I’ve been trying to find this text adventure game for Years on my own. If anybody knows where it is it would be a big help! It’s a satirical text adventure that starts off with white words on a black background in a typical fantasy RPG setting that’s reminiscent of old school games like Zork. Like those kinds of games, it has absolutely IMPOSSIBLE puzzles and eventually, you die from failing to complete one. What makes this game special is that once you die, you wake up again, and the UI changes to a white background with black text. By then, the game begins to play like a modern narrative text adventure.
To facilitate this change, the setting changes to that of a modern condo filled with prior instances of the player character doing various domestic things such as organizing barbeques and playing pool in the game room, those kinds of things. These instances, or clones have long since given up on beating the RPG game. However, they still have wisdom to offer to the current incrnation and act as a sort of “hint system” for the main RPG world. In order to access the RPG world again, you have to first play a card game with your “clones” and they would depart from the table after they’re done whether you win or not. The table has, I think, a map of the RPG world engraved on it. If you get onto it, you’re back in the game as if you never died.
One of the most notable thing in this game is that in the RPG world, a goblin follows you around that constantly insults you, and if you kill it, it explodes and kills you (? I might be misremembering what happens when you kill it, it either kills you or it melts and you scoop up its goop with your shield to solve a puzzle). And in the Modern Condo world, that goblin and its clones, THOUSANDS of its clones surround the condo. The only reason why they haven’t breached and infiltrated the condo is that there’s a forcefield around it that keeps them out (and the player clones in). I think the bit of lore surrounding that is that every time someone kills a goblin in the RPG world, it adds more to the goblin army in the Modern world, but I can’t quite remember.
I think it was on textadventures.uk, but don’t quote me on it. It was most definitely programmed on inform. Again, if anybody knows the name of this text adventure and where to find it, it would mean a lot.
