Ask HN: What's your favorite text-based adventure game?

Posted by ranuzz 10/28/2024

I loved playing zork and torn.com is kinda text based.

With generative AI it feels like they can easily make a come back !!

84 points | 74 commentspage 2

msg 10/28/2024|

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.

AndrewStephens 10/28/2024||

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/

olvy0 10/29/2024||

Hi Andrew, just wanted to me and my family really enjoyed Voyage of the Marigold! It's such an excellent little game. We played through it a couple of time, each time discovering new things. Thank you for writing it.

I've played Star Trek: Resurgence a couple of months ago, and I must say I enjoyed your game much more than Resurgence, which is incredible considering that it was written just by you. IMO your game stays very close to spirit of the classic Trek I grew up with.

AndrewStephens 10/29/2024||

Thank you very much, you have made my day. I basically sat down and wrote the game that has been in my head for 30 years, which is why it looks the way it does.

hinkley 10/29/2024||

I don't want generative AI, but an interactive fiction with speech recognition to make the game be a spoken word game would be interesting. Like Bandersnatch.

lIl-IIIl 10/28/2024||

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 10/28/2024|

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/

amiga386 10/28/2024||

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...

wyldfire 10/28/2024|

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. :)

Y_Y 10/28/2024||

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.

dcminter 10/28/2024||

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.

matthewsinclair 10/28/2024||

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

rgovostes 10/28/2024||

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.

rznicolet 10/28/2024||

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.

nathell 10/28/2024|

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!

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