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Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

Can you give an example of one of the later, better games?

If you don't mind moderately difficult games (my personal preference) I strongly recommend taking a look at the blurbs for these few tremendously good games and seeing if they appeal to you:

Adam Cadre - Varicella http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ywwlr3tpxnktjasd

Jon Ingold - Make It Good http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=jdrbw1htq4ah8q57

Andrew Plotkin - Spider And Web http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=2xyccw3pe0uovfad

OTOH if you want to start with something easier, but still with puzzles, Bronze by Emily Short is a good one.

If you want a very good game with almost no puzzles, then definitely Photopia.

Another game with moderately easy puzzles that might appeal to the HN demographic is Dan Schmidt - For A Change. The setting is an abstract, somewhat pastoral landscape full of things whose descriptions are alien but extremely evocative. The theme of the puzzles is imagining and understanding things about the world of the game. I found it rather entrancing.

http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=t61i5akczyblx2zd

Anyway, there are so many really must-play IF works from the last decade that the recommendations could go on forever.

Spider and Web is one of my favorite examples. It plays to the medium's unique strengths in ways that will be obvious to anyone who goes through most of it. It's also a fairly short game.

While not by Infocom, Photopia is probably the best Interactive Fiction I every played.

You can download it at http://www.wurb.com/if/game/255 (http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/photopia.... probably being the best choice). It's possible to play it online at http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.php?game=332&mode=htm..., but it's not as much fun as with the real version.

To open the .z5 file you need something like Zoom [1] for Mac, or Frotz [2] for Windows.

[1] http://www.logicalshift.demon.co.uk/mac/zoom.html [2] http://frotz.sourceforge.net/

Fantastic, thank you.

Anchorhead is sort of a Lovecraftian story.

Violet is a fun, short, one-room game. You have to finish writing the last thousand words of your PhD thesis, or your girlfriend Violet will leave you and go back to Australia. Mostly this means you have to figure out how to deal with distractions. The characterization and narration (in Violet's voice) are charming.

These aren't Infocom games, they're recent games written for Inform. You should be able to find them online, probably playable in the browser.

thanks -- i just spent a very enjoyable evening playing violet. first interactive fiction i've ever finished.

if anyone is interested, you can play it online here - http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=4glrrfh7wrp9zz7b (button top right)

Thanks. I just spent 3 hours playing a game about procrastinating while working on your PhD thesis, procrastinating while working on my PhD thesis.

i hope you also have a sweet australian girlfriend! and now unplug your computer :o)

Anchorhead looks promising, thank you.

If you like Anchorhead, you may enjoy Slouching Towards Bedlam, which has a similar atmosphere and similarly beautiful writing.

http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=032krqe6bjn5au78

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