Comments

Though this game is going to be released in late March early April,
during the design phase at least twice as many characters were
conceived as were actually placed on the grid. The authors have
some hopes, if the game is successful enough, to perhaps expand
the game into an extended version. Before that would come at least
one bug fix version of the release game. No promises when, but the
likely release of a fix version would be a month or so after the
release of the original.

Tools used to play this game:

This version of Dear Brian (1.1) is a TADS3 game, compiled on 
the 3.0.6g compiler. Tests running the game on the 3.0.5 interpreter 
have failed. If you want to get the latest interpreter, it can be found here: 

http://www.tads.org/t3dl.htm

Scope and purpose of this game:

This game is squarely aimed at the AIF audience. The authors have no
real experience with IF norms, and if those in IF wish to hold this game
to those standards, please understand. We learned how to write these
games by emulating those who came before us, people like NewKid and 
Scarlet Herring. Guys like these are our examples. 

I say this partly in defense of the art that I do. I haven't played very much
IF as it were. I don't care for IF puzzles or their solution. If I get interested 
in that kind of thing, I buy a copy of Chess Life and solve Andy Soltis's
chess problems. And it doesn't help in that AIF is a euphamism for "crap"
in the IF world. My recollection of Emily Short's reviews of IF for one 
year includes the comment, probably misquoted partly: "The puzzles in
this game are the kind found in inferior AIF." It's hard to make such a 
statement unless you believe AIF is already an inferior product. 

The trend in AIF has been towards nearly puzzle free games. In this sense
this game is something of a throwback. Puzzles are found in the game and
it is necessary to solve them to finish the game. I do know that an author 
adding puzzles to a game when he himself doesn't like them much seems
strange. I find it strange myself that I think in terms of puzzles when I write AIF.
I offer no explanation for this, other than to say that's how I wrote the plot 
of this game.

Dear Brian is a game, not a deep immersive simulation. We do experiment with
conversational verbs (call [npc] about [topic], for example), we experiment
with using quotes as an aside to the main plot. We do pander to IF norms in a
couple ways. We use cheese in the kitchen, and we added a xyzzy verb. An IFer
with some skill might be able to find all of the quotes but one without having any
sex, or enjoy torturing Fluffy. But that's about it for the non-adult folks.

Choices.