I love interactive fiction, or “IF” for the acronymically inclined. Or “text adventure” games if you’re less familiar with the Infocom of the 1980s. IF as a genre, fundamentally unchanged for more than twenty years, evolved in a world of gaming where graphics were non-existent and words were the sole medium of expression. The game described locations, objects, and actions in text, and the player controlled the story’s protagonist by typing commands in English (or any other natural language in which the story was written). As a player, you had to rely on your imagination to fill in the gaps.

In the time since, technology has allowed designers to create games that realize their visual ideals. And many of these games have captivating stories and excellent puzzles, just like good IF games. And there are entirely different styles of games whose pure entertainment value is graphics-based, like a first-person shooter or even a simple puzzle game like Tetris. And that’s great! But it’s also different, and IF still has something to offer today.

I like to think of the relationship between IF and popular modern games as analogous to the relationship between books and movies. It’s not much of a stretch. It’s words versus pictures. Both words and pictures have their place, both can be entertaining, educational, and otherwise enriching. But I personally prefer words.

If you’re a fan of words like me and you’ve never played interactive fiction, or perhaps if you played Infocom’s Zork back in the 80s and remember it fondly, you might be surprised to learn that the medium is far from extinct. An active hobbyist community continues to produce new titles, and as a result IF has grown tremendously, both technically (in terms of language parser sophistication, availability of IF writing/development tools, etc.) and as an art form. Now there are countless modern IF titles currently available for free, representing an amazing array of genres and story-telling styles. Erstwhile players of old-style text adventure games might, for instance, notice the trend toward emphasis on a game’s plot and story-telling as opposed to disjointed puzzle solving. That’s a severe generalization, as classic puzzle games are also certainly still developed — I just want to emphasize that the diversity of titles now available surpasses anything imagined in IF’s “heyday” of twenty plus years ago.

Playing them allows me to simultaneously experience three of my favorite things: reading, puzzle solving, and playing games (or four if I happen to play IF while eating peanut butter!). If you also enjoy the art of the crafted sentence, do yourself a favor and read this Beginner’s Guide to Interactive Fiction. It may or may not be your cup of tea, but it has to be nice to know that people are telling stories in interesting new ways.