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Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?

#31

Post by ranuzz »

jph wrote: post #8

Zork was amazing, and was on the internet in the 1970's. Zork history is pretty amazing too: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29885/eaten-grue-brief-h... If you've ever seen source code with comment warnings such as "It is pitch black" or "You are likely to be eaten by a grue" or "You're in a maze of twisty little passages", then you've encountered some of Zork's famous lines.

oh awesome. I wasn't around when it was released but did play it on an emulator years after and was amazed at how magical it felt when the game understood what I was typing in plain English.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?

#33

Post by ranuzz »

klibertp wrote: post #28
mrob wrote: post #13

I'm not convinced that current generative AI is a good fit for this kind of game. IMO, the heart of the text adventure game is the world model, and LLMs are notably lacking here. It's hard to believe the game is simulating a real place when it doesn't even have object permanence. That said, my favorite human-authored text adventure game (I prefer that name to "interactive fiction" because I'm primarily looking for en…

> I'm not convinced that current generative AI is a good fit for this kind of game. IMO, the heart of the text adventure game is the world model, and LLMs are notably lacking here. It's hard to believe the game is simulating a real place when it doesn't even have object permanence. The mechanics still need to be coded; however, like the OP, I believe there's an enormous opportunity to enrich the game content with LLM…

yep, that's what I was thinking. A lot of filler can be written using llm.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?

#34

Post by ranuzz »

gjm11 wrote: post #29

The Gostak , by Carl Muckenhoupt. Its opening text reads as follows: Finally, here you are. At the delcot of tondam, where doshes deave. But the doshery lutt is crenned with glauds. Glauds! How rorm it would be to pell back to the bewl and distunk them, distunk the whole delcot, let the drokes discren them. But you are the gostak. The gostak distims the doshes. And no glaud will vorl them from you. And what you have…

amazing! it sure is creative. found the online version gonna give it a try.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?

#36

Post by heyitsguay »

mrob wrote: post #13

I'm not convinced that current generative AI is a good fit for this kind of game. IMO, the heart of the text adventure game is the world model, and LLMs are notably lacking here. It's hard to believe the game is simulating a real place when it doesn't even have object permanence. That said, my favorite human-authored text adventure game (I prefer that name to "interactive fiction" because I'm primarily looking for en…

Agreed about the importance of a world model. People get enamored with increasing text volume with LLMs, but unless it ties back into distinct game state interactions, players quickly recognize it as fluff and it ends up not really adding to the game.

It's not exactly a text-based adventure game (more text-based trading), but recently I spent some time messing around with integrating an LLM with a text-based world model. It's not 100% reliable, but I've had some pretty satisfying interactions with it: https://github.com/heyitsguay/trader

Basically, you're a trader traveling around a world buying and selling goods, but the economy is tuned such that you can only really get ahead by conning the NPCs >:D

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?

#37

Post by nathell »

Anchorhead, by Michael Gentry.

I’ve played the old, text-only, Z-code version back in high school, around 1997, and the experience was so vivid and immersive that to this day I can draw a map of Anchorhead from memory and recite the lineage of the Verlac family. I think it’s still my favourite game of all time (although I spent much more time on some others).

These days, an illustrated version can be bought on Steam for something like $10. Highly recommended!

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?

#38

Post by matthewsinclair »

I spent so much time playing HHGTTG [0] as a kid it is kinda embarrassing to admit to it these days. I loved all of the Infocom interactive fiction games. They were great. But very much from a different age of computing. I guess they are like the gaming equivalent of the difference between a book and a movie.

[0]: https://douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?

#39

Post by nathell »

gjm11 wrote: post #29

The Gostak , by Carl Muckenhoupt. Its opening text reads as follows: Finally, here you are. At the delcot of tondam, where doshes deave. But the doshery lutt is crenned with glauds. Glauds! How rorm it would be to pell back to the bewl and distunk them, distunk the whole delcot, let the drokes discren them. But you are the gostak. The gostak distims the doshes. And no glaud will vorl them from you. And what you have…

If you like it, be sure to also check out Andrew Plotkin’s ‘Lighan ses Lion’ [0], an entry in WalkthroughComp run by Emily Short [1]. It’s not a game, just a transcript of a fictitious game, but well worth checking out for a chuckle... or as a brain teaser.

Also, the Beast puzzle in ’The Edifice’ [2] by Lucian Paul Smith comes to mind.

[0]: https://www.eblong.com/zarf/zplet/lighan.html

[1]: https://www.ifwiki.org/WalkthroughComp

[2]: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=4tb9soabrb4apqzd

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?

#40

Post by lIl-IIIl »

It's been a long time since I've been into this, so my tastes might have changed.

But my favorites were:

Photopia, 9:05, and I-0 by Adam Cadre

The Enchanter trilogy. My first introduction to Enchanter was actually this unofficial sequel: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=x6ne0bbd2oqm6h3a, which I loved.

Slouching Toward Bedlam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slouching_Towards_Bedlam

If you like Zork, "Janitor" will make you laugh: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=utic1iedvvnnsf3a

Also have very fund memories of Humbug and Jacaranda Jim (wow it took me a very long internet search to find the names.. I forgot almost everything about what those games were about, and all I had to go on is that they were DOS executables and that the author was some anti-virus author).

https://grahamcluley.com/misc/jacaranda-jim/

https://grahamcluley.com/misc/humbug/

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