I’m on a Mac; it’s not just that I have to play in a browser. I like playing in a browser. But the browser version of Quest is Not Good.
It does a network request for every move. Even on a wired network connection in the US, it takes a second or so to connect to http://textadventures.co.uk/ Every command has to connect to the UK and fetch the result, so every command takes a full second to run. It’s unbearably slow.
But it’s actually worse than that. Try this: start a Quest game on wifi. Then turn off wifi and type a command. The game completely locks up. Now turn wifi back on and type a command. The game is still completely locked; there’s nothing you can do to get unstuck except refresh the page, erasing all of your progress.
As a result, Quest games are basically unplayable on mobile. Even if you’re willing to endure the slow commands, at some point, your network connection will drop, and you’ll lose all of your progress.
Compare this with Inform games running on Parchment on iplayif.com. They take a few seconds to load, but once they load, they’re fully in memory in your browser. Hit enter and you get a response instantly. The performance and UI experience is just as good as the play experience in a top-shelf interpreter, Lectrote, because Lectrote and Parchment share the same underlying JavaScript code.