Pass the Banana

From IFWiki

Comedy
Comedy
Surreal
Surreal
One-room
One-room
Green IF comp ribbon.png
IF Comp 1999
33rd of 37
Pass the Banana
Pass the Banana small cover.jpg
Author(s) Admiral Jota
Publisher(s) n/a
Release date(s) 1999
Authoring system Inform 6
Platform(s) Z-code 5
Language(s) English
License(s) Public domain
Multimedia
Color effects none
Graphics none
Sound/Music none
Ratings
Cruelty scale Merciful

How It Begins

Yes, we have no bananas.

You might be anyone carrying nine bananas. You are in the Adventurer's Lounge, which is decorated with candles, hand-drawn maps, a trophy case, plentiful seating, and there's a closet to the north. You also see a giant flaming head, a monkey and Melvin the Robot here.

(No goal is explicitly stated, but the game is called Pass the Banana. You might try that.)

Notable Features

  • Several IF and ifMUD in-jokes. For example:
    • The setting, the Adventurer's Lounge, is from ifMUD. It is likewise normally decorated with candles, maps, trophy case, etc.
    • The size of the story file is 69,105 bytes.
    • Monkey jokes have always been popular on ifMUD, and passing bananas from one player to another was (once upon a time) an occassional activity there. Round brackets, "(" and ")", were sometimes called bananas, and some of the bananas passed would be just have a round bracket character for its name.
    • The description of Melvin mentions Floyd, the robot first seen in Planetfall (Infocom).
    • The response "Eat the banana? How unseemly!" is a nod to Varicella (Adam Cadre; 1999; Z-code).
    • One secret ending's rank is a nod to Varicella (Adam Cadre; 1999; Z-code).
  • The NPCs can be talked to via ask-tell, but it's mostly just "ask".
  • The maximum score is 10, including one last lousy point.

Versions

Release 1 (Competition entry)

Links

General info

Reviews

"Other games in this year's competition might have more plot, more puzzles, or more elaborate settings, but none have more bananas." -- Mike Roberts

Spoilers