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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Silicon Dreams

DOS1986 Level 9 Computing

Silicon Dreams by Level 9 Computing is a trilogy of interactive fiction (text adventure) games released in the mid-1980s. The trilogy includes three separate games: Snowball, Return to Eden, and The Worm in Paradise. Each game combines elements of science fiction with puzzle-solving and exploration. All three games are text-based, relying on d...

Skullduggery: Adventures in Horror

DOS1986

Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy

DOSMac OS1986 TRANS Fiction Systems

Tass Times in Tonetown

DOS1986 Interplay Productions

The Fellowship of the Ring

DOS1986 Beam Software

The Pawn

DOS1986 Magnetic Scrolls

Transylvania

DOS1986freeware Polarware

Trinity

DOS1986 Infocom

Acheton

DOS1987

Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor

DOS1987 Infocom

Border Zone

DOS1987 Infocom

Bureaucracy

DOSMac OS1987 Infocom

Bureaucracy is an abandoned text-adventure game designed by Douglas Adams (yes, the writer of The Hitchhiker Guide of the Galaxy), developed and published by Infocom in 1987. Bureaucracy is a peculiar interactive fiction; the game challenges you to solve frustrating bureaucratic problems in a world populated by strange characters.

Demon's Forge

DOS1987 Mastertronic

Gnome Ranger

DOS1987 Level 9 Computing

Gnome Ranger is an abandoned fantasy adventure game, developed and published by Level 9 Computing in 1987 for DOS. Gnome Ranger was designed by Peter Austin who also designed the sequel Gnome Ranger 2: Ingrid's Back.

Indiana Jones: Revenge of the Ancients

DOS1987 Angelsoft

Kingdom of Hamil

DOS1987 Topologika Software

Knight Orc

DOSMac OS1987 Level 9 Computing

Knight Orc is a text-based adventure game released in 1987 by Level 9 Computing, a British game development studio renowned for creating interactive fiction during the 1980s. In Knight Orc, you play as Grindleguts the Orc, flipping the conventional fantasy trope of playing a heroic knight or adventurer.

Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It

DOS1987 Infocom

Passengers on the Wind 2

DOS1987 Infogrames

Plundered Hearts

DOSMac OS1987 Infocom

Stationfall

DOS1987 Infocom

Supernova

DOS1987freeware Apogee Software

The Fourth Protocol

DOS1987 The Electronic Pencil Co.

The Fourth Protocol is a 1985 interactive fiction video game inspired by Frederick Forsyth's 1984 Cold War spy novel of the same name. Developed by the Electronic Pencil Company and published by Hutchinson Computer Publishing, the game was released on platforms such as the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and IBM PC (in 1997). Designed as a ...