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

Zork I: The Great Underground Empire

adventureDOS

James Clavell's Shogun

adventureDOS

A Night with Troi

adventureDOS

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1893: A World's Fair Mystery

Windows XP/98/95Mac20033.4/5

20000 Leagues under the sea

DOS19883.8/5 Coktel Vision

2112

DOS19943/5

9 Princes in Amber

DOS19854.1/5 Telarium

A Dudley Dilemma

DOS19883.3/5

A Mind Forever Voyaging

DOSMac19854.1/5 Infocom

A Night with Troi

DOS1991NSFW4/5

Acheton

DOS19873.7/5

Adventure in Serenia

DOS19823.6/5 Sierra On-Line

African Adventure

DOS1997remake3.6/5

Alice in Wonderland

DOS19893.3/5

Amazon

DOS19843.7/5 Telarium

Amnesia

DOS19864/5 Cognetics corporation

Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur

DOS19894/5 Infocom

Avon

DOS19893.4/5 Topologika Software

Ballyhoo

DOS19863.5/5 Infocom

Beyond the Titanic

DOS19863.8/5 Apogee Software

Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor

DOS19874/5 Infocom

Border Zone

DOS19873.8/5 Infocom

Borrowed Time

DOS19853.6/5 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 for its early use of digitized photos and a noir-style detective narrative.The game's story is set in the 1930s and foll...

Breakers

DOS19864.1/5 Synapse Software

Brimstone

DOS19853.4/5 Synapse Software

Bureaucracy

DOSMac19873.9/5 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.

Castle Adventure

DOS1984freeware4.2/5

Castle Elsinore

DOS19923.5/5 Temple Software

Circuit's Edge

DOS19904.1/5 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 various platforms including DOS, Amiga, and Commodore 64.Set in a dystopian future, Circuit's Edge takes place in the fictional city of Rhoes Island, a dark and gritty urban landscape filled with crime, corru...