Malinche Entertainment


Malinche Entertainment was an interactive fiction development and publishing business founded by Howard Sherman in 2002.

History

Prior to starting his own software consulting business and Malinche, Sherman worked at RMI.net, then Excalibur Internet Corp. While Sherman claims to be working in the tradition of early interactive fiction developer Infocom, there is no legal or commercial connection to that company or any past developer. Despite this fact, he has used Infocom's logo as a launcher icon for at least one game as a marketing ploy, for which he has been criticized.

Reception and criticism

Sherman's published games under the Malinche label include Pentari: First Light, Greystone, Endgame, The First Mile, and Pentari: The Apprentice. All of Malinche Entertainment's games are written by Sherman. They are written using Inform targeting the virtual Z-machine. Versions of some games are also available for iPods, using a hypertext interface. The games have also been ported to the Nintendo DS, personal digital assistants, and the iPhone.
Sherman states that he markets his products to adventure gamers, the general fiction book market, and blind gamers.
Sherman's The First Mile received a poor review from PC Gamer, being criticised for "typos" and for "incorrectly linked objects, caricatured minorities, physical impossibilities, and confusing commands."

Controversy and legal threats

Sherman has threatened to sue the web publication SPAG for considering to publish an unfavorable review of one of his games. The Malinche website has displayed carefully edited review quotes for games, in order to alter the reviewers' intended meaning, and quotations from reviews written decades ago for games by Infocom were presented so as to imply that they described Malinche games.