Ask HN: Great text based games to play?

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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  • parchment

    The Interactive Fiction web app (by curiousdannii)

    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.

  • bitburner

    Bitburner Game

    > Bitburner is a programming-based incremental game that revolves around hacking and cyberpunk themes.

    https://github.com/danielyxie/bitburner

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  • counterfeit-monkey

    Counterfeit Monkey by Emily Short

    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.

  • grapevine

    The MUD Chat Network

    If you're looking for something to play on your own, winners of the IF competition[1] are often excellent.

    [0]: https://grapevine.haus

  • Mudlet

    ⚔️ A cross-platform, open source, and super fast MUD client with scripting in Lua

    Check out the list on Mudlet (https://mudlet.org), it's a FOSS desktop app for playing online test games you describe. Comes with a selection of good games pre -configured.

  • garglk

    A cross-platform IO layer for an interactive fiction player

    Taco Fiction: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=2ej7ntbmoit9ytvy

    You can use gargoyle as your IF player and run many games https://github.com/garglk/garglk/releases

  • frotz

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  • scummvm

    ScummVM main repository

  • python-adventure

    Original Colossal Caves adventure game, but in Python 3

    If you reference XYZZY, you need to suggest Colossal Cave! I think this is the text game that inspired all the others (and the only game I've ever played on VAX/VMS). You may be able to run it with `advent` on Linux. There used to be an Emacs command for it (maybe `M-x adventure`?), but I don't remember it and I can't seem to find it on Google. It looks like there's also a Python version at https://github.com/brandon-rhodes/python-adventure

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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