Are pictures mandatory now?

Back when I first got into AIF there were ZERO pictures, I can't remember when they first appeared but it was definitely Goblinboy that was the first to implement then in a large way and popularize their use.

Personally, I don't care for them unless the game is visually focused, if there's text descriptions along with pictures I'll turn the pictures off, and let my imagination do the work. It's not like I hate when a game has pictures, not at all, just given the option, I'll go without.

That's just my preference, and clearly I'm in the miniority. But my question is, how much am I limiting myself by not including pictures? Is any AIF game without pictures doomed to obscurity? As has been discussed recently, all the stuff on patreon is very picture heavy (and largely crap), and if people are willing to spend actual money on frankly awful games solely because they have pictures where does that leave games that go without?

In my case, as an author, I have no interest in producing pictures myself, but I did enjoy the image that Lost Trout made for my game from the AIF Minifest - http://adultinteractivefiction.blogspot.com/2016/09/aif-minifest-2016.html (and it uncannily nailed the image I had in my head for the character!)

Back at it

I didn't have much time at all to work on the game over the holidays but my schedule is back to normal now and I hope to pick up the pace a bit.

I've decided against using Inform, the time it would take to learn a whole new programming language could be better spent on finishing up what I've already started in Adrift. Maybe in the future, but for now I'm sticking with Adrift.