What is a text adventure?
A text adventure is a game with no pictures to play through, only words. The game tells you where you are and what you see. You decide what to do, and the game writes back what happens. You explore, solve problems and follow a story, all by reading and answering.
People also call these games text-based games or interactive fiction. The three names overlap: "text adventure" is the older, game-like term, and "interactive fiction" is the wider one used today.
How did text adventures start?
The first well-known text adventure was Colossal Cave Adventure, written by Will Crowther in 1976 and expanded by Don Woods in 1977. You explored a cave by typing short commands, and the game is where the magic word XYZZY comes from.
A group at MIT then wrote Zork between 1977 and 1979. Its authors founded Infocom, which sold Zork I to home computer owners from 1980 and went on to publish a long run of text games, including The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with Douglas Adams in 1984. Zork's opening line, "You are standing in an open field west of a white house", is still one of the most quoted lines in games.
How do you play a text adventure?
| Classic parser games | Modern choice-based games | |
|---|---|---|
| How you act | Type a command: GO NORTH, OPEN DOOR, TAKE LAMP | Pick one of a few choices, or type a move in plain words |
| What it's about | Exploring, puzzles, collecting objects | Characters, decisions and their consequences |
| How it can go wrong | "I don't understand that." | Rarely; every option leads somewhere |
| Examples | Colossal Cave, Zork, modern Inform games | Choice of Games, Twine stories, Wimbook |
In a parser game, much of the fun is working out what the game understands. In a choice-based game, the fun is in the decision itself: you know your options, and the question is which one you can live with.
What are text adventures like today?
The genre never went away. It moved into a few lively corners.
- Interactive fiction communities. Writers still make parser games with tools such as Inform, and the annual Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp) has run since 1995. The Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB) lists thousands of games.
- Choice-based text games. Twine made it easy to write branching stories in a browser, and Choice of Games publishes long all-text games with stats and multiple endings.
- AI text adventures. AI Dungeon, launched in 2019, lets you type any action and has an AI write the reply.
- Interactive novels. Wimbook mixes the two traditions: each book is an illustrated novel where you are the main character, every scene ends with three moves, and you can also type your own move. The characters remember what you did.
Is a text adventure the same as a CYOA?
They are close cousins. A CYOA (choose your own adventure) story gives you a few choices and branches on each one; a classic text adventure lets you type commands and explore a world. Most modern text games sit in between: choices most of the time, sometimes a move in your own words. See What Does CYOA Mean? for the gamebook side of the family.
Where can you play a text adventure online?
On Wimbook, Chapter I of every book is free in your browser, with no account and no download. You can pick from three moves in each scene or type your own, and the next scene is written around it, inside the rules of the book's world. The books cover romance, romantasy, mystery, fantasy and sci-fi.
Classic parser games such as Zork are still playable online through IFDB and fan archives, Choice of Games has free demos, and AI Dungeon has a free tier. For a side-by-side look at the apps, see our comparison of nine interactive story apps.
Three first chapters to start with:
- Woken Forty Years Early. You wake forty years early on the Meridian. The only other person awake says he has been alone for forty years.
- Fifth Passenger. Four tourists board at dawn. You never look away. You land with five.
- Your Spells Heal the Enemy Prince. Rival champions, a trial that needs one victor, and every spell you cast heals him.
