Text Based Adventure Game Recommendations?

[Wackymon]

I have been thinking about a project for School, and the first thing that came to my head was "Make a text-based adventure game." So now I need ideas on how to make it and some basic guidelines for it, along with some examples to study/waste time on.

That, and now I genuinely wonder how they played like, what drove them, why people played them, how they were designed, their function, their tastes, everything.

 

[Exhuminator]

I'd say the first thing to do is watch this documentary:

http://getlamp.com/

It's an awesome documentary and will answer most your questions if not all of them.

Then you might want to see where text adventures began:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure

And where they've gone today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypher_%28video_game%29

If you want to make your own:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-tools-to-create-your-own-text-adventure-games/

People played them, and still play them, because the best immersion and graphics that can possibly exist come from your imagination.

 

[Launcelot111]

If you're looking to make one yourself, then TADS is a pretty popular program for making one. I can't vouch for the ease of making one though- only enjoyed the finished product.

 

[Frezzato]

Another recommendation courtesy of a woman calling herself Auntie Pixelante for a program called Twine [http://twinery.org//]. It's free, open-source, and can be used for personal or commercial use.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

I recommend checking out a game called First Times, which you can find here [http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/u4vzkxbzvkefhftiainh7a/first-times]. Its horror and is a great demonstration of how effective text can be at playing with your imagination.

 

[mrvenom]

You could try the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy game. It's textbased. It's hard. It's about hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.

http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html

 

[wulf3n]

If you're looking to try out some Text Adventures for inspiration you could head over here:

http://ifdb.tads.org/

They've got a pretty good selection.

 

[Zacharious-khan]

how is like the first response not Zork? I can think of 69105 reasons why you should play that