The Short Game attempts to discuss an entire genre-defying medium of game design: text-based interactive fiction. That’s right, we’re talking about old-school text adventures, but also newer developments like Twine games and more interactive text driven games.
We discuss the history of interactive fiction, the interactive fiction scene today, and recommend a number of games that might be good for beginners or anyone interested in a good interactive read.
Please forgive our decrease in audio quality this week; we were traveling and recording under less-than-ideal conditions.
(Lots of) Links for this episode:
- Colossal Cave Adventure
- Zork
- Interview with the creators of Zork, in the form of a text adventure
- Infocom
- Feelies
- Planetfall Feelies
- Bureaucracy Feelies
- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Infocom Adventure
- Twine – an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories
- Inform – a design system for creating parser IF
- IFComp – An annual celebration of new, text-driven digital games and stories from independent creators.
- Lost Treasures of Infocom for iOS
- IFDB – Interactive Fiction Database
- Emily Short on the IFDB
- Galatea by Emily Short
- Frotz for iOS – A great application for playing parser-based IF on iOS
- Child’s Play
- Savoir-Faire
- The Dreamhold – A free IF adventure designed for people who’ve never played IF before, by master IF designer Andrew Plotkin. Our highest recommendation for newcomers!
- Spider and Web
- Lost Pig
- Choice of the Dragon
- Counterfeit Monkey
- Creatures Such As We – IFComp winner, “A dating sim about how humanity connects through art, even out in the vastness of space.”
- King of Dragon Pass
- Fallen London aka Echo Bazaar
- Icebound
- Xyzzy Awards
- Spring Thing
- People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction – How to Play Card
- Brass Lantern – Beginners Page
- Inform (parser-based) Interactive Fiction Interpreters
- Hadean Lands by Andrew Plotkin
- 80 Days
- Blood & Laurels
You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame
Your hosts this week were:
- Raygan Kelly – @raygank
- Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
- Laura Nash – @laurajnash