Interactive fiction: text-based adventure games
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.
Most popular interactive fiction games
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1893: A World's Fair Mystery
Windows XP/98/95Mac OS2003
1893: A World's Fair Mystery is an interactive fiction game developed by the American studio Illuminated Lantern and released in 2002. Set during the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, the game combines historical ficti...
20000 Leagues under the sea
DOS1988 Coktel Vision
Based loosely on Jules Verne’s famous tale, this game lets you live your steampunk submarine dreams with all the elegance of a DOS interface. You command the Nautilus, explore the ocean depths, and encounter strange sea crea...
2112
DOS1994
Welcome to 2112, a game that predicted a grim techno-future back when floppy disks still ruled. This DOS-era oddity throws you into a world that’s part cyberpunk, part fever dream, and entirely confusing. It’s got clun...
9 Princes in Amber
DOS1985 Telarium
Based on the cult fantasy novels by Roger Zelazny, 9 Princes in Amber is a 1985 text adventure that assumes two things: you’ve read the books, and you enjoy typing things like “look tree” and “use sword&rdq...
A Dudley Dilemma
DOS1988
A Dudley Dilemma (1988) sounds like the title of a children’s book, but it’s actually a very British text adventure for DOS where the stakes are politely quirky and mildly confusing. You play as Dudley, a man with prob...
A Mind Forever Voyaging
DOSMac OS1985 Infocom
If you ever wanted to play a video game that doubles as a philosophical think piece, A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985) is your ride. Released for DOS and Macintosh, this is one of Infocom’s most ambitious works - a text adventu...
A Night with Troi
DOS1991NSFW
A Night with Troi (1991) sounds like a fan fiction gone too far - and, well, that’s pretty much what it is. It’s a DOS-based “adventure” in the loosest sense, where you find yourself on the Enterprise with ...
Acheton
DOS1987
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, brain-melting maze of puzzles so obscure they might...
Adventure in Serenia
DOS1982 Sierra On-Line
Before heroes had inventory screens and voice acting, there was Adventure in Serenia, the lovechild of a text parser and a fever dream. Released in 1982, this proto-graphic adventure gave players a taste of magic, mystery, and con...
African Adventure
DOS1997remake
African Adventure is one of those games that feels like it was made during a two-hour layover at the airport - but somehow, it works. Set in the savannah, it combines survival, exploration, and a splash of educational trivia (prob...
Alice in Wonderland
DOS1989
Step into the rabbit hole - no, really, step carefully, or you’ll glitch right through the floor. Alice in Wonderland (1989, DOS) is a surreal, side-scrolling adventure that loosely follows the Lewis Carroll classic, if Lewi...
Amazon
DOS1984 Telarium
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 recover a missing expedition and probably get into...
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...
Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur
DOS1989 Infocom
Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur is a text adventure with occasional graphics, in which you, the not-yet-king, bumble your way through Camelot trying to prove you’re not just some kid with a weird haircut. The writing is witt...
Avon
DOS1989 Topologika Software
If Shakespeare wrote video games and then decided, “You know what this needs? A parser and some pixelated drama,” you'd get Avon. In this interactive fiction gem from 1989, you step into the slippers of a humble page t...
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...
Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor
DOS1987 Infocom
If you ever wanted to roleplay in a text adventure where a coconut is of utmost importance, Beyond Zork has your back. This is Infocom at its most delightfully weird: part RPG, part parser game, all nonsense. You’ll customiz...
Border Zone
DOS1987 Infocom
Welcome to Border Zone (1987, DOS), where the Cold War is hot and your only weapon is your brain (and maybe a good map). This text-based espionage thriller from Infocom combines spy drama with multiple protagonists and a real-time...
Borrowed Time
DOS1985 Interplay Productions
Borrowed Time is a graphic adventure video game developed and published by Interplay Productions. It was released in 1985 for various platforms, including the Apple Macintosh, Apple II, DOS, and Atari ST. The game is notable ...
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...
Brimstone
DOS1985 Synapse Software
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 a 1985 RPG that oozes charm and confusion in equal...
Bureaucracy
DOSMac OS1987 Infocom
Douglas Adams, the twisted genius behind Hitchhiker’s Guide, brings you the most terrifying adventure of all: paperwork. Bureaucracy turns mundane modern life into a text-based hellscape of lost forms, passive-aggressive cle...
Castle Adventure
DOS1984freeware
Castle Elsinore
DOS1992 Temple Software
Caverns of Chaos
DOS1992
Circuit's Edge
DOS1990 Westwood Studios
Circuit's Edge is a cyberpunk-themed role-playing game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom. It was released in 1990 for MS-DOS. Set in a dystopian future, Circuit's Edge takes place in the fictional city of R...
Corruption
DOS1988 Magnetic Scrolls
Cutthroats
DOS1984 Infocom
Deadline
DOS1982 Infocom