Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Great text based games to play?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 161 posts

Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?

#31

Post by ghaff »

kianryan wrote: post #25

Infocom adventure games are some of the grand-daddy's of text adventures. Zork is by far the most well known, but also pretty infamous are Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Godesses' of Phobos and A Mind Forever Voyaging. As a warm-up, I'd recommend Moonmist. It's a mystery game listed as a "Beginner" game, and is great for introducing elements of the Infocom system. The feelies are available to view here: ht…

Planetfall is another by the same author as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Godesses of Phobos and A Mind Forever Voyaging. AMFV doesn't get the love it deserves. It is more about real interactive fiction than puzzle solving. Hitchhiker's is enticing but pretty difficult--not as big an issue perhaps these days as it's so easy to "cheat" if you get stuck as opposed to calling the author :-)

Trinity is another good one. As is The Lurking Horror--set at a thinly-veiled MIT campus where many of the authors were from.

Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?

#33

Post by someguyorother »

raldi wrote: post #20

Spider and Web, https://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/tangle/ Without giving anything away: It does something brilliant that wouldn't be possible in any other storytelling medium.

I think you could do most of it as a point and click. Perhaps with the exception of that one command (if you know what I mean) because the mere possibility of it would be revealing in a point-and-click. But you could do that in a Sierra AGI type graphical adventure because that still has a parser.

On topic, I would myself recommend Coloratura - https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=g0fl99ovcrq2sqzk - for the sense of wonder/unusual protagonist.

Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?

#34

Post by mindcrime »

jolmg wrote: post #23

Pretty sure the Archlinux official repos had a package called "bsdgames" or similar that included a game like that. It's not there now. Maybe it got split up or sent to the AUR.

bsdgames is usually available on most *nix type OS's and probably some non-*nix ones as well. There's all sorts of neat stuff in that package:

https://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/BSD_games

Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?

#35

Post by pjc50 »

kianryan wrote: post #25

Infocom adventure games are some of the grand-daddy's of text adventures. Zork is by far the most well known, but also pretty infamous are Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Godesses' of Phobos and A Mind Forever Voyaging. As a warm-up, I'd recommend Moonmist. It's a mystery game listed as a "Beginner" game, and is great for introducing elements of the Infocom system. The feelies are available to view here: ht…

> 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.

Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?

#37

Post by ghaff »

pjc50 wrote: post #35
kianryan wrote: post #25

Infocom adventure games are some of the grand-daddy's of text adventures. Zork is by far the most well known, but also pretty infamous are Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Godesses' of Phobos and A Mind Forever Voyaging. As a warm-up, I'd recommend Moonmist. It's a mystery game listed as a "Beginner" game, and is great for introducing elements of the Infocom system. The feelies are available to view here: ht…

> 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.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?

#38

Post by II2II »

jolmg wrote: post #23

Pretty sure the Archlinux official repos had a package called "bsdgames" or similar that included a game like that. It's not there now. Maybe it got split up or sent to the AUR.

It is bsd-games in the community repository, and trek in AUR. The bsd-games package includes Adventure, which is the traditional text adventure game. Those packages also include a collection of other text based games that demonstrate how varied text based games can be.

Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?

#39

Post by ghaff »

tmtvl wrote: post #27

The Zork Anthology is available on GOG ( https://www.gog.com/en/game/the_zork_anthology ), there are also a few of them on IA like Star Trek - The Kobayashi Alternative ( https://archive.org/details/msdos_Star_Trek_-_The_Kobayashi_... ). Some of my favourites are Enchanter and the great classic Planetfall.

>great classic Planetfall

There's an extremely inside joke about me in Planetfall relating to the author's rather odd sense of humor. And, no, I'm not going to reveal it :-)

Planetfall is probably one of the more accessible Infocom games even if less-known or less name recognition.

Re: Ask HN: Great text based games to play?

#40

Post by Humdeee »

PenguinCoder wrote: post #4

Look for MUDs and MOOs[1] I've liked and played in the past a lot of these text based role playing games, especially when I was on a shittier dial up connection or remote satellite connections. I liked Aardwolf and Realms of Despair the most. I've played the IRE games like Achaea and Aetolia way too much. While those two definitely have a great lore and many active players, I have always loathed IREs pay to win "cred…

I loved playing Aardwolf years and years ago. I was a big fan of godwars type mostly. What a flashback!
Post reply on HN