The big difference? Instead of having to learn a special programming language, you can now use natural English sentences to describe your game to the computer. See the gallery for a walkthrough of its new features. It looks really impressive.

Interactive fiction (also known as the ‘text adventure’) is an art form that’s still going strong. Although the days when text adventures appeared on the game shop shelves are long gone, there’s a thriving internet community and even an annual competition.

I remember playing with Inform 6 years ago while I was at school. I was fascinated by the idea of creating my own text adventure, having enjoyed classics like Wishbringer and Sorcerer. At that time, Inform consisted of a programming language, and a compiler which turned your ‘program’ into a playable game.

Despite several attempts, I never really got that far with it. I remember getting stuck when I wanted to create a rubber duck that the player could both talk to, and carry around in his pocket. I’m sure it would have been possible, but I suspect it would have required some clever coding, and I was clearly trying to run before I could walk.

Anyway, the point is that there was a pretty big learning barrier to overcome before you could start creating anything. And even then you had to keep a lot of the information in your head (or on paper).

Inform 7 goes a long way to removing these barriers. First, it has a natural language parser instead of a formal programming language. Second, it has a whole set of new graphical tools for conceptually mapping out your game, and checking that it all makes sense.

So in Inform 7, you can literally type things like,

The Cabin contains a glass case. In the glass case is a collection of fishing rods.
The case is closed, transparent, and openable.

From this, Inform will infer all of the necessary actions and properties of the case. The player will be able to OPEN and CLOSE the case, and they will be able to see the fishing rods even when the case is closed.

Now, this is all very neat. But is it really easier than learning a programming language? After all, the words ‘closed’, ‘transparent’ and ‘openable’ are obviously special Inform keywords. You have to learn them. Inform won’t magically understand any old adjective you throw in there.

Similarly, it’s not a perfect language parser. It will understand “something which is carried by the player”, but it won’t understand “something which the player carries”. Both of these are acceptable in English, but only one is acceptable to Inform, and you have to learn that rule.

For someone who’s used to programming, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to learn this ‘special English’, when you could just learn ‘proper Inform’ instead, and write code that’s more concise. But for someone who’s new to programming, this natural language parser goes an enormous way towards making the system seem more friendly and more understandable. And I think it’s easy for existing programmers to underestimate the importance of that. In a way, rather than learning a completely new language with rigid syntax rules and alien keywords, you’re simply learning a new writing style in English, with its own conventions and preferred words. And that’s something you already know how to do.

I think Inform 7 could well open up the art form of interactive fiction to a whole new creative audience. And that can only be a good thing.