A dimension of no sight and no sound
Here’s a fun game to play sometime when you’re in a crowd and you don’t mind looking like a nerd. Say “You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.” and see who looks at you. Well, depending on how loudly you say it, that might be everybody. But the point is that if you say these words in a group of moderately geeky people you’ll hear a few of them mutter “open mailbox” under their breath, and you’ll know that you just sent them on a trip down memory lane, to a time when men were lonely and computers were monochrome.
Those of you who know what I’m talking about can skip on a bit. For the rest of you, Let me sum up: All that stuff about white houses and brass lanterns and grues (what’s a grue? We don’t know) is from one of the first commercial text adventures, called Zork. A text adventure is exactly what it sounds like: the computer shows you some text, you type a response, and you get more text explaining what happened in response to your response. Yes, I know how boring it all sounds, which is why I’m here to tell you why it’s awesome.
Okay, now you’re all caught up.
Like many a tech-savvy boy I played all the Infocom games over and over, happily solving mechanical egg puzzles, or wandering mazes, or just picking up everything that wasn’t nailed down and being frustrated by the occasional Ye Flask. For me the draw was never the puzzles. I don’t really like puzzles. What I liked (and still like) is the feeling of being in a book. I wasn’t reading about what other people were doing, I was the one doing it. I wasn’t seeing what someone else thought a particular dragon looked like; I was seeing what I thought it looked like. It’s like those awesome choose your own adventure books, except you can’t cheat and read it straight through like some kind of Dadaist hippie.
So, here’s the thing: Text Adventures are still around. And I don’t just mean the old classics (although those are still around as well). People are still making these wonderful little worlds of words. The name has changed to “Interactive Fiction”, largely because we’ve discovered that you can do so much more with it than the traditional twisty mazes and “bring item A to room B” quests. These days people are creating real fiction, with meaningful stories and characters and everything. Here are three good examples:
- Photopia: Photopia is the exact opposite of Zork. There is nothing you can do that will change the outcome of the game. In essence it’s a short story. But the plot, the characterization, and the writing of that short story are all worth your time right this minute. I can’t tell you much more about it without ruining it, but it’s haunted me (in a beautiful and bittersweet way) since I first played it three days ago. I can say that the game uses non-linear storytelling, jumping from one scene to another, gracefully linking a world of fantasy to the too-real real world.
- Galatea: Another game that’s almost, but not entirely unlike Zork, Galatea is also completely opposite of Photopia: There’s only one room, and which of the literally dozens of outcomes you get depends entirely on what you do there. In that room is the eponymous statue, the one carved by Pygmalion that came to life. The entire game is you having a conversation with her. Galatea isn’t chat bot, but she responds to a wide variety of questions and tells a large number of stories about her life. How those stories go is entirely up to you and how you interact with her; she’s pretty moody. There’s no one “right” ending; there’s just what you come away with after talking to a woman made of stone.
- The PK Girl: Not in the mood for guided short stories or psychological discussions with statues? The PK Girl is a more traditional game, clearly written by a teenage boy. And it’s a jewel, shining with yearning adolescent glory. You’ll meet young women, some of whom have magical (excuse me, “psychokinetic”) powers. You’ll solve puzzles. You’ll carry out a very G-rated romance with one of the girls. (Which one is your choice). The PK Girl also features sound and (static) graphics, making it a more video-game like game, but the characterization is still top notch, albeit (charmingly) naïve.
But there’s so much more. Pick your favorite genre of book or movie or game and you’ll find a rich world of text that lets you live there for a while. Most Interactive Fiction is available for free, and there are programs for every platform that will let you play them on your modern computer. Or in your browser. Or on your phone. Or in a browser on your phone…
IFDB is your one stop shop for all things interactively fictional, with links to just about every interactive fiction game or story ever made, along with ratings, reviews, hints, the works.
Okay, I’ve got to stop. This stuff is amazing, and you need to try it. Oh, and remember: you have to light the brass lantern, or it’s not going to do you any good.
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There’s no one “right” ending; there’s just what you come away with after talking to a woman made of stone.
That line is just… brilliant. I mean that sincerely.
Wow…Thanks Melodie. That’s always nice to hear.
They all sound lovely, and the most recent one I’ve played has been the one tucked into Kingdom of Loathing.
Hooray for being in a book!
We met a group of Seattle-based text adventure enthusiasts at a convention last year. They were very excitable, and gave us a CD-ROM with a bunch of games on it! They also wanted us to come to their monthly meetings. They were kind of great.
Damn those load bearing flasks….
Indeed. They have been the bane of Thy Dungeonman’s existence for a many a simulated year now.