Piloting a tea-zeppelin on Mars is a lonely job
July 17, 2018 7:52 PM Subscribe
Robin Johnson makes interactive fiction and text adventures.
Detectiveland: New Losago, 1929 – a town full of creeps, clowns, mobsters, and, if you know where to look, the occasional honest citizen. Guide private investigator Lanson Rose through a series of puzzling cases: solve the city's liquor supply problem in "Speakeasy Street", track down a missing food scientist in "The Big Pickle", and investigate strange goings-on under a dilapidated mansion in "A Study in Squid".
Hamlet: You're the prince of Denmark, and boy, are you in a sucky mood! You've been grounded again, your friends don't understand you, and your evil uncle has murdered your father to usurp the throne. "In just five minutes' playing, I was hooked" – Neil Gaiman
Aunts and Butlers: It's 1920, you're a minor aristocrat fallen on hard times, and your wretched Aunt Cedilla is on the warpath. She's your last hope of a decent inheritance, so you'd jolly well better get yourself into her good books before she croaks. And what's that mysterious butler up to? A comic adventure in the style of P. G. Wodehouse.
Portcullis: Your home town has been taken over by an evil sorcerer (because that's what evil sorcerers do.) A party of professional adventurers has arrived in town to dethrone him (because that's what adventurers do.) Help them defeat Zapdorf and liberate the town – or is there something else going on? A comic fantasy storygame, written for the 35th anniversary of Zork and the 40th anniversary of the original Adventure.
Draculaland: A loose adaptation of Dracula, faithfully reimagining several characters and ignoring most of the original plot. Guide Jonathan Harker on a trip through Transylvania, interacting with vampires, mad scientists, zombies, annoying magpies, and moustachioed werewolves.
Xylophoniad: The King of Anachronopolis has ordered you to complete three labours: end the Trojan War, slay the dreaded Bicyclops, and rescue a couple of inmates from Hades. A comic adventure based in Greek mythology.
Zeppelin Adventure: Piloting a tea-zeppelin on Mars is a lonely job, but this run is nearly over and then you're due for a holiday. That's unless you get sucked into a puzzly adventure involving pterodactyls, robots, paternoster lifts and space elves!
INTERACTIVE FICTION & TEXT ADVENTURES, PREVIOUSLY:
Detectiveland: New Losago, 1929 – a town full of creeps, clowns, mobsters, and, if you know where to look, the occasional honest citizen. Guide private investigator Lanson Rose through a series of puzzling cases: solve the city's liquor supply problem in "Speakeasy Street", track down a missing food scientist in "The Big Pickle", and investigate strange goings-on under a dilapidated mansion in "A Study in Squid".
Hamlet: You're the prince of Denmark, and boy, are you in a sucky mood! You've been grounded again, your friends don't understand you, and your evil uncle has murdered your father to usurp the throne. "In just five minutes' playing, I was hooked" – Neil Gaiman
Aunts and Butlers: It's 1920, you're a minor aristocrat fallen on hard times, and your wretched Aunt Cedilla is on the warpath. She's your last hope of a decent inheritance, so you'd jolly well better get yourself into her good books before she croaks. And what's that mysterious butler up to? A comic adventure in the style of P. G. Wodehouse.
Portcullis: Your home town has been taken over by an evil sorcerer (because that's what evil sorcerers do.) A party of professional adventurers has arrived in town to dethrone him (because that's what adventurers do.) Help them defeat Zapdorf and liberate the town – or is there something else going on? A comic fantasy storygame, written for the 35th anniversary of Zork and the 40th anniversary of the original Adventure.
Draculaland: A loose adaptation of Dracula, faithfully reimagining several characters and ignoring most of the original plot. Guide Jonathan Harker on a trip through Transylvania, interacting with vampires, mad scientists, zombies, annoying magpies, and moustachioed werewolves.
Xylophoniad: The King of Anachronopolis has ordered you to complete three labours: end the Trojan War, slay the dreaded Bicyclops, and rescue a couple of inmates from Hades. A comic adventure based in Greek mythology.
Zeppelin Adventure: Piloting a tea-zeppelin on Mars is a lonely job, but this run is nearly over and then you're due for a holiday. That's unless you get sucked into a puzzly adventure involving pterodactyls, robots, paternoster lifts and space elves!
INTERACTIVE FICTION & TEXT ADVENTURES, PREVIOUSLY:
Also: The Interactive Fiction Database> WRITE POST ON INTERACTIVE FICTION
Get Lamp
One summer I hitchhiked through Britain trying to find a harp-maker.
Interactive Fiction competition 2016
West of House
Ten minutes of righteous robot ruination
"Where are they?" Interactive Fiction on Civilizations
Want to play a surreal interactive fiction game?
Interactive Fiction has a convention of rating how cruel a game is
Write your own adventure
Interactive Text Adventure for Your Kindle/E-Book Reader
text adventures (interactive fiction)
"Read you a story? What fun would that be?"
August 2, 2001
If you decide to explore the ledge where the seeker has come to rest, turn to page 6.
VERB NOUN
You are sitting in your chair, in front of you is a gray tablet that is not glowing.
Selection of Stories
Choice of the Dragon
Choice of Broads, Choice of Dudes.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
It's that time again
I was cheering for Lost Pig, too.
It Has Been Quite An Adventure
9:05
A game about crime.
The Digital Antiquarian
You haven't been eaten, until you've been eaten by a grue
Infocom and the Atomic Bomb
You feel yourself turning into a small fish! You flop three times then die.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
Hey, it's written in Javascript! But it looks like an Infocom game! But you can use the mouse!
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:47 PM on July 17, 2018
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:47 PM on July 17, 2018
I need a first programming project that isn't a portfolio website, thank you for the inspiration!
posted by yueliang at 10:50 PM on July 17, 2018
posted by yueliang at 10:50 PM on July 17, 2018
I need a first programming project that isn't a portfolio website, thank you for the inspiration!
If you can get hired on the strength of Inform 7 code, I'll totally buy you a beer.
posted by kaibutsu at 11:14 PM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
If you can get hired on the strength of Inform 7 code, I'll totally buy you a beer.
posted by kaibutsu at 11:14 PM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Yes! Robin’s games are the best. I really love Detectiveland, and Aunts and Butlers is fun too. I haven’t gotten around to playing Zeppelin Adventure yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
posted by uncleozzy at 3:17 AM on July 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by uncleozzy at 3:17 AM on July 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
This is great. I was really into the modern IF scene in the early 2000s and I played a couple Twine games recently that had me feeling that text-based itch again.
Your admirably through Previously... section fails to include one of my favorite IF games of all time, one of my favorite video games of all time: The Gostak. You probably didn't search the archives for "interofgan halpock," which, shame on you, I guess.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:56 AM on July 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
Your admirably through Previously... section fails to include one of my favorite IF games of all time, one of my favorite video games of all time: The Gostak. You probably didn't search the archives for "interofgan halpock," which, shame on you, I guess.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:56 AM on July 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
Wow! I played his Hamlet a really long time ago - it was the first time I'd encountered a text adventure game and I loved it. But at the time I didn't know how to find more.
posted by bunderful at 5:15 AM on July 20, 2018
posted by bunderful at 5:15 AM on July 20, 2018
These are super fun; they all just about nail precisely the level of complexity I hope for, mostly not too hard or too easy. The writing is great, I just guffawed at the description of an insane doctor-bot's data: "A line graph has been plotted on the whiteboard. The x-axis is labelled NUMBER OF PINS STUCK IN HUMAN. The y-axis is labelled PAIN RESPONSE. The correlation appears to be positive and roughly linear."
posted by solotoro at 1:13 PM on July 20, 2018
posted by solotoro at 1:13 PM on July 20, 2018
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(But what is a 'tea-zeppelin'? A zeppelin the shape of a cup of tea or a zeppelin that transports...
Guess I'll find out!)
posted by redrawturtle at 8:29 PM on July 17, 2018 [2 favorites]