updated April 2007 by J. Czapski
Note: for a colorful introduction to the art, visit the authors and teachers' pages
first.
Ifaq - highlights of FAQs from the newsgroups rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction
The Interactive Fiction Wiki - includes a FAQ and a catalog of interesting discussion threads
The Interactive Fiction Archive - all the game files and interpreters
Baf's Guide to the IF Archive - the master catalog
Brass Lantern - adventure gaming news and views, including commercial graphical games
IF-Review - a medium-sized collection of reviews
SPAG - 13 years and 47 issues of the all-text magazine of IF articles and reviews
playing instructions from the game Return to Ditch Day by Michael J. Roberts, 2004, used with permission
Welcome! If you've never played Interactive Fiction before, these instructions are designed to help you get started. If you already know how to play this kind of game, you can probably skip the full instructions, but you might want to type ABOUT at the command prompt for a summary of the special features of this story.
To make the instructions easier to navigate, they're broken up into chapters. At the end of each chapter, just press ENTER to proceed to the next chapter, or P to return to the chapter list.
You've probably already noticed that you interact with the story by typing a command whenever you see the “prompt,” which usually looks like this:
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Knowing this much, you're probably thinking one of two things: “Great, I can type absolutely anything I want, in plain English, and the story will do my bidding,” or “Great, now I have to figure out yet another heinously complex command language for a computer program; I think I'll go play Minefield.” Well, neither extreme is quite true.
In actual play, you'll only need a fairly small set of commands, and the commands are mostly in ordinary English, so there's not very much you'll have to learn or remember. Even though that command prompt can look intimidating, don't let it scare you off — there are just a few simple things you have to know.
First, you'll almost never have to refer to anything that isn't directly mentioned in the story; this is a story, after all, not a guessing game where you have to think of everything that goes together with some random object. For example, if you're wearing a jacket, you might assume that the jacket has pockets, or buttons, or a zipper — but if the story never mentions those things, you shouldn't have to worry about them.
Second, you won't have to think of every conceivable action you could perform. The point of the game isn't to make you guess at verbs. Instead, you'll only have to use a relatively small number of simple, ordinary actions. To give you an idea of what we mean, here are some of the commands you can use:
That's it — every verb and every command phrasing you need to complete the story is shown above. If you ever get stuck and feel like the story is expecting you to think of something completely out of the blue, remember this: whatever it is you have to do, you can do it with one or more of the commands shown above. Don't ever worry that you have to start trying lots of random commands to hit upon the magic phrasing, because everything you need is shown plainly above.
A few of these commands deserve some more explanation. LOOK AROUND (which you abbreviate to LOOK, or even just L) shows the description of the current location. You can use this if you want to refresh your memory of your character's surroundings. INVENTORY (or just I) shows a list of everything your character is carrying. WAIT (or Z) just lets a little time pass in the story.
You'll probably use a few commands quite a lot, so to save typing, you can abbreviate some of the most frequently-used commands:
When you're entering commands, you can use capital or small letters in any mixture. You can use words such as THE and A when they're appropriate, but you can omit them if you prefer. You can abbreviate any word to its first six letters, but if you choose not to abbreviate, the story will pay attention to everything you actually type; this means, for example, that you can abbreviate SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS to SUPERC or SUPERCAL, but not to SUPERCSDF.
At any given time in the story, your character is in a “location.” The story describes the location when your character first enters, and again any time you type LOOK. Each location usually has a short name that's displayed just before its full description; the name is useful when drawing a map, and the short name can help jog your memory as you're finding your way around.
Each location is a separate room, or a large outdoor area, or the like. (Sometimes a single physical room is so large that it comprises several locations in the game, but that's fairly rare.) For the most part, going to a location is as specific as you have to get about travel; once your character is in a location, the character can usually see and reach everything within the location, so you don't have to worry about where exactly your character is standing within the room. Once in a while, you might find that something is out of reach, perhaps because it's on a high shelf or on the other side of a moat; in these cases, it's sometimes useful to be more specific about your character's location, such as by standing on something (STAND ON TABLE, for example).
Traveling from one location to another is usually done using a direction command: GO NORTH, GO NORTHEAST, GO UP, and so on. (You can abbreviate the cardinal and vertical directions to one letter each — N, S, E, W, U, D — and the diagonal directions to two: NE, NW, SE, SW.) The story should always tell you the directions that you can go when it describes a location, so you should never have to try all the unmentioned directions to see if they go anywhere.
In most cases, backtracking (by reversing the direction you took from one location to another) will take you back to where you started, although some passages might have turns.
Most of the time, when the story describes a door or passageway, you won't need to open the door to go through the passage, as the story will do this for you. Only when the story specifically states that a door is blocking your way will you usually have to deal with the door explicitly.
You might find objects in the story that your character can carry or otherwise manipulate. If you want to carry something, type TAKE and the object's name: TAKE BOOK. If you want to drop something your character is carrying, DROP it.
You usually won't have to be very specific about exactly how your character is supposed to carry or hold something, so you shouldn't have to worry about which hand is holding which item or anything like that. It might sometimes be useful to put one object inside or on top of another, though; for example, PUT BOOK IN SHOPPING BAG or PUT VASE ON TABLE. If your character's hands get full, it might help to put some items being carried into a container, much as in real life you can carry more stuff if it's in a bag or a box.
You can often get a lot of extra information (and sometimes vital clues) by examining objects, which you can do with the LOOK AT command (or, equivalently, EXAMINE, which you can abbreviate to simply X, as in X PAINTING). Most experienced players get in the habit of examining everything in a new location right away.
Your character may encounter other people or creatures in the story. You can sometimes interact with these characters.
You can talk to other characters by asking or telling them about things in the story. For example, you might ASK WIZARD ABOUT WAND or TELL GUARD ABOUT ALARM. You should always use the ASK ABOUT or TELL ABOUT phrasing; the story won't be able to understand other formats, so you don't have to worry about thinking up complicated questions like "ask guard how to open the window." In most cases, you'll get the best results by asking about specific objects or other characters you've encountered in the story, rather than about abstract topics such as MEANING OF LIFE; however, if something in the story leads you to believe you should ask about some particular abstract topic, it can't hurt to try.
If you're asking or telling the same person about several topics in succession, you can save some typing by abbreviating ASK ABOUT to A, and TELL ABOUT to T. For example, once you're talking to the wizard, you can abbreviate ASK WIZARD ABOUT AMULET to simply A AMULET. This addresses the question to the same character as in the last ASK or TELL.
To greet another character, type TALK TO (Person). This tries to get the other character's attention and start a conversation. TALK TO is always optional, since you can start in with ASK or TELL directly if you prefer.
The story might occasionally suggest some special conversation commands, like this:
If you like, you can use one of the suggestions just by typing in the special phrasing shown. You can usually abbreviate these to the first few words when they're long.
Special suggestions like this only work right at the moment they're offered, so you don't have to worry about memorizing them, or trying them at other random times in the story. They're not new commands for you to learn; they're just extra options you have at specific times, and the story will always let you know when they're available. When the story offers suggestions like this, they don't limit what you can do; you can still type any ordinary command instead of one of the suggestions.
If you're not sure what to discuss, you can type TOPICS any time you're talking to someone. This will show you a list of things that your character might be interested in discussing with the other person. The TOPICS command usually won't list everything that you can discuss, so feel free to explore other topics even if they're not listed.
You can also interact with other characters using physical objects. For example, you might be able to give something to another character, as in GIVE MONEY TO CLERK, or show an object to someone, as in SHOW IDOL TO PROFESSOR. You might also be able to fight other characters, as in ATTACK TROLL WITH SWORD or THROW AXE AT DWARF.
In some cases, you can tell a character to do something for you. You do this by typing the character's name, then a comma, then the command you want the character to perform, using the same wording you'd use for a command to your own character. For example:
Keep in mind, though, that there's no guarantee that other characters will always obey your orders. Most characters have minds of their own and won't automatically do whatever you ask.
Time passes in the story only in response to commands you type. This means that nothing happens while the story is waiting for you to type something. Each command takes about the same amount of time in the story. If you specifically want to let some extra time pass within the story, because you think something is about to happen, you can type WAIT (or just Z).
You can save a snapshot of your current position in the story at any time, so that you can later restore the story to the same position. The snapshot will be saved to a file on your computer's disk, and you can save as many different snapshots as you'd like (to the extent you have space on your disk, anyway).
In this story, your character will never be killed, and you'll never find yourself in a situation where it's impossible to complete the story. Whatever happens to your character, you'll always be able to find a way to complete the story. So, unlike in many text games, you don't have to worry about saving positions to protect yourself against getting stuck in impossible situations. Of course, you can still save as often as you'd like, to suspend your session and return to it later, or to save positions that you think you might want to revisit.
To save your position, type SAVE at the command prompt. The story will ask you for the name of a disk file to use to store a snapshot. You'll have to specify a filename suitable for your computer system, and the disk will need enough free space to store the file; you'll be told if there's any problem saving the file. You should use a filename that doesn't already exist on your machine, because the new file will overwrite any existing file with the same name.
You can restore a previously saved position by typing RESTORE at any prompt. The story will ask you for the name of the file to restore. After the computer reads the file, everything in the story will be exactly as it was when you saved that file.
Even if you haven't saved your position recently, you can usually take back your last few commands with the UNDO command. Each time you type UNDO, the story reverses the effect of one command, restoring the story as it was before you typed that command. UNDO is limited to taking back the last few commands, so this isn't a substitute for SAVE/RESTORE, but it's very handy if you find your character unexpectedly in a dangerous situation, or you make a mistake you want to take back.
The story understands a few other special commands that you might find useful.
The story doesn't pretend to know every word in the English language. The story might even occasionally use words in its own descriptions that it doesn't understand in commands. If you type a command with a word the story doesn't know, the story will tell you which word it didn't recognize. If the story doesn't know know a word for something it described, and it doesn't know any synonyms for that thing, you can probably assume that the object is just there as a detail of the setting, and isn't important to the story.
If you type a command that leaves out some important information, the story will try its best to figure out what you mean. Whenever it's reasonably obvious from context what you mean, the story will make an assumption about the missing information and proceed with the command. The story will point out what it's assuming in these cases, to avoid any confusion from a mismatch between the story's assumptions and yours. For example:
If the command is ambiguous enough that the story can't safely make an assumption, you'll be asked for more information. You can answer these questions by typing the missing information.
If the story asks you one of these questions, and you decide that you don't want to proceed with the original command after all, you can just type in a brand new command instead of answering the question.
Once you get comfortable with entering commands, you might be interested to know about some more complex command formats that the story will accept. These advanced commands are all completely optional, because you can always do the same things with the simpler formats we've talked about so far, but experienced players often like the advanced formats because they can save you a little typing.
In most commands, you can operate on multiple objects in a single command. Use the word AND, or a comma, to separate one object from another:
You can use the words ALL and EVERYTHING to refer to everything applicable to your command, and you can use EXCEPT or BUT (right after the word ALL) to exclude specific objects:
ALL refers to everything that makes sense for your command, excluding things inside other objects matching the ALL. For example, if you're carrying a box and a rope, and the box contains a floppy disk, typing DROP ALL will drop the box and the rope, and the floppy will remain in the box.
You can use IT and THEM to refer to the last object or objects that you used in a command:
You can put multiple commands on a single input line by separating the commands with periods or the word THEN, or with a comma or AND. For example:
If the story doesn't understand one of the commands, it will tell you what it couldn't understand, and ignore everything after that on the line.
Now that you know the technical details of entering commands, you might be interested in some strategy pointers. Here are a few techniques that experienced interactive fiction players use when approaching a story.
EXAMINE everything, especially when you enter a new location for the first time. Looking at objects will often reveal details that aren't mentioned in the broader description of the location. If examining an object mentions detailed parts of the object, examine them as well.
Make a map, if the story has more than a few locations. When you encounter a new location for the first time, note all of its exits; this will make it easy to see at a glance if there are any exits you haven't explored yet. If you get stuck, you can scan your map for any unexplored areas, where you might find what you're looking for.
If the story doesn't recognize a word or any of its synonyms, the object you're trying to manipulate probably isn't important to the story. If you try manipulating something, and the story responds with something like “that isn't important,” you can probably just ignore the object; it's most likely just there as scenery, to make the setting more detailed.
If you're trying to accomplish something, and nothing you do seems to work, pay attention to what's going wrong. If everything you try is met with utter dismissal (“nothing happens” or “that's not something you can open”), you might simply be on the wrong track; step back and think about other ways of approaching the problem. If the response is something more specific, it might be a clue. “The guard says ‘you can't open that here!’ and snatches the box from your hands” — this might indicate that you have to get the guard to leave, or that you should take the box somewhere else before you open it, for example.
If you get completely stuck, you might try setting aside the current puzzle and working on a different problem for a while. You might even want to save your position and take a break from the game. The solution to the problem that's been thwarting your progress might come to you in a flash of insight when you least expect it, and those moments of insight can be incredibly rewarding. Some stories are best appreciated when played over a period of days, weeks, or even months; if you're enjoying the story, why rush through it?
Finally, if all else fails, you can try asking for help. A great place to go for hints is the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.int-fiction.