Recommend On: Interactive Fiction

Esh

After watching the Adventure Call videos on YouTube I've got an itch to play some interactive fiction. A few questions...

What's the best way to go about this on my MacBook Pro (2010)? Where's the best archive for freeware/shareware interactive fiction and what's the best program to run it on?

What are some of the best titles?

Also, are any of the old Infocom games still freeware? I know Infocom at various times had released them for free.

admanb

I recalled Rock Paper Shotgun having some posts on the subject and did a search, which led me here, followed that to here, which links to the People's Republic of Interactive Fiction, which has a page of "where to start" and links to something called the Interactive Fiction Database.

Seems like a solid place to start.

Orikaeshigitae

Download Spatterlight.

Play these.

And this.

Also these.

Zork 1-3 are freeware, and if you can track down a copy of the other stuff like Planetfall, Deadline, Border Zone, Bureaucracy, or Trinity, Frotz or any other z-code interpreter should be able to read the data files.

I'm glad Zarf hit his target. He's one of my game design heroes.

Sir Carcass

My two current favorites are Babel and Floatpoint. I'm pretty much a newb to IF, though. I use a program called Gargoyle which seems to play a lot of formats.

CptHamilton

They're in amongst the ones that Orikaeshigitae posted recommendations for, but let me point out Slouching Towards Bedlam and Anchorhead as excellent places to start. They're both well-written, with interesting but fairly short stories and puzzles that can be solved without any huge leaps of IF-game-puzzle logic.

Once you're through those (or if you just want something bigger and more puzzle-filled), Curses! is widely-acclaimed and full of interesting puzzles. I never got around to finishing it, but the parts I've played were fun with witty writing.

As for engine... I just use Frotz on my iphone, so I have no useful recommendation

Mike Danger

Digital: A Love Story isn't a conventional IF experience, but it's pretty cool and runs on the Mac. (I got stuck at one point and never beat it, though. )

useless4

Does anyone write IF? I played around in Inform7 and it looks like it got tons better. I would be interested in seeing what anyone else has managed to eek out .

CygnusZ

Vespers and Photopia come to mind.

Dangerbird

Sorry to slightly derail the thread, but whats the name of that one IF where you're in a wooded area near a cabin, and you keep dying over and over again, only to be resurrected after every death?

I think it was called Shards, or Shrapnel... something like that.

I played that one to the end and thought it was a pretty nifty one, though somewhat disturbing.

Drake Chambers

Dangerbird wrote: »

Sorry to slightly derail the thread, but whats the name of that one IF where you're in a wooded area near a cabin, and you keep dying over and over again, only to be resurrected after every death?

I think it was called Shards, or Shrapnel... something like that.

I played that one to the end and thought it was a pretty nifty one, though somewhat disturbing.

That's Shrapnel, by Adam Cadre. He also wrote Photopia.

I really enjoyed his work and am sad that he's stopped doing IF.