Ibo is a Z-machine interactive fiction story written with Inform 7 and is © 2012 by Bahri Gordebak.
In this very sparse and very short one-room story, you play as someone tired and wet from the rain, waiting for their tea at a coffee house. You missed seeing the boy approach you. He said something.
This solution is by David Welbourn, and is based on Release 1 of the story.
SPOILERS AHEAD. Reading a walkthrough prematurely can sometimes diminish one's enjoyment of an interactive fiction story. Please make an honest effort to play the story before reading this walkthrough.
Coffee House
> x people.
> x boy. (In sweater and shoes, no socks.)
> talk to boy. ("buy some chewing gums, sir?")
> buy gum. (He asks if you can buy five, at twice the usual cost.)
There isn't any way to say no.
> buy five.
You take out your wallet, but it isn't implemented.
> talk to boy.
The boy's name is Ibo. While the waiter brings your tea, Ibo runs away. But the gums are on the table.
*** The End ***
This story is coded very oddly. I note that all you can do with the boy is examine and talk to him. Other commands act like the boy isn't even there. And, in fact, he isn't. There's no boy object in the game.
The debugging command TREE shows that there's no boy or people objects in the Coffee House, but there is a "state of the boy" object that's nowhere.
The debugging command ACTIONS shows that the author created a rulebook for each of "checking the people", "checking the boy", "buying gum", "buying five", and "talking to the boy". The awkwardness of this approach may help explain why this story is so short.
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