AI text adventure games: play interactive fiction in chat

Two ways to play

Parser style is terse and puzzle-heavy: you type short commands, the game reports what happens, and the fun is poking at every object. Choose-your-path style is closer to a gamebook: each reply ends with a handful of numbered options, plus room to type your own. Both work with an AI; you just need to say which one you want before the first room.

For parser style, send the Narrator something like this:

"Run this as a classic text adventure. Describe each room in under 80 words, then list exits and notable objects. Wait for my command. Track my inventory and show it when I type I. Start me in a lighthouse keeper's cottage with the door nailed shut from outside."

For a gamebook instead: "End every reply with three numbered choices. I can pick one or type something else."

What a few turns look like

> EXAMINE DESK The desk is bolted to the floor. Its single drawer is locked, with a brass keyhole shaped like a crescent moon. Someone has scratched NOT THE CLOCK into the varnish. > LOOK AT CLOCK A tall clock, stopped at 3:15. The pendulum is missing. Behind the glass, something small glints. > OPEN CLOCK The case swings open. A crescent-shaped key hangs from a nail where the pendulum should be.

Short commands keep the game snappy, but you are not limited to a parser's vocabulary. "Hold the key up to the window and look for scratches" is a perfectly good command, and that freedom is the reason to play this way with an AI rather than a 1980s game.

Keeping puzzles fair

Here is the honest catch: the AI has no hidden notebook. Anything not written in the chat does not exist yet, so a "secret" solution is often decided at the moment you try something. That can make puzzles feel soft, where any clever-sounding idea works.

Two lines in your setup help a lot:

• "Every puzzle's clues must appear in the room descriptions, and the solution must use something already described."
• "If my command would not plausibly work, say so and let me try again. No hints unless I type HINT."

With those rules the game rewards reading carefully, the way the old ones did. If you want an ending you can lose, say that too: "(OOC: I can die or get stuck. If I do, write GAME OVER and offer a restart.)"

Adventures that are already built

Some house characters are adventures with a guide attached. With them, write your commands as actions, like *I try the seventh stair*, and the character answers in their own voice.

• Eleanor Ashgrove: you are locked in a manor until dawn with a polite ghost. Explore it room by room, the attic trunk, the dining table, the stair that creaks, and work out who poisoned her.
• Vesper: you wake six years early on a sleeping starship whose AI keeps one section sealed and cannot tell you why. A slow, exploratory mystery with corridors to map.
• Ines Marlowe: a night train across the Alps, a violin case that holds no violin, a detective in the dining car. Compartment-by-compartment puzzles on rails.

Saves, maps and long games

Undo last message is your save file: if a command gets you killed, take it back and try something else. Another version rerolls what happened without changing what you typed, handy when a description was dull.

For a longer game, ask for a text map now and then: "(OOC: list the rooms I've visited and how they connect.)" When you are signed in, put the inventory, codes you have found and doors that are still locked into Story memory (⋯ menu) so they survive a long session.

Questions people ask