Interactive fiction

You can play stories on a screen.

You type words to move. You can say "go north." It feels like a book that moves. You choose what happens next.

Some games use only text. Other games have pictures too. You can even use books to do this. You read and then pick a path. This changes the end of the story.

In the past, games had no art. This made them easy to play on many machines. You can play alone or with others. It is a lot of fun. Do you want to play?

Interactive fiction is a way to play through a story.

You read text on a screen. Then, you type commands to act. You might type "get key" or "go east." A computer program called a parser reads your words. It turns your typing into actions in the game. Some games use only text. Other games use pictures or videos too.

This kind of storytelling can happen in books. These are called gamebooks. You read a part of the story and make a choice. Your choice changes how the story ends. The "Choose Your Own Adventure" books are a famous example.

Early computer games had no graphics. This made them easy to play on many machines. One famous game is called Adventure. Will Crowther wrote it in 1975. He wanted to share a cave with his children. Later, a man named Don Woods added fantasy parts. He added trolls and elves to the game. Another big game is Zork. It was made by a group called the Implementers. They were very good at making stories work on many computers.

Interactive fiction is a special way to experience a story through software.

Instead of just reading, players use text commands to control characters. These players can also influence the world around them. Some people call these works literary narratives or interactive narrations. They can also be seen as video games, like adventure or role-playing games. Some people use the term to mean puzzle-free stories. Others use it to describe text adventures that focus on puzzles. This type of storytelling can even happen in printed books. These are called gamebooks, like the Choose Your Own Adventure series. In these books, your choices decide how the story flows.

Playing these games involves a specific way of working.

You read descriptions on a screen and then type instructions. You might type simple sentences like "get key" or "go east." A computer program called a parser reads your words. Early parsers could only handle two-word pairs like verb and noun. Later, better parsers could understand much longer, complex sentences. These newer systems can handle commands like "open the red box with the green key." Even without graphics, players move through a physical space of rooms. Sometimes, these spaces are illogical and create tricky mazes. Players often have to draw their own maps to stay on track.

This kind of digital storytelling has a long history.

In the 1960s, programs like ELIZA and SHRDLU used language to talk to users. These were early examples of natural language processing. Around 1975, a programmer named Will Crowther wrote the first text adventure. He called it Adventure, or ADVENT for short. He wrote it to connect with his two young children. The game was based on the real Mammoth Cave. Later, a student named Don Woods expanded the game. He added fantasy elements like trolls, elves, and a volcano.

Many famous companies helped make interactive fiction popular.

Scott Adams founded Adventure International in 1979. He wrote Adventureland and became the first commercial publisher. Another huge company was Infocom. They created the famous Zork series. A group at MIT called the Implementers actually started writing Zork in 1977. They used a language called MDL to build the game. Infocom even made the Z-machine to help their stories run on many different computers. This made their games very easy to play on many platforms.

Interactive fiction is unique because of how it is written.

There are two main modes: the player's input and the game's output. The game usually writes in the second-person point of view. This means the story uses the word "you" to talk to the player. It uses the present tense to make events feel like they are happening now. Some games use an informal or even sarcastic tone to be funny. Other experimental games might let you play as an inanimate object. This challenges how we think about being a character in a story.

Interactive fiction (IF) is a unique form of software that simulates environments for players. In these digital worlds, players use text commands to control characters and influence the setting. These works are often viewed as literary narratives, which are stories told through interaction. They can also be classified as video games, specifically adventure games or role-playing games. Some people distinguish between "puzzle-free" interactive fiction, which focuses on the story, and "text adventures," which focus on solving puzzles. This medium is quite versatile and can even exist in print as gamebooks. In a gamebook, such as the Choose Your Own Adventure series, readers make choices that determine the story's outcome.

The mechanics of interactive fiction rely on a cycle of reading and typing. A player reads a description of their surroundings on a screen. They then provide input by typing simple sentences, such as "get key" or "go east." A specialized program called a text parser interprets these commands. Early parsers were quite limited, often only handling two-word pairs like a verb and a noun. However, later systems like those built on the Zork Implementation Language (ZIL) became much more sophisticated. Modern parsers can understand complex instructions like "open the red box with the green key then go north." This allows for a much deeper level of interaction between the player and the digital world.

Interactive fiction also involves navigating a physical dimension made of different rooms. Even without visual graphics, players move through these spaces to explore the game. Some older games featured illogical spaces where moving north from one area might take you to a new room, but moving south would not return you to the start. These layouts created difficult mazes that required players to draw their own maps to keep track of their location. While these mazes were common in the past, many modern creators avoid them. They argue that poorly designed mazes can become frustrating puzzles that exist only for the sake of being difficult.

The history of this medium begins with early natural language processing experiments. In the 1960s, programs like ELIZA and SHRDLU used conversational language to interact with users. ELIZA simulated a psychotherapist, while SHRDLU could move virtual objects and answer questions about their shapes. Around 1975, Will Crowther wrote the first true text adventure, which he called Adventure. He programmed it in Fortran for the PDP-10 computer. Crowther designed the game to connect with his two children. His original version was an accurate simulation of Mammoth Cave but included fantasy elements like dwarves and magic bridges.

In 1977, a student named Don Woods expanded Crowther's work by adding more fantasy elements. Woods added trolls, elves, and a volcano to the code. This expanded version spread across the ARPAnet and helped spark a massive wave of popularity. The success of Adventure led to the creation of major companies. For example, Ken and Roberta Williams started Sierra Online after playing Adventure. In 1978, Scott Adams wrote Adventureland and founded Adventure International. This was the first company to commercially publish interactive fiction. Adams's work proved there was a real market for selling these digital stories.

One of the most influential companies in the industry was Infocom. The creators of the Zork series began writing a mainframe version of the game in 1977 at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. This group of developers called themselves the "Implementers," a name that is still used by programmers today. To ensure their games could run on many different types of computers, Infocom developed the Z-machine. This was a custom virtual machine that used standardized "story files" as input. This technical innovation allowed interactive fiction to be easily ported across many different platforms, making the genre widely accessible.

Writing for interactive fiction requires two distinct styles: player input and game output. The player provides input through imperative sentences, which are direct commands. The game responds using a second-person point of view, frequently using the word "you." This is done in the present tense to make the player feel like the events are happening to them in real time. While some games use an informal or sarcastic tone, others experiment with different perspectives. Some works use a first-person "I" perspective, while experimental games might turn the player into an inanimate object or an abstract concept. This pushes the boundaries of how we define a character in a story.