Interactive Fiction

Most of this site focuses on multiplayer text games. If what you really want is to write or play a single-player text game, this page is for you.

Solo text games, commonly known as interactive fiction or IF, evolved in parallel to multi-user (MU*) games and thus have a rich history of their own.

This page is meant to serve as a jumping-off point. For deeper coverage, the IF community itself maintains excellent resources (some linked below).

Finding & playing games

IFDB - The Interactive Fiction Database; the central catalog, with reviews and recommendations
IF Archive - The community’s canonical preservation archive: decades of games, tools, interpreters, and source
CASA - Classic Adventures Solution Archive - Walkthroughs, maps, and hints, strong on the commercial 8/16-bit era
Key & Compass - David Welbourn’s large, regularly updated collection of walkthroughs and maps

Interpreters

Programs that run IF games on your own device.

Parchment / iplayif.com - Play most Z-machine and Glulx games straight in your browser
Gargoyle - Typography-focused desktop player supporting many formats (Z-code, Glulx, TADS, Hugo, Alan, and more)
Lectrote - Cross-platform desktop player for Z-code and Glulx
Frotz - The classic, long-maintained Z-machine interpreter

Authoring tools

Parser IF

Inform 7 - Natural-language design system used for hundreds of award-winning works; source on GitHub
Inform 6 - The earlier, procedural Inform; still maintained and used as a compile target by Inform 7
TADS - Programmer-oriented system (TADS 2/3); mature and stable
Dialog - Modern Prolog-inspired language compiling to the Z-machine
ALAN - Natural-language-flavored IF language, beginner-friendly
Adventuron - Browser-based, with a retro 8-bit adventure aesthetic
Quest & Squiffy - Web-based authoring: Quest (parser/hybrid) and Squiffy (choice/markup)
ADRIFT - GUI-driven parser-game toolkit requiring no programming
Hugo - A multimedia-capable parser system; resources hub, with the manual here
ZILF - A modern reimplementation of Infocom’s ZIL toolchain, for authoring Infocom-style games
PunyInform - An Inform 6 library for games that run on vintage 8-bit hardware
Gruescript - A click-based, “parser-like” web IF language by Robin Johnson

Choice & hypertext

Twine - The dominant open-source hypertext IF tool; browser-based and beginner-friendly
ChoiceScript - Powers the Choice of Games catalog of multiple-choice novels
ink - Inkle’s narrative scripting language, with the Inky editor (and the casual web tool inklewriter)
Texture - No-code, drag-words-onto-text authoring, well suited to touchscreens
Windrift - Liza Daly’s JavaScript framework for mutable hypertext stories

Twine story formats

The format you pick determines what a Twine project can do.

Harlowe - Twine’s default format; dynamic hypertext
SugarCube - Powerful format for more game-like stories
Snowman - Minimal, JavaScript-and-template focused
Chapbook - Modern and writer-friendly, by Twine’s creator

Competitions & events

IFComp - The Interactive Fiction Competition, running annually since 1995
Spring Thing - A more relaxed Spring festival, often for longer works
IntroComp - For introductory excerpts of in-progress games
ParserComp - A competition specifically for parser games
XYZZY Awards - The community “best of the year” IF awards

Community

intfiction.org forum - The main IF community forum, covering all systems and languages
IFWiki - Community wiki: deep history, tool documentation, and culture
r/interactivefiction - The IF subreddit
Planet-IF - Aggregator of IF community blogs
Emily Short’s Interactive Storytelling - The most influential IF craft and criticism blog
The Digital Antiquarian - Jimmy Maher’s deeply researched history of IF and adventure games
Brass Lantern - Long-running adventure-game news and articles
SPAG - The historic IF review magazine (1994-2016), now preserved as an archive
PR-IF - The Boston-area “People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction” group
IFTF - The nonprofit that stewards IFComp, the IF Archive, IFDB, Twine, the forum, and more
NarraScope - IFTF’s narrative-games conference, with talk recordings posted

History & preservation

The Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog - Andrew Plotkin’s effort to collect every version of every Infocom game
historicalsource - Jason Scott’s archive of original Infocom ZIL source code
Get Lamp - Jason Scott’s documentary about text adventures, on the Internet Archive (the original site is gone)
Magnetic Scrolls Memorial - History and preservation for the British IF house Magnetic Scrolls
Level 9 Memorial - Tribute to the British IF company Level 9
Strand Games - Modern IF studio publishing the official Magnetic Scrolls remasters
Scott Adams Grand Adventures - Official site of text-adventure pioneer Scott Adams

Academic & electronic literature

Nick Montfort - IF scholar and poet; home of Twisty Little Passages, the first book-length study of IF
Electronic Literature Organization - Research and advocacy for born-digital literary work
Electronic Literature Collection - ELO’s multi-volume anthology
Eastgate / Storyspace - Publisher of classic hypertext fiction and the Storyspace authoring tool

Learning

Writing with Inform - The official Inform 7 manuals
The Inform Designer’s Manual (DM4) - The canonical Inform 6 reference
The Twine Cookbook - Official, community-maintained Twine how-to recipes

Tooling & utilities

Trizbort.io - Browser-based IF map-maker with code export to many systems
Borogove - A browser IDE supporting many IF systems (Inform, Hugo, Dialog, ink, ZIL, and more)
Vorple - An HTML/JavaScript multimedia layer for Inform and other parser IF

Technical specifications

References for interpreter and tool developers.

The Z-Machine Standards Document - The spec for Infocom’s Z-machine, the most widely used IF virtual machine
Glulx - A modern 32-bit IF virtual machine
Glk - The IF input/output interface standard
Blorb - The standard for bundling a game with its graphics and sound
Treaty of Babel - The cross-format bibliographic standard that defines the IFID

Non-English communities

CAAD - The principal Spanish-language IF hub (“aventuras conversacionales”), with an active magazine and forum
Fiction-interactive.fr - The francophone IF community and home of its annual competition
OldGamesItalia - IF Italia - The main Italian IF hub; the wider site is in hibernation but the IF forum stays active
ifwizz.de - An active German IF database and news site
INSTEAD - Peter Kosyh’s open-source Russian “textographic” IF engine (the site may show a certificate warning)