#text adventures

[prokopetz]

I'm not usually much for let's-plays of video games, but I have a special weakness for folks who are only familiar with the concept of interactive fiction via Andrew Hussie's parodies of the medium giving 1980s text adventures a try and discovering that they were actually Like That.

[cosmic-frost-main]

Susie: Sighs "Sorry, doll. I can't do tonight as I'm on my period."

Audrey: "Oh it's okay, I've eaten human flesh before."

Susie:

[arconinternet]

Bureaucracy (In-browser, DOS, Infocom, 1987)

You can play this lesser-known Douglas Adams text adventure here.

You'll need the included 'feelies', which you can find here or here.

You can find my post about the fan-remake of his more famous text adventure here. And this post will reveal why the game contains a reference to aye-aye lemurs.

[psilocervidae]

Why you should give Text Adventure games a try (and how to do so)

There is not nearly enough love for Text Adventure Games here on Tumblr. Or anywhere really. But especially here, I feel like you guys would really get a kick out of them. Here's why:

(quick note, I'm gonna be using the words Text Adventure and Interactive Fiction pretty interchangeably here. Technically that's not perfectly accurate, they are technically different things, but I don't care to explain the difference Just roll with it.)

So

Do you like weird short stories told through unconventional mediums? That's most of what Interactive Fiction is

You like story based video games but hate the finicky combat? Congrats, there is literally no combat skill required beyond the ability to type "hit guard with crowbar"

Blind or visually impaired? Since these games are (with a few exceptions) entirely text based, they work great with a screen reader!

Sick of profit motivated AAA titles with no creative integrity? Well, these games are almost always produced by a single nerd (usually a horrid amalgamation of computer geek and literature geek) with no budget and no responsibilities of the product they're making. And they're usually not paid, since these games are free. Text Adventure is a labour of love, and in most games you can feel the care and effort the creator has put into the game.

Sick of spending $20-70 on a video game? Lucky you, I've been playing TA for years and I have not spent a cent in doing so (Fallen Londen will try to make you pay. But Fallen Londen sucks and is run by bigots. Fuck Fallen London.) Games are either available free on a browser, or as free, small downloadable files (most of which can be played using the Parchment Interpreter)

Wish you read more, but reliant on the quick dopamine of digital media? Well now you can read while also being an active participant in the narrative.

Bad at puzzles? Me too! Games from the 80s and 90s, as well as more famous newer games, have walkthroughs and hints easily available online. Newer games tend to either have a "hint" command, or come with a walkthrough file.

Do you like weird surrealist horror? Well there's... A lot of it.

Okay, but where do I start?

So there are two types of text adventure. The one you might be more accustomed to, and which sees more modern use, is called Hypertext Interactive Fiction. The other is called Parser Interactive Fiction, it's generally seen in older games, as well as games that are larger, feature more puzzles, or involve more exploration.

Hypertext games

Basically, the game will give you a scenario, and then a list of options (hypertext links) to click on to decide what to do next. These are usually more beginner friendly since you don't need to fiddle around with parsers, but personally I find them a bit limiting. Nonetheless, if you're new to Text Adventure, they're a good place to start.

Some of my favourites hypertext games (summaries in green)

My Father's Long, Long Legs is an interactive horror story about family, unease, and loss. Really more of a story than a game, but still good. Very nice use of sound. It does have some visual aspects, so this one might not work with screen readers

Scene Kid Simulator is pretty much what it says on the tin. A cute, nostalgic, coming-of-age slice of life story from the POV of a 2000s scene preteen. Nothing special, but a fun time.

The Uncle Who Works at Nintendo is a strange, unconventional, witty, and heartfelt horror game. Your friend has an uncle who he says works for Nintendo. You're about to meet him, or so he says. A fun and spooky look at childhood, childhood friendships, and childhood lies.

16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonald's is... A joy to play. The name says it all honestly. Witty, charming, tense, engaging, and emotional when it wants to be. I actually found this one through a lucky Tumblr Blaze, which makes sense since this is perfectly suited to Tumblr sensibilities. This one has more puzzle aspects than most hypertext games, but it's still relatively easy and beginner friendly. You're a vampire hunter. It's your night off, and you go to McDonald's. But there's something wrong with the customer sitting beside you...

Toadstools is a game about hunting mushrooms. You have trespassed in a national park and you are wandering blindly through the woods looking for rare fungi. Good luck :)

Parser games

Okay these fuckers are where I really get excited. These games have the classic flashing cursor line where you input text like "go north", "search bookshelf", or "kiss my husband", and the game's rudimentary AI parses your input to decide what happens next. These are my favourites. They really allow you the feeling of exploring the game world, immerse you in the protagonist and the story, using just text on a screen and simple inputs. This does make them considerably more difficult, since a) you need to decide the right way to phrase what you want to do, otherwise it won't work, and b) more possibilities means more chances to mess up and miss things. Unlike video games, your cursor won't light up when you see something important, you'll have to search stuff and work things out on your own But, in my opinion, it is so, so worth it. Summaries in red

The first text adventure game I ever played was One Eye Open. It's an extremely graphic and gory medical horror game (although I would consider it tasteful medical horror, in that it never derives horror from medical procedures, disability, or ooOoHh gross scary sick people) You play as a volunteer test subject for a medical research facility, having to unravel the mystery of the hospital's bloody past. It's good. It's fun. It's tense. It has some really dumb mechanics. Don't play if you're sensitive to descriptions of gore, death, or corpses. This one doesn't have a walkthrough, but I've played it enough times to know the puzzles by heart, DM me if you need help.

Anchorhead is possibly my favourite piece of interactive fiction I've ever played. It's incredible. You play as a newlywed woman, moving to the small seaside town of Anchorhead after your husband Michael inherited a mansion from some distant relatives. There's something wrong with the town though. There's definitely something wrong with your husband's mysterious ancestors. And you're starting to think that there might be something strange happening to Michael. Get ready for some wonderfully atmospheric and immersive Lovecraftian horror, action sequences that are incredibly vibrant for Text Adventure, and a super compelling mystery that the game lets you work out on your own. The puzzles here are hard. I'm not gonna lie, I used a walkthrough at several points during this game. But my god it's worth it. Big massive huge content warning here for mentions of incest, sexual assault, and pedophilia. Not in excess, and nothing explicit, but it will be mentioned as part of the story.

Little Blue Men is a short, strange, sci-fi-ish horror-ish comedy-ish game by the same author as Anchorhead, though the two games are wildly different. You are an office worker. Cope with it. Take The Stanley Parable, Stella Firma, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, mash 'em together, and you have Little Blue Men. It's bizarre. It's evocative. It's pretty darn good.

Coloratura is a strangely beautiful sci-fi story. You're a weird little alien blob. You've been separated from your home and are trapped aboard a human spaceship. You need to get home, need to make the humans understand in the only ways you can: color and song.

Slouching Towards Bedlam is a brilliant little steampunk game about language, choice, cults, Armageddon, and triangles. This game has multiple endings. It's neat in that none of the endings are really "good" or "bad". Rather, you need to decide where you stand, and act in the way you think is best.

The Lurking Horror is the grandparent of horror interactive fiction, released in the late 80s. You're a tech student in university. Something more than electricity is powering the school's computers. Find it, but don't die along the way. Besides the comically archaic descriptions of computers, this game doesn't feel all that dated. It's tricky, puzzle-heavy, and charmingly surreal. (Fun fact, this game and another old TA game called Zork inspired the "darkness kills you" mechanic which would later be popularized in Don't Starve!)

Nine Lives is a very short, very weird, very cartoony game where you play a cat that is very bad at staying alive. Cw for non-graphic but repeated cat death.

Spider and Web is one of the most ingenious uses of Text Adventure as a medium I've ever seen. It's famous for having one of, if not the singular best puzzles in video game history. It's tense, it's fast-paced, it introduces you to mechanics slowly and then lets you test them out on your own. I won't spoil too much, but you play as a very badass spy, reliving your brilliant heist during an interrogation. This game even features a character destined to be a Tumblr Sexyman. It really has it all.

If anyone actually read through all this, and has even considered playing any of these games, I'll be a little surprised. This post turned out a lot longer than I wanted it to be. It was meant to just be "hey interactive fiction is a cool and underappreciated medium, go check it out", but this is my special interest, and not one I often get to talk about. I guess this was me infodumping to the only place that will listen, the empty void of the internet. But these games are fun. And they do not get enough love. Text games are a dying genre, if they're not dead already. Give them a chance, show them some love.

[gamesthatwerent]

40+ Years Lost: Stairway to the Stars (Commodore VIC-20) Finally Recovered!

Lost for 40+ years, we're extremely happy to announce that Stairway to the Stars (#Commodore #VIC20) - 3rd game in Mike Taylor's Magic Mirror series has finally been saved. This is thanks to phenomenal work of Tommi Lempinen & Tom Roger Skauen for #GTW

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2025/08/40-years-lost-stairway-to-the-stars-commodore-vic-20-finally-recovered/

[electronickingdomfox]

The Kobayashi Alternative (or the 1000 deaths of James T. Kirk)

Finished this game (a text adventure) recently, and oh God, what a glorious mess it was!

The frame story (which only appears in the manual, by the way) places you as a Starfleet Academy cadet, playing a simulation of one of Kirk's famous missions, as a sort of alternative to the infamous Kobayashi Maru test (hence the title). But the actual game revolves around Kirk's mission, trying to find Sulu, who has disappeared in the Trianguli sector. And you're given complete freedom to explore the area and planets in whatever order you choose, and to mess the game in whatever way you want.

And that's my main point of interest here. I've witnessed so, SO many deaths for poor Kirk, because of my ill-advised decisions... Falling into craters, being run over by lava from a (not-so-extinct) volcano, sinking in quicksand, being eaten by a dragon, falling into a moat (and then being eaten), beaming down to a planet with a temperature of -250° in just my uniform (because why not?), or the more gruesome version of beaming down to a no-atmosphere planet without a spacesuit. It's also possible to return to Earth without finishing the mission, just like that, which gets you court-martialed. Or beam down some unsuspecting redshirt to a dangerous area, and to his unavoidable death (which here causes a Game-Over, very much unlike the series). Want to swear at someone until the crew arrests you for bad conduct? Check. *For the record, these are the swear words I found to work: bitch, bastard, suck, c*ck, f*ck, ass (use them in any combination you see fit). There's also many crazy things to do, which don't necessarily lead to a game over. Leave poor Scotty stranded on a planet and depart without him (good luck when you need something from Engineering). Or make Spock mindmeld with clay. Or tell McCoy to enter Spock's quarters, and just leave him there for the rest of the game. There's a planet with aliens that are offended by clothes and will put you in jail for wearing them (well, this is inaccurate, because James Tits-Out Kirk would definitely beam down naked, if it would help the mission... and make sure to video-call Spock right before doing so).

Anyway, despite being a primitive game from 1985, I'm impressed by the sheer amount of possibilities and open-ended options in this game. The graphic adventures from the 90's (25th Anniversary, and specially Judgement Rites) are much, much better games overall. But I wanted to talk a bit about these, more obscure text adventures.

If anyone's interested in playing them, I've found the best way is through this custom installer here, which includes all three adventures: https://collectionchamber.blogspot.com/p/star-trek-first-contact.html It automatically runs the games through an emulator for modern systems, and has the last version of Kobayashi Alternative (which is very important, since previous versions were buggy as hell). First Contact uses the same engine of Kobayashi, but since it's a much linear and smaller game, it's obvious a lot of options go un-used. The Promethean Prophecy is a more traditional text adventure. It has some ingenious puzzles, but I found its typical plot of "go there and collect gems" less Trek-like.

[smbhax]

Masters of the Universe: The Super Adventure

[cartridgeconverter]

Might as well put this here -- this is one of my favorite interactive fiction games I've played so far, based on Turandot, and honestly it's even reshaped my view of the opera quite a bit.

https://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2019/Turandot/turandot.html