Why you should give Text Adventure games a try (yes, you!)
There is not nearly enough love for Text Adventure Games here on Tumblr. Or anywhere really. But especially here, I feel like you guys would really get a kick out of them. Here’s why:
@icannotgetoverbirds thank you! I’m glad you’re interested! The post contains links to all the games (although most will not work on mobile, since most of these games predate mobile phones. The links won’t take you directly to the games, but rather to a portal through which the games can be launched.
Most of the links I provided are to IFDB, the Interactive Fiction Database, a community run archive which allows you to search for games by title, age, genre, and community reviews. It has plot descriptions, reviews, and “people who rated this game highly also enjoyed [blank]” reccomendations. It will also provide a list of places each game can be played. Your best bet is online, it’s the easiest to navigate and best for less tech-savvy people, although occasionally the online game will be missing some elements (like colour or music). You can also download the files, if they’re HTML you can open them directly on your computer, if they’re Glulx or Gblorb you can open them in Parchment.
There’s also Textadventure.co.uk, which does a similar thing, but I personally find the UI and search function to be more clunky and less accurate (if IFDB is Ao3, TA.co is closer to Wattpad). You’re also gonna see many more hypertext games than parser games, which as I mentioned isn’t ideal for me.
Lastly, if you really wanna plumb the depths, there’s the IF Archive. This is truly an archive in every sense of the word. Founded in 1992, contains close to every piece of text adventure gaming content ever published, as far as I can tell. There’s no keyword search function or review feature, just a long winding series of lists of links and web portals. If you’re lucky you’ll get game descriptions like “A horror mystery game” or “a twisted fairy tale”, but just as often you’ll have to pick games through titles and vibes alone. Personally, sifting through decades of the Archive looking for games with cool titles to blindly download is my definition of a fun Saturday, but it’s… Not for everyone.
Sorry for the rambling again. If you have any more questions, do not hesitate to ask. And if you do play any of these games and enjoy them, please DM me. I need more people (read- any people) to talk to about this stuff.
