Interactive Fiction Archive

[CooperationIsKey]

Do you like text-based adventure games? Have I got the site for you! The Interactive Fiction Archive is an awesome resource full of literally thousands of text games and related items:

"The Archive’s mission is to preserve the history and practice of interactive fiction and make it freely available to the public. Since 1992, the Archive has collected thousands of text adventures, text adventure development tools, articles, essays, hint files, walkthroughs, jokes, and sly references to Greek politics. It also preserves the history of IF institutions such as the IF Competition and IFDB. This cultural memory is one of the foundations of the IF community."

The games range from actually old to quite recent--people still make text games! I have fond memories of playing games from this site back in college, when I had crappy dial-up internet, lol.

Check it out!

The Interactive Fiction Archive

[Melooon]

Ah this looks cool, I do like text adventures a lot. I even setup an old DOS computer in my old house, mainly to play Zork and Monkey Island in its true context. The clacky keyboard screen glow really add to it.



Ugh I just wish I felt like I had the time to sit down and play some properly and the space to setup that computer again.

[CooperationIsKey]

Oh wow, I didn't realize Monkey Island started as text adventures! :O

I never really got the hang of DOS, tbh; by the time I had my own computer Windows 95 had just come out so I only had to mess with it occasionally to play older games. That's really cool that you have a computer specifically for that stuff though!

[Dan Q]

I love a good text-based adventure. I used to make a point to play through everything in each year's IFComp, and submit reviews/ratings, but I'm very out-of-the-loop these years.

But if you're looking for some recommendations of some of my favourites, here you go:

• Photopia by Adam Cadre in my mind helped reboot IF as an art form; it's highly-accessible and somewhat "railsy", so even if you've not got much experience of text adventures you should be able to pick it up quickly
• Violet by Jeremy Freese is a sweet, funny, single-room puzzle piece that's also very newcomer-accessible about trying to work when your brain wants to procrastinate with all the distractions in your vicinity (which is highly-relatable!)
• Bee, by Emily Short is an amazingly-accessible game about... being in a spelling bee (you won't be asked to spell things, though; that's not the story) - I've not played it since its original platform died and I hear the remake isn't quite as good, but it's probably still fun
• Vespers by Jason Devlin is a creepy, discomforting, edge-of-horror piece of historical fiction; it's a wonderful piece of writing
• Lost Pig by Admiral Jota isn't a great first text-based adventure, because it subverts the mechanisms of play in some interesting ways: however, what it does it does amazingly (and hilariously): the protagonist Grunk has a very limited comprehension and vocabulary, and describes his world within those limitations, requiring the player to interpret what's being described into their own understanding - the medium is the puzzle
• Counterfeit Monkey by Emily Short is my absolute favourite piece of interactive fiction (I blogged to say so back in 2013!) - it does some absolutely amazing things with wordplay: e.g. your character starts with a tool called the "full-alphabet letter remover", which you can dial to a letter of your choice and fire at an object to change what it is, e.g. if you were in an evergreen forest you could change a "pine" into a "pin" and then use it to burst a balloon. Emily Short is one of my favourite IF writers in general and this, I feel, is her masterpiece. If you're new to IF don't make it the first one you play, but maybe the second or third!