The people had always gathered on moonless nights to hear the stories, since the time of their ancestors' ancestors. The heat of the fire and the glow in the storyteller's eyes made the past present, and the path to the future clear. The power in the telling was immense, subtle, divine. What man would dare subvert it?
Download a Windows executable Download the z5 file and a Z-Code interpreter for any operating system. |
Read the release notes Read an analysis of transcripts from Slamdance |
Recognition
Winner |
Selection |
Nominee |
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Winner |
Nominee |
Reviews and Reactions
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Jimmy Maher Nothing else in IF is quite like it.
EternalGamer.com The game really accomplishes its goal of revealing the importance of the story, and the storyteller, in an age long past. It also brings back the nostalgia of text adventure games, and employs a familiar format to entirely new ends. This game is a terrific example of unexplored territory in games, and if only it were a bit longer and a bit more complex, it would be perfect.
Roberto Grassi, Terra d'IF ...one of the better games of IF that I have played recently. The design and the playability are very polished and the type of interaction is reduced to a minimum but very effective. ...The more significant thing is that it transports us into the flow of the story and I think that, at the end, this is what matters more for an Interactive Fiction game. |
PJ For me, the only two games worth considering for the top prize in this year's Spring Thing are Whyld's Second Chance and Aaron Reed's Whom the Telling Changed. Both are story-driven games with interesting approaches to gameplay.
Carolyn Magruder The atmosphere is serious and haunting; the writing is excellent. ... I'd suggest playing it at least once. It won't take long, and it's an interesting journey. Past that, take it or leave it, but it's worth looking over at least that once. Dan Shiovitz It's always nice to play something that is a little experimental, and it's especially nice to play something experimental that *works*, and Whom The Telling Changed totally does. The concept is sort of like The Space Under The Window with a plot and momentum, but in ancient Sumer, hearing one of the tales of Gilgamesh. Isn't that awesome? ... Whom The Telling Changed is an excellent game, well-crafted and innovative, and I absolutely recommend it. |
Technically a polished and well-made piece of work, and one which allows for some real variety of outcome. ... I also found the generic frame story dull and a little distant, especially set against the specific cultural background of the Gilgamesh tale. The characters in the internal story were far more compelling than those in the "real world". I realize that some of this is because the frame has to be flexible as to the PC's gender and attitude, so it tends to make all his/her relationships a little vague and hypothetical as well. But I can see that there's good stuff here.
Nick Montfort Whom the Telling Changed is a reframing and reworking of Gilgamesh, the first known epic, and it is the first work I've interacted with that effectively combines essential interface aspects of the link-based hypertext and interactive fiction forms. I speculated in Twisty Little Passages that this might be possible to do in an interesting way; Aaron Reed has shown how it can happen. |