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Getting Started with Interactive Fiction

"Interactive fiction" is the noble-sounding phrase with which we dignify text-based computer games. Text games tend to be much slower-paced than those that rely on graphics, but a good text game can tell a more complex, coherent story, as well as providing deeper forms of interaction.

You could make a case that certain graphics-based games, especially the slower-paced ones like Myst, qualify as interactive fiction, but there are plenty of slick, professionally designed (and well-funded) websites devoted to them. Most IF sites are dedicated exclusively to text-based games.

Text games are often called adventure games. This is because the genre (or medium, or art form) of interactive fiction began with a computer game called Adventure, which appeared in the late 1970s. Today's games are far more sophisticated, but they still share certain basic features that were first seen in Adventure. That's partly for reasons of historical influence, partly because of the inherent limitations of computers when it comes to understanding the peculiarities of English grammar, and partly because the people who created Adventure understood certain conceptual problems and solved them in sensible ways.

If you want to see how the genre has evolved, you can find various versions of Adventure online, download them, and compare them to the newer offerings. But I'm getting ahead of myself. You're reading this because you want to know how to download a few games, try them out, and discover whether the genre interests you.

Almost all modern IF is free. You can download and enjoy hundreds of games, some of them vastly clever and entertaining, without spending a nickel (other than for your Internet hookup). Likewise, if you should be inspired to try writing your own game, you'll find that the tools for doing so are free downloads.

To enjoy (or get intensely frustrated by -- that's possible too) playing IF, you need two components: interpreter software, and a game file to load into the interpreter. Some IF comes with the game file "pre-installed" in the interpreter, but that's a refinement that we'll ignore here. The two components are downloaded separately. After downloading and installing the interpreter, you can launch it the way you would any other computer program. From its file menu, you'll be able to load the game itself.

Several different systems have been developed for authoring and playing IF. The interpreters and game files produced with and for these systems are, for the most part, not compatible with one another. Most people who play IF regularly have at least two interpreters, one for games in the Inform format (also known as "Z-code") and another for games in the TADS format. Both Inform and TADS have their own variants, but there's no reason to go into the details here. Other IF systems, such as Hugo, are also available, but the lion's share of games are written in either TADS or Inform.

So where do you find the interpreters and the games? Both can be downloaded from the vast online repository known as the Interactive Fiction Archive. The server used for this archive is sometimes slow, but the home page lists a number of "mirror" sites, most of which are faster.

The structure of the archive is not easy to comprehend, even for seasoned denizens of the IF community, but those who maintain it couldn't change it without breaking thousands of links from other sites. My advice: Don't worry about what's in all those subdirectories in the archive. Here's what you need to know to get started.

Playing Inform Games

Inform interpreters are found in the if-archive/infocom/interpreters directory. Here you'll find links to subdirectories with names like frotz, gnusto, and nitfol. For Windows users, I recommend WinFrotz or Windows Frotz, both in the frotz directory. Mac users may want to try Zoom (in the zoom directory) or Spatterlight.

Once you've installed the interpreter, you'll be able to play Inform games downloaded from the if-archive/games/zcode directory. For reasons that are lost in the mists of antiquity, Inform games are in a format called Z-code, which means that most game files end with a .z5 or .z8 suffix.

Those that end with .zblorb or .ulx require a different interpreter. On the Mac, Spatterlight should work nicely. In Windows, you'll need Windows Glulxe. You can download the WinGlulxe installer from the if-archive/programming/glulx/interpreters/glulxe directory.

Playing TADS Games

TADS (The Adventure Development System) comes in two flavors -- TADS 2 and TADS 3. Fortunately, game players shouldn't need to care about this. Your best bet for playing either TADS 2 or TADS 3 games is the HTML TADS Player's Kit, which is found in the if-archive/programming/tads3/executables directory. Mac OSX users will want aQuaTads, which is in the same directoy.

TADS games are found in the if-archive/games/tads directory. (Versions 2 and 3 are lumped together there.)

How to Find Good Games

How to Learn More

Now that you've downloaded and tried a game or two and are totally perplexed, you might want to click over to my How to Play page. That page includes both a long explanation and links to similar explanations written by others.

If you're stuck in the middle of a particular game (not an uncommon occurrence) and would like a little help, you'll want to know about the newsgroup rec.games.int-fiction. You can access this using a news reader (which is probably built into your email program; your Internet Service Provider should be able to help you set it up) or using Google. Click on "more", then on "Groups", and enter rec.games.int-fiction in the search field. The regulars on that group will be happy to assist you.