Text adventures, now know colloquilly as "Interactive Fiction" still has a small but rabid fan base. The amount and quality of games still coming out is amazing. One of the reasons for this, is the relative low requuirement of learning one of the IF programming packages. These free tools allow almost anyone the ability to program their own game.

• Inform 7   ★  Grame Nelson  ★  Create interactive fiction using natural language syntax. This is how easy it is to create a couple of "rooms" in Inform: "Vault is a room. It is located south of Bank Lobby." In that small senteance you created 2 locations, complete with directions to and from. Best of all this package is free. And on the road map is making it open source.
• TADS 3   ★  Michael J Roberts  ★  A more traditional programming environment for creating IF. Like Inform, TADS has a huge community making support and help redially available.
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