An Earth Turning Slowly

Interactive fiction (IF) is a text-based story-telling medium where the author and the reader (and sometimes a random number generator) share control over the story. Most IF takes the alternating form of a conversation: the author's program begins the plot, the reader gives some input on which direction to take next, the program carries the plot forward accordingly, and so on. Most IF also has the reader identify with a character, and limits their influence on events to that character's thoughts and actions. An Earth Turning Slowly is such a work.

Reasonably broad definitions of IF comprise two major subcategories: parser- and choice-based IF. In the former, the reader's input is given in free-form text, which the program tries to interpret according to conventions of the medium. In the latter, the reader's options are enumerated, often in a list or as hyperlinks. An Earth Turning Slowly is a little of both; at any point in time there are only so many options available, but the reader mostly discovers these choices by typing in commands.

Here's an example of the interface mid-play:

Newly available verbs: look at, take, and talk to.

At the top is a list of the protagonist's current goals, which the reader is trying to help them attain. Below that is a list of verbs that the story has added to the player's vocabulary. All player input must begin with a verb that the story has presented, either on the current turn or at some time prior.

The reader, in this example, has chosen the first verb and so far typed “look at the b”; the story shows all of the options for the protagonist that begin with that text. In this case, there's only one that the story both understands and considers in-character: looking at the bites. The text below shows what the protagonist thinks about this option and often hints at how the story will interpret it.

If the reader likes the highlighted option, they can press tab to copy it to the input field or enter to select it. If several options are shown, the up and down arrow keys will scroll through them, and clicking on one will also select it. But the reader is always free to backspace and explore other possibilities.

Sometimes the story will consolidate similar completions. For instance, if the reader had only typed “look”, the interface would appear thus, with ellipses representing the places where the candidates differ:

Newly available verbs: look at, take, and talk to.

If the reader presses enter or tab while such a summary is selected, or if they click on it, the story will complete up until the first ellipsis and then expand the list to give the options individually.

Ordinarily, commands are only completed if at least two letters have been typed. However, if the story gets the impression that the reader can't find a choice that they like, it will start suggesting matches for even shorter inputs, and eventually just list all of the possibilities. So if you get stuck, or have forgotten some verbs, keep trying.

Other things to notice in An Earth Turning Slowly are the chapter panel (usually to the right), which gives the current chapter, setting, and protagonist, and the information panel (usually on the left), which, besides linking to the About and Instructions pages (and the Author's Notes page once the story is over), includes a button for saving your progress.

An Earth Turning Slowly is built using Undum, so if you reload the page, you normally return to the beginning of the story. Clicking the “Save” button will change the point of return to wherever you currently are. Clicking the “Erase” button will move it back to the beginning.

That should be all. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading!

—Mæja