Hack64.Download and Play Text Adventures

Hack 64. Download and Play Text Adventures

Discover the ocean full of text adventures out there, then catch the best ones .

The community of text adventure authors isn't huge, even by Internet subculture standards, but they still produce enough output that someone brand new to the format can feel bewildered about where to start looking. The central archive is vast and intimidating, and you might feel intimidated just figuring out which interpreter to choose. Fortunately, it's not as hard as it seems.

If you want to download and play interactive fiction from your hard drive rather than playing games via the web [Hack #63] , the first thing to do is install what's known as a Z-Machine interpreter. Z-Machine clients run games written in the Inform language, which is an open source version of the system used to write all the classic Infocom games [Hack #65] such as Planetfall, Trinity, and A Mind Forever Voyaging. Not every game you'll come across is written in Inform, but most of them are, and playing a few games that use the Inform interpreter will teach you what you need to know when you go looking for a TADS or Glulx interpreter. If you're looking for a list of all known Z-Machine interpreters, you can get a pretty comprehensive one at http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXinterpreters.html, but this page isn't exactly helpful when it comes to picking a game to play.

6.3.1. Baf's Guide

That's why you need Baf's Guide to the IF Archive, located at http://www.wurb.com/if/index/. Every game mentioned in this section can be found at Baf's, and there are enough pointers within the site to help you find what you're looking for. You can search using a variety of criteria, including title, star rating, language, genre , platform, or a stunning array of individual characteristicseven if your tastes are as specific as "Lobjan-language games based on Lovecraft horror written in GAGS with no puzzles, your choice of protagonist gender, and containing a dragon," you can search by those terms. You will not find anything you're looking for, but you can search by those terms.

Before you go searching willy-nilly, though, there are a couple of worthy directories to peruse first. The sidebar to the left has a section devoted to "Comps/Awards," which you should consider making your first stop: there's no such thing as an objective "best" IF, obviously, but the ones you'll find in the competition winners section will at least have a high probability of being very good.

There are many awards and competitions, but the two biggest are those listed underneath the general Comps/Awards category in the sidebar: the IF Comp and the Xyzzy Awards. Both competitions are open for anyone to vote, provided that authors don't vote for their own work. (The IF Comp is a bit stricter, with an automated frontend to ensure that judges play at least five games before judging ; the Xyzzy Awards simply rely on the honor system.) The main difference is that the IF Comp is a pure reckoning of the best game, with the results released as a simple tally of the votes , while the Xyzzy Awards judge the submitted games in a variety of categories such as best writing, best setting, best NPCs, and best use of medium.

Both contest results are good for different reasons: if you're simply looking for the best text adventures, then the IF Comp listings are what you want. If you're looking for something specific from your text adventures, then the Xyzzy Awards can help, since they are broken out into separate categories. One caveat, though: since both the IF Comp and the Xyzzy Awards tend to be judged by people who are text adventure authors in their own right, and thus have fairly strong groundings in the medium, not every competition winner will necessarily be ideal for newcomers. Feel free to try out a few interesting-looking games, but if you get stuck or confused , don't be ashamed to set this section aside for later, and turn to a different sort of resource within Baf's Guide: the reviews.

One of the ways you can use the Guide is to look at only games that have been reviewed (try http://www.wurb.com/if/game/reviewed to go directly there). Though it has an obvious downside of leaving out quite a lot of games that no one has gotten around to writing about yet, the upside is that you get a little bit of opinion before downloading and playing the game. The reviews are all concise , usually 100 words or less, but they say enough to give you an idea of whether you'll be interested in playing it.

6.3.2. Other Sites

When it comes to the nuts and bolts of playing text adventures, Baf's Guide is pretty much all you need: all new text adventures make their way there eventually, and its ease of use means you'll be able to find them when they do. If you're interested in getting further into the text adventure community, though, there are other sites worth a look.

Brass Lantern

Brass Lantern (http://www.brasslantern.org), founded by the organizer of the IF Comp awards, is a good source of news and articles relating not just to text adventures, but also the occasional graphical adventure such as the Myst series. Newcomers to text adventures will find the Beginner Resources (http://www.brasslantern.org/ beginners ) section useful, while those with a little more experience in the format should check out its collection of editorials (http://www.brasslantern.org/editorials).

Xyzzy News

An online "magazine for interactive fiction enthusiasts ," Xyzzy News (http://www.xyzzynews.com) runs news stories and other articles relating to text adventures, in addition to being the information clearing-house for several competitions, not just the eponymous Xyzzy Awards. Back issues dating to 1995 are still available from the archives, which should help you get a sense of the reborn text adventure community's history from its own point of view.

rec.arts.int-fiction

Not technically a web site (though you can reach it through Google's newsgroup service at http://groups.google.com/ group /rec.arts.int-fiction), this is nonetheless the place to go to get the freshest news and games as they happen. This is the source for the games archived on the IF Archive and organized at Baf's, and it's also a good place to find discussion both technical (authors recruiting testers, asking for help with a scripting language) and abstract interpretations of a particular game's story.

As when dealing with any other online community, it's a good idea to step back for a while and get a feel for the tone and feel of the place before posting, but once you feel comfortable doing so, go ahead and provide comments and/or bug testing for the authors who hang around the group. Like as not, they'll be grateful for the feedback.

Feelies.org

The Infocom creators that popularized text adventures often made a point of including strange widgets in the packaging of their games, such as the bit of fluff in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game. Though text adventures are no longer a commercial concern and have no packaging anymore, Feelies.org (http://www.feelies.org) aims to bring back feelies (a term for the physical detritus from the imaginary worlds in the game) for modern-day text adventure. If you're a fan of a particular game and want a memento of it, or if you plan to play it and want something to help you feel more immersed in that game's world, you might be able to find something in the catalog here.

All of these sites have their own sets of links, of course, so it won't take long to find even more information on the Web about text adventures and the people who make them, and even less time to get hooked on this unique, fascinating style of game. Happy hunting!

Nich Maragos