[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?
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Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?
I loved playing zork and torn.com is kinda text based. With
generative AI it feels like they can easily make a come back !!
Author : ranuzz
Score : 40 points
Date : 2024-10-28 17:29 UTC (5 hours ago)
| h2odragon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leather_Goddesses_of_Phobos
| ilkke wrote:
| I'm gonna steer clear of games that use ASCII graphics as that'd
| be too many games to think about. With that out of the way:
| Toby's Nose, A Dark Room, Kerkerkruip
| berkeleynerd wrote:
| Either 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/
| s-macke wrote:
| For me it is 9:05 by Adam Cadre [0]. Short, linear, easy but with
| a great twist.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9:05
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I don't particularly _like_ it, but Work is an online multi-
| player RPG that pays me to play it.
|
| (Prior to approximately 2020, it was more of a LARP situation,
| but my instance, at least, has moved to fully online.)
| jerf wrote:
| This isn't my "favorite" but if you're going to mention
| generative AI and text adventure games and you don't know about
| AI Dungeon, well, now you do: https://play.aidungeon.com/
|
| I was always terrible at text adventure games because my brain
| does not run on the style of logic that they do. I mean that
| without any particular judgment. I observe that it at least
| sometimes makes sense to other people. But I have sometimes read
| the solutions to things like Zork and many of them still make no
| sense to me... not, like, I can't understand the written text,
| but, like, even knowing the solution I _still_ would never have
| thought to try that.
|
| So the only Infocom game I ever completed on my own without a
| guide is Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It:
| https://www.myabandonware.com/game/nord-and-bert-couldn-t-ma...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_and_Bert_Couldn%27t_Make_...
|
| Completely different sort of game. And also one that may be the
| Infocom text game hardest to make into any other sort of medium.
| It could only work in text, and absolutely nothing else. (Though
| there are a couple of other contenders, I know.)
|
| Although if you're on the younger side, you may not have heard of
| some of the idioms that the game uses, which may raise the
| difficulty quite a bit. The 37 years since the game's release has
| seen language shifts. I played it a lot closer to its release
| time.
| sexyman48 wrote:
| Except for Planetfall, I agree puzzle solutions were non-
| deducible especially for a teenager. Hitchhiker's and Zork,
| despite their immense popularity, were impossible without the
| cheatbooks which were a bustling business.
| jph wrote:
| Zork was amazing, and was on the internet in the 1970's.
|
| Zork history is pretty amazing too:
| https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29885/eaten-grue-brief-h...
|
| If you've ever seen source code with comment warnings such as "It
| is pitch black" or "You are likely to be eaten by a grue" or
| "You're in a maze of twisty little passages", then you've
| encountered some of Zork's famous lines.
| ranuzz wrote:
| oh awesome. I wasn't around when it was released but did play
| it on an emulator years after and was amazed at how magical it
| felt when the game understood what I was typing in plain
| English.
| bzuker wrote:
| https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html is gret
| rznicolet wrote:
| Galatea is an old one I enjoyed, essentially as a character
| piece:
| https://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/emrhyy7pp0c8bjkjeuhs...
|
| I'm not sold on generative AI for this purpose -- maintaining a
| consistent character who remembers and reacts appropriately given
| past interactions seems tough.
| madmountaingoat wrote:
| Planetfall.
| sexyman48 wrote:
| Yup, a transcendent experience for all ages.
| jordigh wrote:
| Do graphical games with text parsers count?
|
| The Crimson Diamond is a recent release that is beyond the
| stellar.
| mrob wrote:
| 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.
|
| That said, my favorite human-authored text adventure game (I
| prefer that name to "interactive fiction" because I'm primarily
| looking for entertainment, not literary value) is Lost Pig:
|
| http://grunk.org/lostpig/
|
| Playable online with a Javascript-based interpreter at:
|
| https://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A//mirror.ifarchive.org/if-...
|
| It's a comedy, and just as with graphical adventure games, I
| think the whole adventure game concept works best with comedy.
| Even human-authored world models are inevitably flawed, and the
| resulting absurdity best matches the tone of comedy. I also
| recommend another comedy, Brain Guzzlers From Beyond!:
|
| https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=f55km4uutt2cqwwz
|
| Both these are relatively modern games, written after the
| commercial collapse of the genre. They were the winners of the
| 2007 and 2015 Annual Interactive Fiction Competitions
| respectively. More information about this:
|
| https://www.ifwiki.org/The_Annual_IF_Competition
| selalipop wrote:
| I'm applying generative AI to interactive fiction with
| Spellbound
|
| https://www.tryspellbound.com/app/scenario/65821/create
|
| (You can click on the dice at the bottom to turn on D&D mode)
|
| I've taken the approach of starting with the #1 problem with
| Gen AI for this application: that it writes bland prose with
| not much going on by default.
|
| From there you can layer on systems that address things like
| object permanence, but even with a basic engine capable of
| generating fun to read pages of text I think you already get a
| pretty fun experience
| klibertp wrote:
| > 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 LLMs. Like procedurally generated maps in
| roguelikes, LLMs can be used to create an order of magnitude
| more unique interactions in the game than what you could
| provide by crafting each dialogue tree by hand. While not as
| good or memorable (on average) as a hand-written character, it
| should be more than enough for Villager A, who normally would
| be completely mute.
| ranuzz wrote:
| yep, that's what I was thinking. A lot of filler can be
| written using llm.
| heyitsguay wrote:
| Agreed about the importance of a world model. People get
| enamored with increasing text volume with LLMs, but unless it
| ties back into distinct game state interactions, players
| quickly recognize it as fluff and it ends up not really adding
| to the game.
|
| It's not exactly a text-based adventure game (more text-based
| trading), but recently I spent some time messing around with
| integrating an LLM with a text-based world model. It's not 100%
| reliable, but I've had some pretty satisfying interactions with
| it: https://github.com/heyitsguay/trader
|
| Basically, you're a trader traveling around a world buying and
| selling goods, but the economy is tuned such that you can only
| really get ahead by conning the NPCs >:D
| joshvm wrote:
| There's a lot of IF like Eat Me or Midnight Swordfight which
| really lean on excellent writing, black comedy and wordplay.
| LLMs are still largely terrible at humour. Anything by Chandler
| Groover is recommended:
|
| https://ifdb.org/search?searchfor=author%3AChandler+Groover
|
| Someone else mentioned Emily Short and there are also
| fantastically written games like Sunless Seas/Skies.
| harel wrote:
| In the early 90s I (and a friend) wrote a text adventure game
| based on the Punk scene at the time. It was my first piece of
| software that I released. This was a period of time where I used
| to print and keep my emails. This was done on TADS, was called
| "The Broken String" and was/is on the IFArchive. I can't say THIS
| was my favourite game, but it does have a sentimental hold over
| me. The premise was that in order to "save the scene" you must
| form a new band, going through the city looking for band members.
|
| Other than that I was quite fond of the Infocom and Magnetic
| Scrolls games. Most of them were great. The games that I
| absolutely adored were all the text based Sierra games. All of
| them. I was quite upset when they removed the text parser.
| abnry wrote:
| Lost Pig. Grunk need find pig.
|
| https://pr-if.org/play/lostpig/
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| I'm shocked nobody's mentioned the Interactive Fiction Database,
| which is loaded up with _tons_ of these available for free as
| abandonware or FOSS, depending on when it was created.
|
| Here's my favorite, Conterfeit Monkey:
|
| https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=aearuuxv83plclpl
|
| It takes unique advantage of the text-based format by allowing
| the player to add and remove letters from words to transform any
| noun into any other noun if it can be done with a single letter
| change.
| amiga386 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...
| wyldfire wrote:
| I played the game prior to having read the novel. It was so
| terribly confusing.
|
| I think the game came with some serious crutch / walkthrough
| otherwise I'd probably have never gotten my robe on, much less
| worked out the babel fish.
|
| I suppose it was the inspiration for me to finally read it,
| though. So that paid off. :)
| bitwize wrote:
| I'm a fan of the Thy Dungeonman series. Still haven't gotten ye
| flask...
| tombert wrote:
| It's been awhile, but isn't the trick to give ye flask to
| Dennis?
| SeaGully wrote:
| During 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 put it on the
| "easier than Zork" side and is a rare text adventure I completed
| without any look-ups. I really really liked it. Save often. RTFM
| (in particular you'll want to look up the list of allowed verbs
| any time you get stuck). Those are the two helpful hints I would
| give to anyone thinking to themselves that they might want to try
| a classic text adventure.
|
| Actually maybe more helpful would be to play something like Space
| Quest which has the same sensibility as text adventures (in that
| they often feel cruel to the user intentionally...) but is
| somewhat more accessible. Space Quest in particular shares a lot
| of DNA with planetfall all the way down to starring space
| janitors.
| mrob wrote:
| Andrew Plotkin developed a rating system for adventure game
| cruelty that's popular within the community:
|
| https://www.ifwiki.org/Cruelty_scale
|
| Space Quest is rated the maximum "Cruel" under this system, as
| it's easy to render the game unwinnable with no feedback that
| you're in this state. Almost all modern adventure games are
| less cruel.
| jghn wrote:
| 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
| mctesterton wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scott_Adams_Adventure_...
| mmastrac wrote:
| Adventure (but it's admittedly a very difficult game to win):
|
| https://grack.com/demos/adventure/
| consf wrote:
| Text-based adventure games have such a unique charm
| stevekemp wrote:
| There are still people writing new games, games that are playable
| upon the same Infocom interpreter that was used to run Zork!
|
| I wrote a CP/M emulator specifically so that I could play a
| trivial adventure game I wrote in Z80 assembly on Linux/Mac
| systems - so I should say that I prefer the infocom games.
|
| However my favourite text-adventure is The Hobbit, the first such
| game I played on the ZX Spectrum back in the early eighties. Read
| about it in this two part piece:
|
| https://www.filfre.net/2012/11/the-hobbit/
| https://www.filfre.net/2012/11/the-hobbit-redux/
|
| Interviews with the author suggest I'm not the only one who got
| in touch, years later, to send her fan-mail. But I'm glad I did
| it regardless and very pleased she took the time to reply:
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2012/11/18/hobbit_author_veronik...
| gjm11 wrote:
| _The Gostak_ , by Carl Muckenhoupt.
|
| Its opening text reads as follows:
|
| Finally, here you are. At the delcot of tondam, where doshes
| deave. But the doshery lutt is crenned with glauds.
|
| Glauds! How rorm it would be to pell back to the bewl and distunk
| them, distunk the whole delcot, let the drokes discren them.
|
| But you are the gostak. The gostak distims the doshes. And no
| glaud will vorl them from you.
|
| And what you have to do over the course of the game is not merely
| _solve the puzzles_ but _work out what all the words mean_. (The
| _grammar_ is just that of English, as are a lot of the little
| function-words. More than that would have been impossible.)
| ranuzz wrote:
| amazing! it sure is creative. found the online version gonna
| give it a try.
| nathell wrote:
| If you like it, be sure to also check out Andrew Plotkin's
| 'Lighan ses Lion' [0], an entry in WalkthroughComp run by Emily
| Short [1]. It's not a game, just a transcript of a fictitious
| game, but well worth checking out for a chuckle... or as a
| brain teaser.
|
| Also, the Beast puzzle in 'The Edifice' [2] by Lucian Paul
| Smith comes to mind.
|
| [0]: https://www.eblong.com/zarf/zplet/lighan.html
|
| [1]: https://www.ifwiki.org/WalkthroughComp
|
| [2]: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=4tb9soabrb4apqzd
| ranuzz wrote:
| nice! lots of new suggestions... I recently picked up torn again
| and remembered old text-based or interactive fiction games... I'm
| gonna play whatever is available online. thanks!
| Y_Y wrote:
| Counterfeit Monkey -
| https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=aearuuxv83plclpl
|
| Emily Short can generally be relied upon of worthwhile games, but
| this IMHO is the most imaginative and engrossing. It has a really
| cool central mechanic and I found it really enjoyable.
| nathell wrote:
| Anchorhead, by Michael Gentry.
|
| I've played the old, text-only, Z-code version back in high
| school, around 1997, and the experience was so vivid and
| immersive that to this day I can draw a map of Anchorhead from
| memory and recite the lineage of the Verlac family. I think it's
| still my favourite game of all time (although I spent much more
| time on some others).
|
| These days, an illustrated version can be bought on Steam for
| something like $10. Highly recommended!
| matthewsinclair wrote:
| I spent so much time playing HHGTTG [0] as a kid it is kinda
| embarrassing to admit to it these days. I loved all of the
| Infocom interactive fiction games. They were great. But very much
| from a different age of computing. I guess they are like the
| gaming equivalent of the difference between a book and a movie.
|
| [0]: https://douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html
| lIl-IIIl wrote:
| It's been a long time since I've been into this, so my tastes
| might have changed.
|
| But my favorites were:
|
| Photopia, 9:05, and I-0 by Adam Cadre
|
| The Enchanter trilogy. My first introduction to Enchanter was
| actually this unofficial sequel:
| https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=x6ne0bbd2oqm6h3a, which I loved.
|
| Slouching Toward Bedlam:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slouching_Towards_Bedlam
|
| If you like Zork, "Janitor" will make you laugh:
| https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=utic1iedvvnnsf3a
|
| Also have very fund memories of Humbug and Jacaranda Jim (wow it
| took me a very long internet search to find the names.. I forgot
| almost everything about what those games were about, and all I
| had to go on is that they were DOS executables and that the
| author was some anti-virus author).
|
| https://grahamcluley.com/misc/jacaranda-jim/
|
| https://grahamcluley.com/misc/humbug/
| alekratz wrote:
| I love seeing Adam Cadre's name in the wild, I know him through
| the Lyttle Lytton contest that he's held every year since 2001.
| It's a fun deep dive of terrible (on purpose) writing.
| https://adamcadre.ac/lyttle/
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| We 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 you like retro Star Trek-like things then
| here is a short somewhat randomized choice-based text game I
| entered in a competition a few months back.
|
| https://sheep.horse/voyage_of_the_marigold/
| zkef wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAUNT
| graememcc wrote:
| Curses by Graham Nelson
|
| https://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2F...
| msg wrote:
| I really like Hadean Lands
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/376240/Hadean_Lands/
|
| You are an alchemist whose spacecraft crashed at a nexus between
| worlds. You need to discover and perform alchemical rituals to
| explore and try to escape.
|
| It has some great quality of life features, such as allowing you
| to re-perform any ritual you have successfully completed in a
| single command, and allowing you to recall any significant
| information you have deduced.
|
| On top of this, some great writing and a very strange atmosphere.
| raytopia wrote:
| Personally, I mostly enjoy cyoa types of text based games. My
| favorite it Warsim: The Realm of Aslona which is more simulation
| focused then most text based adventure games.
|
| Multi user dungeons are also fun! I'm working on one right now
| but more cyoa focused.
| dcminter wrote:
| I'm not very well-up on IF, but I thought "For a change" was
| absolutely amazing when I discovered it:
| https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=t61i5akczyblx2zd
|
| I think that with the current state of the art I'd be wary of
| using gen AI for the _output_ ... but for making the input more
| accommodating of actual human vocabulary and grammar (instead of
| the usual limitations) I do think that LLMs could be amazing.
| sol8 wrote:
| No love for Eamon?
| rgovostes wrote:
| I'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.
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