Ben's Interactive Fiction Page
Huh? What's Interactive Fiction?

Back before computers had decent graphics, people wrote adventure games that were purely based in textual conversation. It was sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure book: you move around to different locations, receiving descriptions of what you can see and interact with, solving puzzles, and so on.

The interactive fiction community has a good introduction to the genre. It's somewhere between game and a work of fiction. If the writing and characters are good enough, some games approach 'novel' status; but it's the interactivity that makes it exciting. You should also read the wikipedia entry on interactive fiction.

Can I Still Play These Games in the 21st Century?

Sure! The original company which sold text adventures on store shelves in the 1980's (Infocom) actually designed a virtual machine for their games to run on. Much like Java, all they had to do was port their "z-machine" emulator once to each platform (C64, PET, TRS-80, Apple II, IBM, etc.) Then their compiler would produce bytecode runnable on each computer.

In the late 90's, long after Infocom perished, the z-machine was rediscovered by a community of internet enthusiasts. New z-machine emulators were written for Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm Pilot, Blackberry (or even with Emacs itself!) You can find a longer list of interpreters here.

Some folks are still lucky enough to have copies of the original Infocom games (which still run in modern interpreters!), but because they're copyrighted software, you won't find them on the web for download (despite being out of print). However, there are excellent new games written by modern enthusiasts that you can download and play.

Do People Still Write These Games?

Heck yeah!

There are two or three IDEs for writing new text adventures; my favorite is an amazing programming language called Inform. There's also whole newsgroup where authors discuss writing new games. This same community sponsors yearly contests where new games are judged. And, as expected, they hand out awards within a virtual chat-room world. Most of these folks spend a good time in the IF MUD.

Have You Written a Game?

Well, sorta. In my attempts to learn Inform, I wrote the "beginning" of a larger text-adventure, and then entered in a small community contest. You can read about the contest, and try out the other six entries as well.

If you want to try my game, visit my Short List of favorite text adventures.