''Spider and Web'' is a piece of

interactive fiction Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...

written by Andrew Plotkin. ''Spider and Web'' begins innocuously enough: the player's character, an apparent tourist, has wandered into a blind alley. Upon trying to leave the alley, however, the character is confronted by a voice sneering that this is a lie and threatening dire consequences if the truth is not told. Gradually, the player pieces together that the main character is an unnamed spy who is being interrogated by an equally anonymous enemy. Through interruptions and prodding, the interrogator reveals that the spy was captured in the process of infiltrating an installation under the guise of a tourist. Most of the commands the player gives are actually part of a story the character is telling to the interrogator. Any part of the story that the interrogator disputes is challenged; the player is executed after a number of these "challenges". Thus, the player's main goal is to tell the captors a plausible story to explain what they already know (or more precisely, what they ''think'' they already know). On June 24, 2014 the author released the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

for educational purposes.

Reception

In the 1998 Xyzzy Awards, the game won the awards for Best Game, Best Individual NPC, Best Individual Puzzle, Best Use of Medium and Best Puzzles. It was also a finalist for Best Individual PC, Best Setting, Best Story and Best Writing. ''

PC Gamer ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games m ...

'' selected it as one of their "Top 100 Greatest Games" in 2015.

References

External links

* *{{IFDB 1990s interactive fiction 1998 video games Fiction with unreliable narrators Single-player video games Spy video games