Hi BloodyCactus,
No worries, that's an entirely fair question
(And wow, someone remembers "Gossip"! That's awesome
)
And you are absolutely right, there are thousands of IF works out there available for free on the IF Archive or on the IFDB. (Btw not many people do Z-Machine anymore, I'm afraid.) On the Amiga, you can play all those z5 and z8 files and you probably would never run out of amazing free games
However, the z3 format I'm using (Infocom's format) is more rare, and limited to: Infocom games, a few small games, Scott Adams demakes, etc. But it's the only format that works on older computers, like the TI-99/4A, the Oric, the Commodore 8-bit, the GameBoy, etc. (Even the C64 has its limitations; Ozmoo only supports files up to 210kb, instead of the full potential of 256kb of a z5 file.) For these platforms, you effectively had no new text adventures for years; and it's some extra work for me to manage to pack the game in the 128kb limit.
But yeah, for the Amiga, I'm competing with Spider and Web, which is free and probably better than my game
My arguments here would be that I tried to make an adventure in the style of Infocom, including the themes and the prose, and some people might like that; there will also be feelies, just like Infocom. And there should, hopefully, be a physical release, with physical feelies and a box designed to be evocative of Infocom's boxes (some people will want that for their collection). It's also not too difficult of a game and won't block you, and it's cheap
(And there's a free demo!) And by buying it, you're supporting my work and encouraging me to keep going, and showing there's a market for more old school parser games.
It's not released for the IFComp, since the IFComp prohibits commercial games; but if you're interested in checking out free games, check out "Life on Mars?", my 2015 entry in that Comp, and one of the few games I've written in English since "Gossip". (Another one is the short, free "Heading East", and my cheap interactive travelogue, with pictures, "Go West", both set in Canada.) They're all available on
https://hlabrande.itch.io