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Category:Interactive Fiction: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"SOMEWHERE NEARBY IS COLOSSAL CAVE, WHERE OTHERS HAVE FOUND FORTUNES IN TREASURE AND GOLD, THOUGH IT IS RUMORED THAT SOME WHO ENTER ARE NEVER SEEN AGAIN. MAGIC IS SAID TO WORK IN THE CAVE. I WILL BE YOUR EYES AND HANDS. DIRECT ME WITH ONE OR TWO WORD PHRASES"''|''Colossal Cave Adventure''}}
Interactive Fiction is a term originally introduced by the seminal [[Adventure Game]] company [[Infocom]] to describe its line of more "serious" long-form text adventures back in the Golden Era. Interactive fiction games are adventure games in which the interaction is almost entirely text-based. Early games, and games from purist companies like Infocom, were nothing more than bare text, but some later offerings added pictures, sound and limited mouse input (one game, ''[[
The obvious reason why they were in text form is that was the only means of output available. Original Adventure was written in the programming language FORTRAN and was designed to run on the mainframe and minicomputers of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Graphics output wasn't possible because most places had no systems available for on-screen graphics. It was only when graphics capability became popular on PCs starting in the mid 1980s that the text adventure started to be replaced by various programs that used graphics capability.
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* [[An Aesop]]: Rarely played straight, usually warped in some way, because [[True Art Is Incomprehensible]] (or offensive).
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]
* [[Easter Egg]]: Typically in the form of a [[Shout
* [[Easy Amnesia]]: Sometimes [[Justified Trope|justified]] by plot, sometimes not.
* [[Empty Room Psych]]: The unintentional version is far more common. Knowing which author wrote the game you're playing helps a lot (good authors are probably really pulling a psych, new or bad authors probably just didn't bother to code the furniture).
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* [[Jigsaw Puzzle Plot]]: Well, it wouldn't be very interactive if all the story took place at once, now would it?
* [[Kleptomaniac Hero]]: Even worse than in video games, since item interaction is the basis for most IF puzzles.
* [[Last Lousy Point]]: Originating in the ur-IF game ''[[Colossal Cave
* [[Late to
* [[Locked Door]]: Though many subversions exist -- the door may require a password, or there might be [[Dungeon Bypass|another way through]], or you might just have to [[Bullethole Door|destroy the door]].
* [[The Maze]]: A [[Discredited Trope]] in [[Interactive Fiction]].
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* [[Talk to Everyone]]: If it's possible to TALK or ASK or TELL or SHOW at all.
* [[Text Parser]]: Originated the concept.
* [[The Many Deaths of You]]: Popularized in the [[
* [[Unwinnable
** For example, "[http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ii0k5l53vhghqyh6 Broken Legs]," the second-place game in the 2009 IFComp, was cruel, but "[http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=jf5zkjj3jqfllwcn Rover's Day Out]" and "[http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=3oez457dpng7ktzb Snowquest]," the first- and third-place games, were both polite in that any death could be undone. In fact, most of the latter two games are merciful, in that you can't do anything to prevent yourself from being able to reach the ending.
* [[Vaporware]]: Plenty of old ones, since graphics killed the text-game stars. Production of vaporware is ongoing, since text games can be produced by single artists, and coding is a huge project. The IF archives are full of half-finished orphans.
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