For something that’s not a text adventure (the best of which are great), there’s also nethack. Be warned, it’s insanely difficult and a massive time suck.
Skip the official/mainline game, go directly to the fork with usability enhancements.
Ask HN: Great text based games to play?
141–150 of 161 posts
Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?
#142Gemstone (currently Gemstone IV) is an online MUD that has been around for 30+ years and has a pretty thriving community and very active development as well as strong gamemaster interaction. https://www.play.net/gs4/
There is a free subscription but it is quite limited compared to the paid membership. I used to play back in the mid 90s and resubscribed a few years ago because I have found nothing else nearly as complex or immersive. Steep learning curve to start but folks are often willing to help others learn. Check out the learning wiki at https://gswiki.play.net/Main_Page
Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?
#143For something that’s not a text adventure (the best of which are great), there’s also nethack. Be warned, it’s insanely difficult and a massive time suck.
Skip the official/mainline game, go directly to the fork with usability enhancements. https://github.com/search?q=nethack4 http://nethack4.org
Also Evilhack has a lot of improvements and more interesting gameplay than vanilla Nethack. I would definitely recommend trying it.
Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
They also sometimes included essentially proto-copy protection, e.g. you need this decoder wheel to solve some puzzle--which of course worked a lot better pre-Web. A lot of the original packaging could be rather unique generally but eventually they ended up standardizing for retail shelving.
I actually am from the box/manual generation and never heard it called 'feelies'.. I remember to register some games i would have to look up charts or keys in the manual, or on page numbers
IIRC 'feelies' was a term coined at Infocom by Brian Moriarty for the extra gewgaws that wound up in the boxes. I don't think the term was used much elsewhere in the industry, even though it did become part of the general gamer vernacular at the time.
Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?
#145Now largely forgotten, UK company Magnetic Scrolls produced some of the best examples in the genre - but it might take some work to get them running, as they had (non-interactive) graphics and a simple menu/windowing system which were state of the art at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_Scrolls The Pawn and Corruption received especially high praise. Hard mode: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and…
Strand Games have remastered some of the original Magnetic Scrolls games (The Pawn, The Guild of Thieves and Jinxter so far) for modern PCs.
Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> feelies This is a term we're going to have to explain to the younger generation: when games were shipped in boxes, those contained at minimum a disc and a printed manual, but some companies came up with gimmick items you could put in the box and "feel", to enhance your immersion in the game. I still have my Ultima 6 "moonstone" and cloth map somewhere.
I recall this being a term in paper-age SF, a fututristic trope of what mass entertainment might become. A “feely” was a sort of movie that involved touch. It was almost always described somewhat disapprovingly, as a sign of future decadence.
It was in Brave New World, and I think originated there. The Feelies are also a jangle-rock band.
Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?
#147I help run the Interactive Fiction Database. https://ifdb.org/ I think that our list of games ranked by review scores is certainly the finest repository of extraordinary text-based games in the world. https://ifdb.org/search?browse Every game on that list is fantastic. For your reading convenience, the top ten are: Counterfeit Monkey , Anchorhead , Superluminal Vagrant Twin , 80 Days , Hadean Lands , Lost Pig , The W…
Unable to play any of these online in Chrome on Windows - first 3 games I tried fail to load with the message TypeError: failed to fetch.
Update looks like it's timing out so maybe server is getting hammered.
Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?
#148May I recommend bitburner?
> Bitburner is a programming-based incremental game that revolves around hacking and cyberpunk themes.
https://github.com/danielyxie/bitburner https://danielyxie.github.io/bitburner/
Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?
#149Gemstone (currently Gemstone IV) is an online MUD that has been around for 30+ years and has a pretty thriving community and very active development as well as strong gamemaster interaction. https://www.play.net/gs4/ There is a free subscription but it is quite limited compared to the paid membership. I used to play back in the mid 90s and resubscribed a few years ago because I have found nothing else nearly as compl…
I learned about Gemstone from this great article by historian and former player Benjamin Breen:
http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/10/dont-cry-for-me-elanth...
Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recall this being a term in paper-age SF, a fututristic trope of what mass entertainment might become. A “feely” was a sort of movie that involved touch. It was almost always described somewhat disapprovingly, as a sign of future decadence.
It was in Brave New World, and I think originated there. The Feelies are also a jangle-rock band.
Oh, so that’s it. I couldn’t recall which one.