From Infocom to 80 Days: An oral history of text games and interactive fiction

It’s barely mentioned aside from the title, but I just wanted to say that 80 Days is a really wonderful game that is well worth your time if you’re into text-based games.

It’s more of an interactive story than a puzzle game, with some light resource management elements. But the writing is wonderful and there are hundreds of possible paths and storylines to discover. Its replayability is very high, whether you’re trying to find the fastest route, seeking out the most remote locations or unlocking hidden subplots.

It really does well to invoke the spirit of adventure in travel, and it was a particular delight during the pandemic days when that wasn’t possible.

Plus they’ve open sourced the language and tools used to create the branching narrative!

https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/

The ink language mentioned in the article, created by Inkle studios for their games, is a joy to work with. It is designed to be embedded and makes writing branching dialog or complete stories very easy.

As well as 80 Days, I really liked Inkle's implementation of the old Steve Jackson Sorcery books (for iOS and other platforms). They really know how to polish their games.

Voyage of the Marigold[0] is a project I recently completed written in a mixture of ink and js for a the 2024 Spring Thing[1] Festival of Interactive Fiction. It didn't win a major prizes but I am happy with the way it turned out.

[0] https://sheep.horse/voyage_of_the_marigold/

(Your enjoyment will probably be proportional to how much you like Star Trek)

[1] https://www.springthing.net/2024/play.html

(I recommend Rescue At Quickenheath, another game that didn't win a major prize but was my favorite)

I loved the recent newsletter-turned-book '50 Years of Text Games' by Aaron Reed. It's a bunch of deep dives into a bunch of games from throughout history, most of which I hadn't heard of.

https://aareed.itch.io/50-years-of-text-games

I'm very familiar with the Infocom era and am still in touch with some of the folks. I admit I haven't kept up with the latest developments. Probably should take a look.

For folks interested in the early history, Jason Scott's Get Lamp documentary is highly recommended. (He also has an Infocom-focused edit.)

How has nobody in these comments mentioned IFDB yet? https://ifdb.org

You can play almost the whole history from your browser if you want.

I am #20071 on ifMUD.

I had also written a document called "Tricky Document" which describes several tricks involved with Z-machine programming (many of which Infocom did not use). http://zzo38computer.org/zmachine/doc/tricky.txt (I also wrote implementations of Z-machine in C, PostScript, JavaScript, and Glulx.)

Another text adventure system that I know of is "OASYS". The VM code was not documented, although it did include source code, and I have figured it out from the source code and written a document. The included OAC compiler was rather limited (no include files, you could not call a function that is defined later in the file, ambiguous syntax, strings duplicated in the output file, no pointer types, no type checking, no macros, no arrays, no bitwise operations, spurious vocabulary entries, and various other limitations), so I had written my own compiler (which still uses the same VM code, but with an entirely different syntax).

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy shown in the photo in the article is actually the very first piece of computer software I ever bought.

I remember purchasing it in a Babbages or something for $14 and being so excited.

Brought it home and ran it on a 286 with a monitor capable of displaying text in one color: amber

> insert babelfish into ear

For a history of IF between 1972–1999, see the Inform Designer's Manual Edition 4, Chapter 46.

https://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/s46.html

I still have the Infocom game Leather Goddesses of Phobos, complete with scratch and sniff card, and the 3-D (blue-red) glasses for the enclosed comic book. If you don't have VR or first-person, it was the next best thing: they told you when to scratch and sniff.

This seems like a good spot to plug one of my favorite games

Will Not Let Me Go

https://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2017/Will%...

A Twine game that simulates dementia. It's a brilliant, well written game that ironically will stick in your memory.

Loved text adventures since my CPC6128 days. They are about the only things I could still use my Psion 5 for. I have Lost Treasures 1 and 2, and the Classics on CD.

This is fantastic: http://www.getlamp.com/

You can also hunt down the Infocom Universe Bootleg. It has pretty much all the games, bonus games, invisiclues, IUB database, software tools.

IUB.zip is 397.5mb zipped

There is a love/hate relationship with most of those old text adventures. They could make an entire world with just a handful of words and fill them with clever puzzles to delight the users.

But then the parser would be willfully obtuse and most of the gameplay would be figuring out the exact combination of commands to unlock the next snippit of the story. Sometimes requiring the player to telepathically connect with the developer to figure out precisely what phrasing he intended.

    You see a special looking rock on the ground.

    > PICK UP THE ROCK

    Huh?

    > PICK UP ROCK

    Huh?

    > PICK UP SPECIAL ROCK

    Huh?

    > PICK UP THE SPECIAL ROCK

    You pick up the rock, it feels special in your hands, you are certain it will be important sometime later.

    > PUT ROCK IN POCKET

    Huh?

    > PUT SPECIAL ROCK IN POCKET

    Huh?

    > PUT SPECIAL ROCK IN MY POCKET

    I can't do that.

    > OPEN POCKET

    Huh?

    > OPEN MY POCKET

    You open your pocket.

    > PUT SPECIAL ROCK IN MY POCKET

    You safely store the rock.

It is no mystery why graphical adventure games basically wiped out the text adventure games.

If you’re looking for some accessible ones to play Inhave very fond memories of the ones at Rinkworks:

http://www.rinkworks.com/adventure/

The site is straight from the late nineties; mobile wasn’t a concern at the time, and it remains not a concern. These are better consumed in a desktop. The whole site is a delightful bastion of “The Old Internet.” The role playing games are also plenty fun!

Always appreciate the GET LAMP shoutouts. - Jason Scott

Very first game I played on a computer was Zork 1. Old Commodore 64. I think I still have the disk jacket for it (but not the disk, sadly).

Mild spoiler warning!

I'm playing Hadean Lands at the moment and wasn't expecting to have to scroll past a map of the game.

Colossal Cave Adventure (filename ADVENT) by William Crowther in 1976 on IFDB: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=fft6pu91j85y4acv

This is the game that started it all!

In my personal archives though, I only have a copy of the 1977 update by Dan Woods where the player can score a maximum of 350 points. This, I believe, is the Fortran source code of the 1977 version: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/adv350-p...

I feel like IF tech could be use for more than just fiction. Imagine government forms that could use it to help people navigate a complex bureaucratic system of forms, or something like the python cookiecutter for generating project layouts which could ask for more detail about your preferences before spitting out a template, online tutorials which customise to cover the 3 main cases etc.

Six pages and no mention of Hunt the Wumpus which was thrilling text based spelunkers years before Colossal Cave Adventure

Also, NarraScope is in Albany, NY this weekend, if anyone is nearby and wants to check it out.

Also, this article misses a small point in time in 2007-2012 where Textfyre was an unsuccessful attempt at commercial IF.

One of the published games was written by Jon Ingold (with Ian Finley), called The Shadow in the Cathedral, which is available at https://textfyre.itch.io/.

I'm not sure, but I think this is the last parser-IF game Jon had a hand in...and may have been a spark for Inkle Studios.

Apparently there is Nine Princes in Amber text adventure game.

I remember a time where I was playing "A mind forever voyaging" every day while listening to "Jazz impressions from New York" by Dave Brubeck on endless repeat. Good times. Both are excellent pieces of art and I can attest that they complement each other very well.

"Interactive fiction" ..HOW the heck did "text adventures" end up with that name?? ALL games are "interactive fiction"!

Did some non-gamer blog or something start this?