Text Adventure Games

This year I have been playing quite a few of the old Infocom text adventure games from the 80s. I found an internet sight that let's you play free in browser.

Just curious if any of you out there liked these kinds of games back in the 80s and also would you play new text games if there were any?

I never played the Infocom games, but I did play a few from Magnetic Scrolls, first of all Jinxter. They were really difficult - I loved them.

Got the complete Zork series from GOG, so maybe I should try them

pibbur who went south

I remember playing Zork 1&2 and Planetfall on my cousin's C64 when I was a kid. It was one of my first experiences with gaming on a computer. I loved Zork, and I can still remember some of the areas almost word for word.

I don't think I would go out of my way to play text-only games now though.

I played some of the more modernish Zork games, and felt that a lot of the setting was lost to me, since I wasn't familiar with the universe, lacking bacground from the text adventures.

pibbur who will be looking for a mailbox

My first Adventure game was (Colossal Cavern) Adventure on the Apple ][. Shortly after I was really into the Scott Adams adventures. About five or 6 years ago I finally solved Savage Island Part I.

The early Sierra games were text adventures, and it was there that Roberta Williams invented the flood fill for the adventure games that used graphics. It was a huge breakthrough for computers in general amd was the beginning of the end of strictly wireframe graphics.

When I found Scott Adams online we exchanged a few emails. Real nice guy, he lives in Wisconson now and on rare occasion puts out a new game. He claimed to have created the PC Game Industry for awhile but I think he's since retracted that statement. He has a point - most games at the time he created Pirate's Cove and Adventureland were free and mainframe only. Creating Zork like games on 8k and 6k machines was quite a hack.

I've played a couple of text adventures by Legend Entertainment, most by ex-Infocom devs. They put a quite comfortable mouse interface on top.

Reminds me that I still wanted to return to their masterpiece Eric the Unready.

Great thread and yes, absolutely - loved the genre as a kid. Interactive Fiction as it tends to get called these days.

There was an Australian company that released text/graphical adventures which I played on C64 all through primary school called "Mountain Valley Software".
They made a great variety of games of varying difficulty using the same engine and parser style which were highly entertaining to play. (Mystery Island, Oasis of Shalimar, Castle of Mydor, Volcano of Raka-tua…to name a few).
Funnily enough, I can still recall the solution to Mystery Island, I played it that much.

There was also Level 9 http://www.mobygames.com/company/level-9-computing-ltd/ and as Pibbur mentioned, Magnetic Scrolls (The Pawn and The Guild of Thieves) all of which I enjoyed but later on.

Admittedly I haven't played that many Infocom classics, (just Zork 1 and 2…didn't finish 3) but it's great that they're still being celebrated and heralded for creating such a vast and interesting genre.

Text-based single player games no. Text-based multi-player roleplaying games, YES if only there were any good ones these days.

I just finished a replay of Sorcerer. It's amazing how it's as if I never played it - totally forgot everything about it. Fun game though. I think I will play zork ii now.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I remember playing Zork 1&2 and Planetfall on my cousin's C64 when I was a kid. It was one of my first experiences with gaming on a computer. I loved Zork, and I can still remember some of the areas almost word for word.

I don't think I would go out of my way to play text-only games now though.

I remember being incensed at the injustice way back when, of being able to play the Infocom games on the Vic 20 of all things (with its mere 5k of RAM) and not on my beloved TI 99/4A (from the $50 rebate marketing push before TI declared bankruptcy) and its whopping 16k of RAM. Well, at least I could play Scott Adams' adventures on it. 2 word commands, but still fun.

I would soon have my cake and eat it too when I got my C64 a few years later.

IF still gets made these days and few years ago I gave it a shot. I decided on "The Dreamhold" - there is an IF contest every year and it got some good reviews. It also had a tutorial/guiding voice to help the IF challenged like myself.

It sorta had a cool Myst feel to it and was pretty enjoyable, but I eventually drifted away from it.

Finished Zork 2. I can't believe how much I'm really enjoying these text games. It's too bad small and light laptops weren't around when Infocom was popular because playing Sorcerer and Zork 2 on my couch with my small laptop was very engaging. I did have to map a little bit and doing that on the couch is a little bit of a pain but other than that it was great. I wonder if tablet devices could breathe new life into interactive fiction.

Playing these two games has rekindled my desire to make my own text adventure game. I'm seriously thinking of trying to make one for my two boys.

Gah! How could I have missed this thread?!

Being late to the party, I just note shortly, that text adventures were my first real love in computer games (even before CRPGs) and I remember spending countless hours in the 1980's with my C64 both playing and trying to make my own text adventures (got pretty far with it, in fact). Providing an extra level of difficulty was my very limited understanding of English back then, so in addition to trying to figure out the puzzles, I was fighting those early primitive parsers and struggling with a foreign language too. I still wonder how I had the patience for it, when there were so many simple shoot 'em ups and platformers around, that required only good hand-eye cordination and reflexes. I guess it was because of the way those text adventures sparked my imagination and how they had interesting exploration and sense of adventure to them. Plus back then (and even now) even the best game graphics were a poor second to a few lines of well-written descriptive text and an active imagination. Ahhh, the memories.

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
Playing these two games has rekindled my desire to make my own text adventure game. I'm seriously thinking of trying to make one for my two boys.

If you're going to try make a text adventure game (or interactive fiction, as it is called nowdays), let me recommend you try either of these languages/programs to help you make it:
- Inform 7 (based on Infocom's text adventure language): http://inform7.com/
- TADS 3: http://www.tads.org/

Also, this is a good site for news and articles on adventure games: http://www.brasslantern.org/

Originally Posted by Lurking Grue
If you're going to try make a text adventure game (or interactive fiction, as it is called nowdays), let me recommend you try either of these languages/programs to help you make it:
- Inform 7 (based on Infocom's text adventure language): http://inform7.com/
- TADS 3: http://www.tads.org/

Also, this is a good site for news and articles on adventure games: http://www.brasslantern.org/

Thank you very much for all that information!!! I will certainly check them out.

In the meantime, I have created most of my toolset (about 75% of it) for creating my own text adventure. I will be able to pull off a lot of what Infocom games could with only a few exceptions - at least with my first version anyway. I'm building the game with a program I'm too embarrased to say… but it is one that I know inside and out. And it works pretty well and let's me focus more on the game creating part than the 'build the toolset and UI parts.'

I never could get into the text based games back then.

The two I had that I remember were Zork and Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy.

I need some sort of graphics.

Originally Posted by Toff
I need some sort of graphics.

That might be the case for me now, but back then I found text adventures far more immersive than the simplistic visuals of the time.

The later text adventures had graphics. Often very good graphics for their time.

Not only the later ones. Mystery House was a groundbreaking title with it's simplistic ASCII pictures.

A couple of new upcoming text adventure titles look promising:

Cypher: Cyberpunk Text Adventure
http://youtu.be/AoBe3uiBvAw
http://www.cabrerabrothers.com/

Legends of the Old West
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile…s/?id=92917833

My first (and only) text-based adventure, the original Adventure game. "You're in a maze of twisty passages, all the same" as the dot matrix printer goes "rat-a-tat-tat." Wonderful stuff.