The most popular interactive fiction games

From the mind of Michael Crichton comes Amazon, a game that lets you live out your jungle explorer fantasies—without the bugs or dysentery. You’re off to the Amazon to ...

Acheton (1987, DOS) is one of those text adventures where the game cheerfully tries to kill you every five minutes — and does so with words. You're tossed into a sprawling, b...

Released in 1984 for DOS, Sorcerer is Infocom at its most mischievous. You play an apprentice wizard who wakes up from a hangover only to find your mentor missing and reality sligh...

You’re a teenage wizard in college. There are spells, parties, potions, and more double entendres than a ‘90s teen comedy. Spellcasting 101 doesn’t take itself se...

The Shadows of Mordor is a dark fantasy adventure that feels like a lost chapter from an old-school Tolkien-inspired novel. You explore a grim and dangerous world filled with monst...

Released in 1988, Legend of the Sword is a graphic adventure that tries to blend epic fantasy storytelling with the puzzle-solving spirit of early point-and-clicks. The result is a...

In Scapeghost (1989), you’re not just dead—you’re also on the clock. As police officer Alan Chance, recently murdered and newly spectral, you’ve got one las...

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 an...

Enchanter is interactive fiction with teeth. As a text adventure, it relies entirely on imagination, yet it manages to feel richer than many graphical games of its era. You play as...

The last entry in Infocom’s Enchanter trilogy, Spellbreaker is where the training wheels come off. It’s unforgiving, cryptic, and expects you to understand spellcraft l...

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 pu...

In Cutthroats, you’re a diver hired for a treasure-hunting expedition that’s about to go very wrong. This text adventure from Infocom mixes underwater exploration with ...

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 disa...

Dragon World (1984) might sound like the precursor to a sprawling epic RPG, but it’s actually more of a board-game-style fantasy experience. Less “slay the dragon with ...

If Hamlet had a sequel directed by a DOS programmer, Castle Elsinore would be it. This interactive fiction game drops you right into Shakespearean drama with murder, betrayal, and ...

With Zork Zero, Infocom decided to throw everything into the cauldron: graphics, mouse support, and a jester who won’t shut up. A prequel to the original trilogy, it’s ...

Ever wanted to fight fire with... even more fire? Brimstone tosses you into a magical mess of spells, dungeons, and monsters who woke up on the wrong side of the crypt. It’s ...