The Classic Adventures Solution Archive
solutionarchive.com
solutionarchive.com
[1] https://www.solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C615/Zork+I%3A+The+...
So likely hand-composed, not generative algorithm, I think.
My one child loves playing the Sorcery[1] series with me- I read out loud and they make the choices.
For IF, my kid has enjoyed doing some Zork with me, but the puzzles are pretty difficult.
We also played some text adventures, but I wouldn't recommend them for today's kids. Back then it was just cool to sit in front of a computer in the first place so bashing our heads against the wall for months trying to get a babel fish didn't seem as frustrating as it actually was.
VNs and Twine style IF would be less frustrating, although a lot of those are probably not age appropriate for younger kids.
> although it takes a bit out of me lol
So much this. Preparation took time, and the game itself consumed a lot of my time and mental energy. Sadly, this came to a point were my daughter was highly motivated to play, but I was often not in the mood for that or had enough time to play, so our sessions became less and less frequent, to disappear entirely. I think it's been more than one year we did not play (she is 7 now).
Nevertheless it was a great experience. All fathers should consider give it a try. For the record, I never really played this kind of game before, just witnessed some.
We probably played more than 30 games. Toward the end it followed the same template where she was a witch (a gentle witch of course) that went from towns to towns to solve issues (generally related to magic). Most often she had to learn a new incantation along the way to help her in this adventure. Sometimes she also had to use previously learned incantations written on her notebook. That was a bit a trick on my part to get her read a bit. Drawing a basic plan of the city helped a bit, so toward the end we did that a lot.
In one year or so, his brother will be old enough to play, so I might try again. Something that would help is pre-made campaigns (just in case someone knows some nice resources for that). As I am thinking about this, I guess generative IA can be leveraged for this purpose.
And thanks for the Sorcery recommendation, I haven't played it myself and from reading about it in the past I wasn't sure if it's age appropriate.
It's a modern interactive fiction game:
I'm pretty sure I've seen this auto-mapping software some years ago. Can anybody point me in the right direction?
Edit: it’s not in this list: https://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/mapping-tools/