Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress

"All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead..."

Source // Wikipedia

Do you like Rogue but want more? NetHack not enough for you? Do you want all the empty, black spaces on your terminal screen to be full - absolutely crammed full - of characters you didn't even know were in the ASCII standard? And do you then want that fantasy world to be staggeringly huge, span a good few hundred years of simulated history, and be incomprehensible, nonsensical, yet insanely detailed, all at the same time?

Then you might - might, mind - be looking for Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress, or Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress, or better yet, Dwarf Fortress, the game that is almost literally like no other.

There are games you dread to start up, games you fear setting eyes upon, and then there is Dwarf Fortress, as impenetrable to new players as a good fortress should be. This post is going to be something, alright, but I know for sure it won't be useful.

Façade

Uh, ha, yeah...

Games can simulate a lot of things. The physics of a race car, the communication between alien species, the horrors that lurk in the night. They're not always perfect simulations, sure, but they don't always need to be.

Case in point, social interaction and awkward conversation simulator, Façade, a three-person one-act play of an evening with Trip and Grace. On the surface, you would be forgiven for passing this one by. A play? Talking? About marital arguments? No, thanks. But this isn't any old game. This is more of an experiment in Artificial Intelligence. One we really need to see first hand.

Alter Ego

How did you turn out?

Back in the day, a few friends of mine kept banging on about what they did in The Sims. While it was often humorous, I didn't have a PC good enough, nor an interest strong enough in playing it to see what the fuss what about.

Fast forward ten or so years, and I'm travelling back thirty years to play Alter Ego, a life simulation text adventure hybrid that allows you to live out an alternative life, just like The Sims, only without the graphics and the mods and the ability to choose anything more than a few options.

It even came in two versions, Male and Female, just like life itself - the black and white binary world in which we live, with its clearly delineate-oh who am I kidding, having only two versions was acceptable in the 80s.

I know nothing of this game, and a little more than nothing about life, so it's about time to dive right in.

Trinity

Dolphin, get the coconut.

Yeah, not the best of images to look at...

I don't have anywhere near the amount of knowledge on text adventures as I do on video games that have graphics - and that's not exactly encyclopaedic in the first place. What that basically means is that Trinity is completely new to me, I have no idea what it's about and I will most likely not get very far in it.

But let's make sure.

A Mind Forever Voyaging

A Gamer Forever Wondering just what the bloody hell he's got to do to make any progress. Goddamn it, why do I get myself into these situations...

Yeah, sorry, not the easiest of screens to read...

It seems like only ereyesterday when I was going through Déjà Vu, the logical, graphical, next step for the text adventure, but we're not done with getting lost in an adventure game yet. Steve Meretzky is back with quite the tale this time, as we become A Mind Forever Voyaging.

I have no idea what it's about, so let's blindly stumble into it.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

I played HHGTTG and all I got was a lousy T-Shirt...

Source // MobyGames

I have never read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I've seen the film once, for sure, as well as clips of it and the TV show. I know that the number 42 and a day dedicated to towels is related to it. That is, more or less, the extent of my knowledge of the book, which is a big problem when it comes to the game, as it almost necessitates you having read it before you play.

I'm playing the 30th Anniversary edition from the BBC, but many versions exist across the years, and all of them, as the BBC describes, are 'a bit mean'.

Whatever could they mean by that?...

Planetfall

Weel we bawldlee goh weer ainjeels feer tu tred?

Source // Abandonia

I haven't come across Planetfall on my journeys and that's a shame, because it doesn't take too long before this text adventure gets interesting. Unfortunately, I can't interact with the interactive entertainment that is Planetfall, so I'm going to have to resort to watching it instead. Hopefully it's just as fun (though with far fewer deaths, faffing about and getting lost).

The Hobbit

They're taking the Hobbits to the Commodore-dor-dordor-dore...

Oh boy, a licensed property, so early on?! At least it's not a video game based on a movie at this point, but it is based on the book, or rather sits alongside the events of the book - so much so that it was sold alongside a copy of the Hobbit, which makes The Hobbit some kind of collectors edition waaay before such a concept would dominate the gaming market. And there wasn't a standard edition, it was straight up cross-media promotion, and it was everywhere. Name the home console of the 80s and The Hobbit seems to have been on it, so it must have been good...

Luckily for me, it's available on the Internet Archive. Doesn't come with the book though, but I'll let that slide.

Zork

What in the zork is going on here?

If I remember correctly, my first experience of Zork was at school, during either a lunch or a free period where a friend of mine who was far more computer savvy than I got it, or one of its sequels, up and running for a game. I remember nothing else but for the fact that it was a text adventure.

I've had mixed success with text adventures, but I have heard Zork was one of the better ones. Maybe I'll manage to wrap my head around it, unlike all the other text adventures. Maybe I'll get lost in all that text. I just don't know until I fire it up.

The Internet Archive is once again home to an online emulator that you can play on, so we can dive right in.

MUD

You haven't lived until you've been disconnected...

Source // Wikipedia

It was inevitable that somewhere, somehow, gaming would be done over networks with players in other places. Upon reading that it was MUD that got this notion off the ground - a text adventure capable of multiple user interactions - I thought 'well, this write up won't be based on me playing it then'.

How wrong I was. 35 years later, MUD is still playable, and people are still playing. That's got to be worth a look.

Eamon

Who said everything should be handed to you on a plate? You want graphics with your fantasy adventure games? Better start imagining them...

Source // Wikipedia

"That's probably a pretty impressive hand drawn dragon for the time, actually". It's such a strong image to represent Eamon in fact, that this is what 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before Your Die chose to represent the game too. Perhaps a picture of text based gaming above a block of text about text based gaming is too much text. Whatever the case, my only expectation from this game is that there will be a lot of text.

But my first impression was actually one of 'oh, wow, what?', as I discover that Eamon was designed to be built upon by any Tom, Dick and Harry that wanted to create role playing adventures for people to play on their apple ]['s, with a list of hundreds of offerings from the community to pick and choose from.

Not only that, but I find that the platform is still being developed for, and that you can freely download a deluxe edition, which includes all the bells and whistles that decades of fan innovation and interest has brought.

There is, then, no excuse to not dive right in.