Interactive Fiction according to Fredrik

What is "Interactive fiction"?

Interactive fiction, in the sense that it is used on these pages, is a cooler name for what used to be called "text adventures" in the '80:s. It is a kind of computer game where you move a fictive person around in a fictive world (It doesn't have to be a human, but more often than not, it is.). You type what you want he/she/it to do, and the game tells you what effect it had. In this manner, you solve the problems that the author has put in the game for you to solve.

Interactive Fiction is somewhere halfway between books and games. Some works of IF focus more on the storytelling, while others focus on the problem solving.

This IF thing sounds interesting, can I try it?

Yes, you can. I recommend you pay a visit to:

A Beginner's Guide to Playing Interactive Fiction.

Where can I find IF-related material?

Discussions on playing IF can be found at the news group rec.games.int-fiction
Discussions on authoring IF can be found at the news group rec.arts.int-fiction
The ftp-site for IF-related material can be accessed at http://www.ifarchive.org/.
An excellent index that covers many of the games at if-archive is called Baf's Guide to the IF Archive. The if-archive has a lot more than games, of course.
Playgame.FAQ describes how to play the games at if-archive.
Here's a good page if you are thinking about writing your own IF game.
The BrassLantern.org is a place with lots of information both for beginners and seasoned players.
For great online magazines dedicated to interactive fiction, you should have a look at XYZZYnews and SPAG (Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games).
All this and just about anything else that has to do with IF can be found at PDD's Adventure Page or Scott Neal Reilly's Interactive Fiction Page.

IF games I have made

There have been a bunch, most of them in the end of the eighties. There are only three games that can be run on any computer that is likely to be connected to the Internet:

"Hobbit - The True Story - redux, Director's Cut" is a parody of the Melbourne House game "Hobbit" that used to be available for the C-64 and other computers. The game was written by me and Johan Berntsson in MS-DOS BAT-files.
"The Terror of Mecha Godzilla - The True Story" is about saving Tokyo from the attacking monster Mecha Godzilla. This game too consists entirely of MS-DOS BAT-files.
Here are some reviews of these games that I have found on the web.
Oh, there's one more game: "Vacation Gone Awry" (used to be called "Stranded" earlier). I started writing it 14 years ago, with Johan Berntsson and Staffan Friberg. It was finally released on 31 Decemeber 2001.

Other IF related projects

I have recently finished a module for a dedicated IF authoring language called Inform. The module is called Swedish.h and enables authors to write games in Swedish. For more information and downloads, please visit the homepage of Swedish.h.

Go back to Fredrik's homepage

Fredrik Ramsberg
fredrik@ramsberg.net

Last updated on 28 Oct 2003