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Haunt, the 70s text adventure game, is now playable on a website

haunt.madebywindmill.com

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Re: Haunt, the 70s text adventure game, is now playable on a website

#21

Post by waisbrot »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #13
kqr wrote: post #8

Many, many historic text adventures are available in the browser, thanks to the Parchment interpreter. You can find them on the IFDB, and click the link to play online. One of my favourites among the classics are Plundered Hearts[1]. There's also a lively community of people who make modern text adventures. These tend to be shorter and more well designed than many of the cruel games of the past. My all-time favourite…

My favorite of all time is "Ad Verbum". > With the cantankerous Wizard of Wordplay evicted from his mansion, the worthless plot can now be redeveloped. The city regulations declare, however, that the rip-down job can't proceed until all the items within have been removed. It's full of delightful wordplay and puzzles that play with the text-adventure medium, constraining what words you can use. Highly recommended.

"Spider and Web" is quite short, pretty easy, mostly gives good hints. A great starter-game, I think. I also love Zarf's writing.

https://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/tangle/

Re: Haunt, the 70s text adventure game, is now playable on a website

#22

Post by mrob »

waisbrot wrote: post #21
JoshTriplett wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite of all time is "Ad Verbum". > With the cantankerous Wizard of Wordplay evicted from his mansion, the worthless plot can now be redeveloped. The city regulations declare, however, that the rip-down job can't proceed until all the items within have been removed. It's full of delightful wordplay and puzzles that play with the text-adventure medium, constraining what words you can use. Highly recommended.

"Spider and Web" is quite short, pretty easy, mostly gives good hints. A great starter-game, I think. I also love Zarf's writing. https://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/tangle/

"Spider and Web" is famous because it's a subversion of genre norms. It does not play fair by traditional text adventure game standards. I don't recommend it for beginners, because other than the central gimmick, the puzzles are not particularly interesting. You won't appreciate it unless you know how unusual it is.

And even if you do know how unusual it is, you won't necessarily like it. I can't go into detail without spoilers, but I can compare it to an analogous situation with the Fighting Fantasy gamebook "Creature of Havoc", which is, depending on your point of view, either a work of genius or a broken mess. You opinion of "Spider and Web" will likely match that of "Creature of Havoc".

Re: Haunt, the 70s text adventure game, is now playable on a website

#24

Post by butz »

kqr wrote: post #8

Many, many historic text adventures are available in the browser, thanks to the Parchment interpreter. You can find them on the IFDB, and click the link to play online. One of my favourites among the classics are Plundered Hearts[1]. There's also a lively community of people who make modern text adventures. These tend to be shorter and more well designed than many of the cruel games of the past. My all-time favourite…

Not sure if it qualifies as a real "text adventure", but I recently played "Type Help" (https://william-rous.itch.io/type-help) and was unexpectedly amazed, how such simple interface, with very few text commands, can lead player through very intriguing story. Will be looking into more IF games now.

Re: Haunt, the 70s text adventure game, is now playable on a website

#25

Post by nosrepa »

kqr wrote: post #8

Many, many historic text adventures are available in the browser, thanks to the Parchment interpreter. You can find them on the IFDB, and click the link to play online. One of my favourites among the classics are Plundered Hearts[1]. There's also a lively community of people who make modern text adventures. These tend to be shorter and more well designed than many of the cruel games of the past. My all-time favourite…

A great modern text adventure is roadwarden. You can't play it in a terminal as it does have a GUI and images for the set pieces, but it's still a text adventure at heart.

Re: Haunt, the 70s text adventure game, is now playable on a website

#27

Post by ZeroGravitas »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #13
kqr wrote: post #8

Many, many historic text adventures are available in the browser, thanks to the Parchment interpreter. You can find them on the IFDB, and click the link to play online. One of my favourites among the classics are Plundered Hearts[1]. There's also a lively community of people who make modern text adventures. These tend to be shorter and more well designed than many of the cruel games of the past. My all-time favourite…

My favorite of all time is "Ad Verbum". > With the cantankerous Wizard of Wordplay evicted from his mansion, the worthless plot can now be redeveloped. The city regulations declare, however, that the rip-down job can't proceed until all the items within have been removed. It's full of delightful wordplay and puzzles that play with the text-adventure medium, constraining what words you can use. Highly recommended.

Counterfeit Monkey similarly fuses classic text adventure mechanics with a wordplay mechanic where you can transform objects by adding and removing letters to solve puzzles.

Re: Haunt, the 70s text adventure game, is now playable on a website

#28

Post by oersted »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #2

I got on to a bus then nothing happened/worked. Look, I think modern games with giant GO HERE arrows are dumb, but these games were an exercise in patience beyond necessary.

It should have taken you to the mansion. Yes I agree that the game is unnecessarily obtuse, but the vibe-coded interpreter itself is rather buggy too. I've had several crashes, resets, and state corruptions.

Sometimes it's a bit hard to distinguish between a bug and archaic design :)

Re: Haunt, the 70s text adventure game, is now playable on a website

#29

Post by joongix »

kqr wrote: post #6
joongix wrote: post #4

[flagged]

Funny -- I feel almost the opposite way! In modern games there's a very small set of action one can take in any situation (hence why game controllers can get by with so few buttons) whereas in text adventures, there are several dozens of plausible actions in any situation, down to details like "smell photo" or "break frame". Sure, a modern game could implement breaking the picture frame as a narrative element, but th…

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