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905
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Years
Millennium
1st millennium
Centuries
Decades
Years
905 by topic
Leaders
Categories
905 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar905
CMV
Ab urbe condita1658
Armenian calendar354
ԹՎ ՅԾԴ
Assyrian calendar5655
Balinese saka calendar826–827
Bengali calendar311–312
Berber calendar1855
Buddhist calendar1449
Burmese calendar267
Byzantine calendar6413–6414
Chinese calendar甲子年 (Wood Rat)
3602 or 3395
    — to —
乙丑年 (Wood Ox)
3603 or 3396
Coptic calendar621–622
Discordian calendar2071
Ethiopian calendar897–898
Hebrew calendar4665–4666
Hindu calendars
 - Vikram Samvat961–962
 - Shaka Samvat826–827
 - Kali Yuga4005–4006
Holocene calendar10905
Iranian calendar283–284
Islamic calendar292–293
Japanese calendarEngi 5
(延喜５年)
Javanese calendar804–805
Julian calendar905
CMV
Korean calendar3238
Minguo calendar1007 before ROC
民前1007年
Nanakshahi calendar−563
Seleucid era1216/1217 AG
Thai solar calendar1447–1448
Tibetan calendarཤིང་ཕོ་བྱི་བ་ལོ་
(male Wood-Rat)
1031 or 650 or −122
    — to —
ཤིང་མོ་གླང་ལོ་
(female Wood-Ox)
1032 or 651 or −121
Icon of Naum of Preslav

Year 905 (CMV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar.

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905

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from Grokipedia
9:05 is a minimalist interactive fiction game created by American developer Adam Cadre and first released on January 3, 2000. Written in Inform, it presents a text-based narrative where the player awakens in a sparse bedroom at 9:05 a.m. to a ringing phone, prompting a rushed morning routine amid everyday clutter like scattered laundry and a dresser of clothes, with the goal of getting to work on time. The game's brevity—typically playable in about 20 minutes—encourages multiple replays to uncover its layered structure and subtle humor, blending slice-of-life elements with clever commentary on interactive fiction conventions. Highly regarded in the genre, it holds an average rating of 4.2 out of 5 from over 560 user votes on the Interactive Fiction Database and was nominated for Best Individual Puzzle at the 2000 XYZZY Awards.

Gameplay

Mechanics

9:05 is a parser-based interactive fiction game where players interact with the environment through natural language text commands entered at a prompt, typically in the form of verb-noun phrases, to perform actions and navigate spaces. The interface displays room descriptions, object details, and a persistent time indicator in the top right, starting at 9:05 AM, with output advancing via key presses past "[MORE]" prompts; it runs in Z-machine interpreters without graphics or menus. Players begin in a bedroom and can move between adjacent rooms—such as south to the bathroom or east to the living room—using directional commands like "south" or "go east," each taking 1 minute. The core mechanic revolves around a real-time clock that advances variably with actions, creating urgency to complete a morning routine before arriving late to work, which results in failure. Routine tasks consume specific durations: for example, "take shower" requires first dropping worn items like soiled clothing and takes 6 minutes, while examining objects or moving rooms adds 1 minute each. Eating breakfast, such as "take poptart," "put poptart in toaster," and "eat poptart," progresses with minimal explicit time cost but fits within the sequence; failed or inefficient actions, like attempting to shower without removing soiled clothes, incur penalties through humorous error messages or added delays. Commands like "examine me" reveal the player's state (e.g., dirty or undressed), "wear clothes" equips clean attire from a dresser, and "inventory" or "i" lists carried items, supporting basic management without a complex inventory system. The game's structure emphasizes sequencing everyday tasks under time pressure in a compact apartment layout, including bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchenette, and driveway, completable in under 10 minutes per playthrough. There are no intricate puzzles or scoring; instead, progression relies on efficient command inputs for actions like "open dresser," "take clean clothing," and "unlock car" before entering a vehicle for a choice-driven drive sequence using yes/no responses to prompts. Waiting with "z" advances time by 1 minute per use, allowing experimentation but risking lateness, while unsupported commands like "brush teeth" yield errors to keep focus on the core routine.

Plot

The plot of 9:05 unfolds in the life of an unnamed protagonist who wakes up disoriented after an exhausting night in a cluttered apartment at 9:05 a.m., facing immediate consequences for oversleeping after a rough night. The opening scene is triggered by a ringing telephone on the bedside table; answering it reveals a call from his coworker, who sternly demands that he rush to the office for a critical meeting, as he is already five minutes late and risks severe repercussions. From there, the narrative progresses through the protagonist's harried morning routine in the modest, messy confines of his home—a sparse bedroom with dirty laundry strewn about, an adjacent bathroom, and a living room leading to the exit. He scrambles to freshen up, change out of soiled clothes from the previous night's activities, and grab a hasty bite to eat, all while the in-game clock advances unforgivingly, amplifying the tension of time slipping away. Environmental details, such as scattered personal items like keys and a wallet, underscore the chaos of his personal life intruding on professional urgency. Thematically, the story delves into the frustrations of mundane daily existence and the acute stress of workplace demands, portraying a relatable spiral of lateness and regret that builds toward an ironic tone. As the climax approaches, a sudden shift to violence emerges, juxtaposing the ordinary routine with darker undercurrents. The overall structure is a linear tale with branching paths determined by the player's time management choices, ultimately leading to a pivotal revelation about the protagonist's unexplained actions from the night before.

Development

Creation Process

Adam Cadre, an influential author in the interactive fiction (IF) community, drew upon his established background in the genre when creating 9:05. Entering the IF scene in late 1996 through online forums, Cadre debuted with I-0 in 1997, a game featuring innovative branching narratives and variable playthroughs that explored risky scenarios through a teenage protagonist's perspective. This early work established Cadre's style of subverting conventional IF structures and player agency, elements that carried into his later pieces, including 9:05. His film education also informed his narrative techniques, often blending cinematic pacing with text-based interactivity. Conceived as an experimental short-form IF piece, 9:05 was developed and released in early 2000, with its initial version appearing in late 1999 and an update in February 2000. Cadre crafted the game rapidly to test ideas around the player-character relationship, extracting a focused concept from broader explorations of psychological themes in IF, such as split personalities and obedience to player commands. This quick development contrasted with his more expansive projects like Photopia (1998), allowing him to prioritize emotional impact over complex mechanics in a format that could be completed in minutes. The inspirations for 9:05 stemmed from Cadre's interest in inverting IF tropes, particularly the assumption of player control over the protagonist, drawing contrasts with works like Cody Sandifer's George (1997), where insanity is externalized through NPCs. He blended these conceptual roots with themes of personal turmoil, reflecting societal issues like child abuse as a pervasive "issue of our time," informed by historical analyses estimating high prevalence rates among youth. Everyday IF traditions, such as Infocom's Deadline (1982) with its mundane investigative scenarios, also echoed in Cadre's choice of a routine morning setting to build tension. Key design decisions emphasized brevity to heighten surprise and emotional payoff, eschewing traditional puzzles in favor of a single revelatory twist that encouraged replays and discussion within the IF community. Cadre opted for a free release via platforms like the IF Archive, fostering immediate accessibility and buzz among players familiar with his prior subversive works. This approach aligned with his goal of experimenting with form to challenge player expectations, using techniques like timed text and screen manipulation prototyped in concurrent projects.

Technical Aspects

9:05 was authored using Inform 6, a popular system for creating interactive fiction during the late 1990s and early 2000s, which compiles games into the portable Z-code format (specifically Z-code 5 for this title). This choice enabled robust handling of the game's parser for natural language inputs, room descriptions, and object interactions, leveraging Inform's built-in libraries for standard commands like movement, examination, and inventory management. The parser operates intuitively for basic actions, with minimal disambiguation issues, prioritizing narrative flow over complex verb synonyms or advanced input parsing. A key technical feature is the custom-implemented clock system, which advances in real time from 9:05 a.m. to 9:35 a.m. based on player actions or turns, triggering timed events such as phone messages and environmental changes without relying on external dependencies. This was achieved through Inform scripting with conditional branches for success, failure, or delay states—such as wasting time on non-essential examinations leading to deadline failure—creating tension through rigid progression and limited player agency. The system's efficiency ensures seamless integration, with the clock serving both as a gameplay mechanic and thematic element, enforcing linearity in a game estimated at 10-15 minutes of play. The game was released in 2000 as a free downloadable .z5 file via the Interactive Fiction Archive, emphasizing text purity with no graphics, sound, or multimedia elements to focus on parser-driven storytelling. Later adaptations include browser-based play through web interpreters hosted on platforms like the Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB), maintaining compatibility without modifications. Technical constraints, including a highly linear structure confined primarily to an apartment and office commute with minimal branching, were addressed by optimizing code for quick loading on contemporary hardware like early 2000s PCs, avoiding expansive world-building to highlight the core time-sensitive narrative. This scoped design exemplifies accessible IF development, portable across Z-machine interpreters on various systems.

Reception

Critical Response

Upon its release in 2000, 9:05 generated positive buzz within interactive fiction (IF) communities, particularly on forums like rec.arts.int-fiction, where players lauded its shocking ending and relatable premise of a harried morning routine disrupted by urgency. Reviews in the SPAG newsletter emphasized the game's emotional impact, noting how its twist prompts a visceral "WHAT?" reaction on first playthrough, encouraging immediate replays to uncover hidden context. Critics and players praised the game's brevity as a core strength, enabling high replayability and delivering a punchy narrative without filler, often completable in under five minutes yet rewarding multiple sessions with deeper revelations. The innovative use of time pressure—manifesting as a relentless clock ticking toward a deadline—built suspense effectively, subverting expectations without relying on traditional puzzles, which allowed the story to shine as the focal point. Some critiques highlighted the game's shortness and linearity as drawbacks, arguing it lacked sufficient depth for extended engagement beyond the initial twist, with the author's guiding prompts occasionally feeling too heavy-handed. Occasional notes addressed minor parser limitations, such as inconsistencies in actions like locking doors despite having keys, though these were deemed non-disruptive to the overall experience. In broader media retrospectives, 9:05 featured in PC Gamer's 2020 "Crapshoot" series, where it was appreciated for its dark humor—particularly the ironic news report finale—and accessibility as an entry point for non-IF fans, offering a clever, misconception-toying gimmick in a concise package.

Awards and Legacy

9:05 received a nomination for Best Individual Puzzle at the 2000 XYZZY Awards, recognizing its innovative narrative structure in the interactive fiction (IF) community. This accolade highlighted the game's clever use of a single, meta-puzzle that unfolds through replay, distinguishing it among entries that year. The game's legacy endures through its influence on short-form IF, inspiring works like Grief by Simon Christiansen, which similarly employs unreliable narration and emotional twists in a compact format. It has been frequently cited in community discussions for demonstrating effective pacing and accessibility, appearing in polls such as "Best Beginner Game of All Time" and recommendations for newcomers to the genre. By prioritizing emotional impact over traditional puzzles, 9:05 contributed to IF's shift toward narrative-driven experiences, often referenced in analyses of everyday-life storytelling. Culturally, 9:05 remains a staple for introducing IF's potential for humor and relatability, with its 5-10 minute playtime encouraging multiple engagements to reveal its twist. It pokes fun at IF conventions, evoking strong reactions in reviews and forum threads, and has been analyzed in publications like SPAG #20 for its deceptive simplicity. Today, 9:05 is widely available on platforms like the Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB) and the IF Archive, playable online via interpreters such as iplayif.com or downloadable for Z-code compatible apps. This accessibility ensures its ongoing role in IF education and enjoyment.
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