E-Books →50 Years of Text Games From Oregon Trail to AI Dungeon

Adventure. Trade Wars. Fallen London. Galatea and Photopia. Pixelberry's Choices. Lifeline. ELIZA. 80 Days. And everything in between...
For fifty years, writers have been creating interactive stories on digital platforms. From text adventures to VR poetry, MUDS to mobile dating sims, chatbots to roguelikes, these games without graphics have often pioneered new techniques for interactive storytelling, engaged imaginations with beautiful prose and clever gameplay, and discovered the many ways written stories can be played. Often forgotten, frequently overlooked, they're still worth remembering today.
Now you can help preserve the stories of these games and the people who make them in a beautiful, collectible book chronicling the first half-century of video games made from words.
What's Inside?
In the book you'll find fifty in-depth chapters, covering fifty games: one released in each year from 1971-when a Minnesota teacher wheeled a teletype into his class to debut a game called The Oregon Trail-to 2020 and the latest in A.I. storytellers. Revised and enhanced from the acclaimed blog series, each featured game gets a rich, deep-dive analysis into how it works, what it's about, why it's special, and its lasting legacy.
The fifty games you'll discover include famous classics, overlooked gems, and forgotten genres: everything from epic MUDs to generative text engines, and games running on hardware from teletypes to smart watches. It's the story of interactive fiction, made accessible to outsiders and insiders alike.
A readable layout with original maps and flowcharts help illustrate the workings of each game, amid copious excerpts, interviews with authors, and even snippets of source code. Whether you're reading about an old favorite or discovering a little-known gem, you're guaranteed to learn something new.