Zarf’s Interactive Fiction

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2021-09-28 14:30:05

Interactive fiction was the first great computer-game craze. Through the early 1980s, the most sophisticated, complex, involving games available were the text adventures. Everyone agreed. Go look up up old videogame rating charts; Infocom was always on the list — with several games.

Of course, advancing graphics eventually washed away IF’s supremacy. By 1990, all the text game companies were closed, or about to be. But... the games didn’t go away. And a community of IF fans — still interested in sophisticated, complex, involving, literate gameplay — continued to create them.

You can play my games freely (and for free). All of the games on this page run right in your web browser. These are not demos or previews. They’re complete stories.

Everyone’s heard that IF is hard to play. You have to type exactly the right command or you fail, right? Well — no. Modern IF games are pretty easy! They understand a good range of commands, as long as you stick to a familiar pattern. There are variations, but not too many.