Absolutely agree with this. I first played IF - Colossal Cave actually - in 1980, and played text adventures throughout all the 1980s. Yes in the UK there was phenomenal creativity then especially in the Spectrum scene, though distribution was more problematic. However I don’t think anything in the 1980s matches the amateur explosion we have seen since the early 1990s, fuelled in a large part by Inform and TADS, and then later via Twine and other forms of IF. So yes, I’m rather wowed by things since. 80s great, but since then superb.
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AdventureWriter is actually what we in the UK call The Quill… CodeWriter obtained the rights to produce some versions for US machines from Welsh company Gilsoft; making their own tweaked version for the C64 along with Apple II, Atari 8-bit and DOS releases.
The games from the Thriller pack are available in the usual Commodore 64 archives. They were written by John R. Olsen, who cut his teeth making adventures for the TRS-80 in the early 1980s. Many of his Quilled games were ports or reworkings of his earlier BASIC games for that computer.
See…
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C3959/Frankenstein+Adventure.html
for example. Jason Dyer has covered the TRS-80 version of that “Thriller” game on his blog.
As linked to previously, the Junkyard games were also written with the Quill/AdventureWriter…
http://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C2367/Junkyard.html
Not only can you easily play the games, but you could also extract all the source code from them.
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I’ve been somewhat reluctant to suggest specific titles here. What is essential is incredibly subjective. Also I am very much aware that I haven’t played everything, not even all Infocom games.
However if I may refer to my own IFDB list of recommended titles Vivs top 10 favourite IF games - Recommended List there are a number of titles on there that would be worth checking out:
- The Hobbit (1983)
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1984)
- The Guild of Thieves (1987) - by British company Magnetic Scrolls
- Curses (1993)
However other games spring to mind too, for this thread. Eg
- Hunt the Wumpus (1972)
- Adventure (1976) also known as Colossal Cave - available in lots of versions
- Multi User Dungeon or MUD (1978) - playable via Richard A. Bartle: MUD the original MUD game
- Knight Orc (1987) - by British company Level 9
- Christminster (1995) - arguably the other big influential and proof of concept game alongside Curses in the early Inform era
And yes, definitely check out some of the other games on Aaron A. Reed’s https://if50.substack.com
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Does this still happen in the current Gargoyle version of ScottFree? I haven’t tested Strange Odyssey very well, but I the one “glimpse” I know of in The Count should work. If it doesn’t, please file a bug report.
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Thanks, there are some I am not familiar with on that list!
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Sounds like the situation’s advanced since I last tried these. I better check them and report back.
-Wade
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The Thriller series was written by John R Olsen of Free Spirit Software and published by CodeWriter in 1984. These are readily available from any of the C64 archive sites. Look for them by the individual game titles: ‘Night of the Walking Dead’, ‘Perils of Darkest Africa’ and ‘Revenge of the Moon Goddess’. John was one of the great writers of the golden era. He published at least 20 games for various platforms from TRS-80 onwards. Two of the SoftSide Adventure of the Month series (‘Arabian Nights’ and ‘Volcano Island’) were written by him.
‘Junkyard’ was a three-part adventure written by Steve Peoples and published by CodeWriter in 1983.
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I would say the golden age of IF was the eighties. Not because games were better back then, but because those games are both foundational as well as nostalgic. This, I think, is the way the golden age of comics works, and I’ve always been satisfied with that characterization.
So far as foundational works go, I write a lot about Infocom games in terms of their textual content. This means I value some games more than other people do, and vice versa. These are the Infocom games I would recommend playing. I recognize that player tolerance for puzzle difficulty will vary. In my opinion, it’s better to see the games with hints than it is to skip them outright. The original Invisiclues are easy to find; use those (and their maps) instead of a walkthrough. For the trilogies, take long breaks between games if you like. I can see Zork being especially exhausting back-to-back.
The Zork Trilogy is instructive in a lot of ways. For one thing, we get to see Infocom evolve from collaborative development to its auteur development model. We still see the influence of that model’s formation today. It’s likewise an opportunity to consider a trajectory that includes growing narrative sophistication as well as increasingly atmospheric text and worldbuilding.
Deadline requires both a spatial and temporal map to navigate. This was very innovative at the time, both for its rather extensive (for the time) conversational text as well as for its genre (locked room whodunnit). The kind of clockwork implemented in Deadline is largely gone from IF, but lots of video games have picked up the slack with day and night cycles and scheduled events/encounters (Breath of the Wild is only one example).
The Enchanter Trilogy has a very satisfying system of magic, and its influence can still be felt today. While my game is not a traditional puzzler, Enchanter heavily influenced the design of its central mechanic. Both Enchanter and Spellbreaker have interesting and cohesive game worlds. Sorcerer, while still enjoyable, never reaches the heights of those games. Still, it’s good to play them all.
I may well be the person who has written the most about A Mind Forvever Voyaging: twelve posts in total. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! It abandons the Zorkian, thing-centered model of play to focus on qualities, events, and exploration for its own sake.
If AMFV abandons the Zorkian model of play, Trinity perfects it. For the rest of the 80s, Trinity would be the highest expression of the puzzle-heavy exploration game.
Plundered Hearts is the most narrative-focused Infocom game, and it feels quite modern at times.
If you still want more… Note that I consider all of these games worthwhile, but I recognize that there are many non-Infocom games to play.
Suspended
Infidel
Wishbringer
Planetfall (some would say it belongs on the list above, which is fine by me)
Ballyhoo
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (arguably could be moved up due to its novel use of modular design)
Keep us updated on your journey!
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Thanks for the lists! I am playing A Mind Forever Voyaging now and quite enjoying it. I was overwhelmed at first by being thrown into a difficult-to-map city and expected to fulfill a list of objectives I wasn’t sure how to approach. Once I made it past that first part, things have gone a lot more smoothly. The premise and style (political/dystopian sci-fi) are very much in line with my taste.
I’ve heard Trinity is a similar sort of thing done with a totally different approach, so I’m looking forward to trying that one at some point.
I’m actually surprised at all the recommendations for Hitchhiker’s Guide… I thought that one had a reputation for being nearly impossible! I will have to give it a go. Loved the books when I was a teenager.
So am I. Hitchhiker’s Guide is the most overrated game of all time. It’s incredibly hard and unfair and full of logical inconsistencies. It rates cruel on Zarf’s cruelty scale. If you haven’t read the book, then forget it.
Another overrated game that’s recommended on this thread is The Hobbit. This game had some very clever things going on under the hoods (for the time), but it’s very hard and chock full of bugs. People used to revel in playing the game just to find all the weird bugs.
I suspect that people feel compelled to say they like these games, simply because they’re based on famous books. If you replaced all the names in the games with names that weren’t in the books so that you didn’t know they were based on the books, would they still be popular? I think not. They would have been bagged in reviews and seen for what they really are. Even so, they are ‘must play’ games.
(Now sit back and watch all the pundits defend these games.)
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Could be different tastes and differing levels of tolerance for wonkiness and bugs.
If I do try these games, I’ll at least not feel guilty about resorting to guides.
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I’m about 2/3 of the way through Hitchhiker’s, and I’m not too impressed. I’ve been a big fan of the books since I read them as a teenager, but the game doesn’t really measure up.
“Eddies,” said Ford, “in the space-time continuum.”
“Ah,” nodded Arthur, “is he. Is he.”
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I was going to reply with AMFV, but then I realized you’re right.
HHGG was Infocom’s huge hit, but it’s not even good. And I’ve always loved the books.
Still, as you say–a must-play.
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In the case of Hitchhiker’s Guide, you might like to read my review in Page 6. It was written at the time the game was commercially available. It includes a history, game playing strategy (fairly spoiler free) and coded hints.
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Just like every other Infocom game, except maybe Nord and Bert.
Surely the point of an “essential must-play” list is to see games that tried unique and ambitious things for their time. Asking for the “easiest and most fun” games of the 80s and 90s would be a different list entirely.
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I’m towards the end of AMFV now. I don’t think it’s the masterpiece I was expecting, but I like it.
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I know The Hobbit has received a lot of criticism over the years from people who consider it overrated and can’t see what all the fuss is about, but then has there ever been a game that has received universal acclaim from everyone who played it? I doubt it. When I got onto the internet and discovered the IF scene to be alive and kicking after all these years of assuming it was over with, I made a point of finding the most highly rated game around and seeing just how far IF had come over the years. And, funnily enough, when I tried Photopia I didn’t like it at all. Nicely written but I honestly couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
I don’t think I had any pre-conceived notions about The Hobbit because of the book which, at the time, I hadn’t even read. From what I remember, I got both for Christmas one year as a teenager: some special offer where you bought the game and got a free copy of the novel thrown in for good measure. As I was a remarkably slow reader back then, I’m sure I played the game long before I got around to tackling the book. I ended up loving both.
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In general text adventure game recommendation threads, particularly UK 8-bit ones, The Hobbit always comes up being heavily recommended… usually alongside lots of other games with really obtuse and difficult puzzles, that I only ever believe are being recommended due to nostalgia by people that haven’t really ever gone back to play either the games they’ve recommended, or any other games since the 1980s! (Just to be clear… that wouldn’t be an accusation I’d level at anybody mentioning games here, by the way… this is a much different crowd!)
I would never recommend The Hobbit in one of those sorts of threads, but I can completely understand why it’s been recommended here. I think that The Hobbit manages to be both simultaneously one of the best text adventures ever written and one of the worst text adventures ever written. It was ground-breaking at the time for the fact it attempted to simulate a living, breathing world where all the non-player characters just got on with their own business, irrespective of what the player was doing. The fact that Gandalf and Thorin could go off and get into a fight and get themselves killed, leaving the game unsolvable, was regarded as a positive thing. There was a real hunger for that sort of game at the time. But strip away that aspect and look at the elements that became more important in text adventures going forward, and it is seriously lacking in interesting, logical puzzles.
The Hobbit is not a good example of the text adventure genre. It is not a good beginner’s adventure and there are plenty of ways you can argue that it’s not even a very good adventure. But it is a very good example of the way people were looking to push and explore the genre at the time, when it was still in its infancy really and still left with many of the trappings and ideas that would go on to be used in RPGs. People were playing The Hobbit, and getting stuck in the goblins’ dungeon, a decade after it came out. It inspired so many British adventure writers; particular young British adventure game writers, who often paid homage to it in their own work and produced parodies of it. They were being inspired by the game, not the book, The Hobbit was an extremely important text adventure to me when it came out, being my first ever experience of the genre, but unlike many other games that had that impact on me, bother personal and professional, it’s not one that I ever feel the need to revisit.
So despite it’s failings, The Hobbit is an essential must-play for anyone who is in to the history of text adventures and interactive fiction, particularly British works. It sold incredibly well and had a huge impact on virtually everything that came out after it in the UK scene. For just its technical aspects alone it is worth checking out. But yeah, you could argue that both then and now, that if you’re after clever, logical puzzles, it’s also a bit crap.
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Yup my suggestions were very much along the lines of games I think important for understanding the history of text adventure games, not necessarily the best. I agree with many of the critiques of The Hobbit and Hitchhiker’s, but would still argue that they are very important examples of the genre and in the history of IF. This is also why I recommended Hunt the Wumpus, which barely compares with later parser games in terms of depth, but is of pivotal importance in the history.
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I completed A Mind Forever Voyaging and found it very interesting and enjoyable overall (with a few minor gripes). You can find my thoughts on that game on this thread.
Next I think I might tackle either Plundered Hearts or Trinity.
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