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Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?
51–60 of 78 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?
#52During the pandemic I decided to work through Zork, and ended up completing the first three Zork games with minimal "looking things up" (actually, much to my chagrin I had to look up something precisely once per game, and in each case it was a small puzzle right near the and of the game, almost perfect!). I'll go ahead and second Planetfall though, which I saw someone else mention. For anyone else curious, I would pu…
Out of curiosity, do you think you realized any benefit from some of the puzzles entering into common knowledge by now? And/or the Seinfeld Effect?
I could see how that would be true. By on the other hand in objective terms it’s pretty obscure pop culture knowledge so could also see it providing zero benefit
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?
#53I'm fond of Moonmist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonmist), a haunted mansion whodunnit, because my mother introduced me to it when I was very young.
I learned years later that the story changes according to your answer when a character asks you for your favorite color. It's such a simple trick but it keeps your friends from spoiling it for you.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?
#54During the pandemic I decided to work through Zork, and ended up completing the first three Zork games with minimal "looking things up" (actually, much to my chagrin I had to look up something precisely once per game, and in each case it was a small puzzle right near the and of the game, almost perfect!). I'll go ahead and second Planetfall though, which I saw someone else mention. For anyone else curious, I would pu…
Planetfall was great, it’s the only infocom game I managed to complete. I think I might enjoy a mind forever voyaging more now than I did at the time, but I remember being terribly confused. Hitchhiker’s Guide is so manifestly unfair that it loops back around to being funny again, but I couldn’t even manage the babelfish, so I didn’t get much play out of it.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?
#55Kubernetes.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?
#56Either the classic "A Mind Forever Voyaging" or the Lovecraftian "Anchorhead" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mind_Forever_Voyaging https://store.steampowered.com/app/726870/Anchorhead/ If you want to live these games vicariously I can also recommend the Eaten by a Grue podcast over at https://monsterfeet.com/grue/
I am Perry Sim. The combination in that story between calculating the future in simulation and the outcomes of the project were chilling.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?
#57It's worth giving Aisle a try. It's from Sam Barlow (creator of Her Story).
You only have one command, and then the story "ends". It's an interesting way to tell a narrative. You can feel the DNA of Her Story in there.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?
#58I'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…
Perhaps the game could be developed collaboratively online, so interested contributors could add dialog for the villagers and other characters, instead of trying to just outsource to hallucinating LLMs.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?
#59We are going through something of a golden age of text-based games. There are still plenty of parser-based games being created but choice-based games have been growing in popularity and complexity over the last few years. And yes, people have been experimenting with generative AI. There are several competitions each year for new text based games and an active community. https://intfiction.org Tooting my own horn, if…
Hi Andrew, just wanted to me and my family really enjoyed Voyage of the Marigold! It's such an excellent little game. We played through it a couple of time, each time discovering new things. Thank you for writing it.
I've played Star Trek: Resurgence a couple of months ago, and I must say I enjoyed your game much more than Resurgence, which is incredible considering that it was written just by you. IMO your game stays very close to spirit of the classic Trek I grew up with.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?
#60We are going through something of a golden age of text-based games. There are still plenty of parser-based games being created but choice-based games have been growing in popularity and complexity over the last few years. And yes, people have been experimenting with generative AI. There are several competitions each year for new text based games and an active community. https://intfiction.org Tooting my own horn, if…
I don't want generative AI, but an interactive fiction with speech recognition to make the game be a spoken word game would be interesting. Like Bandersnatch.