Since the demise of its commercial era circa 1990, interactive fiction, also known as text adventures, managed to survive thanks to development tools such as TADS, Inform, and ADRIFT, and today a thriving community of authors, readers, critics, theorists, software developers, and others continues to output an extraordinary body of high quality, innovative work, displaying a sophistication and artistry that often bears only a passing resemblance to even the greatest Infocom classics—for free. So vast is the breadth of this community, in fact, that it can seem difficult to penetrate, despite a number of helpful and informative websites.
For those who are disinclined for whatever reason to parse out a solution to this particular puzzle, I would like to present a compilation of interactive fiction (IF) titles, the tools necessary to access them, and a wide assortment of documents that are of practical, historical, theoretical, and critical import.
Originally intended as a celebration of the thirty years between the original ADVENT (1976) by Will Crowther and Don Woods and the close of 2006, this collection has been expanded and revised through 2008—including not only a broader catalog but also new versions of some older works as well as the latest software releases. The Magic Word features a carefully considered collection of well over 1000 individual titles, beginning with early progenitors Eliza (1966) and Hunt the Wumpus (1972). All XYZZY Award winners and high-ranking Annual Competition entrants to date have been included. Unfortunately, the majority of the Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls catalogs have been omitted due to their enduring commercial licenses. Infocom games can be purchased in collections through Activision, Inc., but Magnetic Scrolls games are sadly out-of-print.
The common label “text adventure” may have been appropriate in the 1980s but is often misleading when considering the work of today’s non-commercial community. Many of these titles are more story than game or puzzle, and great experiments continue to occur in areas such as conversation, player-narrator relationships, world simulation, emergent solutions, metatextual conceit, narrative structure, perspective, user interface, and multimedia presentation, to name but a few.
Invoking The Magic Word is simple:
- Download the five-part zip file here (432.52 MB total).
- Extract IF.zip.001 using an application such as 7-Zip.
- Browse to the interpreters directory and install Gargoyle (Win) or Zoom (Mac).
- These interpreters can open most of the included IF files!
- Be sure to read Info.txt to learn more.
If you are new to interactive fiction, I suggest beginning with The Dreamhold (2004) by Andrew Plotkin or Mrs. Pepper’s Nasty Secret (2008) by Jim Aikin and Eric Eve; both titles were designed specifically to introduce new IF readers to the traditional conventions of the medium. Additionally, if you come from a videogaming background, I suggest Gun Mute (2008) by C. E. J. Pacian as a useful entry point. The Interactive Fiction Database—with its user reviews and recommended lists—is a helpful resource for deciding where to go next!
Please contact me or leave a comment if you have any questions or feedback. Puzzle-oriented games can be great fun as cooperative exercises, so it would be nice to play some in tandem!
