The past, present, and future of Interactive fiction

Want to mix coding and writing to create wondrous works of fiction?
In this video I look at the past of interactive fiction including: Choose your own adventure, fighting fantasy, and lone wolf. I look at text-based computer games and infocom.
I then look at the new wave of platforms and works such as: Twine, Inky, Articy, Bandersnatch, Depression Quest, and many more!
Enjoy! And share your works with me.
All included media copyright their respective owners. And thank you to archive.org for the digitised books.
Test version - / the-past-present-and-f...

[@jenmoss6306]

I teach Creative Writing for New Media and found this roundup of games and tools really useful.

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Great to hear, thank you! There should be some follow up videos soon.

[@devilofether6185]

One thing I would like to see from these tools is the ability to make UI elements, it would be nice to have a character sheet that is easy to access and modify

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Right now, your best bet for that is probably Inky into Unity, but I appreciate that isn't ideal. I have a long list of new tools to try, so maybe I will end up finding what you're also looking for.

[@sen7826]

​@@ChrisChinchillaWatch what would you think of a simple Java Swing app (because I assume there shouldn't be any complex or advanced graphics)? I am making text game right now from scratch, with plain Java. It's going to be a CLI program that runs just on the terminal or command prompt. But if I had to use UI elements the simplest thing for me to implement would be Swing.

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

@@sen7826 You can build interactive fiction anyway you want really, and some of the early ones would hae been coded from scratch. You just might like to try one of the tools mentioned to plan the script and story etc.

[@philliphessel6788]

The paper format actually originated with the Tunnels & Trolls solos, starting with _Buffalo Castle_ in 1976. The limitations of that medium relative to digital programs were less significant when personal computers were more expensive, less powerful and less portable. “Not strictly interactive fiction but kind of” seems a bizarre way to speak of the medium to which the IF term was first applied, and in reference to which it finds most common usage. Colossal Cave Adventure debuted on minicomputer systems, and (broken up into three parts) as Zork for micros was the foundation for Infocom’s IF enterprise. The abbreviated title Adventure (used for the Scott Adams products with a less sophisticated parser) gave rise to the basically synonymous genre name for computer IF - “adventure games” - which outlived the commercial viability of the text-oriented form. That form is the focus of the annual Interactive Fiction Competition, which has featured among other significant works some to which peculiarities of the medium itself (and sometimes subverting conventions) are important artistic elements.

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Yes, that is true. I actually even own a copy of a reprint of the Tunnels and Trolls book with one of the solo adventures. I guess I meant more than to outsiders (which I get the impression you're not); they think of interactive fiction in the digital form. Also, to be honest, filming and showing books on video is hard! But as someone who is currently rereading the Lone Wolf books and as this video has been popular, a roundup of originally physical examples could be interesting… So would how people actually made and made them, though I guess the tools would be less consistent. Personally, I am also more likely to make a more traditional print-based one as it requires less technical ability.

[@rlopez8630]

i was in 7th grade when i played Zork the first time back in '82. It might seem frustrating no to play now, but we were all enthralled at what seemed like a game where you could do anything you wanted

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Certainly! I grew up more on early Sega games and even playing them again recently, what seemed amazing then now felt… a little old.

[@andrebernhardt9716]

Awesome introduction to IF, subscribed!

[@johnpreston7744]

Love the video! Been researching this because I’ve been working on a fully analogue interactive fiction RPG and hadn’t found any until now. Pretty much everything modern seems to be digital to some extent. I’ll have to check out the Lone Wolf series because it looks a lot like what I’ve been making!

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Nice! They’ve all been republished and they’re even making new ones now. It was more popular in Europe but so much deeper and darker than fighting fantasy etc. hoping to make some of my own soon™️ too

[@MichaelCoorlim]

Bandersnatch - made as part of Black Mirror for Netflix - was very successful, they just made the mistake of using "Choose Your Own Adventure" in their marketing, which as we know is trade dress. The legal issues are largely why they haven't repeated the process.

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Ahh, ok, good to hear, I just assumed financial reasons

[@MichaelCoorlim]

I've used both Inform and TADS, and I generally preferred TADS - which sadly hasn't seen an update since the TADS light library was released a decade ago.

[@FlutterVR]

Awesome video! I'm working on a narrative VR game and researching IF because I'm not sure what approach to take. This overview was great and brought back a lot of memories too.

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Glad I could help!

[@PostcardsFromJapan]

Very interesting information! Thanks for introducing those tools.

[@vojdie]

Thank you very much, this tour was highly informative ❤

[@javiercabrerabooks]

CYPHER: Cyberpunk Text Adventure Game needs some love here.

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

I'm going to try and get back into game reviews in 2024, so noted!

[@djrmarketing598]

ChatGPT 4o (and possibly earlier ones) can actually create copy-pasteable Inform 7 code from just a description. I asked it to make a text adventure version of Myst, and it was able to give me a sample game that had the same concept (right from the dock with the misty sea and the boat)... It wasn't complete by any means but it was there. And it can debug its own code if you paste in the Inform compiler errors.

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Oh wow, I’ll have to see how it can cope either way and original idea

[@MichaelCoorlim]

I've used Ink in a few projects in Godot and Unity, but it'll also output directly to HTML5 if you're not doing anything fancier with it. And yes, I did the planning in Atricy, but only for mapping out the branching story. With Twine, I prefer to use Tweego and text files instead of the visual IDE.

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Ah cool, not heard of tweego, I’ll add to the list. Been trying to get to godot slowly

[@juliangrantproductio]

Great overview. Very enjoyable.

[@OlliePer]

Brilliant overview and video Chris. I'll be in touch!

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Thanks! Hopefully more similar content soon!

[@devonguinn1890]

Fantastic video!

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Thank you! More to follow

[@carnivorous_vegan]

Very well made, valuably educational video

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Thank you!

[@uziao]

thank you from Brasil

[@sarahm6130]

Hi! you quickly mentionned interactive audio fictions and I would love to learn som emore, I have been searching but I can't find any, do you have other places/titles to look for? Otherwise thank you very much for the video, it's so good and well made!!

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Thanks! It seemed to be something more popular a few years ago when voice assistants came out, but even when I made the video a lot looked dead. The new wave of ai tools might mean there’s a resurgence. So I’ll take a look and try to make a new video!

[@sarahm6130]

@@ChrisChinchillaWatch thanks so much!! You gained a subscriber ✨

[@jan_Wilo]

id like to mention markiplier's "a heist with markiplier" and "in space with markiplier" here on youtube!

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Are they games or videos, or?

[@jan_Wilo]

@@ChrisChinchillaWatch videos kinda like the movies with options

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

@@jan_Wilo Ahh, OK, thanks, will take a look :)

[@lesath7883]

Nice. Very nice. Thank you.

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Most welcome 😊

[@gjsb6wfg995]

But of course, the Narcoman Pavlik bests them all, though I don't think it's still on yt

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

That’s a game or an engine or?

[@Eva-km5ng]

"Depression Quest is famous for other reasons which I won't go into here" 💀💀💀

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Well, yes…………… it was probably just best left alone in this video

[@collinvisser7108]

Neat video - Where is the Future part 17:18 start with publish 18:20 is why. If you can give me a time stamp please. I did like the idea of making a talking Interactive fiction - that does sound very cool. thx

[@FabioBittar]

Why did you ignore Adventuron? It's imho the best one out there.

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Not ignored, never heard of until you mentioned it now. Will add it to the list.

[@GabrielCsanalosi786]

Have you looked into Dungeons AI's platform for creating generative AI text based games?

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Do you mean AI dungeon as that's in the video, but maybe it's something else with a similar name. Yo might have noticed that i started a new video series, and AI-generated games will be on the list for that too.

[@GabrielCsanalosi786]

@@ChrisChinchillaWatch Yes, I misspoke. They have a beta platform called Voyage that looks interesting.

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

@@GabrielCsanalosi786 Cool, will take a look

[@rwetmore]

Kinda curious why my comment was deleted. Not angry, just curious. Oh, well. 🙂

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

I don't normally delete comments, so I don't think it was me, and I'm not sure the Google mother ship will ever tell you... Sorry!

[@rwetmore]

@@ChrisChinchillaWatch It was just a message chastising you a bit for not including Ren'Py in your tools list for creating interactive fiction. It's the fifth most prevalent format for games released on Steam, for example. It's a scripting environment simple enough to get started right away, but can get as detailed as you want since you can drop directly into Python when needed. Perhaps it was deleted because I included the URL for the Ren'Py site? Anyway, that's it.

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

@@rwetmore Maybe your chastising was too harsh ;) I have never seen the comment or heard of the tool, but have some follow up videos on the list, so I'll add it!

[@vinceboston7451]

Did you say "ec-cetra ec-cetra"??? It's ET-cetera. From the Latin et meaning "and". (Ex: Et tu Brute?) The Queen is rolling in Her grave. Such bad English.

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

No, I said "eggcetra" :)

[@chmod0644]

Shouldn't it be Cicero rolling in his grave?

[@mystaofthemoon]

there's 2 steve jacksons, and it's not the other one

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

It's confusing isn't it 😆

[@mystaofthemoon]

man edging me by saving twine til the end but keeps referring to it

[@ChrisChinchillaWatch]

Haha, well, you know, it's the small grey elephant in the room.