Zork I is one of the first interactive fiction games, as well as being one of the first commercially sold. Zork I The Great Underground Empire is an Interactive fiction Computer game written by Marc Blank, Dave Lebling, Bruce Daniels It is one of the most famous interactive fiction games. Here it is portrayed running on a modern interpreter.

Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. In Computing, a command is a directive to a computer program acting as an interpreter of some kind in order to perform a specific task A player character or playable character (PC is a Fictional character in a Video game or Role playing game who is controlled or controllable Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as computer games. A narrative or story is a construct created in a suitable format (written spoken poetry prose images song Theater, or Dance) that describes a sequence of A video game is a Game that involves interaction with a User interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. In common usage, the word refers to text adventures, a type of adventure game with text-based input and output. An adventure game is a type of Video game characterized by investigation exploration puzzle-solving, interaction with game characters and a focus on Narrative The term is sometimes used to encompass the entirety of the medium, but is also sometimes used to distinguish games produced by the interactive fiction community from those created by games companies. It can also be used to distinguish the more modern style of such works, focusing on narrative and not necessarily falling into the adventure game genre at all, from the more traditional focus on puzzles. See also [[Game classification]] Video games are categorized into Genres based on their Gameplay interaction A puzzle is a Problem or Enigma that challenges Ingenuity. In a basic puzzle one is intended to piece together objects in a logical way in order to More expansive definitions of interactive fiction may refer to all adventure games, including wholly graphical adventures such as Myst. Myst is a graphic adventure Video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller.

As a commercial product, interactive fiction reached its peak in popularity in the 1980s, as a dominant software product marketed for home computers. A home computer was a class of Personal computer entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s Because their text-only nature sidestepped the problem of writing for the widely divergent graphics architectures of the day, interactive fiction games were easily ported across all the popular platforms, even those such as CP/M not known for gaming or strong graphics capabilities. CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers is an Operating system originally created for Intel 8080 / 85 based Microcomputers by Gary Kildall Today, interactive fiction no longer appears to be commercially viable, but a steady stream of new works is produced by an online interactive fiction community, using freely available development systems. Most of these games can be downloaded for free from the Interactive Fiction Archive (see external links).

The term "interactive fiction" is also occasionally used to refer to hypertext fiction, collaborative fiction, or even a participatory novel, according to the New York Times. Hypertext fiction is a genre of Electronic literature, characterized by the use of Hypertext links which provides a new context for non-linearity in "literature" Collaborative fiction is a form of writing by two or more authors who take it in turns to write a portion of the story. It is also used to refer to literary works that are not read in a linear fashion, but rather the reader is given choices at different points in the text; the reader's choice determines the flow and outcome of the story. The most famous example of this form of interactive fiction is the Choose Your Own Adventure book series. Choose Your Own Adventure is a series of children's Gamebooks first published by Bantam Books For others, see gamebooks. A gamebook is a Book that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices that affect the course of the narrative which branches down various paths through the

Medium

Text adventures are one of the oldest types of computer games and form a subset of the adventure genre. A video game is a Game that involves interaction with a User interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. An adventure game is a type of Video game characterized by investigation exploration puzzle-solving, interaction with game characters and a focus on Narrative The player uses text input to control the game, and the game state is relayed to the player via text output.

Input is usually provided by the player in the form of simple sentences such as "get key" or "go east", which are interpreted by a parser. In Linguistics, a sentence is a grammatical unit of one or more words bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it often preceded and followed In Computer science and Linguistics, parsing, or more formally syntactic analysis, is the process of analyzing a sequence of tokens to Parsers may vary in sophistication; the first text adventure parsers could only handle two-word sentences in the form of verb-noun pairs. Later parsers, such as those built on Infocom's ZIL (Zork Implementation Language), could understand complete sentences. The Z-machine is a Virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games ^[1] Later parsers could handle increasing levels of complexity parsing sentences such as "open the red box with the green key then go north". This level of complexity is the standard for works of interactive fiction today.

Interactive fiction shares much in common with Multi-User Dungeons ('MUDs'). In computer gaming, a MUD ( Multi-User Dungeon, Domain or Dimension) is a multi-player computer game that combines elements of MUDs, which became popular in the mid-1980s, rely on a textual exchange and accept similar commands from players as do works of IF; however, since interactive fiction is single player, and MUDs, by definition, have multiple players, they differ enormously in gameplay styles. MUDs often focus gameplay on activities that involve communities of players, simulated political systems, in-game trading, and other gameplay mechanics that aren't possible in a single player environment.

Interactive fiction usually relies on reading from a screen and on typing input, although speech synthesis allows blind and visually impaired users to play interactive fiction. Typing is the process of inputting text into a device such as a Typewriter, Computer, or a Calculator, by pressing keys on a keyboard.

Writing style

Interactive fiction features two distinct modes of writing: the player input and the game output.

As described above, player input is expected to be in simple command form (imperative sentences). In Linguistics, a sentence is a grammatical unit of one or more words bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it often preceded and followed A typical command may be:

pull lever

The responses from the game are usually written from a second-person point of view, in present tense. The second-person narrative is a Narrative mode in which the Protagonist or another main character is referred to by employment of second-person Personal pronouns Present Tense is the first Sagittarius album released in 1968 by Columbia Records. This is because, unlike in most works of fiction, the main character is closely associated with the player, and the events are seen to be happening as the player plays. While older text adventures often identified the protagonist with the player directly, newer games tend to have specific, well-defined protagonists with separate identities from the player. The classic essay "Crimes Against Mimesis"^[2] discusses, among other IF issues, the nature of "You" in interactive fiction.

A typical response might look something like this, the response to "look in teachest" at the start of Curses:

That was the first place you tried, hours and hours ago now, and there's nothing there but that boring old book. You pick it up anyway, bored as you are. ^[3]

Many text adventures, particularly those designed for humour (such as Zork, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Leather Goddesses of Phobos), address the player with an informal tone, sometimes including sarcastic remarks (see the transcript from Curses, below, for an example). Zork was one of the first Interactive fiction Computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an Interactive fiction Computer game based on the seminal comic Science fiction series of the Leather Goddesses of Phobos is an Interactive fiction Computer game written by Steve Meretzky and published by Infocom in 1986

History

Adventure

Around 1975, Will Crowther wrote the first text adventure game, Adventure (originally called ADVENT because a filename could only be six characters long in its operating system, and later Colossal Cave). William ("Willie" or "Will" Crowther (born 1936 is a Computer programmer and caver. Colossal Cave Adventure (also known as ADVENT, Colossal Cave, or Adventure) (Crowther 1976 Crowther An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination ^[4] It was programmed in Fortran for the PDP-10. Fortran (previously FORTRAN) is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative Programming language that is especially suited to The PDP-10 was a Mainframe computer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC from the late 1960s on the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor Stanford University graduate student Don Woods discovered Adventure while working at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and in 1977 obtained and expanded Crowther's source code (with Crowther's permission). This is about the programmer For the meteorologist see Don Woods (meteorologist and football player see Don Woods (football player. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (also known as Stanford AI Lab or SAIL) is the Artificial intelligence (AI research laboratory of Crowther's original version was an accurate simulation of the real Colossal Cave, but also included fantasy elements (such as axe-wielding dwarves and a magic bridge); Woods's changes were reminiscent of the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, and included a troll, elves, and a volcano some claim is based on Mount Doom, but Woods says was not. Simulation is the imitation of some real thing state of affairs or process Mammoth Cave National Park is a US National Park in central Kentucky, encompassing portions of Mammoth Cave the longest Cave system known in the ^[5]

In early 1977, Adventure spread across ARPAnet, ^[6] and has survived on the Internet to this day. The ARPANET ( Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) developed by ARPA of the United States Department of Defense, was the world's first operational The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks The game has since been ported to many other operating systems. An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination

The popularity of Adventure led to the wide success of interactive fiction during the late 1970s and the 1980s, when home computers had little, if any, graphics capability. Many elements of the original game have survived into the present, such as the command 'xyzzy', which is now included as an Easter Egg in games such as Minesweeper. Xyzzy is a magic word from the Colossal Cave Adventure computer game A virtual Easter egg is an intentional Hidden message or feature in an object such as a movie, Book

Adventure was also directly responsible for the founding of Sierra Online (later Sierra Entertainment); Ken and Roberta Williams played the game when it first appeared, and when unable to find any other games of similar quality, decided to design one of their own.

Commercial era

Adventure International

Adventure International was founded by Scott Adams (not to be confused with the creator of Dilbert). Adventure International was a Video game publishing company that existed from 1978 until 1985 started by Scott and Alexis Adams Scott Adams (born July 10, 1952) is the co-founder with ex-wife Alexis of Adventure International, an early publisher of games Dilbert (first published April 16, 1989) is an American Comic strip written and drawn by Scott Adams.

In 1978, Adams wrote Adventureland, which was loosely patterned after the original Advent. Adventureland was a text-based adventure computer game program written by Scott Adams, and the first such game sold commercially for the then-new He took out a small ad in a computer magazine in order to promote and sell Adventureland, thus creating the first commercial adventure game. In 1979 he founded Adventure International, the first commercial publisher of interactive fiction. The company went bankrupt in 1985.

Infocom

The largest company producing works of interactive fiction was Infocom,^[7] which created the Zork series and many other titles, among them Trinity, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and A Mind Forever Voyaging. Infocom was a Software company, based in Cambridge Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of Interactive fiction. Zork was one of the first Interactive fiction Computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an Interactive fiction Computer game based on the seminal comic Science fiction series of the A Mind Forever Voyaging ( AMFV) is an Interactive fiction game designed and implemented by Steve Meretzky and published by Infocom

In June 1977, Marc Blank, Bruce K. Marc Blank is an American Computer game designer and Game programmer. Daniels, Tim Anderson, and Dave Lebling began writing the mainframe version of Zork (also known as Dungeon), at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. Tim Anderson is a Computer programmer who helped create the Adventure game Zork, one of the first works of Interactive fiction and P David Lebling (born 1949 was an Interactive fiction Game designer, or Implementor, at Infocom. Zork was one of the first Interactive fiction Computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. Project MAC (the MIT Project on Mathematics and Computation later the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science ( LCS) was a research laboratory at MIT The game was programmed in a computer language called MDL, a variant of LISP. MDL (the MIT Design Language is a descendant of the Lisp Programming language Lisp (or LISP) is a family of Computer Programming languages with a long history and a distinctive fully parenthesized syntax In early 1979, the game was completed. Ten members of the MIT Dynamics Modelling Group went on to join Infocom when it was incorporated later that year.

In order to make its games as portable as possible, Infocom developed the Z-machine, a custom virtual machine which could be implemented on a large number of platforms, and which took standardized "story files" as input. The Z-machine is a Virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games In Computer science, a virtual machine (VM is a Software implementation of a machine (computer that executes programs like a real machine

The Infocom parser was widely regarded as the best of its era. In Computer science and Linguistics, parsing, or more formally syntactic analysis, is the process of analyzing a sequence of tokens to It accepted complex, complete sentence commands like "put the blue book on the writing desk" at a time when most of its competitors parsers were restricted to simple two word verb-noun combinations such as "put book". The parser was actively upgraded with new features like undo and error correction, and later games would 'understand' multiple sentence input: 'pick up the gem and put it in my bag. take the newspaper clipping out of my bag then burn it with the book of matches'.

In a non-technical sense, Infocom was responsible for developing the interactive style that would be emulated by many later interpreters. The Curses excerpt below, for example, is recognizably in the 'Infocom style'.

The company was bought by Activision in 1986 after the failure of Cornerstone, its database software program, and stopped producing text adventures a few years later. Activision Inc is an American Video game developer and publisher. Cornerstone is a Relational database for the PC released by Infocom in 1985

In 1991 and 1992, Activision released volumes one and two of The Lost Treasures of Infocom, a collection containing most of Infocom's games, followed in 1996 by Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom. The Lost Treasures of Infocom is a collection of 20 Computer games from Interactive fiction pioneer Infocom, released in 1991 Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom is a collection of 33 Computer games from Interactive fiction pioneer Infocom, and the top 6 winners

Legend Entertainment

Legend Entertainment was founded by Bob Bates and Mike Verdu in 1989. Legend Entertainment was an American developer of Computer games The company was founded in 1989 by Bob Bates and Mike Verdu after the end Robert Bates (born December 11 1953) better known as Bob Bates, is a U It started out from the ashes of Infocom.

The text adventures produced by Legend used (high-resolution) graphics as well as sound. Some of their titles include Eric the Unready, the Spellcasting series and Gateway (based on Frederik Pohl's novels). Eric the Unready is an Adventure game from Legend Entertainment. The term is most often found in a variety of communities Within the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying community spellcasting is a skill often used by druids clerics and wizards Frederik George Pohl Jr (born November 26, 1919) is a American Science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career

The last text adventure created by Legend was Gateway II, while the last game ever was Unreal 2 (the well-known first-person shooter action game). Unreal II The Awakening is a First-person shooter Video game, designed initially only for a single-player campaign A first-person shooter ( FPS) is an action Video game from the Shooter game The initial development of Maze War Legend was acquired in 2004 by Atari. Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972.

Other companies

Probably the first commercial work of interactive fiction produced outside the U. S. was the dungeon crawl game of Acheton, produced in Cambridge, England, and first commercially released by Acornsoft (later expanded and reissued by Topologika). A dungeon crawl is a type of role-playing adventure in which heroes navigate a Labyrinthine environment battling various monsters and looting any treasure they may Acornsoft was the software arm of Acorn Computers Ltd, and was a major publisher of software for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. Topologika is a British publisher of educational software It was founded in 1983. Other leading companies in the U.K. were Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9 Computing. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located Magnetic Scrolls was a British Computer game developer during the mid 1980s and early 1990s Level 9 was a British computer Adventure game company which produced some of the most advanced games of the 1980s Also worthy of mention are Delta 4, Melbourne House, and the homebrew company Zenobi. Delta 4 was a British software developer created by Fergus McNeill, writing and publishing Interactive fiction. Krome Studios Melbourne, formerly Melbourne House, is a video game development studio owned by Krome Studios and based in Melbourne Australia Zenobi is a Computer game company that is known for its Interactive fiction.

In Japan, companies such as Data West developed limited interactive fiction games, such as the seven-volume murder mystery series Misty. ^[8] Later, interactive fiction became more popular in Japan in the form of visual novels. A is an Interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics usually with Anime -style art

In Italy, interactive fiction games were mainly published and distributed through various magazines in included tapes. The largest number of games was published in the two magazines Viking and Explorer^[9], with versions for the main 8-bit home computers (ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and MSX). The Sinclair ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal Home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd MSX was the name of a standardized Home computer architecture in the 1980s The software house producing those games was Brainstorm Enterprise, and the most prolific IF author was Bonaventura Di Bello^[10], who produced 70 games in the Italian language. Bonaventura Di Bello (born April 26, 1963) is the co-founder with his wife Adelaide and his brother Massimiliano of Brainstorm Enterprise, an early The wave of interactive fiction in Italy lasted for a couple of years thanks to the various magazines promoting the genre, then faded and remains still today a topic of interest for a small group of fans and less known developers, celebrated on Web sites and in related newsgroups.

Modern era

After the demise of the commercial interactive fiction market in the 1990s, an online community eventually formed around the medium. In 1987, the Usenet newsgroup rec. Usenet, a Portmanteau of "user" and "network" is a world-wide distributed Internet discussion system arts. int-fiction was created, and was soon followed by rec. games. int-fiction. By custom, the topic of rec. arts. int-fiction is interactive fiction authorship and programming, while rec. games. int-fiction encompasses topics related to playing interactive fiction games, such as hint requests and game reviews.

One of the most important early developments was the reverse-engineering of Infocom's Z-Code format and Z-Machine virtual machine in 1987 by a group of enthusiasts called the InfoTaskForce and the subsequent development of an interpreter for Z-Code story files. The Z-machine is a Virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games The Z-machine is a Virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games In Computer science, a virtual machine (VM is a Software implementation of a machine (computer that executes programs like a real machine The InfoTaskForce was a group of Infocom Enthusiasts who first Reverse engineered the Infocom Z-Machine and wrote a Public domain version In Computer science, an interpreter normally means a Computer program that executes, i As a result, it became possible to play Infocom's work on modern computers.

For years amateurs formed a small community producing interactive fiction works of relatively limited scope using the Adventure Game Toolkit and similar tools. The Adventure Game Toolkit is software that supports the development of Adventure games It was written in 1987 by David Malmberg. The breakthrough that allowed the interactive fiction community to truly prosper, however, was the creation and distribution of two sophisticated development systems. In 1987, Michael J. Roberts released TADS, a programming language designed to produce works of interactive fiction. TADS is a programming system for creating Interactive fiction games In 1993, Graham Nelson released Inform, a programming language and set of libraries which compiled to a Z-Code story file. Graham A Nelson (born 1968 is a British mathematician poet and the creator of the Inform design system for creating Interactive fiction (IF games Inform is a Programming language and design system for Interactive fiction originally created in 1993 by Graham Nelson. A programming language is an Artificial language that can be used to write programs which control the behavior of a machine particularly a Computer. A compiler is a Computer program (or set of programs that translates text written in a computer language (the source language) into another Each of these systems allowed anyone with sufficient time and dedication to create a game, and caused a growth boom in the online interactive fiction community.

Despite the lack of commercial support, the availability of high quality tools allowed enthusiasts of the genre to develop new high quality games. Competitions such as the annual Interactive Fiction Competition for short works, the newer Spring Thing for longer works, and the XYZZY Awards, further helped to improve the quality and complexity of the games. The Interactive Fiction Competition is an annual competition for works of Interactive fiction that has been held since 1995. Spring Thing is an annual competition to highlight works of Interactive Fiction (text adventure games and other literary works The XYZZY Awards are an event to recognize extraordinary Interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards or Grammy Awards but Modern games go much further than the original "Adventure" style, improving upon Infocom games, which relied extensively on puzzle solving, and to a lesser extent on communication with non player characters, to include experimentation with writing and story-telling techniques.

While the majority of modern interactive fiction developed is distributed for free, there are some commercial endeavors, including Peter Nepstad's 1893: A World's Fair Mystery, several games by Howard Sherman published as Malinche Entertainment, and The General Coffee Company's Future Boy!. 1893 is a commercial mystery/educational Interactive fiction by Peter Nepstad written in TADS programming language Malinche Entertainment is an Interactive fiction development and publishing business founded by Howard Sherman Emily Short was commissioned to develop the game City of Secrets but the project fell through and she ended up releasing it herself. Emily Short is the pseudonym of an Interactive fiction (IF Writer, perhaps best known for her debut game Galatea and her use of psychologically ^[11] Some authors offer optional commercial "feelies" (physical props associated with a game) through feelies.org or similar services.

Notable works

• Colossal Cave Adventure by Will Crowther and Don Woods was the first text adventure ever made. Colossal Cave Adventure (also known as ADVENT, Colossal Cave, or Adventure) (Crowther 1976 Crowther William ("Willie" or "Will" Crowther (born 1936 is a Computer programmer and caver. This is about the programmer For the meteorologist see Don Woods (meteorologist and football player see Don Woods (football player.
• The Zork series by Infocom (1979- ) was the first text adventure to see widespread commercial release. Zork was one of the first Interactive fiction Computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. Infocom was a Software company, based in Cambridge Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of Interactive fiction.
• The Hobbit by Philip Mitchell and Veronika Megler of Beam Software (1982) was an early reinterpretation of an existing novel into interactive fiction, with several independent non-player characters. The Hobbit is a computer game released in 1982 and based on the book The Hobbit, by J Krome Studios Melbourne, formerly Melbourne House, is a video game development studio owned by Krome Studios and based in Melbourne Australia
• Planetfall, by Steve Meretzky of Infocom (1983), featured Floyd the robot, which Allen Varney claimed to be the first game character who evoked a strong emotional commitment from players. Planetfall is a Science fiction Interactive fiction Computer game written by Steve Meretzky, and the eighth title published Steven Eric Meretzky (born May 1, 1957) is an American computer game designer with dozens of titles to his credit Allen Varney (b April 1959) is an American writer and Game designer born in St ^[12]
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky of Infocom (1984), was notable in that the author of the original work was involved in the reinterpretation. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an Interactive fiction Computer game based on the seminal comic Science fiction series of the Douglas Noël Adams (11 March 1952 &ndash 11 May 2001 was an English author comic Radio dramatist
• A Mind Forever Voyaging, by Steve Meretzky of Infocom (1985), the first story-heavy, puzzle-light game. A Mind Forever Voyaging ( AMFV) is an Interactive fiction game designed and implemented by Steve Meretzky and published by Infocom
• Amnesia, by Hugo Award and Nebula Award winning science fiction and fantasy author Thomas M. Disch (1987), the only purely text-only adventure ever published by Electronic Arts. Thomas M Disch's Amnesia is a Text adventure Computer game created by Charles Kreitzberg's Cognetics Corporation, written by award-winning The Hugo Awards are given every year for the best Science fiction or Fantasy works and achievements of the previous year The Nebula Award is an award given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA for the best Science fiction / Fantasy fiction Thomas Michael Disch ( February 2 1940 – c July 4 2008) was an American Science fiction author and Poet
• Curses, by Graham Nelson (1993), the first game ever written in the Inform programming language. Graham A Nelson (born 1968 is a British mathematician poet and the creator of the Inform design system for creating Interactive fiction (IF games Inform is a Programming language and design system for Interactive fiction originally created in 1993 by Graham Nelson. Considered one of the first "modern" games to meet the high standards set by Infocom's best titles. ^[13]
• Radical Dreamers: Nusumenai Hōseki, by Square Co. (1996), one of the earliest text adventures on a video game console. is a Japanese Video game produced by Squaresoft (now Square Enix) in 1996 for the Satellaview add-on for the Nintendo Super Famicom was a Japanese Video game company founded in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto.
• So Far, by Andrew Plotkin (1996), the first XYZZY Award for Best Game winner in 1996. So Far is an Interactive fiction game written in 1996 by Andrew Plotkin. Andrew Plotkin (born May 15 1970 also known as Zarf, is an award-winning Interactive fiction author and an important figure in the modern interactive fiction community This is a list of XYZZY Awards results, grouped by award rather than year
• Anchorhead, by Michael S. Gentry (1998) is a highly rated horror story inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Anchorhead is the name of a 1998 Interactive fiction Computer game by Michael S Michael S Gentry is an award-winning Interactive fiction author best known for his game Anchorhead. Howard Phillips Lovecraft ( August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author of horror, fantasy The Cthulhu Mythos is a Shared universe created in the 1920s by American horror writer H ^[14]
• Photopia, by Adam Cadre (1998), the first almost entirely puzzle-free game. Photopia is a piece of literature by Adam Cadre rendered in the form of Interactive fiction, and written in Inform. Adam Cadre (born February 5, 1974 in Silver Spring Maryland) is a U It won the annual Interactive Fiction Competition in 1998. The Interactive Fiction Competition is an annual competition for works of Interactive fiction that has been held since 1995.
• Varicella by Adam Cadre (1999). Varicella is a 1999 work of Interactive fiction by Adam Cadre, distributed in z-code format as Freeware. It won four XYZZY Awards in 1999 including the XYZZY Award for Best Game, and had a scholarly essay written about it. The XYZZY Awards are an event to recognize extraordinary Interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards or Grammy Awards but ^[15]
• Galatea, by Emily Short (2000). Galatea is a work of Interactive fiction by Emily Short. It won the 2000 IF Art Show and a XYZZY Award for Best Non-Player Character Emily Short is the pseudonym of an Interactive fiction (IF Writer, perhaps best known for her debut game Galatea and her use of psychologically Galatea is focused entirely on interaction with the animated statue of the same name. Galatea has one of the most complex interaction systems for a non-player character in an interactive fiction game. A non-player character, often shortened to NPC, is a character that is controlled by the Gamemaster in Role-playing games or one that is not Adam Cadre called Galatea "the best NPC ever". Adam Cadre (born February 5, 1974 in Silver Spring Maryland) is a U ^[16]
• Slouching Towards Bedlam, by Star C. Slouching Towards Bedlam is a highly-praised Interactive fiction game that won the first place in the 2003 Interactive Fiction Competition. Foster and Daniel Ravipinto (2003). Set in a steampunk setting, the game integrates meta-game functionality (saving, restoring, restarting) into the game world itself. Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and Speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s The game won four XYZZY Awards and held the record for the highest average score of any game in the Interactive Fiction Competition before 2006, when it was overtaken by Floatpoint. The XYZZY Awards are an event to recognize extraordinary Interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards or Grammy Awards but The Interactive Fiction Competition is an annual competition for works of Interactive fiction that has been held since 1995. Floatpoint is a 2006 work of Interactive fiction written by Emily Short about a Diplomat sent to an endangered colony to discuss evacuation ^[17][18]
• Rendition, by nespresso (2007). rendition is a 2007 work of Interactive fiction by "nespresso" written using Inform 7 and published in Z-code format in which the player performs A political art experiment in the form of a text adventure game, forcing the player to confront their own complicity. Experimental literature refers to written works - often Novels or Magazines - that place great emphasis on Innovations regarding technique and Its approach to tragedy has been discussed academically by both the Association of Computing Machinery^[19] and Cambridge University. The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational Computing society The University of Cambridge (often Cambridge University) located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the ^[20]

Sample transcript

This is a brief transcript from one of many possible ways to not win the game Curses, by Graham Nelson. Graham A Nelson (born 1968 is a British mathematician poet and the creator of the Inform design system for creating Interactive fiction (IF games The player has entered instructions on the lines beginning with '>' (shown here in italic); the rest of the text is printed by the computer. The computer begins with a printed introduction giving a little context to the game (much more would become apparent as the game progressed):

It's become a matter of pride now not to give up. That tourist map of Paris must be up here somewhere in all this clutter, even if it has been five years since your last trip. And it's your own fault. It looks as if your great-grandfather was the last person to tidy up these lofts. . .

CURSES
An Interactive Diversion
Copyright (c) 1993 by Graham Nelson. New players should type "help".
Release 8 / Serial number 930603 (Compiled by Inform v634)

Attic

The attics, full of low beams and awkward angles, begin here in a relatively tidy area which extends north, south and east. The wooden floorboards seem fairly sound, just as well considering how heavy all these teachests are. But the old wiring went years ago, and there's no electric light.

A hinged trapdoor in the floor stands open, and light streams in from below.

>inventory
You are carrying:

a chocolate biscuit
an electric torch (providing light and closed)
a crumpled piece of paper

>read paper

Things to do:

1. Find map
2. Phone airport to check parking
3. Health forms. . .

and so on. Let's face it, 1. is more enticing than the rest put together.

>enter trapdoor
Yes, probably just as well to give up looking, and heaven knows there's enough packing to do, what with the rest of the family in uproar. Oh well.

*** You have missed the point entirely ***

In that game you scored 0 out of a possible 550, in 3 turns, giving you the rank of hapless Tourist.

Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, give the FULL score for that game or QUIT?
>^[3]

Development systems

A number of systems are available today to write interactive fiction. Among them are ADRIFT, Inform, Hugo, Quest, and TADS. ADRIFT is a graphical user interface used to create and play text adventures. Inform is a Programming language and design system for Interactive fiction originally created in 1993 by Graham Nelson. Hugo is a Programming language and design system for Interactive fiction created by Kent Tessman. TADS is a programming system for creating Interactive fiction games The majority of current IF development is implemented in Inform, TADS, or ADRIFT. In the 2006 IFComp, the lions' share of the games were written for Inform, with a strong minority of games for TADS and ADRIFT, followed by a smattering of games for other systems. The Interactive Fiction Competition is an annual competition for works of Interactive fiction that has been held since 1995. ^[21]

While familiarity with a programming language leads many new authors to attempt to produce their own complete IF application, most established IF authors recommend use of a specialised IF language, arguing that such systems allow authors to avoid the technicalities of producing a full featured parser, while allowing broad community support. The choice of authoring system usually depends on the author's desired balance of ease of use versus power, and the portability of the final product. ^[22]

Older development Systems

• Gilsoft's The Quill and the Professional Adventure Writer
• Incentive Software's Graphic Adventure Creator (GAC)

See also

• Grue
• Interactive Fiction (IF) MUD

Related Concepts

• Hypertext fiction
• Roleplaying Games, which are occasionally described as another form of interactive fiction. Gilsoft was a British producer and publisher of Video games and related utilities This article discusses the adventure game writing program For other usages of the word quill, please refer to Quill (disambiguation. Professional Adventure Writer or PAW (sometimes called PAWS for Professional Adventure Writing System) is a program that allows the user to write Incentive Software Ltd was a British Video game developer and publisher founded by Ian Andrew in 1983 Graphic Adventure Creator (often shortened to GAC) was a game creation system/programming language for adventure games published by Incentive Software, originally A grue is a fictional predator from the Zork series of Interactive fiction games by Infocom. ifMUD is a MUD associated with the Recartsint-fiction Newsgroup accessible via Telnet or a MUD client Hypertext fiction is a genre of Electronic literature, characterized by the use of Hypertext links which provides a new context for non-linearity in "literature" A role-playing game ( RPG; often roleplaying game) is a Game in which the participants assume the roles of Fictional characters.
• Visual novel, interactive fiction with graphics. A is an Interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics usually with Anime -style art
• Multi-User Dungeon (MUD), which may be considered as a kind of multiplayer or collaborative interactive fiction
• Addventure
• Gamebook
• Graphic adventures, adventure games with roots in interactive fiction. In computer gaming, a MUD ( Multi-User Dungeon, Domain or Dimension) is a multi-player computer game that combines elements of An addventure is a type of online Interactive fiction that combines aspects of round-robin stories and Choose Your Own Adventure -style tales A gamebook is a Book that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices that affect the course of the narrative which branches down various paths through the
• Amateur adventure game
• Interactive storytelling

Specific Related Fiction

• Choose Your Own Adventure
• Fighting Fantasy
• Lone Wolf (gamebooks)

Notes

Further reading

• Montfort, Nick (2005). Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. The MIT Press. The MIT Press is a University press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT in Cambridge Massachusetts ( USA) ISBN 978-0-262-63318-5.  
• Daniel Keller, "Reading and playing: what makes interactive fiction unique" p. 276-298. in Williams, J. P. , & Smith, J. H. (2007). The players' realm: studies on the culture of video games and gaming. Jefferson, N. C. : McFarland & Co. ISBN:9780786428328

External links

• Interactive Fiction Database, a community site where you can find personalized recommendations for IF games to play.
• Text Adventures at the Open Directory Project
• The Interactive Fiction Archive, a large archive of free-to-download and play interactive fiction (random mirror). The Open Directory Project ( ODP) also known as dmoz (from directory
• Baf's Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive, a more user-friendly interface for the IF archive.
• The Interactive Fiction Wiki, a MediaWiki wiki specific to Interactive Fiction.
• Something about Interactive Fiction - MobyGames examines the history (and future) of this gaming genre.
• A Brief History of Interactive Fiction, a timeline of events in interactive fiction history at the Brass Lantern website.
• Interactive Fiction: More Than Retro Fun, a beginners introduction and setup guide to Interactive Fiction games and interpreters
• Web-adventures, an online z-machine interpreter