Introduction
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West of House+ `9 E, i3 k& Y4 z
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.$ o, ?; A% k. R2 y( Q: }
There is a small mailbox here.1 [5 q% D9 \* r# l3 u- `$ { m
For a generation of gamers, these three lines of text evoke the same nostalgic flutter that younger gamers more commonly associated with playing the likes of Doom, Resident Evil or Half-Life for the first time. Infocom's Zork (released commercially in 1981) has one thing in common with these modern titles; while it certainly wasn't the first game in its genre, it was responsible for kick starting a genre -- raising the bar to a height that very few of Infocom's peers were able to reach.8 V5 T2 F1 r& c+ L* d# L' B
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The text adventure genre comprises an almost Zen-like simplicity. Its basic components are a computer system able to display plain text, a keyboard interface and the imagination of both the game's author and player. These rather spartan system requirements enabled the genre to flourish on a large number of home computer platforms.
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The text adventure genre was largely conceived by accident. Programmer and caver Will Crowther had mapped Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, in his spare time in 1972. Several years later, he translated his extensive vector survey of the location into a text-based presentation, developing a parser to allow a user to "navigate" through the cave's locations by typing simple commands through a keyboard. Eager to entertain his children with this project, he added various fantasy elements to the presentation.
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A year later, in 1976, Don Woods discovered Crowther's program while clearing out files on his company's computers. An unabashed Tolkien fan, Woods extensively rewrote Crowther's original text descriptions, adding more locations and considerably more fantasy elements. He also refined the text-based parser, allowing for a much wider variety of commands and thus a much broader range of available interactions with the game. This enabled Woods to introduce a complex set of puzzles that the player was required to solve in order to advance through the game. F" S$ X6 {/ o+ X( o
The Crowther & Woods Colossal Cave Adventure (also known as Colossal Cave, Adventure or ADVENT) became something of a hit on university campuses around the world. It particularly caught the eye of a group of MIT students in 1977, who decided to create their own much larger version, which they christened Zork. This too became a popular cult favourite, so much so that three of those original MIT students (namely Tim Anderson, Marc Blank and Dave Lebling) formed their own development company, Infocom, and decided to release Zork as a commercial computer game product.- |( o1 l$ T% N- t! p; C
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Interactive Fiction
Infocom's Zork proved to be an instant commercial success. Throughout the 1980s they dominated the text adventure genre, although they preferred to describe their games as works of interactive fiction. This was no mere conceit; Infocom's games stood head and shoulders above those of their competitors for two very good reasons.
Firstly, the complexity and versatility of their text parser was second to none. Many of the earliest text adventure games were plagued by a problem that many players referred to as "guess the verb/noun". Most gamers had a pretty good idea of what needed to be done within a game to solve a certain puzzle, but actually finding the right words and syntax could often prove to be elusive. Most games had a very limited vocabulary (i.e., one could "take sword", but the game would fail to recognise "take weapon") and a very simplified verb-noun syntax. Infocom's parser boasted a much larger vocabulary (partly due to some nifty compression) and the ability to understand much more complex input strings (i.e., "take the stone, examine it, then put it in the backpack"). - v7 M9 Q. E+ Y" i" T8 p# L
Secondly, Infocom's developers were skilled story tellers in addition to being good programmers. They were highly skilled in making the game's interface as invisible as possible, enabling them to create a much more immersive story-telling experience for the player. To this end, Infocom's games soon moved away from the standard dungeon crawl/treasure hunt approach to text adventures, offering a much richer variety of stories.4 O& { {/ Q/ K: H- p% h; S/ w
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Infocom's only major rivals, throughout most of the 1980s, were two UK-based developers -- Level 9 and Magnetic Scrolls. Level 9 were firmly entrenched within the "old school" style of text adventures. Like Infocom, their early games were very much derivative of Colossal Cave, but they too began to branch out. While their parser and richness of text never did quite match Infocom's standards, Level 9 nevertheless managed to appeal to both hardcore puzzle fans and those seeking a more prosaic gaming experience. H+ J- _, x1 J0 x2 `( X
Magnetic Scrolls arrived on the scene relatively late within the genre's commercial life span, but nevertheless managed to give text adventures a new lease of life. Prior to the release of their first game, The Pawn, in 1987, the gaming press drew considerable attention towards Magnetic Scrolls' rather exceptional illustrations. Taking advantage of relatively new 16-bit computers, such as the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga, Magnetic Scrolls were able to add an extra dimension to the previously text-only genre. They weren't content to rest on their visual laurels -- their parser was arguably more sophisticated than Infocom's, although much of that complexity was rarely exploited (or, indeed, needed) within their games.
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1990 and Beyond
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As the 1980s drew to a close, the increasing sophistication of home computers threatened to undermine the simplicity of the text adventure genre. Thanks to the likes of the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master System, gaming consoles were enjoying a second lease of life, with a next generation of 16-bit consoles just lurking around the corner. Likewise, the 16-bit home computer platforms were offering much richer audio/visual gaming experiences. Text adventures were starting to look somewhat old fashioned.- @3 ^; p) T% }( M3 Y( l- i
A few developers were quick to adapt the gameplay mechanics of text adventures within a visually rich, mouse-driven environment. Sierra Entertainment and Lucasfilm Games, in particular, spearheaded the new "point & click" genre with instant commercial hits such as King's Quest, Space Quest, Maniac Mansion and Zak McCracken and the Alien Mindbenders. These would later evolve into the likes of Gabriel Knight and Day of the Tentacle.) g9 Z, T W, A5 W
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The masters of the text adventure genre found it difficult to adapt these new technologies. While the likes of Infocom, Magnetic Scrolls and Infocom increased the illustrative content of their games, it wasn't enough to ensure commercial success, thus each of the developers quickly died off in the early 1990s.1 h3 d! O& U( L) \
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While most text adventure fans moved on to discover other gaming genres, there was no denying that an exceptional, limitless gaming genre had died a somewhat needless death. While it was true that text adventures no longer held commercial validity, artistically there was still a lot more that could have been done with the genre. The novel certainly didn't become obsolete with the invention of the motion picture industry, so the text adventure needn't necessarily die out because gaming technology had moved on.8 T, S5 x2 j7 C5 B
Throughout the early 1990s, many individuals continued to keep the genre alive by developing their own homegrown text adventures, usually made available online or swapped amongst friends. However, most of these projects tended to be confined to a single hardware platform, which somewhat limited the growth of the genre. If the genre was to survive within underground circles, much greater portability was needed.4 w. t. F+ f7 M, R4 G
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Salvation arrived in 1993 with Graham Nelson's Inform, a programming language whose source files are compiled to run on a "virtual machine" emulating Infocom's own virtual Z-Machine. Running with the aid of a Z-code interpreter (of which there's at least one for just about every computer platform under the sun), the Inform-based text adventures helped revitalise the genre, offering maximum portability while at the same time taking advantage of contemporary memory/storage spaces to provide a much deeper gaming experience.
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While the text adventure genre's commercial viability remained a thing of the past, the introduction of Inform (plus a variety of similar programming languages/compilers and interpreters such as TADS, Alan, Hugo, AGT, Adrift and Glulx) kick started an entire underground community that has continued to grow in size each year. The quality of many of today's text adventures even surpasses that of the best Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls titles. 8 S1 C. G1 N. x" n0 G3 D$ Z$ ]1 S$ {
The Best of 1994-2004' A0 @: U$ A& s6 ~8 C
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In 1995, the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup launched the first interactive fiction contest. It attracted a dozen entries, most of them developed with either Inform or TADS, and was the first indication that the genre was starting to enjoy a new lease of life. Some ten years later, the annual competition represents the pinnacle of achievement within the genre, now attracting anywhere up to fifty entries each year. Outside this competition, games are continually being developed and released by newcomers and old hands alike.
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Those who are new to the genre, or are rediscovering it for the first time since the late 1980s, may be a little overwhelmed by the existing online coverage. While there are a number of web sites that contain friendly beginner's guides, sooner or later one will need to navigate through one of the many mirrors of the official Interactive Fiction FTP archive. Trying to locate a specific file amidst the restrictive 8-letter filenames and cryptically named directories can be a little daunting without someone on hand to guide you through.
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To this end, I have collected together over 200 of the very best text adventures (or works of interactive fiction) of the last ten years in one downloadable collection. In order to help promote the genre as an author-driven one, I've arranged the games by author, rather than alphabetically by title or genre.8 Z: N8 P8 z; a2 W% E# I
This collection includes the latest (at the time or writing) Windows-based interpreters for all the major programming languages, including Inform/Glulx, TADS/TADS3, Hugo, Alan, AGT and Adrift, although the vast majority of games you'll find here are either Inform or TADS-based. Don't despair if you favour a different platform. For starters, all the data files included herein are compatible with any other interpreter for that particular language. The Beginner's Guide document, included in this collection, provides instructions for obtaining interpreters for other popular platforms, including Mac and Linux. A Google search for something like "inform interpreter <platform>" will doubtless turn up interpreters for slightly more obscure/uncommon hardware platforms.
If you want to play the creamiest cream of the crop, head into the "/games/modern masters" directory, where you'll find games from those authors considered to be the current masters of the genre. The main bulk of games lies in the "/games/best of 1994-2004" directory. These comprise of various competition winners, highly regarded runners up plus numerous other games that consistently earn themselves excellent reviews and heaps of praise.7 ?$ l( J& C+ n
There's something here for everyone, so don't be afraid to hunt around for something else if one particular title doesn't immediately grab you. You'll eventually stumble across something you enjoy. For the most part, however, pretty much every game available here is well worth investing your time in.
If you want to learn more about any given title, prior to playing, then head over to Baf's Guide to the IF Archive, which you can find at the following URL:0 }% `% ?' y0 {
http://wurb.com/if/index
Just type the game's title (or author) into one of the "quick search" boxes for more information. Feel free to use this web site to find more games -- you can browse through competition results, genres, platforms, ratings, authors, etc. The games represented in this collection are only the tip of the iceberg, so there's much, much more to explore. If you're feeling particularly adventurous (no pun intended), grab a development kit for one of the popular programming languages and write your own text adventure!. H2 S& u+ A+ P( w0 j
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I hope you enjoy this collection. If you've stumbled across it by some other means, then please feel free to burn/email a copy for/to a friend who might be interested. All the games here are considered freeware (with one or two shareware exceptions), so they may be freely distributed (but may NOT distributed commercially, so please don't seek to profit from them without each author's express written permission).
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