The IF Reader

[Ghost]

With all the quality threads about general game theory, adventure game design et al, I'd like to put up the IF THEORY READER.

It's a pretty hefty volume with quality essays about interactive fiction (design, pitfalls, idiosynchratic elements, thoughts on characters, puzzles, and what have you). They're mostly written by people who are main contributors to recent IF, and since IF is the foundation on which graphic adventures are build, it's sensible to say that some of the stuff in that reader may be useful for "us", too.

If you're getting it: My favourites are "Crimes against Mimesis" (or "How to make stuff break the illusion of the game") and "Broad Landscape" (or "How to avoid making games that look like a patchwork instead of a true world").

Have fun with this free download:
-> http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_69/10228000/10228464/4/print/IFTheoryBookv2.pdf

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Also, because it really interest me: Who here still plays IF? Any thoughts to share, and opinions? IS IF still comparable to modern point-and-click adventure games? If you had the choice, would you like to see a classic text adventure re-made*? Is that a sensible idea at all? Fire away!

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* I''d love to see a new take on Wishbringer. The very first IF I played and solved, and I love the idea: All puzzles in the game can be solved by wishes granted by a magical stone, but also by mundane means. The more wishes you use the harder it becomes NOT to rely on the wishbringer... and your reward for solving the game's story is that you can keep the stone, so depending on your playthrough you *can* end up with a worthless pebble as your sole reward (well, you also save your hometown, so there's that...)

[mode7]

Thank you for posting this. The articles you pointed out look really promising!
Well honsetly I actually never played, IF. When I got my first Computer the era of grafic adventures had already begun, and later I never really got into the genre. Using parsers and reading tons of text on a monitor just never seemed fun. Although I have a feeling I'm missing out on something.

[Eric]

Twisty Little Passages by Nick Montfort (who is represented here) is another interesting read, for those wishing to delve further into theories of IF.

[Radiant]

I play IF on occasion; there are some fun games in there that don't really work in other genres (including graphical adventure).

[miguel]

I've got Frotz installed on my PC and phone. Their collection of games have some of the best "modern" IF games around.
I personally love murder investigative IF games, typing the questions you want to ask makes it like you're really in control there.
If I'm in the right mood I love to read all the descriptions of places, objects and try awkward actions just to see if "they" thought about it.

[Ghost]

One game that really stands out in my collection is "Nord and Burt Can't make Heads Or Tails of it". It's one of Infocom's finest I think- a game that is completely based on puns, proverbs, and spelling. The puzzles themselves aren't really special but they all rely on the player finding out the pun and making the most of it- using a strange contraption to create all sorts of "jacks", for example (jackknife, jackrabbit, jacket...), or hunting down a Cereal Killer (a vampire who eats all the cereals in a supermarket).

Then there's Curses, Jigsaw, and Christminster, three games that got me back into IF. Especially Christminster excels at creating atmosphere, and Jigsaw's concept of time-travel is well executed too. Since these games are available for free, I can just recommend them to anyone:
Curses: http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=plvzam05bmz3enh8
Jigsaw: http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=28uhmejlntcbccqm
Christminster: http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fq26p07f48ckfror

[Andail]

I enjoyed the part about the need of doing something moderately - like in Christminster, when you need the sleeping man to roll away so you can grab the key, and only the feather will do because simply pushing him would wake him up completely - that's a really good way to force you to use a certain inventory item. I enjoyed it until I played Christminster myself, and found out that you could very much attempt to push him, but he still wouldn't wake up. Using the feather just happened to be the right way.
So I guess the article writer remembers a better version of this game than the one I played

[Radiant]

There's also Ad Verbum, which relies entirely of wordplay. For example, there's the Stunning Salon, which is described solely in words starting with the letter S, and while you're in there, the game only accepts input if all words start with the letter S. The only exit is north...

[qptain Nemo]

When it comes to IF nothing for me has really beaten how nice and cozy text adventures with graphics by Legend entertainment play. However, I do have a considerable backlog of modern IFs that interest me, stuff by Emily Short in particular, because she makes cools stuff. And so, I'm currently (by a very loose definition of the word) in the process of playing through Legend's Gateway and Slouching Towards Bedlam.