Even though the general narrative online seems to be that text adventures died with Infocom (which I disagree with for many reasons of course), it’s nice to see that there’s two notable Interactive Fiction and Text Adventure events happening at the same time. The first is that the 32nd Annual IF Comp is now live! There are 71 new interactive fiction entries to play and vote on. Not all of them are pure text adventures but the entries let you know what type of Interactive Fiction it is. I love choice based games as well so this is not an issue for me. It’s also just wild to me that it’s been going on for so long. I always forget that the Post-Infocom Text Adventure era or whatever you called it really did start that early on while folks like Legend were still making text adventures.

The only heads up I’d like to give is that while they put much heavier restrictions on gen AI usage, I believe they do not have anything for code because it would be impossible for them to enforce. While I personally disagree and think it’s worth having anyway, even at least a disclosure requirement, I get it. I’m not going to fill up this post with complaints. Just know that you should dunk your head in a toilet if you use it.

The second Interactive Fiction related item I’d like to mention is that it’s the final week of voting for IntroComp. IntroComp is described as “an annual competition where participants develop excerpts of interactive fiction, gain feedback from audience reactions, and (hopefully!) use this feedback to release a fantastic final product.” Check some games in development out and help some games get made!

And if you’ve never played a text adventure, give it a shot. Many of the Interactive Fiction games on this Interactive Fiction Database list are text adventures and available for free. It’s a bit of a cliche to recommend Lost Pig but it’s a good one! You may also like Bronze, Shade, or Photopia. Just click around and start playing one that sounds interesting to you.

Text adventures: They’re neat!