Fredrik's Interactive Fiction Starter's Kit

ALERT!

I consider this page deprecated. I highly recommend visiting A Beginner's Guide to Playing Interactive Fiction instead.
-- Fredrik

ALERT!

Welcome! This page aims to provide an easy way of trying some modern interactive fiction. Perhaps you played some IF games a decade ago or so, but haven't seen what's on the scene today, or perhaps you haven't tried it at all. In any case, this is the page for you.

What's Interactive Fiction?

Well, I've made an attempt to define it on my Interactive Fiction Page

What's in the kit?

This package contains five to six different IF-games, meant to give an insight into what IF can be. It also contains all other programs you need to play them, and a general instruction on how to play this kind of games. The game Nine Points is an introduction with lots of help for beginners.

The games included are:

(Clicking on a game will display a review of it)

The Sound of One Hand Clapping (Not in the Macintosh Kit)
Theatre
John's Fire Witch
The One That Got Away
Gumshoe
Nine Points

Downloading

To download a Starter's Kit, first figure out which version you want, then press the button that says "Download" to get to the download page. The package is currently available in these forms:

Fifstart for PC (674K), runs under DOS or any version of Windows, requires a 386 or better processor for some of the games.
Fifstart for Macintosh (772K), should work on any Macintosh with system 7.
Fifstart for Amiga (691K), should run on any Amiga, although some of the games may require Kickstart 2 or higher. Ported by Bill Hoggett. Here are some screenshots.
Fifstart for Unix (898K), sourcecode with makefile intended for Linux, slight modifications are necessary for other Unices. Ported by John Hartnup.

This kit sucks, isn't there a better one around?

Well, there are different kits around. They have a bit different approaches, that may or may not suit you better.

IFSTART by Russ Bryan

It is a little smaller, has two big games and more material on how to play. If you prefer that approach, download that instead (or why not both?). The games included are:

The package is available in these forms:

Ifstart for PC (478K)
Ifstart for Macintosh (514K)
Ifstart for Amiga (608K)

IF for Win 95/NT by Werner Punz

This one has three big games, a readme file and an HTML readme file with links to useful places in the if-archive. It also has a Win95/Nt installer. This kit is significantly bigger than the other ones, but it still fits into a single disk. The games included are:

The package is, as the name suggests, only available in one form: IF for Win95/NT (1343K).

Adventure Blaster 1.0 by Eric O'Dell

This is a newer and bigger kit, and the one with the fanciest interface. All the games and related material have been wrapped up into a single, easy-to-use Windows application. Contains reviews, hints, walkthroughs and solutions (although far from everything is provided for all games). It also has general instructions on playing IF games. It's big, it's for Windows users only, but let's face it -- it's a beautiful package! The games included are;

The package is only available in one form: Adventure Blaster 1.0 for Windows 95 or later (2897K).

Go back to Fredrik's Interactive Fiction Page

Fredrik Ramsberg
fredrik@ramsberg.net

Last updated on 28 Oct 2003

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