The main purpose of this portal is for readers of 50 Years of Text Games to find up-to-date links to play, download, or buy each game covered in the book. Each entry also has a collection of bonus links, including items like interviews with authors, hints and manuals, scans of vintage ads, and links to other online coverage.
Most of these games are best played on a desktop or laptop computer, rather than a mobile or tablet device.
Details on the Ultimate Collector's Edition
ARGAlternate Reality Game; A live multiplayer game usually running for a limited time, often extending through multiple media and communication channels including text (though many are not primarily text-based).The Beast (2001)
BBSMultiplayer games for a bulletin board system, usually designed to be played by one player at a time rather than simultaneously.Trade Wars 2002 (1991)
Choice-BasedStory nodes connected by explicit decision points, usually moving forward through a possibly-branching plot.The Cave of Time (1979), Digital: A Love Story (2010), 80 Days (2014), Lifeline (2015), Choices: The Freshman (2016), Weyrwood (2018)
ExperimentalText games that don’t fit into any of the above styles.His Majesty's Ship "Impetuous" (1981), Screen (2002), Nested (2011)
HypertextA tree of story nodes often explorable in nonlinear order, generally navigated by clicking linked words.Uncle Roger (1986), Patchwork Girl (1995), Howling Dogs (2012)
MUDMulti-User Dungeon; Parser games hooked up to a persistent, multiplayer world.MUD (1980), LambdaMOO (1990), Achaea (1997)
ParserA simulated world explored by typing imperative commands that are then “parsed” into valid actions. Also called text adventures or interactive fiction, parser games were massively popular in the 1980s and continue to be made today.Adventure (1976), Zork (1977), Pirate Adventure (1978), The Hobbit (1982), Suspended (1983), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984), A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985), Plundered Hearts (1987), P.R.E.S.T.A.V.B.A. (1988), Silverwolf (1992), Curses (1993), So Far (1996), Photopia (1998), Galatea (2000), The Fire Tower (2004), El Museo de las Consciencias and Lieux Communs (2007), Violet (2008)
Play-by-MailMultiplayer games where players send in orders by mail or email, with a central computer batch processing turns at a slow cadence (often once a week) and sending personalized results as a turn report.Monster Island (1989)
Procedural StoryInteractive narratives shaped by complex procedures as well as player choices, usually offering multiple and sometimes emergent outcomes.The Hobbit (1982), The Playground (1994), King of Dragon Pass (1999), Dwarf Fortress (2006), Versu: A Family Supper (2013), AI Dungeon (2019), Scents & Semiosis (2020)
Resource ManagementGames primarily concerned with managing a set of numeric qualities. Modern idle and clicker games fall into this category, as do many early computer games.The Oregon Trail (1971), ROCKET (1972), Universal Paperclips (2017)
RoguelikeA challenging world with procedurally generated elements, often explored from a top-down perspective. Roguelikes often use text as stand-in graphics rather than primarily as words and sentences.Hunt the Wumpus (1973), Super Star Trek (1974), dnd (1975), Shades of Doom (2005), Dwarf Fortress (2006)
Storylet-DrivenAn unordered set of story nodes presented to the player in an order based on randomness, simulation qualities, or player stats.King of Dragon Pass (1999), Kingdom of Loathing (2003), Fallen London (2009), 80 Days (2014)
ASPActive Server Pages, an early server-side scripting language for dynamic web pages.The Beast (2001)
BASICProminent early language designed to be easy to learn, a democratizing force in the early history of computing.The Oregon Trail (1971), Hunt the Wumpus (1973), Super Star Trek (1974), Pirate Adventure (1978), His Majesty's Ship "Impetuous" (1981), Uncle Roger (1986), P.R.E.S.T.A.V.B.A. (1988)
CWorkhorse language behind much commercial software.LambdaMOO (1990), Screen (2002), Dwarf Fortress (2006)
C++An object-oriented version of C which became the root of many graphical game engines.King of Dragon Pass (1999), Dwarf Fortress (2006), Choices: The Freshman (2016)
ChoiceScriptA simple language for authoring Choice-Based stories, created by Choice Of Games.Weyrwood (2018)
FOCALAn early teaching language for DEC/PDP machines, less popular and readable than BASIC.ROCKET (1972)
FlashEnvironment for early web-based games incorporating sound and animation, popular from the late 90s through the beginning of the 2010s.The Beast (2001)
FortranInfluential early programming language often used during the mainframe era.Adventure (1976)
HTMLHyperText Markup Language, the structural foundation of web sites.The Beast (2001)
HapA domain-specific language for reactive planner rules, developed by Carnegie Mellon's Oz Project for defining digital character behavior.The Playground (1994)
HourglassObscure early MUD engine.Achaea (1997)
InformDomain-specific language for parser interactive fiction created in the early 90s and hugely influential on the amateur text games scene.Curses (1993), So Far (1996), Photopia (1998), Galatea (2000), The Fire Tower (2004), El Museo de las Consciencias and Lieux Communs (2007)
Inform 7An improved version of Inform using a natural language paradigm for defining parser-based story worlds; in 2022, renamed to just Inform again.El Museo de las Consciencias and Lieux Communs (2007), Violet (2008), Scents & Semiosis (2020)
JavaScriptWorkhorse language for creating reactive and dynamic behavior on the web.The Beast (2001), Kingdom of Loathing (2003), Fallen London (2009), Nested (2011), Universal Paperclips (2017), AI Dungeon (2019)
LispOriginally short for "list processing," an early high-level programming language heavily used in the first few decades of computing especially for artificial intelligence.The Playground (1994)
MACRO-10An assembly language for the PDP-10 mainframe computer.MUD (1980)
MDLLisp-like language created by MIT's Dynamic Modeling Group.Zork (1977)
MOOA scripting language for creating behavior within the MOO environment.LambdaMOO (1990)
Objective CA variant of C used by Apple for creating applications for their platforms.Lifeline (2015)
PAWProfessional Adventure Writer, a menu-driven tool from the 1980s for creating text adventures.Silverwolf (1992)
PHPAn early server-side engine for generating and serving dynamic web content, often from a database.Kingdom of Loathing (2003)
PerlA scripting language for web servers focused on processing text.Kingdom of Loathing (2003)
PraxisA domain-specific language developed to define character behaviors for the Versu project.Versu: A Family Supper (2013)
PythonA commonly used language from the late 2000s on, noted for its ease of use and high-level perspective.AI Dungeon (2019)
QuickBasicA development environment for BASIC targeted at professional coders.Monster Island (1989)
Ren'PyA language and set of tools for easily creating visual novels and released them on many common platforms.Digital: A Love Story (2010)
StoryNexusEngine developed by Failbetter Games in the 2010s for their storylet-driven web games.Fallen London (2009)
StoryspaceCommercial tool by Eastgate Systems for creating hypertexts, popular in the 1990s in academic circles.Patchwork Girl (1995)
Turbo PascalIntegrated development environment for the Pascal language.Trade Wars 2002 (1991)
TutorReadable language developed for the PLATO platform to allow teachers to easily create interactive lessons.dnd (1975)
TwineVisual hypertext tool popular in the 2010s.Howling Dogs (2012), Lifeline (2015)
Visual BasicEvolution of BASIC to handle multimedia and other aspects of developing software in the early Windows era.Shades of Doom (2005)
Z80 AssemblerLow-level language for the popular 1980s 8-bit microprocessor, used in several influential early home computers.The Hobbit (1982)
ZILZork Implementation Language, an in-house language developed by Infocom for creating their parser-based text adventures.Suspended (1983), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984), A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985), Plundered Hearts (1987)
inkLanguage for forward-flowing Choice-Based stories developed by inkle.80 Days (2014)
The earliest version of The Oregon Trail—the text-only original, made long before the green-tinged Apple remake played by 80s kids in their school computer labs—debuted in a Minnesota classroom on December 3, 1971. In the fifty years since, text games—fiction you can play—have evolved from rough-hewn prototypes to mainstream successes to commercial pariahs to underdog heroes. They’ve been resurrected as indie punk games, award-winning art games, viral sensations, and groundbreaking pioneers of interactive storytelling techniques. Their popularity has waxed and waned, but they’ve never been dead, and they’ve never gone away. Often overlooked, frequently dismissed, these games are a vibrant part of gaming history worth remembering, playing, and continuing to make.
50 Years of Text Games is a book and blog series that takes a journey through fifty text games, one for each year of the medium’s first half century. It takes a close look at how each game works, what it says, who made it, and how it fits into the rapidly changing historical and technological context of its time. These aren’t necessarily the most famous fifty games from these years, nor the best-loved, the most influential, or the most important (whatever that might mean). The constraint of picking one and only one game for each year instead suggests a grand tour, a journey that can’t possibly include everything but aims to stop at many interesting sites along the way.
Find out more about where you can get the 50 Years book!