Two Events Celebrate Text Adventures, Roguelike Games (ifcomp.org)

An anonymous reader writes: The 24th annual Interactive Fiction Competition kicked off Monday, unveiling 77 new text adventures which will vie for nearly $9,000 in prize money. The contest's organizers are encouraging people to play and rate the free games, and encourage their friends to join in the fun (or to donate more prize money or other prizes). They're dedicating this year's competition to the memory of Stu Galley, who co-founded the pioneering text adventure company Infocom back in 1979 with his classmates from MIT. Infocom went on to create everything from Zork to a popular Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game, and Stu is credited as the driving force behind text adventures like Moonmist, Seastalker, and The Witness.
Meanwhile, long-time Slashdot reader paulproteus reminds us that the "Roguelike Celebration" is happening today and tomorrow at the GitHub office in San Francisco -- and is streaming on Twitch. The Roguelike Celebration is a community-generated weekend of talks, games, and conversations about roguelike [games] and related topics, including procedural generation and game design... It's for fans, players, developers, scholars, and everyone else, including people new to this type of game.

Comments

Re:It's not total shit

[Tuidjy]

Every few years, I find the time, and play some of the games. Usually I try to do it before the votes are tallied, but sometimes I really do not have the time, and just play the winners.

There has not been an year where I haven't really enjoyed at least one of the games. Sometimes, enjoyed is not the right word... some of those games are less interactive, but tell a story that makes you think, or that stays with you because it throws quite the curve ball.

If you have the time, give it a try. Some ideas are better made into a text adventure than expanded into a novel...