Skip to content
MU* Resources

Interactive Fiction

Most of this site focuses on multiplayer text games. If what you really want is to write or play a single-player text game, this page is for you.

Solo text games, commonly known as interactive fiction or IF, evolved in parallel to multi-user (MU*) games and thus have a rich history of their own.

This page is meant to serve as a jumping-off point. For deeper coverage, the IF community itself maintains excellent resources (some linked below).

Authoring tools

Section titled “Authoring tools”

Tools for writing your own interactive fiction (IF), grouped roughly by approach.

Hypertext / branching narrative

Section titled “Hypertext / branching narrative”
  • Twine - Browser-based, beginner-friendly, and free
  • Inklewriter - Free tool for writing and publishing interactive stories
  • ChoiceScript - Powers the Choice of Games catalog

Parser IF

Section titled “Parser IF”

The classic “you are in a dark room, type EXAMINE LAMP” style.

  • Inform 7 - Natural-language authoring system used for hundreds of award-winning works
  • TADS 3 - Programmer-oriented parser IF system
  • Dialog - Modern Prolog-inspired parser IF language
  • Adventuron - Browser-based, retro 8-bit adventure aesthetic

Other notable systems

Section titled “Other notable systems”
  • Quest - Browser-based authoring with both GUI and code modes
  • Squiffy - Lightweight branching narrative tool from the Quest team

Where to publish and find games

Section titled “Where to publish and find games”
  • IFDB - The Interactive Fiction Database
  • IF Archive - The community’s preservation archive; decades of games, tools, and source code
  • itch.io interactive fiction tag - Where many indie IF authors publish today
  • Choice of Games - Publisher of ChoiceScript-based games, with a “Hosted Games” label for community-submitted work

Competitions

Section titled “Competitions”
  • IFComp - The Interactive Fiction Competition, running since 1995
  • Spring Thing - Spring counterpart to IFComp, more relaxed

Community

Section titled “Community”