Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

The Return of the Text Adventure?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 18, 2014

heroprojectNot that they ever truly went away… but now, text adventures are on Steam. Hanging out with the mainstream games again. That’s novel.

“Heroes Rise” Is the First Text Adventure on Steam; We Need Your Help!

I haven’t played it yet. In all honesty, I’ve played maybe five interactive fiction games in as many years. I used to love ’em, but I guess time progressed. Anyway, I may have to pick these up in a show of support.

My first “complete” non-trivial game development projects, back in the C-64 days, were text adventures. I had a ball making them, and enjoyed playing them. Mine weren’t nearly as good as the Infocom titles, but from my vague, biased recollection I think they could have stood up to many of the other offerings of the day. Every once in a while I think about what it would take to try my hand at interactive fiction. It would be interesting, but I don’t know if I have the passion for it that I once did.  What I loved about them was the world-building and storytelling — which I do with RPGs now. But while a picture may be worth a thousand words, there is still a ton that can be done with text that graphics can’t touch. They are truly different media.

 


Filed Under: Adventure Games - Comments: 4 Comments to Read



  • Mustawd said,

    Found your blog via MattChat and CRPG addict. Good stuff.

    I’ve actually been getting into interactive novels/games lately. Scratches my itch to play “games” and I’m able to tell myself that I’m being productive by reading. That way I don’t feel guilty about the huge backlog of books on my ipad.

    That being said, you saying we won’t be getting a Steampunk text adventure game anytime soon? 😛

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    Heh – not anytime soon, I’m afraid. For the immediate future, I’m gonna have to lock my office door and disable the Internet to get the FK2 demo done. I would love to do a Steampunk RPG at some point down the road, though. I’ve got a few ideas kicking around my head for one.

  • Ottomobiehl said,

    Ah, text adventures. Fun to play and the “goto” programming project for any newbie learning BASIC.

    That game looks interesting. Something else to add to my backlog? So many games so little time.

  • LateWhiteRabbit said,

    I didn’t realize this was by Choice of Games until I clicked the link. I haven’t followed their stuff in forever, but I spent hours “playing” Choice of the Vampire and Choice of Broadsides and they were amazing. I’m going to have to pick this game up on Steam.

    Zork was my first PC game and actually helped me learn to read. My cousin and I were five, and we would play it together, sounding out words and slowly advancing as we came to a consensus on what to type. I don’t think we ever beat it, but we sure had fun.

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