Fantasy Game

I’ve find the IFDB is awesome but very hard to find the quality games, And by quality i mean the qualities i like.

I was hoping i could get some game suggestions or maybe search suggestions. I’ll give you a little back story to help.

I’m both new to IF and not new at all. I first got into the games when i bought Return to Zork as a kid and fell in love with it. This of course led me to the other Zork games. I think i played Zork I about 10 times until i finally finished it last month.

I’ve always liked IF games but never played them for more then one sitting at a time. The big hurdle for me is I don’t like sitting at my computer to read. A few months ago I saw a reference to the old Zork games while i was playing on my phone. Everything fell into place in my mind. I started playing IF games on my phone before bed.

I started with Zork 1-3 and played them through but they where too hard and I had to use the walkthrough for most of it. Story of course was great though a little shallow.

I then played Photopia which was really good though in my opinion the ending sucked. It was also too limited in options. I really don’t see what all the hype is about. I’m guessing it was a game changer at the time it came out but the works it influenced have surpassed it. If this is not the case then the bar for IF is pretty low.

I tried Emily Short Indigo and the idea of having to Take Hour made me rage quit the game pretty fast.

Lost Pig was fun. I have’t finished it and am not sure if I will. I did enjoy my time playing though.

I’m planing on playing Vespers. That looks really good.

Right now I am playing Treasure’s of the Slavers Kingdom and I love it. On wimp mode the combat actually adds something to the game for me. Not the actual fighting but the fact that my gear and a bit of chance affect the outcome. Writing is good enough and I like the setting.

Outside of IF I’m a huge fantasy fan. If it has orcs I’ll give it a try. Lord of the Ring, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms really all the DnD stuff. I was pretty shocked that this genre didn’t really have a large presence in IF. 3D video games are flooded with it.

So that what I’m asking for suggestions on. I want a good fantasy game. Something with magic, different races, all that crap. I don’t want it to be hard. TotSK puzzles where as hard as I like. Easier still good. I want a good story as well. This is a book substitute for me so I’d like at least something with a plot that half decent. Combat system isn’t necessary but i definitely like the one in TotSK.

I’m having doubts a game like this exists but if there is anything close let me know. Or even something not close but you think i would like it based on the massive chunk of text above.

Worlds Apart, City of Secrets, The king of shreds and patches, Anchorhead and So Far come to mind.

Ok, none of those fit his request. He said, " I want a good fantasy game. Something with magic, different races, all that crap."

Just sayin’.

well, they are fantasy at least (even the 2 horror entries)…

plain Tolkienesque fantasy is not easily found in IF, if at all…

he could try this one, even though it doesn’t take itself too seriously

there’s also Adam Cadre’s pastiche of old text-adventures with his own trademark twist, but again, it’s not quite what was asked…

True dat, y0! :smiley:

Fantasy’s extremely well-represented in IF, but Tolkienian high fantasy (the stuff with the orcs) is less common. Or at least, good games of that kind are less common.

There’s a fair amount of IF that rotates around magic systems - Savoir Faire, Suveh Nux - but if Indigo made you ragequit I dunno what counts as an acceptable magic system for you.

The main thing that springs to mind is Wearing the Claw. That’s fairly old, though, so it may be on the more-difficult side. There’s Kerkerkruip - but that’s almost entirely about combat strategy, with relatively little story. You might like Yet Another Game With A Dragon - but, again, pretty puzzly. Cursed - puzzly. Magocracy - really quite difficult, and not much by way of story.

I suspect that Treasures of a Slaver’s Kingdom - which is a pretty unusual game in a lot of ways - remains the closest thing to what you want.

(Genre high fantasy of the kind you’re looking for is much more popular in pornographic IF. This is probably not what you’re looking for.)

wut?

people actually want to see elves doing kinky stuff? :laughing:

…you’re not from the internet, are you?

Try the Enchanter trilogy. It’s not available on the IFDB because the rights are officially still owned by Activision, but it’s not too hard to find a copy of the data files. (I don’t know if this is legal or not, I’d classify the games as abandonware as they are no longer published.)

You can probably buy The Lost Treasures of Infocom for your phone if you want the Enchanter trilogy in a completely legal fashion.

A New LIfe has goblins and a dragon, in a pretty nontraditional form. Also the puzzles are quite difficult – I haven’t yet finished it using the hints and the walkthrough (this is partly because what I think is a bug put it in what seemed to be an unwinnable state).

One problem you’re going to have is that the kind of game you’re looking for often uses combat rather than puzzles for pacing and gating content, and good combat systems are hard in IF. Lost Pig is the best gnome & orc game I can think of (no combat, of course). I’m tempted to suggest Endless, Nameless, which truth be told I haven’t got that far into, but I think it might turn out to be not up your alley.

Maybe you’d like Guilded Youth? It’s not puzzly, and it doesn’t have multiple races, in fact it’s not really fantasy… but it’s kinda fantasy.

If you are into roguelikes you should check out Kerkerkruip, which is sort of a cross between Angband and Colossal Cave.

The more i look and the more i read it seems I won’t find what I’m looking for. Maybe I will make my own.

About the combat thing though… It’s really not the combat i like. The fact i have to type attack over and over isn’t really fun and definitely isn’t engaging. I just liked how they used monsters and such to block area’s and gear to unlock them. I thought that was kinda cool. Gave me something to work towards.

I find in non linear games I often get stuck at a point where not only do i not know what to do but I don’t know what needs to be done. I hate that. I’m not a fan of going from room to room trying to see if i missed examining something. It reminds me of those old scumm games where i would slowly move my mouse around the screen until the icon changed. That’s not fun to me. I guess I like my games linear in that way. I believe i should know my current goal at all times. This fact alone seems to have removed alot of games off my “will probably like” list.

I’ll just have to keep looking around at the different games and keep my fantasy fiction to movies, 3d games, tv and novels.

Maybe give some of the Choicescript games a try – look for works-in-progress in the forums. It’s not parser IF but a couple I played recently were quite entertaining.

These fantasy ones for example,

choiceofgames.com/forum/disc … experiment

choiceofgames.com/forum/disc … els-wip/p1

Two replies that may be so obvious they’re dumb:

You could investigate the Melbourne House text adventures directly adapted from Tolkien books. Primitive but undeniably relevant.

You might also find what you’re looking for in a MUD.

You might try Moondarkling: Elfboon, which is sort of a parody of these sorts of games. I forget if it was really linear, but it’s pretty short.

Edit: Oh, and before I forget, last year’s Castle of the Red Prince could be considered in that fantasy vein. It’s not linear, but it has in-game hints (try SLEEPing!)

Edit, again: Joke Answer, Kind of: The Matter of the Great Red Dragon. And now I must go to bed.

That’s the spirit. :slight_smile:

It’s more of a pastiche of urban fantasy than Tolkienian fantasy. (And not really a good pastiche, either. I have a habit of trying to tackle genres that I’m not actually all that familiar with. Damn you, speedIF.)

By the way, the blurbs for SpeedIF Jacket (or at least this one) don’t seem to be on IFDB.

Sorcery! inklestudios.com/sorcery/

I think the late Infocom Arthurian legend game Arthur holds up pretty well.