puzzles of much IF, here you have only one move before the game ends. Each of the accepted commands – and there are several dozen, all of which you’ll need to deduct or guess at – leads to a different ending. Not necessarily a resolution, but certainly lending a finality to this particular moment in time:
So what do you do? Buy pasta, think about Gnocchi, try to talk to the woman, take your clothes off, start shouting… Some endings are moving, others tragic, others funny, others lurid, others mysterious. It rewards experimentation, logic, lateral thinking and craziness in equal measure.
Crucially, a number of the less eventful endings provide hints as to your character’s backstory, which in turn fill your mind with possibilities as to new actions you could attempt. Hence, Groundhog Day – each attempt you make at the game is informed by the events of the previous one(s). You revert back to exactly the same situation every time, but though the world hasn’t changed, your knowledge has – and with that comes an uncanny sense of progress.
The game’s available from here, a teeny 120Kb. It’s in one of those blasted .z5 formats, so you’ll need an Infocom interpreter app if you don’t already have one – WinFrotz did the trick for me, and very straightforwardly so. Updated – an in-browser no fuss, no mess version of Aisle can be found here. Thanks, Rook.
Warning: there is a Your when it means to say You’re. Otherwise, the writing is elegantly sparse and very often moving.
Big thanks to Joe Martin for the tip-off.
Related Stories:
I think “go to clare” is the happiest one I found that others haven’t mentioned before. I think it’s probably my favorite one.
“take woman’s trolley” reveals that when the woman isn’t named Clare (she’s not your Clare but a different one in “ask woman her name”) she’s probably named Kate. It’s also the only ending I’ve seen so far that “you” meet kate’s boyfriend/husband instead of being escorted out by security when you do something mean to her.
“Woman, undress” is another funny-psychopath one and reveals that psychopath-”you” is apparently named Clark. THE BEST ITALIAN SUSPENDERS!
General thought on the game: I think it’s more of a parallel universe scenario than Groundhog Day. There’s no time loop, because the game always ends with every action. It seems to me that every action leads to a different parallel universe, which makes sense given what the introduction tells you to begin with. Some are ordinary-you(no clare but no mental illness), some are happy-you(you and clare or you and the other woman), some are grieving-you(clare’s dead, but you haven’t gone nuts) some are funny-psychopath-you, and some are grim-psychopath-you.
Parallel universes! Yes, that does make some sense of things.
I’d noticed that actions that dwell on the past lead generally to sad or dark endings, things that act on the present lead to silly or happy endings.
Or I could just be missing a whole bunch of endings I hadn’t tried yet.
Great game, one of my favourites was “inventory”.
I think “tell woman about love” is my favourite.
I found ‘Stalk’ the most disturbing.
This is quite fantastic, the fact that there are so many options is brilliant. Very twisted in places; I feel I’ve got a fair few endings though.
‘destroy pasta”
Spider and Web by Andrew Plotkin is a really good piece of IF, but the puzzle after the interrogation is a bit of a doozy. You have to think about and understand the premise of the game to solve it on your own.
I needed a walkthrough, sadly.
Also, try “think about suicide” for something chilling.
Meh, I prefer Pick Up The Phone Booth And Aisle.
Is it wrong that the first thing I did was “throw gnocchi at woman”?
…shortly followed by “throw pasta at woman”, that is.
Ooh, it turns out “throw sauces at woman” is the best one yet!
Shit, I skimmed some of those spoiler bits by accident. Seems like a good IF.
See, you get those sweet ass innovative IF’s, like this or that Beauty and the Beast one, and then you get the “you’re just playing a novel” IF’s, like Anchorhead. Anchorhead is tres gut, although I never got far enough in it…
this is so good. I just sunk so much time into this. Just wow.