Narrator

Those interested in studying player character may also be interested in past rec.arts.int-fiction discussions .

Customizable PC. The player is allowed to adjust aspects of the player character (often explicitly, at the beginning of the game). Probably the most frequent choice to offer is a choice of PC gender.

• Bolivia By Night, Aidan Doyle. Permits the player to choose both a gender and a nationality, with mild effect on puzzles, and some results as well for how the NPCs treat the player character. My Review.

Multiple PCs. Your point of view shifts between several different player characters over the course of the game.

• Downtown Tokyo, Present Day, John Kean. You play both the hero of a Japanese monster movie, and the movie-goer in his seat watching the movie. It’s a bit surreal, but reasonably effective for all that.
• Being Andrew Plotkin, J. Robinson Wheeler. You play multiple people over the course of the game, and at one point play a pair of people simultaneously, which is a fairly unusual effect.
• Common Ground, Stephen Granade . You experience the same occurrences repeatedly through the eyes of the three major characters; the identity of the player character determines how you perceive various objects and events, providing multiple insights on the situation. See also Exhibition by Ian Finley and Jane by Joe Grzesiak.
• Heroes, Sean Barrett . You select one of several possible heroes to play on your quest; your abilities and insights affect how you are able to approach various puzzles. See also the robots in Infocom’s Suspended, the main characters of Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning…, and the superhero protagonists of Paul O’Brian’s Earth and Sky series.

PC with Unusual Abilities. Your player character is not human; or he is human but has extremely unusual abilities. Both puzzles and narration may play on the way the strange protagonist views and manipulates the environment.

• Bad Machine, Dan Shiovitz. The PC is a robot, and has an interesting variation on the usual set of command options and perceptive abilities. See also Unauthorized Termination by Richard Otter.
• A Bear’s Night Out, David Dyte . You experience the world in the form of a teddy bear. See also Ralph by Miron Schmidt (in which the PC is a dog) and A Day for Soft Food by Tod Levi (in which the PC is a cat).
• Djinni Chronicles, J. D. Berry. The player character is a genie with peculiar powers.
• Constraints, Martin Bays. The player character is an inanimate object in one of the modules of this multi-part game.

Anti-heroic PCs. The PC is not necessarily someone whose goals you support.

• Infidel, Infocom.
• Varicella, Adam Cadre . The player character is a scheming courtier trying to seize power.
• Sting of the Wasp, Jason Devlin. Play a selfish society woman, out to protect her own goals.

Unusual Player/PC relationship. The player character’s identity or interaction with the voice in its head is explicitly explored in some regard; or your PC is not what you might think at the beginning of the game.

• Everybody Loves a Parade, Cody Sandifer. Infamous when it was released for containing a bit of a twist — though from the perspective of the IF world as it now stands it doesn’t strike me as particularly twisty. Highlight for spoilers: At one point, fairly late in the game, it becomes clear that the player character is, in fact, female. This is only stunning if you’ve been assuming a male PC all along, which was perhaps more the norm for IF at the time than it is now.
• Rameses, Stephen Bond . The player is not always able to convince the player character to obey the commands he’s given — a tension that paints an interesting portrait of the PC’s social awkwardness and limitation.
• Voices, Aris Katsaris . The player character is aware of the player’s voice and responds to it independently. See also Bellclap by Tommy Herbert, The Primrose Path by Nolan Bonvouloir, and LASH by Paul O’Brian .
• FailSafe, Jon Ingold . Explanation would damage the effect. See also The Weapon by Sean Barrett, All Roads by Jon Ingold, and Delusions by C. E. Forman.
• The Baron, Victor Gijsbers. This piece involves some unexpected twists in the relationship between the player and the PC; it also employs a completely novel form of interaction in which the player is asked to clarify his intentions before certain important acts. For instance, >ATTACK FOX might provoke a menu asking the player whether he means to kill the animal out of aggression or simply to put it out of its misery.

Unusual Narrative Voice. Games that use something other than second-person present-tense narration. [Search for more games using first or third person or the past tense using the Advanced Search page at Baf's Guide.]

• Fallacy of Dawn, Robb Sherwin. Narrated in the first person (singular). See also the sequel Necrotic Drift and much of Robb’s other work.
• Muse: An Autumn Romance, Christopher Huang . Uses the first person (singular) and the past tense.
• Kallisti, James Mitchelhill. Narrated in the third person (singular), in the past tense. Not otherwise particularly recommended, this game combines turgid prose with pornographic content for an experience that is both bewildering and potentially offensive.
• Beetmonger’s Journal, Scott Starkey. Contains segments in the third person and past tense.
• A Night Guest, Valentine Kopteltsev. Not only does this game use the first person and past tense, it provides most of its reponses in a quirky poetic form. Silly, and with a good deal of verb-guessing.
• Granite Book, James Mitchelhill. The protagonist is, somewhat mysteriously, first person plural. It’s never entirely clear what this means, and does not very much alter the range of actions. See also Legion by Jason Devlin.
• Till Death Makes a Monk-Fish Out of Me!, Jon Ingold and Mike Sousa. Contains one section in the first person plural. This is by no means the bulk of the game, but the effect is somewhat interesting.
• The Isolato Incident, Alan DeNiro. Uses first person plural, as per a royal “we”. [Suggestion and writeup courtesy of David Welbourn.]