I took a serious interest in IF once it reached its "modern" stage (which ironically happened more than a decade ago). It started subverting the tired tropes of "you're in this dungeon and have to find the treasure" and playing with the conventions of the genre and even the UI itself.
In the spy game Spider and Web, instead of "losing", for most of the game you get a "that's not what happened, please don't lie to me".
There was this scifi game, whose name now escapes me, where you're communicating by radio with the survivor of a spaceship, and every parser error gets reported appropriately: "I'm sorry, you're breaking up, can you repeat please?".
In Rematch you have only one move, and then you either die or win (but what you can do in this move can be very complex).
In Adam Cadre's Photopia the gameplay possibilities aren't that many, but the story is heartwrenching. His 9:05 is hilarious in how it plays with common player expectations.
Spider and Web‘s climax was a complete rush - I was puzzled for quite some time until the solution hit me over the head. So satisfying. Best IF game I‘ve ever played.
No, the game I was talking about is IF, as in Interactive Fiction, what text adventures are called now.
Without giving away the major plot twist of the game I'm thinking of, I can assure it has nothing to do with Lifeline.
Edit: found it! It's called Fail-Safe, and if you ever intend to play it, please don't read spoilers. The game is so short, almost a single "scene", that spoilers will really ruin it: https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=c6x835i6o9zqfc59
Too bad so few people turned up to play the Interactive Fiction Competition this year. Only about ~50 votes per game were recorded on average. I think people like to reminisce rather than play I.F., or maybe we've all been broken by 3D.
The winning game in 2020 was truly whimsical, and the Magpie scored a place in the top-5 again!
I play some IF here and there and the comp is my go-to place for what to play. I'm frequently years late though. It's not a thing I think I should track in real time.
Infocom games were nice and all but modern IF is where it's at. The genre moved forward, there's better design, better stories, more interesting mechanics. Gigantic labyrinth worlds that you can't win because you missed a one-time chance to pick up bubblegum in the first area of the game isn't something that is done anymore.
> one-time chance to pick up bubblegum in the first area of the game isn't something that is done anymore.
This is what I said in peer post a few hours ago. That's because the genre has been critically analyzed over the past 50 years.
Although the "click the keyword" modern I.F. really doesn't do it for me. I prefer the open-ended interpreters.
There is a doctoral thesis on this called "Twisty Little Passages". It discusses several "fundamental laws" of I.F. that were derived from the Infocom games of the 70's and 80's, such as your "bubblegum" complaint.
It's a strange genre, I like it a lot but I can see why there isn't much new content.
One existential problem for the genre is that you really need a physical keyboard -- while the awesome "80 Days" can get by with limited choices, anything parser-based really feels crummy on a smartphone or tablet.
In principle because content generation has slowed down so much it should finally be possible to play everything good. But I don't have a good way to curate a backlog of the IF games I've been meaning to try.
The way I tend to play IF is somewhere between reading a short story and toying with a puzzle, or maybe a bit of something else. I'm happy to lean on hints or walkthroughs to get through content faster. The experience is unique though I wonder if I'll ever bother to introduce it to my kids?
There are absolutely standout entries in the genre, both big and small, that struck some kind of narrative chord and for which the memory of playing is very clear to me ("Vespers', "Anchorhead", "The Meteor, the Stone and a Long Glass of Sherbet", "Photopia", "Shade", "9:05", "In The End", "Christminster", "Theatre", "Curses", "Jigsaw"). It'll be a bummer if these things ever totally vanish.
> One existential problem for the genre is that you really need a physical keyboard -- while the awesome "80 Days" can get by with limited choices, anything parser-based really feels crummy on a smartphone or tablet.
Some of the mobile interpreters try to address some of the keyboard issues - with frequently used verbs &c. as composable buttons. Though given the fairly short input of traditional interactive fiction I'm not sure why it should be much more of a problem than say texting (and indeed one of the mobile interpreters even has a text-message type layout for interaction).
I grew up playing Return to Zork and just missed the original Zorks. I couldn't get into them but really wanted to. I love the execution of IF and the stories they weave. What would be a good modern IF to jump into that isn't as punishing as the original Zorks, and not too hard for an IF newbie? Thank you!
All of the games on the list are delightful, but a newbie can't really be expected to finish any of them without hints. Luckily, almost all of them offer gradual hints, either linked from IFDB itself or in-game with a HINT command.
Your best option is to browse past IF competition winners. A lot of modern IF places emphasis on story telling based upon setting or situation. Much like a book, it can be difficult to connect with a story if you cannot relate to it in some way. Here is a link to past competitions:
For those familiar with the original 1998 version, note that a remastered and illustrated edition was released in 2018--worth a replay and a good way of supporting the author! https://store.steampowered.com/app/726870/Anchorhead/
I'll second the recommendation for Anchorhead. It's a great lovecraftian horror, the plot draws you in and it's hard to stop until you finish it.
Beware of dead ends though so save often.
I fully agree that modern IF is vastly better. I have commented on related threads here before that Emily Short's work has freaking blown me away. I'll take her games over any modern 3D game any day.
The writing is beautiful and sophisticated, yet never pretentious or long-winded. It's an absolute joy. Also, she frequently allows for many endings (ex: kill antagonist or romance antagonist) that is either rare of poorly done/simplistic in AAA titles.
In my academic studies using IF to teach CS [1], I've found it can be very powerful to "play" or "tell" stories in person. (These are middle- and high-school students.) Usually, at the end of a class authors will volunteer to share their stories, and then they will ask for a volunteer to be the protagonist while the author reads as the narrator. (This becomes important when the stories are serious and touch on real-life situations where it could be painful to have someone else misread, misinterpret, or make fun of your story.)
[1] Proctor, C., & Garcia, A. (2020). Hogg, L., Stockbridge, K., Achieng-Evenson, C., & SooHoo, S. (Eds.). Student voices in the digital hubbub. Pedagogies of With-ness: Students, Teachers, Voice, and Agency. Myers Educational Press. https://chrisproctor.net/media/publications/proctor_2020_ped...
In my 40+ years playing IF, I never considered this. What an interesting idea. I did play an email correspondence campaign in the early 90's but that was a ton of work for the DM since he was writing pages and pages of story. But it was a fun in-between.
I don't know how to find the reference, but I read somewhere that originally they were meant to be played in groups, sort of a campus-wide puzzle contest.
It's frustrating how hard of a sell the text medium can be, especially with how creative authors have grown to explore what visual media isn't well-suited for. So many of my avid gamer friends just won't give anything with such a minimal UI an honest shot, even if they loved playing similar games in the past when it was more of a necessity.
Incidentally, I was actually thinking of submitting something that I'd been working on for the competition, but I didn't think it would qualify since it was already publicly distributed. It's up at https://writtenrealms.com/worlds/7996/brimstone-prologue, so if anybody is into this kind of thing and has some time to kill, I'd actually love to hear any feedback!
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text game was my favorite of the genre, and was my first introduction to PC games. I remember it being quite challenging especially in the pre-walkthrough days.
That game is impossible to solve without spoilers, so far as I'm concerned. And lord knows I tried. As far as Infocom goes, the only ones I managed to solve unassisted were Zork I and II and Planetfall, all of which are considered on the easy end of the spectrum. The later games were much more complex. Along with HHG2TG, Lurking Horror was really difficult too.
H2G2 was medium difficulty compared to Starcross and Deadline, it just required patience. And MAN was it satisfying to win as a 13 year old. Long before accomplishments were measured in twitch response rather than deductive logic.
Spellbreaker, OTOH, was potentially impossible. It had two puzzles early in the game that were solvable by irreversible methods that made the game unwinnable. (One was casting Girgol to stop time allowed you to solve the Ogre puzzle, but you needed that spell at the very end, can't recall the other).
I really liked Planetfall and it's one I made it through to the end without too much help (also pre-walkthroughs/pre-Web). Steve Meretzky was the author of both that and Hitchhikers--the latter with Adams of course. I also really liked his A Mind Forever Voyaging but that's probably closest to an interactive novel that Infocom ever did; the puzzle content is fairly light.
Interesting. I found Planetfall moderately difficult, but the Lurking Horror was easy (I almost finished it first time I played it---I think it took me two sessions). A friend of mine played HHG2TG (I never did) and almost gave up on it.
I had the game as a kid who had never heard of the books. Played the intro a dozen times before someone told me the only way to even get started in the game was to lay down in front of the oncoming bulldozer three times in a row. Challenging is an understatement :P
which shows the powerful and lasting impact that some of these multi-player text games had on the people (particularly kids) who played them. It was previously posted to HN but I can’t find the thread off hand.
For those who enjoy historical and game-play review of text-based games and similar games, there is the digital antiquarian: https://www.filfre.net/ If you go to the ebooks page, you can get (free) ebooks of game coverage from years spanning from 1966 to 1993. I believe every infocom text game is covered.
I spent many hours creating games using the Graphic Adventure Creator. Despite it's name it was really just text adventures but with the occasional slowly-drawn static scene.
Also a big fan of Level 9 and Infocom, though the only one of theirs I ever completed was the Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Quirky, funny, and clever, but quite stereotypical in retrospect.
I really liked the purpose of this series. I believe that anyone who is interested in Game Development (like me) in general will take advantage of what's to come.
In the spy game Spider and Web, instead of "losing", for most of the game you get a "that's not what happened, please don't lie to me".
There was this scifi game, whose name now escapes me, where you're communicating by radio with the survivor of a spaceship, and every parser error gets reported appropriately: "I'm sorry, you're breaking up, can you repeat please?".
In Rematch you have only one move, and then you either die or win (but what you can do in this move can be very complex).
In Adam Cadre's Photopia the gameplay possibilities aren't that many, but the story is heartwrenching. His 9:05 is hilarious in how it plays with common player expectations.
I love IF.