grapevine VS counterfeit-monkey

grapevine.haus/

I've heard of people having decent results using the Grapevine web client on iOS, although an iPad with a physical keyboard is probably much preferred over an on-screen keyboard. The only catch is that the game has to be registered with Grapevine and the web client enabled, as far as I know at least.

There's also still some diehard MU* players out there, and some modern servers in active development. See Ares MUSH and Evennia (a MUD-like server), directories https://mustard.mythicus.net/ and https://grapevine.haus/.

This question is asked rather frequently. There are very few truly active aggregation sites any more. The most active, but pretty incomplete site is probably grapevine: https://grapevine.haus/

If you want immersion in a more low-fi text-based setting, maybe head to /r/MUD and look into a MUD that pushes your buttons in terms of settings and mechanics. Try some of the games linked into Grapevine if you're not familiar with MUDs. Lots of nice games to get your feet wet, there, until you find one to call home. Just a warning, MUDs are not immune to suffering from a high number of low-effort games, but it seems easier to find the good ones that it does with PBBGs.

I have three to share, but they tie for the same reasons. Armageddon, Sindome and Star Conquest have pretty cool areas. Armageddon a Mad Max out in the desert type of vibe with people trying to survive with mutants and the like, Sindome is a cyber punk dystopian future where anything is possible and Star Conquest a future space opera with three main factions fighting it out for supremacy. All have people on at basically all times of the day. Armageddon Host name - www.armageddon.org 4050 Sindome Moo.sindome.org 5555 Star Conquest moo.squidsoft.net 7777 All three are heavy into role playing, however. So it will be required. I do believe Sindome and maybe Star Conquest have classes. I mean they have jobs, but I think you can gain abilities not in your skill set. I believe all are PvP and PvE, so it can be stressful if getting attacked I suppose. I am not much into PvP myself though. They may or may not have OOC channels. All three are free to play. Currently Armageddon is MUD of the Month and can be played with the community on Saturdays and Sundays UTC -5 or CDT at 6pm till 12am. You are welcome to join us if you like. Consequently Grapevine is the Mud website of the Month https://grapevine.haus/ This website has 140+ games. It has a great feature with it's stats screen for each game. It gives you how many players have been on the last 48 hours, last week, last month, last year and time of day for busy hours. So that may help you in finding a good MUD as well.

https://grapevine.haus/ is most popular right now

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.