itch.io

After talking to him, I did: I, STATS, W, W, W, W and he wasn't there. Would you like me to send my transcripts?

If you're a Discord user, there's some interesting  servers for text adventures and interactive fiction, including Adventuron and PunyInform, and some of the competitions, such as SeedComp, ParserComp and this one. The Text Adventure Literacy Jam server has announcements (of course) and some interesting discussion on game development, testing requests, help with puzzles, and so on. The traffic isn't heavy, but it's nice to be part of the community. Much better than Facebook.

I kept a transcript. When we got back, I talked to Andy and he rushed off in the direction of the Hackspace exit. I then checked every location and he was nowhere to be found. I talked to Julie, Stephan and Carl and they all congratulated me on finding Andy, but that's it. (I also checked the other time periods, but no sign of Andy.)

I've rescued Andy and he's gone back to his wife. The other characters in the hackspace have congratulated me for rescuing Andy, but the game doesn't end. What now? How do I get it to end?

The invite link is on the home page: Text Adventure Literacy Jam Discord server.

If you do an update, any update, no matter how minor, update the version number. This aids historians/biblographers and players. For example, if I'm look for a game on IFDB, IF Archive or IFWiki and it says the latest version is version 1.0.0 and I've already got version 1.0.0, then I'm not to know that theres' a different version 1.0.0. Use semantic versioning: a.b.c, where a is a major release, b is a minor release and c is a bug fix. So, in your case, it should have been 1.0.1.

You are lucky that Adventuron allows, even promotes, semantic versioning, whereas the stupid Z-code file format only allows a single release number and the serial number is the date in yymmdd format.

For those not paying attention, you may not have noticed that the submission period has closed and judging has started. There were 7 submissions and there's quite a variety in game styles and authoring tools used. It looks like three of the games opted to use the time travel theme, the others didn't. And that's okay, as the theme was optional.

Now's the time to start playing and rating the games. I'd suggest playing all the games before submitting your ratings to make sure that your scoring is fair. If one game is clearly better in one category than the others, then make sure it has a higher score in that category. Similarly, if one game is clearly worse in one category than the others, then make sure it has a lower score in that category. If two or more games are equal in one category, then make sure you give them the same score. You might like to consider using a sliding scale where the worst game in one category gets one star, the best gets 5 stars and the others are distributed accordingly.

Keep a piece of paper with your scores in a table. Write the titles of the games in the rows and the scoring categories in the columns. Fill in the scores for each game when you complete the game, while it's fresh in your memory. Try to complete each game before you score it. If it's a large game (and many of them are), make sure you play it for at least two hours before you rate it.

There are some interesting discussions on the games on the Discord server, so join in the fun or ask for hints there, but please use spoiler tags when necessary so that you don't spoil the game for anyone that hasn't played it yet.

Finally, if you didn't submit a game, consider writing reviews of the games in the Competitions category on intiction.org and tag your reviews with 'TALP'.

Andrew's game is the most recent in a series of games he's written that rely on word play. You can use conventional two-word input consisting of a verb and a noun, but most of the "puzzles" rely on you recognising Spoonerisms and entering them in place of a normal command. In case you're not familiar with Spoonerisms, this is where the morphemes of two words are switched to create two new words. The first few locations provide plenty of hints that lead to this idea. For example:

* name less -> lame ness

* ooh task -> to ask

* rare thing -> there ring

* veering choice -> cheering voice

* whoa guest -> go west

All you have to do is type the new words to gain points. Some of the Spoonerisms require you to have solved previous ones before they are accepted. So, if a Spoonerism doesn't work in one location, come back and try it later after solving some of the others. The hints are there, but they may be quite subtle. Once you get the hang of it, it's quite fun.

Thanks.

The screen scrolling rather than refresh is bog standard in all modern adventure authoring systems. You'll find that it's invaluable, as you can scroll back to see past responses. One of the things I hate about Adventuron is that it doesn't do this, so your history is gone every time you move to a new location.

If you're up for a challenge, try to solve the game in the minimum number of moves. You'll need to visit London and the Hindenburg at least once and the other time periods at least twice. If you're interested, you can also find a map and solution on my GitHub page for the game. You might like to compare your map with mine.

Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for picking up that hint bug, too. I've fixed it for a post-comp release.

It sounds like you missed something earlier. When on the beach at Krakatoa, go north to the rock platform. There's a cave to the west. Go there.

You've found what you need in London. There's nothing more to do there.

Make sure you've taken something out of the crate at San Francisco, then return to the ship and climb the mast. While you're on the ship, examine the table in the cabin and do what is suggested. You can also examine the thing that was revealed when you examined the table and follow that clue.

Text Adventure Literacy Jam is an annual event that encourages authors to write text adventures (or parser-based interactive fiction) suitable for beginners to the genre. The games must include a tutorial at the start of the game. This is one of the aspects that makes this competition unique. This is the 5th year that the competition has been running and the winning submissions are elligible for some very generous prizes.

The games submitted to Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2025 are now available for playing and judging. All games are free to play for the duration of the judging period, which started yesterday and finishes on 31 May 2025.

7 games were submitted this year. There are some top quality games amongst them, so join in the fun! Everyone that likes text adventures should play and rate these games. If you've never heard of text adventures or never played a text adventure, then these games were designed for you. Give them a go!

Looking good. Love the cover art.

Thank you for the kind words. It was a lot of fun to write, so I'm glad you liked it.

You entry has been received. I can see the submission because I'm the host, but I don't think anyone else can see it. You've got a password on it, so that's good, and not even I can see the game page. Good luck in the comp.

Correct. In your itch.io project page, under Visibility & access make sure you have selected Restricted . This will prevent it appearing in itch.io searches and what have you, which would be a public release. You can set it to Public about 24 hours before submissions close. Perhaps set a reminder in your calendar.

I'll send an email reminder to all participants about 24 hours beforehand. If you forget, it doesn't matter. You'll know, because your game won't appear on the Submissions page after submissions close. If there is a mismatch between the number of entries and the number of games that appear, this is usually the reason why. You can then change it to Public and it will appear. So long as it's submitted before the deadline, you're safe.

You must not give out the link that allows you to play or download the game in a public forum, as this is then a public release. You can exchange details with your testers in private.

Itch.io doesn't allow person-to-person communications, so use one of the resources I suggested and ask for playtesters. They can then send you a personal message and you can send them the download details or email it to them. You can upload your game to itch.io, but make it restricted and add a password. You can then give the link and password to your testers in a personal message.

For anyone else reading this, make sure you get your game tested well before the submission window closes at the end of April. Get as many testers as you can and try to get at least one beginner to play the game as part of your testing. Games that have not been tested always rate badly, so do not skip this advice.

If you don't get any offers, I can playtest it. See the section on Testing on the Overview page. I'd suggest requesting testers on the Discord server or in the beta testing category at intfiction.org so that you can provide download details in a private message. Don't give these details out publically.

1. Yes.

2. Yes, but this means you would need multiple images for those rooms or overlays of some sort.

3. Yes. Think of it this way. Can a blind player play the game?

4. The secret to a good text adventure is to anticipate anything that a player might try and allow for it. The example in 'Who Kdnapped Mothe Goose' may have been an oversight.

5. It does. Perhaps 90% or more of the coding will be related to point 4, i.e. actions and responses that don't lead to the ultimate solution of the game. A lot of the player's time will be spent exploring and trying things. The size is up to you. I know that at least three of the games will be quite large, but a short, punchy game can capture the player's interest enough for them to rate it highly. Maybe aim for a playing time of one to two hours.

It's there because we had bad experiences with newbie authors last year where the games they wrote were definitely not suitable for beginners and we were crticised for that. Beginner-friendly games is the whole point of this competition.

We do not discourage newbie authors, but we try to explain what they're getting themselves in for and to get a mentor. In your case, point 'n' click, choose your own adventure (CYOA) and narrative works are not appropriate background experience for this competition, as it's all about parser-based text adventures suitable for beginners to the genre.

Writing a text adventure is hard. Writing a text adventure suitable for beginners is very hard. Writing an in-game tutorial is very, very hard. Even very experienced authors have difficulty with this, which is why very few text adventures have an in-game tutorial. If you think you have the skillset to write such a game, you are more than welcome to enter the competition.

That's "Garry' with a double 'r'.

I don't think you should be using random hints, as the provided hint may not provide help for the player's current situation or it may provide help for a problem that the player has already solved or it may provide spoilers for a situation that the player hasn't even encountered yet. If any of these situations occur, the player will just keep typing HINT until they run out of hints.

I think it is much better to provide context-sensitive hints whereby you run through a series of tests to see if the player has solved a particular problem. If they have solved it, then you move on to the next test. When you get to the first situation that the player hasn't solved, then you provide a hint for that situation. Does that make sense? The hint will generally be location-based, so this reduces the number of tests you need to do in any location, but it may be more general or a combination of the two.

If you want to stick to your random hints, have you considered having a list of hints and just shuffle the order of the hints at the start of the game? Each item in the list has an index number from 0 to MAX - 1. Just create an array of the index numbers and shuffle the array. Then you only need to step through the shuffled array of index numbers and print the hint corresponding to that index number.

Yes. See the list of prizes towards the bottom of the competition's home page. You'll need PayPal to accept any cash prizes.

Note that your game will need to adhere to all the rules. (For anyone else reading this, don't bother spamming with any old rubbish or it will be disqualified.) First-time authors are up against some text adventure veterans, so your game will need to be very, very good to win, but participating is the fun part.

You can also donate prizes! And they don't have to be cash.

Keeping a devlog is fine, providing you don't say anything too specific (or too spoilery) about the game's details. In fact, it may be helpful (or at least interesting) for others tackling a similar project.

If you don't mind a little feedback, I'll throw in a few observations along the way.

When you're doing connections in Adventuron, there are a few ways to do this. Using your example rooms, imagine that you can go north from b_h to n_l and south from n_l to b_h. As this is a two-way connection, the normal way to code this is:

connections {
   from, direction, to = [
      b_h, north, n_l,
   ]
}

Personally, I find this confusing as it's hard to remember which connections are associated with which room. When you code the connections for room n_l, you have to remember that you've already coded it (by default) because of the two-way connection from room b_h. Two-way connections also have the disadvantage that you can't code one-way connections, connections with bends or connections that are loops back to the same room. Because of this, I always use one-way connections and find this a lot less confusing. Hence, the example becomes:

connections {
   from, direction, to = [
      b_h, north_oneway, n_l,
      n_l, south_oneway, b_h,
   ]
}

If the player can warp or teleport from one location to another, you can do something like this.

on_command {
   : match "xyzzy -" {
      : if (is_at "w_h") {
         : goto "y2";
         : redescribe;
      }
      : else {
         : print "Nothing happens.";
      }
   }
}

Don't give up. 

Firstly, make sure you have examined every item in every location, including scenery, as this will sometimes expose a new item, give a subtle clue or just provide more detail.

Secondly, make sure you draw a map. It's amazing the number of times a player misses a location, simply because they've missed or forgotten an exit because they didn't draw a map.

Thirdly, write yourself some notes, things like:

• What objects have I found that I haven't used.
• What obstacles are preventing progress.
• What puzzles are yet to be solved.

By taking a more disciplined approach, you will quite often hit on a solution to whatever it is that has you stumped.

Fourthly, leave if for a day or two and come back to it with a fresh mind.

Finally, if you are still stuck, type HINT (if the game has in-game hints), ask a question in the Comments on the game page or look up the solution on the Classic Adventures Solution Archive (CASA) at https://solutionarchive.com/.

You did it again! I've now got three different versions of release 1 and two different versions of release 2. How is anybody supposed to know which is which when updating databases at CASA, IFDB, IFWiki, IFArchive, MobyGames et al?

Thanks. Glad you liked it. Charlie the Chimp is another small game that's a lot of fun.

You're reading things that aren't there. The term 'obscene content' is not used anywhere, so I don't know why you put it in quotes. Perhaps you meant 'offensive content', where the guidelines say, "The game must not include any offensive content including hateful, racist, misogynistic or homophobic content, or anything that would make people feel bad about themselves."

There is no 'close focus' on adult content. It is only mentioned in rule 12. Repeating the quote above, "Any game with adult content must have a content warning at the start of the game." That is reasonable, as we don't want little children being exposed to such things.

I don't think we've ever had a game with adult content, but if anyone does choose to include adult content, then when creating the game's project page, make sure to select the Metadata tab and select Has sensitive content under Audience & Content. itch.io will then filter that game out for anyone that has chosen not to view adult content, which I think is the default.

So, to summarise:

• Any game with 'offensive content' will be disqualified.
• Any game with 'adult content' must have a content warning.
• Any game without 'adult content' is fine.
• All games must be suitable for beginners to text adventures. If they also appeal to children who are beginners to text adventures, then that's a bonus.

It's still release 1. You need:

Release n;

When you do an update, can you please increment the release number?

The aim is to "Write a text adventure that is suitable for beginners to this genre. The game must include an in-game tutorial."

The games in the first Text Adventure Literacy Jam in 2021 were aimed at children, but that is no longer the case. Rule 12 says, "Any game with adult content must have a content warning at the start of the game." The Content guidelines elaborate on this and suggest that "It is preferred that your game is G-rated (suitable for a general audience) and would appeal to children." This is the only time that children are mentioned.

So, it must be written for beginners to text adventures, but it would be nice if it also appeals to children, as children are often beginners to the genre.

Thanks for the kind words. It is, indeed, a very retro-inspired game. It's a sort of blend of a treasure hunt and an escape game woven around a mystery in the not too distant future.

Thanks. Not a high priority, but I'll take a look at it in due course.

I'm glad you found this. It would have been great to swap notes.

For those that don't know, 'UMD' is University of Michigan-Dearborn. Did you find the projects page? I was looking for it a little while back and couldn't find it, so guess that it's been taken offline. Fortunately, I captured all the games when they were still available. Let me know if I can help you with those. The old UMD games were a lot of fun. Horribly buggy, but still a lot of fun. I admire what the students were able to achieve in just a week or two.

'Cargo Breach' is a complete redesign based on your idea for 'Dead in the Water'. A story was developed, the time period was changed to WWI and the layout of the ship was based on research into steamers used during this period. Room descriptions were rewritten and scenery was added. All the existing puzzles were changed and a number of new puzzles added. I tried to get everything to make sense within the context of the story. Despite all the changes, there are some elements that you may recognise: the captain and his coffee mug, the frozen ice on the steps, the magnet (that was really tricky to implement), the cargo container aft of cargo hold 2 (albeit with different contents) and the ultimate goal.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the game.

Thanks.

No problem. After asking this question, I realised that the context implied that the single character was a clef and I noticed that the other unknown characters actually changed each turn, so I assume they are musical notes (crotchets, quavers etc.).

Thanks.

Firstly, thanks for making the web-playable version.

I've just made my way through to the end, being careful to keep track of the score. I worked out that you receive 10 points for delivering a package and 1 point for each dollar earned. You also lose a point for each dollar spent. I finished with 159 points and Glenda gave me a certificate that said NOT BAD. I suspect there is a last lousy point to get 160 points, otherwise Glenda would have been more generous in her praise. Have I missed something? (I went for the fancy haircut, rather than the buzz cut. That would have saved another 5 points, but I didn't think the buzz cut would be fancy enough for Sir Godfrey.)

I browsed through the Easter eggs file when I was finished, but don't think I would have guessed any of those strange commands. Perhaps there are points to be earned amongst those.