Top 50 IF list 2019

Emily Short wrote a blog post a fortnight ago or so discussing her nominees for Victor Gijsbers’ Top 50 Interactive Fiction Games of All Time list, 2019 edition. The contest closes on the 31st of July 2019 (i.e. in 2 days, as of the day I write this), and I was thinking about what games would be on my list. This has also resulted, perhaps more importantly, with me having a list of games I still need to play.

Both lists below have the games hyperlinked to their Interactive Fiction Database page, which generally includes reviews and game files to download (or links/suggestions of where to get the game).

First, my personal list of favourites/best text adventures/interactive fiction that I’ve completed or at least played most (er, at least half?) of, ordered roughly in the order I encountered them:

Some of these may be being boosted by nostalgia, but I think they all pretty much hold up and are interesting/innovative in some fashion.

Looking over the author names, I remember when playing Infocom games back in the 80s suspecting that “Marc Blank” was a pseudonym….i.e. Last Name: [blank].

Dunnet is an interesting entry also in that it was originally written in Maclisp for the DECSYSTEM-20, then ported to Emacs Lisp in 1992, and it is the Emacs version (M-x dunnet) that I’m familiar with.

A list of games I still need to play (never played before) or finish (haven’t made significant progress, though I spent a pretty long time with the Silicon Dreams games, Anchorhead, and Varicella, but don’t think I’ve made much progress (or I’ve forgotten what progress I made)), roughly in order of precedence (i.e. how soon I plan to play):

All of the games listed here, in either list, are playable in either Malyon or Gargoyle (with the exception, I think, of Hadean Lands), an admittedly rather arbitrary criterion.