In a time of ever decreasing attention spans, with overpriced hardware chugging along to produce high fidelity graphics, with epilepsy inducing particle effects, and a nonexistent file compression standard, there is a certain genre, which simply says: Nay.
A genre which once pioneered the entire medium of PC gaming as we know it.
A genre which has always been there throughout the history of gaming, for a time, surviving, but now, prospering.
A genre which is the pure and solid bedrock, in which every single game must stand on.
The humble Text-Adventure, have you ever wondered, where it all began?
A genre which once pioneered the entire medium of PC gaming as we know it.
A genre which has always been there throughout the history of gaming, for a time, surviving, but now, prospering.
A genre which is the pure and solid bedrock, in which every single game must stand on.
The humble Text-Adventure, have you ever wondered, where it all began?
Just for fun
In the beginning, there was a programmer named William Crowther, in the mid 70s, he had gone through a nasty divorce, being only allowed to see his children on the weekend, he wanted to do something for them, just so they could have fun and bond over the precious little time allowed to them.
In order to do that, he combined his two favorite hobbies, caving (using the caves of Kentucky as backdrop), and, Dungeons and Dragons (adding fantastical elements, for funsies), to make a little piece of software, something someone not tech savvy could enjoy.
The result has many names, ADVENT (due to the limitation in filenames at the time), Adventure, and most importantly, Colossal Cave Adventure, coded on a PDP-10, and using the ancient runes known to us mortals as the Fortran programming language.
The game was quite simple, you were given a description, and you gave the computer 2 words (a verb and a noun), when the parser got the right words, the adventure continued. It had some other limitations as well, but we are gonna skip that.
The Text-Adventure genre has been born.
In order to do that, he combined his two favorite hobbies, caving (using the caves of Kentucky as backdrop), and, Dungeons and Dragons (adding fantastical elements, for funsies), to make a little piece of software, something someone not tech savvy could enjoy.
The result has many names, ADVENT (due to the limitation in filenames at the time), Adventure, and most importantly, Colossal Cave Adventure, coded on a PDP-10, and using the ancient runes known to us mortals as the Fortran programming language.
The game was quite simple, you were given a description, and you gave the computer 2 words (a verb and a noun), when the parser got the right words, the adventure continued. It had some other limitations as well, but we are gonna skip that.
The Text-Adventure genre has been born.
Adventure running on the hardware it was meant for.
Later, Don Woods will ask for permission to improve upon Adventure, when given the blessing, he expanded the code quite significantly, now with an added Tolkien inspired flair.
Thanks to Woods’ efforts, Adventure made it to a little thing they had going at the time, a little thing called, ARPANET, you know, just the predecessor of what we know today as The Internet.
Adventure quickly spread, with nerds from many a computer science department having an Adventure. Later on, ported to run on most operating systems, you can run it on your PC right now actually.
The Golden Age
The late 70s and early 80s will be paramount for Text-Adventures.
Adventure had surged in popularity, among a niche audience of computer enthusiasts that is.
After playing Adventure (the original version), programmer Scott Adams saw the untapped potential this new and exciting medium had, and in no time, he got to coding.
Using the humble BASIC programming language, Adams wrote Adventureland, the purpose, to bring Text-Adventures to the home computers, having to buy ad-space on a magazine to promote it, he had made the very first commercial adventure game.
It sold like hotcakes.
With such a success, Adams went on to start Adventure International, in order to keep everything in house, now free to write many new games.
Later on, he will develop the SAGA (Scott Adams Graphic Adventure) Plus programming language, to streamline the process of making graphic adventures.
His work, together with the magazine SoftSide, inspired the creation of a myriad of Text-Adventures written in BASIC.
Adventure had surged in popularity, among a niche audience of computer enthusiasts that is.
After playing Adventure (the original version), programmer Scott Adams saw the untapped potential this new and exciting medium had, and in no time, he got to coding.
Using the humble BASIC programming language, Adams wrote Adventureland, the purpose, to bring Text-Adventures to the home computers, having to buy ad-space on a magazine to promote it, he had made the very first commercial adventure game.
It sold like hotcakes.
With such a success, Adams went on to start Adventure International, in order to keep everything in house, now free to write many new games.
Later on, he will develop the SAGA (Scott Adams Graphic Adventure) Plus programming language, to streamline the process of making graphic adventures.
His work, together with the magazine SoftSide, inspired the creation of a myriad of Text-Adventures written in BASIC.
But, Adams won’t be the only one to be inspired by Adventure.
Roughly at the same time, a few students at MIT had 100% Adventure, and they wanted more.
So, they decided to make it themselves.
Under the name Dungeon, their work began, just like the game that inspired them, they made use of mainframe computers to make it. Using a MIT developed parser, and a MIT developed programming language.
But, they wanted to go big, better parser, and more complex puzzles.
Just like Adventure, Dungeon made the rounds through ARPANET, catching the attention of many other enthusiasts.
But it was a little different, Dungeon made the rounds, while still in development, a little community had been made around the development of Dungeon, with many people offering to playtest, and submit bug reports.
Sound familiar? Yes, a git repo before it was even a thing.
By the end, Dungeon had taken its proper name, a name you might be familiar with, Zork.
They were quite happy with the result, so much in fact, they wanted to publish it.
With some more students, and even staff members joining, they started the legendary Infocom.
There was a little problem, how to make this thing run on home computers? Remember, it was meant to run on a mainframe computer.
Their solution was quite elegant, they coded a little virtual machine that could run on pretty much anything computer at the time, the Z-machine, which played “story files” (games) coded using their own little programming language ZIL (Zork Implementation Language).
It was quite sophisticated, to the point that the parser could handle entire sentences.
Thanks to the reputation they already had, Zork sold like hotcakes.
The golden age of Text-adventures had truly began.
This is only a fraction of the games Infocom made.
Because Infocom was such a titan of the industry, many didn’t even try to step into the same ballpark, yet there were a few standouts, quite small really, but worth mentioning.
There was Edu-Ware, they had a little niche market when it came to their educational games, being early pioneers of edutainment as we know it today, mostly developing for a crappy home computer only liked by hipsters, The Apple 2. They did try their hand at other genres, to mixed results, yet their biggest success was an adventure game called The Prisoner.
There was CE Software, which created SwordThrust, using the Eamon System (a system that allowed people to make their own adventure games, with a parser, and even basic dice rolls), which never really got enough traction, due to the Eamoun System being so easy to use, they had far too much competition, mostly from hobbyist making their own adventures at home.
There was Sierra Online, with Ken and Roberta Williams whom inspired by Adventure, they decided to make something similar, but with graphics, and soon after, Mystery House was released, it was thanks to their graphic adventures, that they managed to maintain an edge against the Infocom juggernaut.
There were also many other studios, quite small, mostly developing for commodore systems, because their audiences weren’t english speaking, each one of them made their own little niche.
Text-Adventure games, or rather, learning to create Text-Adventures were even used as a way of teaching programming to the younger generation, a trend that remains to this day, *cough* That's how i learned Lua. *cough*
Its so over
Text-Adventures had achieved massive heights, but, everything that goes up, must come down.
And they did so… In free fall.
By the late 80s, the Golden Age was over.
But, what happened? Quite a lot really, so lets summarize it with bullet points.
And they did so… In free fall.
By the late 80s, the Golden Age was over.
But, what happened? Quite a lot really, so lets summarize it with bullet points.
- The improvement in technology brought machines capable of producing graphics, which made Text-Adventures look archaic by comparison.
- The development of more accessible games, especially home consoles, and arcades.
- The difficulty of developing with a text parser (having to account for many words the player may type), made most adventure games go for an easier approach, the point-and-click.
- The quality of Text-Adventures had decreased, due to writers suffering of burnout.
- Many new genres had appeared, and took a piece of the pie.
Infocom would be acquired by Activision, and soon after, Activision pulled the plug, keeping the IPs and trying as hard as possible to make lighting strike twice.
Adventure International, tried to adapt, but soon after, it went bankrupt.
Sierra Online, now Sierra Entertainment, moved on to point-and-click games.
Edu-Ware? Defunct.
CE Software? Moved on to non-gaming related software.
There was a little spark of hope, a little movement in the UK, some smaller studios that kept on trying while Infocom was alive, others feeling that without Infocom, they might be able to make it this time.
Spearheaded by Acornsoft, Magnetic Scrolls (considered the true rival of Infocom, depending on who you ask), Level 9 Computing, and Delta 4. They kept Text-Adventures on life support for a while, yet, soon after most of them would either die by the 90s, or move on to graphic adventures.
Adventure International, tried to adapt, but soon after, it went bankrupt.
Sierra Online, now Sierra Entertainment, moved on to point-and-click games.
Edu-Ware? Defunct.
CE Software? Moved on to non-gaming related software.
There was a little spark of hope, a little movement in the UK, some smaller studios that kept on trying while Infocom was alive, others feeling that without Infocom, they might be able to make it this time.
Spearheaded by Acornsoft, Magnetic Scrolls (considered the true rival of Infocom, depending on who you ask), Level 9 Computing, and Delta 4. They kept Text-Adventures on life support for a while, yet, soon after most of them would either die by the 90s, or move on to graphic adventures.
By the end, Adventure Game no longer meant Text-Adventures in the public eye.
The trend, was over.
But, its spirit remained.
Limbo
From the ashes of Infocom, Legend Entertainment will be born, a phoenix created by former members, will try once more.
Trying to incorporate graphics into their Text-Adventures, a la early Sierra text parser games.
Yet, they were never truly able to compete with the new titans of adventure games, it was now the Sierra vs Lucas Arts battlefield.
Legend’s Text-Adventures, were able to maintain a little cult following from the Infocom days, but soon after, they saw the writing on the wall, and knew that they had to adapt or die.
Moving onto Graphic Adventures, later on leaving Adventure Games behind for good.
Trying to incorporate graphics into their Text-Adventures, a la early Sierra text parser games.
Yet, they were never truly able to compete with the new titans of adventure games, it was now the Sierra vs Lucas Arts battlefield.
Legend’s Text-Adventures, were able to maintain a little cult following from the Infocom days, but soon after, they saw the writing on the wall, and knew that they had to adapt or die.
Moving onto Graphic Adventures, later on leaving Adventure Games behind for good.
But, although Legend had failed, there was a little underground movement that never gave up.
Stuck to newsgroups within the Usenet, and the IfMUD, fans were able to connect with one another, bonding over their love of the Infocom days, gushing over Text-Adventures, talking about game design, etc. etc.
Realizing that by the 90s, Text-Adventures were on their way out, they refused to give up.
And efforts were made.
First, it was AGT (Adventure Game Toolkit), which allowed anyone with a computer to easily make their own Text-Adventures.
Second, it was a group of madlads, dubbed the InfoTaskForce, they managed to reverse engineer Infocom’s code, making it possible to play their games in modern PCs.
Third, it would be the most important of all, the release of TADS (Text Adventure Development System), and the creation of the Inform programming language, both making it easier than ever for anyone wishing to make their very own Text-Adventure, later on, Quest will join as another tool.
Finally, it was community managed competitions, more notably, Ifcomp and the XYZZY awards, which not only bolstered the sense of community, it allowed many to finally try their hand at game dev, they are still going strong, bringing a plethora of new games and creators into the spotlight.
Although, the text parser was left as a thing of the past (Only used by the most stubborn, and the old guard), mostly due to the difficulty and amount of work involved to properly implement it. Now being replaced by set choices, reminiscent of the Choose Your Own Adventure books of old.
We are so back
The 00s and the 10s will lay the groundwork.
For a time, the torch of commercial Text-Adventures will be carried by a little company named Choice of Games, which uses their own in house programming language Choice-script, you can find their games on Steam.
The true renascence will come with the tools that will be made available.
Inform 7 will be released, allowing writers with little programming knowledge to finally bring their ideas to life.
Inkle Studios, will not only release their own tools (Ink) under the MIT license, they came out swinging with new and fresh Text-Adventures, and with an easy way of importing work made in Ink to both Unity and Unreal Engine, Ink will become the backbone of many narrative focused games moving forward.
And finally, Twine will be released, allowing many non-programmers to easily develop their own hypertext-adventures, and easily publish them as well!
Many stories wanting to be told were finally seeing the light of day, just go to Itch.io and look at the Twine tag.
With a now increased presence of Indie game Devs, these tools will now bring a whole new generation of Text-Adventures into the fray.
Although the paradigm has shifted, the sentiment never died, to make a fun interactive story, only needing the player’s imagination to fill in the blanks.
The medium of Text-Adventures does remain as its own little niche, being played mostly by a very small community of enthusiasts. History does rhyme after all.
For a time, the torch of commercial Text-Adventures will be carried by a little company named Choice of Games, which uses their own in house programming language Choice-script, you can find their games on Steam.
The true renascence will come with the tools that will be made available.
Inform 7 will be released, allowing writers with little programming knowledge to finally bring their ideas to life.
Inkle Studios, will not only release their own tools (Ink) under the MIT license, they came out swinging with new and fresh Text-Adventures, and with an easy way of importing work made in Ink to both Unity and Unreal Engine, Ink will become the backbone of many narrative focused games moving forward.
And finally, Twine will be released, allowing many non-programmers to easily develop their own hypertext-adventures, and easily publish them as well!
Many stories wanting to be told were finally seeing the light of day, just go to Itch.io and look at the Twine tag.
With a now increased presence of Indie game Devs, these tools will now bring a whole new generation of Text-Adventures into the fray.
Although the paradigm has shifted, the sentiment never died, to make a fun interactive story, only needing the player’s imagination to fill in the blanks.
The medium of Text-Adventures does remain as its own little niche, being played mostly by a very small community of enthusiasts. History does rhyme after all.
Although not "Pure" Text-Adventures, they now carry on the torch that started all the way back in the 70s
Although mostly forgotten, its a medium that once paved the way for an entirely new industry, its guidelines serving as the first tried and tested pieces of videogame design, some of which are still being used to this day.
Now, I hope you have enjoyed this quick look through the history of one of the most influential genres in gaming history.
And, perhaps have found some new appreciation towards it.
Maybe just maybe, give some Text-Adventures a chance?
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