Many, many historic text adventures are available in the browser, thanks to the Parchment interpreter. You can find them on the IFDB, and click the link to play online. One of my favourites among the classics are Plundered Hearts[1].

There's also a lively community of people who make modern text adventures. These tend to be shorter and more well designed than many of the cruel games of the past. My all-time favourite is The Wise-Woman's Dog[2], a passion project with a very high quality bar.

Text adventures are great[3], and no, as of yet, they are not improved by LLMs. Too inconsistent, too much hallucination. They can't even play text adventures well.

[1]: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=ddagftras22bnz8h

[2]: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=bor8rmyfk7w9kgqs

[3]: https://entropicthoughts.com/the-greatness-of-text-adventure...

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JoshTriplett 4 hours ago | parent [-]

My favorite of all time is "Ad Verbum".

> With the cantankerous Wizard of Wordplay evicted from his mansion, the worthless plot can now be redeveloped. The city regulations declare, however, that the rip-down job can't proceed until all the items within have been removed.

It's full of delightful wordplay and puzzles that play with the text-adventure medium, constraining what words you can use. Highly recommended.

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waisbrot 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

"Spider and Web" is quite short, pretty easy, mostly gives good hints. A great starter-game, I think. I also love Zarf's writing.

https://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/tangle/

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kleiba2 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There was a time where I spent most evenings playing "A Mind Forever Voyaging" by Steve Meretzky [1], complete with trying to draw maps and jot down notes and clues, while listening to a Dave Brubeck album on repeat. The fact that I still remember that more than a decade later is a testament to how good that experience was.

[1] https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=4h62dvooeg9ajtfa

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nathell 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Mine is ‘Anchorhead’ (1998), by Michael Gentry. I think it’s actually my favourite game of all time, of all genres.

I’ve played the old, text-only, Z-code version back in high school, around 1999, and the experience was so vivid and immersive that to this day I can draw a map of Anchorhead from memory and recite the lineage of the Verlac family. I think it’s still my favourite game of all time (although I spent much more time on some others).

These days, an illustrated version can be bought on Steam for something like $10. Highly recommended!

	▲	kleiba2 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		...which you can also play online: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=op0uw1gn1tjqmjt7