Best Text Adventure

Anchorhead is a parser-based interactive fiction game written by Michael Gentry and published in 1998. The narrative draws heavily from the Cthulhu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft, tasking the player with investigating a decrepit New England coastal town and their newlywed husband's sinister family legacy....

Trinity is a text adventure game developed and published by Infocom in 1986, designed by Brian Moriarty. The plot involves time travel and explores the history of nuclear weaponry, sending the player to various historical locations tied to the development of the atomic bomb, such as the Trinity test...

Planetfall is a 1983 science fiction text adventure game developed by Steve Meretzky and published by Infocom. The player assumes the role of a low-ranking Stellar Patrol ensign who becomes stranded on a deserted, ruined planet after his ship explodes. The game is notable for featuring the robot com...

Zork I: The Great Underground Empire is a fantasy text adventure game originally developed between 1977 and 1979 by students at MIT. It was later released commercially in 1980 by Infocom, a company founded by the game's creators. Players navigate a vast underground labyrinth, solve puzzles, and coll...

Photopia is a work of interactive fiction written by Adam Cadre and released in 1998. It won first place in the 1998 Interactive Fiction Competition and is distinguished by its heavy emphasis on narrative and character development over traditional puzzle-solving. The story unfolds through a non-line...

Spider and Web is a parser-based interactive fiction game created by Andrew Plotkin in 1998. The narrative functions as a frame story where the player character is an espionage agent captured during a mission, interrogated by an enemy scientist, and forced to recount past events. The puzzles require...

Hadean Lands is a text-based puzzle game designed by Andrew Plotkin and released in 2014 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. Set on a crashed spaceship, the player assumes the role of a technician-in-training who must use an alchemy-based magic system to repair the vessel and save the crew. The...

Lost Pig is a comedic text adventure developed by Admiral Jota in 2007, notable for winning the annual Interactive Fiction Competition. The player controls Grunk, an orc with limited intelligence who ventures into an underground cave system to find an escaped pig. The entire narrative is delivered t...

Galatea is a piece of interactive fiction written by Emily Short and published in 2000. Adapted from the classical myth of Pygmalion, the game centers entirely around a single, extended conversation with an animated statue in a museum exhibit. The gameplay focuses on navigating a complex dialogue me...

Slouching Towards Bedlam is a text-based interactive fiction game created by Star C. Foster and Daniel Ravipinto in 2003. The narrative takes place in an alternate-history Victorian London where the player assumes the role of a doctor investigating an unusual illness at a psychiatric asylum. It is r...

Suspended is a 1983 interactive fiction game developed and published by Infocom, designed by Michael Berlyn. The player is a human controller permanently housed in a cryogenic vault, tasked with maintaining a planetary colony by issuing commands to six specialized robots. Each robot has distinct sen...

Curses is a text-based interactive fiction game written by Graham Nelson and released in 1993. It holds historical significance as the first game developed using the Inform programming language, which subsequently became a standard tool in the medium. The story begins with the player searching throu...

Tally Ho is a choice-based interactive fiction game written by Kreg Segall and published by Hosted Games in 2017. The narrative is structured as a comedy of manners set in 1920s England, focusing on the relationship between a wealthy member of the gentry and their valet. The game's tone and social d...

Sorcery! Part 4: The Crown of Kings is a fantasy role-playing game developed and published by inkle in 2016. It is an adaptation of the fourth and final book in the Sorcery! gamebook series originally written by Steve Jackson. Players navigate the Mampang Fortress to confront the Archmage and recove...

Make It Good is a noir detective text adventure developed by Jon Ingold and published in 2009. The player assumes the role of a disgraced police inspector tasked with solving a murder case while navigating corrupt demands. The gameplay centers on examining crime scenes, interrogating suspects, and m...

Coloratura is an interactive fiction game created by Lynnea Glasser and released in 2013. The narrative features an alien entity known as a Cephalopoid that crashes on Earth and must rescue its kin by communicating through sensory color and emotional manipulation rather than standard human language....

Spellbreaker is a text adventure game developed and published by Infocom in 1985, written by Dave Lebling as the third and final installment of the Enchanter trilogy following Enchanter and Sorcerer. The player controls a master wizard tasked with investigating magical anomalies destabilizing the wo...

Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz is a text adventure game developed by Infocom and released in 1981 as the second installment in the Zork trilogy. The game continues the dungeon exploration of its predecessor, casting the player as an adventurer navigating the underground realm of the Great Undergroun...

Jolly Good: Cakes and Ale is a choice-based interactive fiction game developed by Kreg Segall and published by Hosted Games in 2019. Serving as a sequel to Tally Ho, the story continues to explore a comedic 1920s English society inspired by the works of P.G. Wodehouse. Players manage the chaotic liv...

inkle Studios' adaptation of the second Sorcery! Fighting Fantasy gamebook by Steve Jackson. Players navigate Kharé, a trap-filled city, through a deeply branching narrative structure with multiple paths and outcomes. The game features a magic system, combat mechanics, and decision-making that carri...

Porpentine's 2012 Twine hypertext game presents a surreal experience set in a virtual reality environment with recurring motifs of confinement, escape, and bodily experience. The player navigates between a spartan room and dreamlike sequences, uncovering layers of narrative. Howling Dogs is recogniz...

"Deadline" is an interactive fiction game released by Infocom in 1982, designed by Marc Blank. As one of the first text adventures to function as a timed murder mystery, it requires players to investigate a death by gathering clues and interrogating suspects. A distinguishing feature of the game is...

Aisle is a 1999 interactive fiction game created by Sam Barlow using Inform. The game is notable for its single-turn structure where the player character stands in a supermarket aisle and must choose one action, with each valid command producing a different narrative outcome. Despite this constraint...

The third installment in inkle Studios' adaptation of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! gamebook series. Players explore the open wilderness of Kakhabad while tracking seven magical serpents, each with different abilities and behaviors. The game expands on the series' combat and magic systems while introduci...

All Roads is an interactive fiction game by Jon Ingold that won the 2001 Interactive Fiction Competition. Set in Renaissance Venice, it features a time-loop narrative structure where players repeatedly experience the same evening from different perspectives, gradually uncovering a complex conspiracy...

Emily Short's 2002 interactive fiction game is set in 18th-century France, where players control a young man attempting to enter a noble household. The game's central mechanic is a magic system that allows players to link objects together so that actions performed on one affect the other. This objec...

Magnetic Scrolls' 1985 debut title was a significant commercial text adventure that combined a sophisticated natural language parser with detailed graphics on supported platforms. Set in the fairy-tale kingdom of Kerovnia, players control a character who awakens with amnesia and must navigate a worl...

Enchanter is a 1983 text adventure game developed and published by Infocom. It was designed by Marc Blank and Dave Lebling as the first installment in a fantasy trilogy, which also includes Sorcerer and Spellbreaker. Set in the universe of the earlier Zork series, the game shifts the focus from coll...

Heaven's Vault is a 2019 archaeological adventure game developed by inkle Studios. Players control Aliya Elasra, an archaeologist exploring the Nebula, an ancient network of connected moons. The game's central mechanic involves deciphering a constructed hieroglyphic language through context clues an...