HN Explorer

Ask HN: Great text based games to play?

218 points by cgb223 ↗ HN
I’m of a younger generation, and have seen a lot of references to text based games in popular media. Games where it gives you a prompt like “You are in a forest” and you can type things like “I climb a tree” or “I look around” and it responds to that.

I’d love to try one of these out. I have a modern computer so I’m guessing it’ll have to be emulated somehow, but what do you recommend as a great text based game to try? Like ones that really make you think and get creative

160 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] thread
sp332
Counterfeit Monkey by Emily Short. https://github.com/i7/counterfeit-monkey/releases Maps and cheat sheets are in the "Counterfeit Monkey.materials" folder.

If you don't want to install a parser on your computer, you can play it online by putting the link to the .gblorb file into https://iplayif.com/ I.e. https://iplayif.com/?story=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fi7%2Fc...

Modern games are generally going to be more approachable than old ones. Tastes have changed considerably. In the days when you couldn't pull up a walkthrough in a few seconds, taking days to think of the next step was part of the fun, and just getting permanently stuck at some point was fairly common. Also, letting the player keep going even after they have done something to make the game unwinnable is now considered very uncool. Navigation is much less tedious these days as well, fast travel for example, although the exact mechanics depend on the game.

And that's not mentioning the amount of CPU and RAM available, not only for the game's runtime, but also for tools like I7 (which was used to write Counterfeit Monkey).

For an quicker introduction to modern "interactive fiction", as it's called these days, check out competition entries. https://intfiction.org/c/competitions/7 These are generally written in a shorter amount of time and the results are quicker to play through.

ghaff
My vast nostalgia for Infocom games--and the vast care and effort that went into those games--notwithstanding, they were written using 40 year old tech to run on machines that, at least initially, might have had a floppy disk and maybe 64K of memory (or less). Yes, they're more playable than a lot of graphics games of the time would be today, but they're from a different age.

Still dip into them every now and then though :-)

PenguinCoder
Look for MUDs and MOOs[1]

I've liked and played in the past a lot of these text based role playing games, especially when I was on a shittier dial up connection or remote satellite connections. I liked Aardwolf and Realms of Despair the most. I've played the IRE games like Achaea and Aetolia way too much. While those two definitely have a great lore and many active players, I have always loathed IREs pay to win "credits" style.

Text based gaming is still alive and evolving. Just don't expect a AAA game and definitely not single player.

[1] https://www.topmudsites.com/

Sebguer
Very sadly, TMS was shifted to an archive-only format a short while ago. End of an era. It looks like Mud Connect is dead, too. Not sure there are any aggregators still standing? :/
Humdeee
I loved playing Aardwolf years and years ago. I was a big fan of godwars type mostly. What a flashback!
gpanders
The IRE games are very well done. I too have spent many, many hours in Achaea, and more recently (a year or two ago) in Starmourn.

You can get by without paying for credits, though it does involve more in-game grinding. For me, what made me lose my interest in these games is the role playing requirement. I understand that for some people that is part of the fun, but I could never really get into it.

Lenis
I would never recommend an Iron Realms game to someone for a couple of reasons.

One being the pay to win aspects where players who pay real money to buy items get major advantages.

Another being the amount of grinding required to level up.

I'd recommend Akanbar instead. It has no pay to win features. Balance based real time combat loosely based on the old Avalon game (Achaea did not invent balance based mud combat, it came from the now dead game 'Avalon') and you don't have to learn a coding language just to become competitive and partake effectively in the pvp if that's a part of the game you have interest in.

It sits in a sweet spot between complexity and simplicity and has a fun concept, well made guilds and a dedicated playerbase and admin.

PenguinCoder
I agree, I wouldn't recommend IRE games these days for anyone; especially newcomers. Same reasons and quite a few other ones. But it's has been quite a few years since I had time to engage in any type of MMO or MUD though, so I don't have any current up to date recommendations.
andremedeiros
Check out ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery.) It’s been around for a long time and has a great story to it.
suprjami
I've always had a soft spot for McMurphy's Mansion, a game where you look around your Scottish relative's estate to find 12 good bars. I have good memories of figuring this out with my Scottish grandmother as a child. You can play it with DOSBox or on Internet Archive.

https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=gkqdo58j2zvjtxnk

https://archive.org/details/McMurphysMansionV1.5SW1989martin...

Apart from that, from short to long, some usual IF recommendations are:

Interstate 0: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=a3ym4ipix7sjsfrf

Glowgrass: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=b1xy3s75cjlty973

Anchorhead: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=op0uw1gn1tjqmjt7

A Mind Forever Voyaging: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=4h62dvooeg9ajtfa

You can also look for other beginner lists: https://ifdb.org/search?searchfor=beginner&searchgo=Search+L...

You need an "interpreter" to play most of these, look up Gargoyle: http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/

ctoth
The Grapevine network[0] is a fun little community of different MUDs where you can connect and hang out with other people who enjoy text-based worlds. If you're looking for something to play on your own, winners of the IF competition[1] are often excellent.

[0]: https://grapevine.haus

[1]: https://ifcomp.org/comp/2022

stormcode
Grapevine is awesome. Good call-out.
mcphage
Hadean Lands is a great modern IF game where you learn alchemical rituals, and have to figure out the meaning behind them to modify the ritual to solve puzzles. And I’ll second the recommendation for Emily Short’s Counterfeit Monkey.

Another fun interesting one is Aisle… the whole game is a single command, but you can enter all sorts of things, and get different outcomes.

cableshaft
This is a fun one I played recently about shopping in a grocery store, called Aisle. You only have a single command you can give for the whole game, but there's a looot of them you can provide, and it gives you a different ending for each. Part of the fun is trying to figure out what you can say to find another ending. You can play it directly at the link below.

Play: https://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2F...

tomstuart
…by Sam Barlow, now better-known for the live-action video games Her Story, Telling Lies and Immortality.
psvv
"Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle" popped into my head not long ago and I thought wow, that's a reference not a lot of people in this world would understand.
VadimPR
Check out the list on Mudlet (https://mudlet.org), it's a FOSS desktop app for playing online test games you describe. Comes with a selection of good games pre -configured.
allanquatermain
Play CYPHER, Cyberpunk Text Adventure here: https://cabrerabrothers.com

"Ever since you came back from the Moon colonies you've been struggling to get into the smuggling business again. Things aren't as easy as they once were though, especially without your old pal Eddie around. It was him who brought all the major players in the market to do business with. And boy did they line up to hire you. Even the Yakuza used to pay almost twice the standard rate for moving passcodes through the international borders inside your Synapse.

All you've got now is a French crook that goes by the name of Lime, who cares more about setting up his own deals than bringing new quality customers on board to work with.

You always knew working with that french bastard was trouble, only you never realized how much until one of the deals he had setup went wrong."

# Make your way through the crowded streets of NeoSushi City!

A deal that goes wrong. A beautiful young woman wearing red cowboy boots following you into a Yakuza nightclub. A pack of Retrievers hired to chop your head off and "Mr.Smith", a mysterious man who claims to be a friend in a world where everyone is after the passcode stored in your Synapse. Will you live long enough to see what it unlocks?"

From the game's website:

CYPHER Cyberpunk Text Adventure is unlike anything you have ever played before; it is a whole new dimension in game interaction and storytelling you can vividly experience from within the realms of your own imagination!

Think of a book or movie you like the most, now imagine for a moment a limitless world of interaction and adventure where you not only take control of the main character of the story, but ARE the main character of the story! Every word you say, every decision or action you take is exclusively your own in the world of CYPHER.

In Text Adventures you communicate with the game world through conversational English sentences, the same way you would do in a chatroom or writing emails. The story unravels into a thrilling interactive experience that will keep you on the edge of your seat for hours... as long as you can escape death.

the_doctah
Dragonrealms!
nmeagent
IMO Dragonrealms was great in the late 90s and early 2000s, but when I tried to get back into it in 2020 I found that rampant AFK scripting for skill progression killed my desire to put much time into it. It was supposedly still against the rules, but those rules were basically completely unenforced and people would just flagrantly violate them while the GMs didn't seem to care. I ended up canceling my account after about a month.
the_doctah
That's pretty much modern Dragonrealms, yeah. It really is a shame. The golden age of the was unmatched though.
robbintt
I still play from time to time. For the most part the only in game communities tend to just use the world props as a prop/sandbox for freeform roleplaying. The people who script level their characters tend to talk on discord and probably other chats. I don't think spontaneous in game interaction is much of a thing anymore.
raldi
Spider and Web, https://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/tangle/

Without giving anything away: It does something brilliant that wouldn't be possible in any other storytelling medium.

someguyorother
I think you could do most of it as a point and click. Perhaps with the exception of that one command (if you know what I mean) because the mere possibility of it would be revealing in a point-and-click. But you could do that in a Sierra AGI type graphical adventure because that still has a parser.

On topic, I would myself recommend Coloratura - https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=g0fl99ovcrq2sqzk - for the sense of wonder/unusual protagonist.

psvv
Even though it's famous inside (and out?) of text game circles, this is a game I still wish had a wider reach. It really just does something with video games that I didn't think was possible before playing it, and haven't seen explored satisfactorily since. Unfortunately, you sort of need to know how to play text games to appreciate it.

If anyone reading has tried text games and have found they just aren't for you, you can get somewhat of a proxy of the experience by reading through this community let's play of the game (https://adventuregamers.com/forums/viewthread/8481). Although long (like the game), I think it brings you on the typical journey of playing, even if you aren't necessarily making the connections yourself (which would normally be a big part of the appeal).

PebblesRox
Seconded! And put on the album "Eye in the Sky" by The Alan Parsons Project while you play. I happened to listen to that while playing the game and thematically it's very appropriate.
mindcrime
Broadly speaking there are two big "threads" to follow here. You have your MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon)[1] & MOOs (MUD, Object Oriented)[2] which are played over the network, and are more or less the text based equivalent to MMORPGs. Then you have your IF (Interactive Fiction)[3] / text adventure game that installs and runs locally like the old Infocom games. There is, of course, some overlap here.

You can find lists and links for MUDs and MOOs in several places, but one good resource is mudlistings.com[4]. For Interactive Fiction / text adventures, try the IFReviews[5] and IFdb[6] sites.

If you want specific recommendations... I'd say start with the canonical OG interactive fiction game, Colossal Cave[7]. It's available from the distro package managers on most Linux systems as "adventure" or "advent" or something along those lines. Another interesting one is "Battlestar"[8] which is usually available as part of the "bsdgames" package.

For a good MUD, I'm personally a fan of Avatar[9].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOO

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction

[4]: https://mudlistings.com/

[5]: http://www.ifreviews.org/

[6]: https://ifdb.org/

[7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure

[8]: https://www.ifwiki.org/Battlestar

[9]: https://www.outland.org/news.php

jolmg
Pretty sure the Archlinux official repos had a package called "bsdgames" or similar that included a game like that. It's not there now. Maybe it got split up or sent to the AUR.
II2II
It is bsd-games in the community repository, and trek in AUR. The bsd-games package includes Adventure, which is the traditional text adventure game. Those packages also include a collection of other text based games that demonstrate how varied text based games can be.
rgmerk
For something that’s not a text adventure (the best of which are great), there’s also nethack.

Be warned, it’s insanely difficult and a massive time suck.

rollcat
Or more broadly, rogue-likes.

My favourites are definitely Nethack and DCSS (aka crawl). I would also like to try Cogmind (but it's unfortunately Windows-only), and maybe Dwarf Fortress. Other noteworthy titles are ADOM and Moria/Angband.

There's a lot going on these days in this genre that kinda departs from some of the core ideas of a roguelike, the term "roguelite" is sometimes used. It's a fun rabbit hole to go down into, lots of really good games.

kianryan
Infocom adventure games are some of the grand-daddy's of text adventures.

Zork is by far the most well known, but also pretty infamous are Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Godesses' of Phobos and A Mind Forever Voyaging.

As a warm-up, I'd recommend Moonmist. It's a mystery game listed as a "Beginner" game, and is great for introducing elements of the Infocom system.

The feelies are available to view here: https://gallery.guetech.org/greybox.html

There are a collection of game files here: https://eblong.com/infocom/

My preferred player is still Frotz. It compiles and runs on practically anything, my Psion, my Pis, Windows, everything.

https://gitlab.com/DavidGriffith/frotz

ghaff
Planetfall is another by the same author as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Godesses of Phobos and A Mind Forever Voyaging. AMFV doesn't get the love it deserves. It is more about real interactive fiction than puzzle solving. Hitchhiker's is enticing but pretty difficult--not as big an issue perhaps these days as it's so easy to "cheat" if you get stuck as opposed to calling the author :-)

Trinity is another good one. As is The Lurking Horror--set at a thinly-veiled MIT campus where many of the authors were from.

pjc50
> feelies

This is a term we're going to have to explain to the younger generation: when games were shipped in boxes, those contained at minimum a disc and a printed manual, but some companies came up with gimmick items you could put in the box and "feel", to enhance your immersion in the game.

I still have my Ultima 6 "moonstone" and cloth map somewhere.

ghaff
They also sometimes included essentially proto-copy protection, e.g. you need this decoder wheel to solve some puzzle--which of course worked a lot better pre-Web.

A lot of the original packaging could be rather unique generally but eventually they ended up standardizing for retail shelving.

markus_zhang
I still love the wheel and manuals of SSI Gold Box games. Apparently there wasn't enough space for all those texts so the games guide you to read say Page 31 for a certain long dialog.

I actually think it gives a lot of immersion than modern day AAA games.

poisonarena
I actually am from the box/manual generation and never heard it called 'feelies'.. I remember to register some games i would have to look up charts or keys in the manual, or on page numbers
medwards666
IIRC 'feelies' was a term coined at Infocom by Brian Moriarty for the extra gewgaws that wound up in the boxes. I don't think the term was used much elsewhere in the industry, even though it did become part of the general gamer vernacular at the time.
ghaff
I should ask some of the other Infocom folks one of these days. I imagine one of them remember.
markus_zhang
It's sad that game publishers don't do it anymore since I don't know when. Everything goes online nowadays. Boring.
oneeyedpigeon
Actually, there are a LOT of 'collector's edition' versions of physical games from publishers like Limited Run, Super Rare, and iam8bit. Check out this Cuphead package, for example:

https://www.iam8bit.com/collections/collectors-editions/prod...

Now, for many of us, they are prohibitively expensive, but they are available.

markus_zhang
You are right. They are indeed very expensive.
oneeyedpigeon
That particular example is above the typical price, I think, but they're certainly called collector's editions for a reason. It's a shame, but I suspect the majority are purchased and left unopened.
wombatpm
Loved my Peril Sensitive Sunglasses from HHGTTG
dsq
I recall this being a term in paper-age SF, a fututristic trope of what mass entertainment might become. A “feely” was a sort of movie that involved touch. It was almost always described somewhat disapprovingly, as a sign of future decadence.
scotteric
It was in Brave New World, and I think originated there. The Feelies are also a jangle-rock band.
dsq
Oh, so that’s it. I couldn’t recall which one.
jfzoid
Planetfall Enchanter Trilogy Starcross (took place inside a space station -- map was wrap-around) Suspended was harder but definitely very good
wolverine876
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/

prewett
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
tmtvl
The Zork Anthology is available on GOG (https://www.gog.com/en/game/the_zork_anthology), there are also a few of them on IA like Star Trek - The Kobayashi Alternative (https://archive.org/details/msdos_Star_Trek_-_The_Kobayashi_...).

Some of my favourites are Enchanter and the great classic Planetfall.

ghaff
>great classic Planetfall

There's an extremely inside joke about me in Planetfall relating to the author's rather odd sense of humor. And, no, I'm not going to reveal it :-)

Planetfall is probably one of the more accessible Infocom games even if less-known or less name recognition.