Best Inform

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....

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

9:05 is a short interactive fiction game by Adam Cadre released in 2000. The game begins with the player character waking to a phone call telling them they're late for work, presenting a seemingly mundane scenario. Without revealing specifics of its narrative, the game is known for a structural twis...

Varicella is a 1999 interactive fiction game by Adam Cadre, created with Inform. The player controls Pier d'Varicella, a palace minister in the fictional Royal Palace of Piedmont attempting to become regent for the young prince following the king's death. The game is structured as a political thrill...

The Dreamhold is a parser-based interactive fiction game written by Andrew Plotkin and released in 2004. It is set within a mysterious, surreal tower where the player character awakens with no memory of their identity. Specifically designed to be an accessible entry point for players unfamiliar with...

"Eat Me" is a horror-oriented text adventure game written by Chandler Groover using the Inform programming language. The narrative confines the player character in a dungeon-like setting where they are compelled to consume a variety of increasingly bizarre and monstrous entities. The game relies on...

"Christminster" is a text-based interactive fiction game written by Gareth Rees and published in 1995. The story follows a protagonist named Christabel who arrives in a fictional, Gothic English university town to investigate the disappearance of her brother. Players interact with the environment us...

"Vespers" is an interactive fiction game written by Jason Devlin in 2005 using the Inform development system. Set in a fifteenth-century Italian monastery, the narrative follows Father Giovanni as he manages the abbey while the surrounding countryside is ravaged by a deadly plague. As the crisis dee...

"So Far" is a surrealist interactive fiction game written by Andrew Plotkin and published in 1996. It challenges players with an abstract, dreamlike narrative where characters are transported through a series of disconnected, highly allegorical landscapes. The game relies heavily on complex text par...

The Edifice is a text-based interactive fiction game written by Lucian Smith using the Inform programming language. It notably won the 1997 Interactive Fiction Competition, distinguishing itself through its historical and linguistic focus. The game tasks players with navigating a series of vignettes...

Metamorphoses is a critically acclaimed interactive fiction game written by Emily Short and released in 2000. Built using the Inform language, it features a narrative heavily inspired by the mythological transformations found in the works of Ovid and Franz Kafka. The player assumes the role of a cha...

Blue Lacuna is a 2008 interactive fiction game written by Aaron Reed using Inform 7. It is set on a mysterious, deserted island where the protagonist seeks to uncover the secrets of an enigmatic painter while trying to return home. The game is technically notable for its attempt to bridge the gap be...

King of Shreds and Patches is a 2009 parser-based interactive fiction game written by Julian Mortimer Smith in Inform. Set in Elizabethan London, it combines detailed historical research with Lovecraftian cosmic horror, as the player investigates supernatural threats within the streets, taverns, and...

Alabaster is a 2009 collaborative parser-based interactive fiction game led by Emily Short, with contributions from eleven additional authors, written in Inform. It retells the Snow White fairy tale from the perspective of a hunter sent to kill Snow White, who must interview characters through a bra...

Floatpoint is a 2006 parser-based interactive fiction game by Emily Short, written in Inform. The player takes the role of a diplomat sent to a colony to decide whether its human settlers and a nearby alien civilization should be relocated. It won first place in the 2006 IF Competition. The game use...

1893: A World's Fair Mystery is a text-based adventure game written by Peter Nepstad and released in 2002. The interactive fiction game challenges players to solve a theft by exploring a highly detailed, historically accurate recreation of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The game r...

"Captain Verdeterre's Plunder" is a parser-based interactive fiction game written by Ryan Veeder, released as an entry in the 2013 Interactive Fiction Competition, where it won first place. The game is a comedic puzzle adventure centered on a pirate captain attempting to offload treasure from a rapi...

"For a Change" is a surreal parser-based interactive fiction game written by Dan Schmidt in the Inform programming language. It won the 1999 Interactive Fiction Competition, standing out for its highly experimental approach to language and setting. The game employs an invented, dream-like dialect, r...

"Losing Your Grip" is a work of interactive fiction by Stephen Granade that uses a parser interface and spans multiple acts. The narrative engages with psychological themes through surreal scenarios that blur literal and figurative events. The work is recognized within the interactive fiction commun...