Interactive fiction: text-based adventure games sorted by release date
Interactive fiction games (or text adventures) are adventure games in which the player gives textual commands in order to act within the given story. The story itself is told both using text and static pictures or with no graphics of any kind, just text. The genre's stepping stones are Adventure (developed in 1975) and the Zork series. Infocom, Legend Entertainment and Magnetic scrolls were some of the most popular interactive fiction developers of the 80s.
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Essex
DOS1985 Synapse Software
Forbidden Castle
DOS1985 Angelsoft
Golden Oldies: Volume 1 - Computer Software Classics
DOS1985 The Software Toolworks
James Bond 007: A View to a Kill
DOS1985 Angelsoft
Mindshadow
DOSMac OS1985 Interplay Productions
Mindwheel
DOS1985 Synapse Software
Perry Mason
DOS1985 Paisano Productions
Questprobe featuring Human Torch and The Thing
DOS1985 Adventure International
Rambo First Blood Part 2
DOS1985 Angelsoft
Rendezvous with Rama
DOS1985 Telarium
Rendezvous with Rama is an interactive fiction (text adventure) game released in 1984. Telarium, a subsidiary of Spinnaker Software, was known for producing narrative-driven games based on popular literary works. This adaptation o...
Sherlock Holmes: Another bow
DOS1985 Magicom Multimedia
Spellbreaker
DOS1985 Infocom
Star Trek: the Kobayashi alternative
DOS1985 Micromosaics
The mist
DOS1985 Angelsoft
The Wizard of Oz
DOS1985 Windham Classics
Treasure Island
DOS1985 Byron Preiss Video Productions
Voodoo island
DOS1985 Angelsoft
Wishbringer
DOS1985 Infocom
Amnesia
DOS1986 Cognetics corporation
In Amnesia, you wake up in a hotel room with no idea who you are, where you are, or why someone wants you dead. And no, this isn’t a gritty FPS—it’s a text adventure. That’s right, no graphics, just your im...
Ballyhoo
DOS1986 Infocom
Come one, come all, to the saddest circus ever pixelated. In Ballyhoo, you're stuck in a depressing carnival trying to solve a kidnapping while dealing with clowns, carnies, and the worst text parser since your last therapy sessio...
Beyond the Titanic
DOS1986 Apogee Software
Before Titanic was a movie with a lot of weeping, there was Beyond the Titanic, a text adventure where surviving the iceberg is just the beginning. The game takes the historic disaster and then says, “What if we added a secr...
Breakers
DOS1986 Synapse Software
In Breakers, you're a high-tech wrecking crew with a mission: break stuff. Computers, walls, enemy morale—whatever gets in your way. Released in 1986, it feels like a mutant crossbreed of action game and low-budget sci-fi mo...
Hollywood Hijinx
DOS1986 Infocom
James Bond 007: Goldfinger
DOS1986 Angelsoft
Jewels of Darkness
DOS1986 Level 9 Computing
Leather Goddesses of Phobos
DOS1986 Infocom
Moonmist
DOS1986 Infocom
Passengers on the Wind
DOS1986 Infogrames
Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man
DOS1986 Adventure International
Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man is an abandoned text-based adventure game designed by Scott Adams, developed and released by Adventure International in 1986 for DOS but was also published for Acorn Electron, Atari 8-bit, BBC Micro...
Sherlock Holmes: The Vatican Cameos
DOS1986 Magicom Multimedia