
From Chapter 3, "What do all those things on the screen mean?"įor an example of what a text adventure game would be like, see the strip of 8 March 2005 in Dudley's dungeon. Unlike text adventure games that accept commands in pseudo-English sentences and explain the results in words, NetHack commands are all one or two keystrokes and the results are displayed graphically on the screen. Since then, screen orientation has become the norm rather than the exception NetHack continues this fine tradition. When NetHack's ancestor rogue first appeared, its screen orientation was almost unique among computer fantasy games. Want to read more about text adventures? Check out this history of the adventure game genre I wrote.A text adventure (or "interactive fiction") is the type of game commonly found on computer servers before someone had the idea to draw a map in ASCII characters, thus creating the roguelike games including NetHack.Īs the NetHack Guidebook explains it: don't trust wiki Digital is a linear, interactive short story that takes place “five minutes into the future of 1988,” and has you playing around with bulletin board systems to try and solve a mystery. You can play it in your browser or on your phone.ĭigital: A Love Story is a text adventure from 2010 by Christine Love, who would later go on to develop Ladykiller In A Bind. Survive the dark, fantastical streets of this underworld and make a name for yourself.įallen London’s a great time, especially for fans of dark fantasy. Play it here and try not to shed any tears.īefore they took to the high zees with Sunless Sea, Failbetter crafted a massive text adventure taking place in the same universe called Fallen London. It’s a dating sim at first glance but also something much more. It’s goofy and occasionally heartbreaking. It’s hard to pin down Creatures Such As We to a single genre. You can also read my Virtual Life column on the game and its theme of recovering from loss here.
#Text adventure for free
You can buy ADR on iOS/Android or you can play the prototype browser version for free here. It’s a game all about expansion and it’s a fascinating, well-crafted experience that does so much with so little. And then there’s a village, and then there’s a forest, and then there’s a world.
#Text adventure full
Simogo’s mobile title takes full advantage of the platform, dropping you into a scenario dripping with espionage and wordplay, forcing you to examine things from every angle and use your mind to uncover the game’s mysteries.Īre you a fan of the strange and the grotesque? Love beautiful prose? Do you like horses? Tom McHenry is billed as a horse raising simulator but it dives headlong into the absurd soon after presenting its initial concept.Ī Dark Room is a minimalist game about surviving in the post-apocalypse at all costs. Play this one without the lights on, kids.ĭevice 6 straddles the line between interactive novel and text adventure but it’s so good we’re going to make an exception and include it on here anyway because wow. It’s spooky, it’s meta, oh, and it’s free. The House Abandon is a short horror game where you play a text adventure on an old CRT monitor in a spooky house, with the environment changing depending on your actions. Lifeline is available on iOS and Android. It’s a tense experience, one worth playing if you like suspenseful scenarios and making tough decisions.

The game plays out in conversation form: you choose where they go and what choices they end up making. Taylor needs your instructions to stay alive. Lifeline is a game with a fascinating concept: you’re communicating with an astronaut named Taylor who’s become stranded on a mysterious planet. To say too much about Sun Dogs would spoil the fun, but it’s definitely a heady type of game, and a unique experience worth playing if you’re into sci-fi. Sun Dogs is billed as a “transhumanist adventure” where you explore the solar system. Though the game is available on mobile and PC, I recommend playing the mobile version when you’re on the go for a more thematically immersive experience. The game is massive and its branching paths give it a lot of replay value, as two adventures will hardly ever be the same. If you’re curious about the genre but have never dived in, this guide will serve as a pretty good starting point, with 10 great recent text adventures that are definitely worth your time.Ĩ0 Days is an interactive, steampunky take on Jules Vernes’ classic novel Around The World In 80 Days. It’s been fascinating to watch the genre bounce back after laying dormant for many years, thanks to the rise of digital distribution, basic programs like Twine, and growing mobile games market. I’m probably the biggest dork at GI when it comes them, seeing as I used to have a column about them over at Playboy and even wrote a couple myself.
