Hellzon here. My first IF may have been The Hobbit, or may have been something else I had on my old C64. I played those games on and off on said C64 but never got very far with any of them. If they even had save functions, I didn’t have the hardware to make use of them.
Flash forward to 1998, when I found Baf’s guide to the IF Archive. I was quite delighted to find out that there was an entire archive of those old text games I’d played a decade earlier. I want to say Babel and Sunset over Savannah were the first games I tried. My old savefiles say I played a bunch of the ChickenComp games - now that was a bit weird.
Anyway, something shiny flew by and I did other things until someone mentioned Counterfeit Monkey. I got drawn back in and found that gee, the medium has evolved since the last time I checked in.
Besides IF, I play tabletop RPG:s, watch movies and try to stop doomscrolling on social media. Making a game in Inform 7 is one of the projects in my big todo-file, we’ll se if I ever get that far.
Name’s Cryptic Puffin, and it’s nice to meet you all. I’m a high school student and I got into IF several months ago (I don’t have the best sense of time), but I first came across it a bit before that through a z-code interpreter project on Scratch. I was only aware of classic Infocom games like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy then, so I was discouraged by their difficulty level until I found Andrew Plotkin’s “The Dreamhold”-- definitely recommended for just about anyone, I’d say-- and that’s really what opened the door into IF for me. I’ve written a game of my own, which is currently in the testing stage. To be honest, I’m just happy I just found this community and I hope to get know more of you better
I’m newer than you are, but still, welcome! My favorite game is The Wizard Sniffer by Buster Hudson, but I also recommend Hamlet – The Text Adventure by Robin Johnson.
It makes my day to see high school students getting into IF. All us olds are always worrying about IF dying, so everyone will be very glad to see you here. Welcome!
Welcome to you too!! The Wizard Sniffer is already on my to-play list, and I’ve added Hamlet as well! I’ve managed to avoid reading Hamlet so far in my life, so hopefully that won’t put me at too much of a disadvantage lol.
Hello everybody. I first got into interactive fiction years ago when I was around 16 and remember my mind being blown by the game Galatea by Emily Short. I also adored Shade by Andrew Plotkin and Photopia by Adam Cadre. Before that I had played a bit of Zork when I was very young.
I return to them now around 16 years later as I’ve started writing short stories and I am interested in writing my own text adventures. I am two days into using Inform to try and write my first one and it’s tougher than expected! I am endeavouring to use the documentation as much as possible as well as good old trial and error to learn as much as possible, but I may have a few noobish questions from time to time.
I am a fan of MR James and Robert Aickman so I think text adventures appeal to me as they feel so uncanny and strange to me. The perfect medium for the kind of strange tales I’d like to tell. When I play video games, I generally enjoy story driven games the most (my top picks are Disco Elysium, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and Dear Esther.)
Lovely to meet you all! Hope to get to know you all over the course of time.
I am a fan of MR James and Robert Aickman so I think text adventures appeal to me as they feel so uncanny and strange to me
I just watched the John Hurt version of “Whistle and I’m Come to You” a few months ago. Pretty terrifying stuff with no need for special effects, gruesomeness, etc.
I am quite late to the introductions; I’d like to remedy this matter now.
I’m Christopher Drum and my first taste of interactive fiction was way back on the TRS-80 Model 1 playing “Pirate Adventure” by Scott Adams. In a clearance bin one day I came across a picture of a warrior slicing down a troll and got my dad to buy Zork in the ziploc bag for me (interesting games were kind of rare for the TRS-80, so I was excited). Been an Infocom fanboy ever since, with Planetfall being especially near and dear to my heart. Of course I do enjoy playing modern IF as well.
I dip in and out of the community over the years. Over at ifarchive.org I contributed (24 years ago now?!?!) “The Definitive Infocom Icons” (which are well and truly in need of a serious makeover these days), the “OS X Infocom Icons Volume 1” (never did release volume 2 sorry!), and recently released a v3 z-machine for the Pico-8 called Status Line. I’ve tried writing Inform games and came in 3rd in the first PunyInform Jam (NOT an endorsement of the quality of the game!), but am much more interested in making tools than in making games I’ve found.
Currently working to bring z4 and z5 support to Status Line, and am beginning investigations into the unique interpreter developed for a handful of Japanese Infocom translations that were published back around 1992(ish).
At any rate, I’m glad to meet you all and am happy this community exists.
I enjoyed your game, the writing showed a nice eye for details and captured the pub atmosphere well. And I really liked the cigarette vending machine puzzle.
If you do feel like writing another game some time, it could turn out very well, I think.
But of course, writing tools is great, too. Do what’s fun for you and keep us posted on the progress!
My name is Timo, 27, I’m currently studying Interaction Design in uni, and am in the process of writing my Master’s Thesis on Interactive literature (for the second year now), the reasearch for which introduced me to various forms of interactive fiction. Before then I just stuck to video games, visual novels and the occasional gamebook, in terms of IF.
My first piece of interactive fiction (depending on your definition) was either Super Mario Bros. on the NES, one of the Captain Underpants books which was made in the choose-your-own-adventure format (no idea what the title was, might even be mixing it with another book series, but I’m fairly certain it was Captain Underpants), or the visual novel Fate/Stay Night.
My first text-adventure game, also the first game I ever developed, was a small mine exploration game, which I called Dungeons and Dwarves (very original, I know). Originally made for simply learning C++, I later translated it from C++ to Java for a uni course to expand it with a couple of classmates. After which it was quite definitively abandoned.
After that I’ve been working with Unreal Engine. Made a text-adventure template for it last year as a part of my thesis (wrote a short story with it for my thesis as well). I also made a visual novel template recently, which I’ve been working on with my most recent projects.
Before you ask “why use Unreal Engine for text adventures and visual novels?”, I’ll answer: “Firstly, why not? And secondly, it gives me pretty much infinite possibilities for expanding my games and templates in any which way I choose.”
Can’t promise to be too active (I rarely post anything anywhere), but anyhow, nice to meet you all!
Welcome to Intfiction. I hope you find the time as you can to contribute.
I have been experimenting with Unreal and Unity. Fungus Games for Unity is an asset that can be used to develop text based games. I prefer text based parser games and Fungus may be overkill for my needs.
My name’s Charm (he/they). I’m 23, living in Maryland, USA. I’ve got a degree in creative writing, and I work as an English tutor. I wrote we, the remainder from this past IFComp, as well as a smaller choice-based game called Kiss of Beth.
I couldn’t tell you my first introduction to IF. The ones that come to mind are The House Abandon, A Dark Room, and Emily Is Away, but there were certainly text games before those. I used to devour Choose Your Own Adventure books, too.
I was introduced to interactive fiction as a concept through a college course I took called ‘Writing For Games,’ where we played some of the classics (Counterfeit Monkey, Violet, a few others) and wrote a few of our own games in Twine.
I’m currently also working on a couple of projects in I7. I have experience with HTML and CSS, as well as some limited knowledge of Flash (for all the good that does now).
Outside of IF, I also enjoy music (listening and writing), reading, and other kinds of video games. I’m excited to be here!
My favorite game is The Wizard Sniffer by Buster Hudson, but I also recommend Hamlet – The Text Adventure by Robin Johnson.
I first got into interactive fiction years ago when I was around 16 and remember my mind being blown by the game Galatea by Emily Short. I also adored Shade by Andrew Plotkin and Photopia by Adam Cadre. Before that I had played a bit of Zork when I was very young.
