I’d have hoped my list would have changed over two polls over eight years, but it hasn’t changed that much. So in some cases, neither have my capsule reviews!

In alphabetical order:

Adventureland (1978)

The first Scott Adams adventure is an elementally-named treasure hunt through a forest and some caverns, with a bit of magic thrown in and a lot of random things that can go wrong. As a kid, it was one of the first adventure games I was able to make progress in on my own, though my dad considered it uninteresting compared to the graphic splendour of stuff like Wizard and the Princess. Adventureland has aged far better than Wizard… It’s clear and fun, and really dense with the way the puzzles overlap.

Some find so few words in a game intolerable. If you acknowledge that Adams’s games convey an attitude (which they definitely do) I think you also have to acknowledge that their words have an aesthetic which is conveying it. I am more interested in what that aesthetic does than the fact that it’s incapable of many things. His games may be the rawest demonstration of ‘words + your imagination + puzzles = a particular type of engagement’, and IF folk are always on about the power of words, and sometimes about the other things.

Anchorhead (1998)

I’ve finally admitted Anchorhead to my top games. This appreciation was hard won/acquired in the process of readying myself to participate as an author in Cragne Manor. I’ve decided to acknowledge all that’s good about Anchorhead in spite of the fact I’m of the school that think it’s simply too difficult by design.

Andromeda Awakening (2011)

This sci-fi game is the reason we have all the Andromeda games.

Aotearoa (2010)

One of the first games I played when I returned to text adventures in 2010. It made me think, ‘Wow, this is how these games could be treating players, and these are some of the new things they can do.’ That’s on top of it being a really good game in its own right, and I don’t really separate the two. It’s an earnest G-rated adventure, well-written and action-packed in spite of relatively hefty wordiness. The delivery has the kind of grace and flow that tends to make a game of any genre stand out.

Coloratura (2013)

This sci-fi/horror game is both conspicuously gamey and a visceral exploration of different characters’ emotions. Someone said (somewhere? In a previous voting thread? In a review?) that they haven’t come back to it. And I haven’t come back to it either since I originally played it, but for me, that’s not criteria suited to every game. There are lots of great books I haven’t read more than once, nor felt the need to until a lot of time had passed. I’m trusting my memory on this one.

Cragne Manor (2018)

A new entry to my list. So, I helped write it, but only about 1/80th of it. This semi-blindly-mass-written supernatural horror-exploration puzzler surpassed all expectations and turned out to be almost a new model of parser game, potentially hyper-detailed within every room but also limited in difficulty scope within each room. The macroscopic difficulty (inter-room puzzles) is made manageable by an incredibly useful hint device that nevertheless doesn’t feel spoilery. And to think that all it took for Cragne Manor to come about was that Anchorhead had to be written, then twenty years had to pass, then scores of people had to produce material within a multi-document framework supplied by the two organisers who then had to work for months coralling and overseeing the material before the testing began!

Harmonic Time-Bind Ritual Symphony (2016)

This is my most rad new pick amongst my top games.

The blurb is, ‘A musician’s manic episode binds fiction and reality into a joyful union’ and the game genre says ‘psychedelic’. I’ll just paste the last paragraph of my review of the game, below:

“Harmonic is a big, fun game that is generous about ways in which you might experience it. It offers a main story track, lots of optional content, lots of helps to access both of the above, interesting meta content and scores of ideas about existence, both wacky and thoughtful. Also, I didn’t know anyone could make a game I’d really like that also had this much recreational drug-taking and Grateful Deadism in it, two things I would normally have to endure through gritted teeth. Philosophically, I understand that one of the (many) reasons I respond so positively to Harmonic is because the game is organised and disciplined art, even though it’s about a lot of things and people that aren’t necessarily organised or disciplined. I do feel the primary author shared or simulated (or both) a difficult-to-share personal experience successfully, too.”

Kerkerkruip (2011)

The best tactical dungeoncrawl in parser form. High replayability due to its randomness. Also pretty difficult. I often end up saying its name ‘KruhKruhKruh’, like I’m coughing.

Strange Odyssey (1979)

My other favourite Scott Adams adventure. Relatively speaking, Adventureland comes across as friendly, whereas Strange Odyssey is hostile and alien in feel. Again, this is ultimately a treasure hunt, but the treasures are on different worlds, reachable through a portal in an abandoned spacecraft. Each world is very dangerous. You might step through a portal into an incompatible gravity field and be crushed immediately. I like the sense of unpredictable danger and mystery in this game. The minimal prose works well because the worlds are more threatening without explanation. There’s also a unique effect involving subliminal flashes of other locations appearing (this also happens in The Count, and it seems likely it happens in other Adams games as well) but this effect is absent from the Inform ports. So what would I say about those ports? Don’t play 'em! Use an emulator of some 8-bit machine.

Suspended (1983)

The first Infocom game I ever played. I didn’t achieve much (I was maybe 10?) but I kept playing the early part again and again because I loved the chilling atmosphere. I got creeped out when the robots dispassionately reported on the arrival of the humans who had come to turn me off. Also there’s the whole business with the robots themselves, named after their propensities (kinda like the Smurfs). I liked moving their counters around on the real board, studying the board and thinking about what might be in different locations. I’ve still got my original copy of this with the big frozen face prop.

Transylvania (1982)

I wouldn’t feel right not having a single Apple II graphics & parser game in my list. Those were the first adventures I played: Mystery House, Wizard & The Princess, etc. And of course those were the first adventure games to ever have graphics. But those early Sierra games haven’t aged well, and though the Apple II was the home of this style for other companies, too, I find those games mostly too ‘all over the place’ to easily recommend to a wider audience today.

I previously listed Lucifer’s Realm to represent this type of game, but now I think a better all-around choice is Transylvania. The fact that Transylvania appeared on numerous platforms, graphics included, is probably also a commercial testament to its relative accessibility.

Wishbringer (1985)

Wishbringer’s the Infocom game I actually like the most. It’s also the first Infocom game I completed, but that doesn’t hold a nostalgia point for me, rather it speaks to the fact that most Infocom games are too hard for me. It is Wishbringer’s modern day fantasy story, subject matter, menacing atmosphere and the idea of a world transformed into a nightmare version of itself that I am drawn to.

You Will Select A Decision (2013)

Perfectly written and one of the funniest things I’ve ever read or played.