41–50 of 78 posts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...
I think the game came with some serious crutch / walkthrough otherwise I'd probably have never gotten my robe on, much less worked out the babel fish.
I suppose it was the inspiration for me to finally read it, though. So that paid off. :)
I'm a fan of the Thy Dungeonman series. Still haven't gotten ye flask...
There are several competitions each year for new text based games and an active community.
Tooting my own horn, if you like retro Star Trek-like things then here is a short somewhat randomized choice-based text game I entered in a competition a few months back.
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…
https://ifdb.org/search?searchfor=author%3AChandler+Groover
Someone else mentioned Emily Short and there are also fantastically written games like Sunless Seas/Skies.
https://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2F...
https://store.steampowered.com/app/376240/Hadean_Lands/
You are an alchemist whose spacecraft crashed at a nexus between worlds. You need to discover and perform alchemical rituals to explore and try to escape.
It has some great quality of life features, such as allowing you to re-perform any ritual you have successfully completed in a single command, and allowing you to recall any significant information you have deduced.
On top of this, some great writing and a very strange atmosphere.
Multi user dungeons are also fun! I'm working on one right now but more cyoa focused.
I think that with the current state of the art I'd be wary of using gen AI for the output ... but for making the input more accommodating of actual human vocabulary and grammar (instead of the usual limitations) I do think that LLMs could be amazing.
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 y…