Adam Cadre



Adam Cadre is a writer who's worked in several spectrums of fiction throughout his life, from books to webcomics to MST-ings, but he is perhaps best known and beloved for his work with Interactive Fiction. He's won 11 XYZZY Awards for his various text adventures and stole the 1998 Interactive Fiction Competition with his seminal work Photopia, in addition to starting his own annual IF competition called Spring Thing.

His conventional fiction output consists of several short stories and one novel, the dark high school comedy Ready, Okay!. His Web Comics (hosted on his website) are Academy X, a deconstruction of the Science Hero set at an academy for Omnidisciplinary Scientists, and Evil Creatures, a continuation of the plot from Academy X. Additionally, he has also been part of two amateur rock bands, paints, blogs, and runs the annual Lyttle Lytton Contest (which challenges readers to submit horrible made-up novel opening lines). He's something of a modern Renaissance Man.

He Also Did this classic MST-ing of The Eye of Argon.

You can find his website here.

Cadre's Interactive Fiction Games:
 * I-0 (1997)
 * Photopia (1998)
 * Varicella (1999)
 * 9:05 (2000)
 * Shrapnel (2000)
 * Textfire Golf (2001)
 * Lock & Key (2002)
 * Narcolepsy (2003)
 * Endless, Nameless (2012)

IF Tropes

 * Base Breaker: Photopia was, in many respects, this for the Interactive Fiction community at large: some praised its beautiful plot, characterisation, and writing, while others decried its apparent lack of interactivity or puzzles. This gave rise to a lot of the "Story vs. Game" controversy that goes on in the IF community today.
 * Info Dump: There's a big (optional) one at the end of Shrapnel.
 * Magnificent Bastard: All of your rivals in Varicella. This, of course, means that your goal is to beat them at their own game.
 * The Many Deaths of You: Deconstructed in Shrapnel.
 * Meta Fiction: Endless, Nameless is simultaneously an old-fashioned '80s-style adventure romp and a commentary on the evolution of Interactive Fiction itself.
 * No Communities Were Harmed: The state of Dorado (the setting for I-0 and Narcolepsy) is meant to be a stand-in for southern California, while Turtalia (the setting for Photopia) is based on southwestern Canada.
 * No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: The biggest complaint about Photopia.
 * Retraux: Endless, Nameless is a deliberate throwback to the BBS "Door Games" of the 1980s.
 * Same Face, Different Name: Adam Cadre submitted Photopia to the 1998 Interactive Fiction Competition under the name "Opal O'Donnell", out of fear that people would associate Photopia with his earlier sex farce game I-0.
 * Story to Gameplay Ratio: His games fall all over the spectrum, from almost all story (Photopia) to almost all gameplay (Lock and Key). They do tend to lie toward the "story" end of the spectrum, though.
 * Tear Jerker: Photopia
 * Time Crash: Shrapnel provided the page quote, and with good reason.
 * Tomato in the Mirror:
 * Villain Protagonist: Primo Varicella of Varicella, the unnamed player character of.