SHOOT GRUNT WITH SHOTGUN

Now this is … um … interesting.

IF Quake is a port of id Software’s Quake 1 engine to the Inform programming language. Inform is a language for creating Interactive Fiction games, or simply IF.
IF games, if you’ve never seen one, are text adventures. Basically they’re interactive novels. IF has a long and glorious history in the gaming industry, and the genre has produced lots of classics, most notably the Infocom library of games, which include the Zork series, The Lurking Horror, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Suspended, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and more (for more on Infocom, click here).
IF Quake acts as a bridge between the Quake engine and a Z-Machine interpreter of your choice, converting the maps and NPCs you encounter in the game into straight, readable text. In IF Quake, you walk through the exact same levels you do in the graphical version of the game, only instead of circle-strafing and firing at your enemies, you type commands like “ATTACK GRUNT WITH SHOTGUN.”

And just to make it clear, it isn’t a textual re-writing of the game, but an actual interactive transcript interpreted from the game engine itself.

Which sounds pretty goofy, but the screen shots, at least, are a hoot.

This might turn out to be one of those “Margie is off at D&D” Night activities.

(via BoingBoing)