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Ask HN: Great text based games to play?

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

#101

Post by amw »

dfabulich wrote: post #73

I 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…

I just want to pipe in with a personal standout from when I used to play more IF, which is _King of Shreds and Patches_, Lovecraft in the London of Shakespeare, and worth a playthrough.

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

#102

Post by jamesgreenleaf »

quadcore wrote: post #44

I just asked chatGPT if it could act as game master for a text-based rpg and it says "sure" and proceeded to start the story telling. Amazing.

I just did the same thing. It sent me on a campaign to recover an ancient artifact, but it played out the whole scenario for me without stopping to ask what decisions I would make, and there was zero conflict along the way. Nice descriptions of the forest and labyrinth my character had to navigate though.

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

#103

Post by buttocks »

One avenue for text games is the BBS “door” games of the 1990s, which you can still find online today (see: telnetbbsguide.com). Trade Wars 2002, Legend of the Red Dragon, and Barren Realms Elite are some classics. These are turns-based games where you log in each day to play your set of turns. It can be addictive.

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

#104

Post by kingsfoil »

Zork is of course the quintessential TBAG, alongside Hitchikers.

A couple of other good ones: Vespers: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=6dj2vguyiagrhvc2 9:05: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=qzftg3j8nh5f34i2 Slouching Towards Bedlam: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=032krqe6bjn5au78 (I haven't actually played this one but it's on my list)

I usually play Zork using the Rezrov project: https://metacpan.org/dist/Games-Rezrov/view/rezrov

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

#105

Post by redeux »

buttocks wrote: post #103

One avenue for text games is the BBS “door” games of the 1990s, which you can still find online today (see: telnetbbsguide.com). Trade Wars 2002, Legend of the Red Dragon, and Barren Realms Elite are some classics. These are turns-based games where you log in each day to play your set of turns. It can be addictive.

Trade Wars was a fantastic game, but that last time I played about a decade ago a lot of people had turned to automation which took a lot of the fun out of it, for me personally.

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

#106

Post by Aeolun »

dfabulich wrote: post #73

I 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…

Just want to agree with the fun that ‘80 days’ is :)

There’s also ‘Magium’, which is not really a game so much as interactive fiction.

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

#108

Post by Diederich »

tmcneal wrote: post #46

If you're a fan of Tolkien, check out MUME (Multi-user Middle Earth), a MUD that's been online since 1990: https://mume.org/ Its unofficial community site is http://elvenrunes.com/ which has hosted forums and player-submitted "logs" (text logs of PvP fights) for over 20 years.

I played MUME a ton in the mid to late 1990s, and still login once in a while.

It's truly a hidden gem. Walking around the world often feels like being inside a Tolkien novel.

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

#109

Post by prewett »

wolverine876 wrote: post #26

Some great resources: * Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB) https://ifdb.org/ * IFWiki https://www.ifwiki.org/ * Playfic https://playfic.com/ * The Interactive Fiction Competition https://ifcomp.org/ * XYZZY Awards http://xyzzyawards.org/ * electronic book review http://electronicbookreview.com/ * Electronic Literature Organization https://eliterature.org/

If you reference XYZZY, you need to suggest Colossal Cave! I think this is the text game that inspired all the others (and the only game I've ever played on VAX/VMS). You may be able to run it with `advent` on Linux. There used to be an Emacs command for it (maybe `M-x adventure`?), but I don't remember it and I can't seem to find it on Google. It looks like there's also a Python version at https://github.com/brandon-rhodes/python-adventure
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