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IF resources & recommendations

What is IF?

Interactive fiction (IF) games played on the computer, often (but not always) text-based, with some interactive element. The most common types of IF are parser games (the player types in commands to make things happen, like "unlock door with key") and choice-based games (the player chooses from various options written by the developers). There's more professionally developed interactive fiction than most people think: Citizen Sleeper, Telltale games, and Scarlet Hollow, and visual novels are all interactive fiction. Some people would argue that Disco Elysium counts.

The IF community

There's also a small but very active community of amateur interactive fiction creators. Fun, creative, thoughtful games are being made all the time just because creators love making and sharing games. Some are all text, some have images, graphics, or animation. IF games come in all sorts of forms and genres: story-driven games, games that simulate combat or resource management, classic puzzle games, and more literary or artistic games don't fit neatly into any one genre.

Playing and making IF

Here are some games to play or tools to make your own:

Playing IF (WIP-- more to be added)

  • Detritus is the IF Comp '25 winner; your starship is dead in the vacuum. Search the wreckage for way to get the engines up and running before it's too late.
  • In Non-humain, you're an eldritch creature who's having a bad day. A great and recent example of what Decker can do.
  • Repeat the Ending is a great example of how thoughtful and literary IF can be.
  • Eikas is a choice-based game in which you have to run a community kitchen in a fantasy world. Make friends, shop for ingredients, manage the kitchen's finances, and try to make a five-star meal.

Making IF

Twine is one of the most popular tools for creating choice-based games. It's free and open-source, and it has multiple formats that have slightly different syntax and capabilities.
  • Twine Harlowe is a simpler way to start working in Twine. It's a flexible format that's less technical than Sugarcube but doesn't play as well with javascript. This official documentation is a decent place to start
  • The 100% Good Twine SugarCube Guide is a great overview of what Twine's Sugarcube format can do. Sugarcube is Javascript-friendly, and it's more complicated, but it has some good base features (a sidebar, built-in save system), and this guide will teach you the basics pretty quickly.

Inform 7 is one of the most popular ways to create a parser game. It's also free, and the built-in documentation is a decent way to get started.

The Interactive Fiction Forum is a great place to ask questions about making or playing games. You can search through old posts that may have an answer to your question if you don't want to make a new post.

Other popular tools iclude Ink (another choice-based engine), Decker (see our link to Non-humain over on the left for a example of a great Decker game), and TADS (another common parser engine).

A lot of professional IF is made in Ren'Py, but this is definitely more coding-heavy.