counterfeit-monkey VS BrogueCE

Counterfeit Monkey by Emily Short. https://github.com/i7/counterfeit-monkey/releases

If you don't want to install a parser on your computer, you can play it online by putting the link to the .gblorb file into https://iplayif.com/ I.e. https://iplayif.com/?story=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fi7%2Fc...

Modern games are generally going to be more approachable than old ones. Tastes have changed considerably. In the days when you couldn't pull up a walkthrough in a few seconds, taking days to think of the next step was part of the fun, and just getting permanently stuck at some point was fairly common. Also, letting the player keep going even after they have done something to make the game unwinnable is now considered very uncool. Navigation is much less tedious these days as well, fast travel for example, although the exact mechanics depend on the game.

And that's not mentioning the amount of CPU and RAM available, not only for the game's runtime, but also for tools like I7 (which was used to write Counterfeit Monkey).

For an quicker introduction to modern "interactive fiction", as it's called these days, check out competition entries. https://intfiction.org/c/competitions/7 These are generally written in a shorter amount of time and the results are quicker to play through.

Various old skool text adventures:

If you are already experienced with them then "Counterfeit Monkey" takes it to the next level with a great twist based on anagram-like magic:

> Anglophone Atlantis has been an independent nation since an April day in 1822, when a well-aimed shot from their depluralizing cannon reduced the British colonizing fleet to one ship.

> Since then, Atlantis has been the world's greatest center for linguistic manipulation, designing letter inserters, word synthesizers, the diminutive affixer, and a host of other tools for converting one thing to another. Inventors worldwide pay heavily for that technology, which is where a smuggler and industrial espionage agent such as yourself can really clean up.

> Unfortunately, the Bureau of Orthography has taken a serious interest in your activities lately. Your face has been recorded and your cover is blown.

> Your remaining assets: about eight more hours of a national holiday that's spreading the police thin; the most inconvenient damn disguise you've ever worn in your life; and one full-alphabet letter remover.

> Good luck getting off the island.

https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=aearuuxv83plclpl

https://github.com/i7/counterfeit-monkey

If you're new to the genre then "Lost Pig" is a good place to start, though technically it's licence (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0) is not open source.

I love any opportunity to suggest people try out Brogue. It was developed with the idea "What would have happened if development continued on Rogue?"

Info here: https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/

Repo/downloads here: https://github.com/tmewett/BrogueCE

I enjoyed it, though for my taste it was maybe a little too simplistic and easy. The original rogue is before my time, but at one point I got very hooked on [brogue](https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/) and this reminded me very much of that.

For a long time, most traditional roguelikes were free (although there seem to be more on steam lately). I think Brogue is a good place to start; it isn't too complicated, it has some nice quality of life stuff, cooperates with a mouse, and its pretty for its genre.

I only play community edition, and my ascensions have been lightning, conjuration, teleport and some reaping combinations. My mastery was teleport with invis/reaping support. Multiplicity weapons are good (spear, rapier) but i tend to get ambitious and play hard for a mastery and screw it up.

Your best option is Brogue (community edition), in my opinion.

Brogue

Brogue is another good option if you're down with rogue-likes, can basically run on anything (& has an Android version).