Giant List of Links to Resources
Last Update:
2024-11-15T06:00:00Z
This post is a wiki and may be edited by any of our regular users.
Please be aware of and observe any licensing guidelines (such as credit requirements) for all resources as individually specified on their respective websites.
Archival/Cataloging
The Interactive Fiction Database
The Interactive Fiction Database is an IF game catalog and recommendation engine. IFDB is a Wiki-style community project: members can add new game listings, write reviews, exchange game recommendations, and more.
IFArchive
The Archive’s mission is to preserve the history and practice of interactive fiction and make it freely available to the public. Since 1992, the Archive has collected thousands of text adventures, text adventure development tools, articles, essays, hint files, walkthroughs, jokes, and sly references to Greek politics. It also preserves the history of IF institutions such as the IF Competition and IFDB. This cultural memory is one of the foundations of the IF community.
IFWiki
philome.la: free twine hosting (*No longer hosting new games.)
News, Articles, Blogs
PlanetIF
Planet IF is your one-stop Interactive Fiction blog aggregator collecting the latest information from the community.
The Digital Antiquarian
A history of computer entertainment and digital culture by Jimmy Maher
Extensively-researched articles with behind the scenes details about the golden age of Adventure/IF games and the companies behind them, including Infocom, Sierra, and many more.
The Rosebush
The Rosebush will be a free online magazine dedicated to publishing longer form articles about interactive fiction. The interactive fiction community already has well-established channels for reviews of individual games, and several people have well-read blogs, but we’ve been lacking a good platform for in-depth analyses, theory articles, discussions of craft, interviews, historical pieces, and so on. The Rosebush aims to be this platform. It will publish substantial articles that increase our understanding of interactive fiction, from individual works to design patterns, community structures and historical trends. The intended audience consists of both players and authors of IF.
Gold Machine
Drew Cook’s Gold Machine is a blog dedicated to textual and narrative analysis of interactive fiction, with a specific focus on Infocom’s games from the 1980s.
Brass Lantern
Articles about Interactive Fiction. No longer updated.
sub-Q
Interactive magazine for interactive fiction. No longer active.
The Classic Adventurer
The Classic Adventurer is a bookazine dedicated to the golden era of text adventures.
ChoiceBeat
ChoiceBeat is the visual novel and interactive fiction zine. This publication covers text-heavy, choice-heavy digital games from around the world.
Art, Sound, Music, Tools for Authors/Creators
Creative Commons (CC) License Information
Masterlist of Sources for Public Domain/Creative Commons Assets
An intfiction post containing even more links to places with public domain/cc assets, mostly images and music.
Pixlr
A free simple online utility to edit and resize images with layers, plus filters and other effects.
Trizbort: The Interactive Fiction Mapper
Browser version of Trizbort for all systems:
Interactive Fiction Mapper
by Gonzalo Garramuno
An IF mapper written in Ruby that runs natively on Linux, Windows and OSx
Dungeon Scrawl
City Generator
Sound Image
Pexels - Royalty-free images
The best free stock photos & videos shared by talented creators. (Some searches may include images that are not free to use, please browse responsibly!)
Free Game Icons
An ever growing collection of free game icons (CC BY 3.0 license)
freesound.org
Freesound is a collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds. Browse, download and share sounds.
Big Impact Sound
Provides music and sound design for media, games, movies, trailers, commercials, YouTube, exhibits, corporate projects and so much more.
Bespoke Music Custom-made music and sound design that will maximize the impact of your project. Stock Music (Library Music) Fast and easy browsing of pre-made and ready to use music in our huge music library.
Game Hosting and Publishers
borogove
Free hosting service for Interactive Fiction games. Games must be either parser system story files or HTML files.
Currently supported file formats: HTML (including Twine and Texture), Z-Machine (Inform, Dialog, ZIL), Glulx (Inform), .gam, .t3 (TADS), HEX (Hugo), Å-Machine (Dialog), Ink JSON files.
Game uploads can be public or private.
Borogove also provides operational online versions of several IF authoring systems for testing, experimentation, and “snippets” which can be shared online and on this forum to provide working implementations of playable code inside a frame within a discussion.
Current online engine implementations offered are Inform 6 and 7 with or without Vorple, Hugo, Dialog, Ink and Dendry.
textadventures.co.uk
A community of interactive fiction game makers and players.
All games here are either playable in your web browser, or as an app for your smartphone or tablet. Almost all are free, and you can even make your own, using our free software - Quest or Squiffy. Other types of games may be uploaded to their catalog, specifically .gblorb, .html, and others.
Quest - Quest - Write text adventure games and interactive stories
Squiffy - Squiffy - A simple way to write interactive fiction
Choice of Games LLC is dedicated to producing high-quality, text-based, multiple-choice games. We have developed a simple scripting language for writing text-based games, ChoiceScript, which we make available to others for use in their projects, and we host games produced by other designers using ChoiceScript on our website.
itch.io
Free game hosting with powerful analytics and discoverability, customizable game frontend landing pages with free in-browser play for HTML games, message boards, storefront for accepting donations or for-pay downloads, devlogs, and private release/testing modes. There is a wealth of IF with an active built-in audience for all types of games and more.
StoryStylus - One More Story Games
A unique map-based choice story creation engine with hot spots, and hosting (free trial then requires subscription, this is a proprietary game creation system)
StoryStylus - https://storystylus.com/
Standalone Authoring Engines / Tools
List of stable authoring systems
IFWiki’s list of authoring systems that are currently stable. Also check out IFWiki’s other lists, for example, Authoring systems for choice-based IF, Authoring systems for parser-based IF, Authoring systems for browsers, Authoring systems for Mac, Authoring systems for Windows, and more.
Adrift
PC only parser creation system requiring no coding with games playable cross-platform with specific interpreters or browser hosting
Adventuron
A parser & choice & hybrid engine with web-based editor that has a colorful retro vibe. Targets web & mobile (via HTML export).
Adventuron also target 8-bit platforms such as ZX Spectrum, ZX Spectrum Next (255 colour graphics supported) & more (in 8-bit compatibility mode).
User Guide: Adventuron User Guide
Editor (requires desktop browser): Adventuron Classroom
Adventuron links
Axma Story Maker
A powerful self-contained Twine alternative (AXMA 6.1) and the newest fully-JavaScript implementation (JS)
JS https://axma.info/
6.1 https://sm.axmasoft.com/
ChoiceScript
(Free for non-commercial use, negotiate with Choice of Games for commercial publishing with them or independently)
CoffeeMud
CoffeeMud provides both the foundation and the tools with which the host can create and host a text-based Multi-User-Dungeon–a gathering place for players all over the internet to congregate for the purpose of adventuring.
CSIDE - ChoiceScript IDE
A powerful community-developed authoring environment for ChoiceScript including editing, file management, instant compile for playtesting, and official CS integrated auto-play test routines.
Choose Your Story
A simple browser-based utility to create and share choice stories with an inventory system on their website
PLEASE READ - before you visit the Choose Your Story website
Please be aware if you are not CIS or if you are a staunch ally or consider yourself “woke” in the positive sense, this community’s mods do not foster any sort of safe space and you will definitely encounter triggering comments and content. While they welcome anyone, do not expect them to respect your pronouns or learn to do so if you share any personal information about your gender identity or sexuality.
Dialog
A modern parser system with concise code similar to Prolog, in active development.
Fungus
Fungus is a free, open source tool for writers, illustrators, animators and game designers–especially visual novel & interactive fiction authors–creating interactive storytelling games in Unity 3D. Fungus is designed to be easy to learn for beginners to Unity 3D, especially for people with no coding experience.
Gruescript
Gruescript is a tool for creating point-and-click text adventures which feel like classic ‘puzzlebox’ games while eliminating the need for the player to type, making the games friendly to modern devices and players. You build your game online and download it as a playable HTML page, which you can host on your own itch.io site or elsewhere.
Guncho
A tool to implement an Inform 7 game as a multiplayer MUD
Inform 7
Inform 7 makes it easy to create text adventures of Infocom quality and beyond with a naturally-readable coding language favored by writers. Includes a complete IDE with two included manuals and a built-in library of community-authored extensions with solutions for common and unique implementation tasks.
Glimmr
Advanced graphics tools and extensions for Inform 7 games - no longer developed.
Inform 6
Inform 6 is the base-language Inform 7 compiles to and may be more suitable to experienced programmers and coders.
Ink / Inky
The powerful scripting language behind Inkle Studio’s Heaven’s Vault, 80 Days and Sorcery! (Middleware with Unity integration and JSON web exportability via the Inky editor.)
Calico
An alternate web-player for games written in Ink
Inklewriter
The new version of inklewriter is now at inklewriter.com, and it is now open source!
Your existing account will not carry over into the new version of inklewriter. You will need to make a new account. If you have data on the old version of inklewriter that you need to rescue and transition over, then please read this blog post for details of how to import old stories into the new version.
InquisitorIF
Inquisitor is an Interactive Fiction engine built for use in both a browser-based and standalone form, built around putting spaces at the core of a hypertext work. A combination of Twine and Aliceffekt’s Paradise if you will, designed to expand on the strengths of both as well as provide a pleasant reading experience.
INSTEAD
Russian-developed choice system, English documentation is available.
Ren’Py
The free visual-novel engine most commonly used by professional and indie designers.
Sadako
https://github.com/Tayruh/sadako/
Sadako is a JavaScript library for creating hyperlink-based interactive fiction using a scripting language that is merger of Twine’s passage and markup system and Ink’s choice based system. The engine itself is designed to be customizable enough that it can produce anything from a standard Twine-like game, to a visual novel, to a dialogue system to be placed inside another game framework
TADS
A parser creation coding system.
Twine
The original choice-based engine widely used for creation, dialogue organization, and narrative prototyping
Twine Resources List
Sugarcube - a popular Twine format
Texture
Choice engine well-suited for tablet play and development
Undum
A beautiful advanced choice-based system
Raconteur - utilities that simplfy Undum creation
Visual Novel Maker
A commercial visual novel creation system from the developers of RPG Maker
Vorple
A high-powered multimedia online interpreter for Inform 7 with hooks to take advantage of browser capabilities
WrittenRealms
Browser based MUD creator with multiplayer and RPG trappings (stats, weapons, armor)
https://writtenrealms.com/
ZILF
ZILF is a set of tools for working with ZIL (the Zork Implementation Language [1]), including a ZIL compiler, ZAP assembler, and ZIL libraries for writing text adventure games.
Competitions
The Interactive Fiction Competition
Discussion here: IFComp - The Interactive Fiction Community Forum
An annual celebration of new, text-driven digital games and stories from independent creators.
Spring Thing
Discussion here: Spring Thing - The Interactive Fiction Community Forum
Spring Thing is an annual online festival celebrating new interactive fiction from all kinds of people. Everyone is welcome!
IntroComp
Discussion here: IntroComp - The Interactive Fiction Community Forum
IntroComp is an annual competition where participants develop excerpts of interactive fiction, gain feedback from audience reactions, and use this feedback to release a fantastic final product.
Theory and Practice
- Emily Short’s Self-training in Narrative Design
- The IF Wiki on Craft, the IF Wiki on Theory
- The IF Theory Reader (PDF)
- Jimmy Maher’s Let’s Tell a Story Together
- Aaron Reed’s doctoral dissertation Changeful Tales: Design-driven Approaches Toward More Expressive Storygames (PDF)
- IF Gems: a selection of quotes from reviews of the IFComp 1995-2005
- Graham Nelson’s The Craft of Adventure (PDF); see also the Inform Design Manual’s Chapter 8, also titled the Craft of Adventure
- The Digital Antiquarian’s Collected Infocom Articles (epub)
- Introduction to IF Scholarship offers an amazing bibliography of IF articles through 2001
Typography
- Practical Typography
- Introduction | Pro Web Type by Donny Truong
- The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web
Programming Books
- Free programming books by subject
- Javascript books
- Procedural Content Generation in Games
- Game AI Pro
- Game Programming Patterns
