1. Adventure by William Crowther and Donald Woods (1976) Average member rating: (95 ratings)
MathBrush says:
Written by one of the most prominent DARPA net scientists, this game established the two-word parser and the basic LOOK, GET, and DROP mechanism of adventure games. Its puzzle design involving active NPCs and multiple uses of objects was better than many later games.
2. Deadline by Marc Blank (1982) Average member rating: (56 ratings)
MathBrush says:
The first Infocom detective game really ingrained its conversation system into interactive fiction, where conversation is conducted by asking about keywords.
3. Infidel by Michael Berlyn (1983) Average member rating: (59 ratings)
MathBrush says:
This game subverted the expectations for the ending of an interactive fiction game in a way that was controversial at the time.
An early game that was almost puzzle less, relied almost entirely on exploration, and which had a strong political message.
5. Curses by Graham Nelson (1993) Average member rating: (129 ratings)
MathBrush says:
Curses! was designed to showcase the Inform programming language, and as such set off a horde of imitators. It had a notable system of books that provided information, and a rucksack that could be used to bypass inventory limits.
An early minimalist game. It created a lot of discussion when it came out. While there had been earlier minimalist games like DeMause's Undo, this one stuck in public consciousness and had many imitators.
Essentially hypertext fiction years before it became popular. Typing in keywords from a paragraph changes the paragraph to focus on that word.
8. I-0 by Anonymous (1997) Average member rating: (156 ratings)
MathBrush says:
Another Cadre game, this story had multiple disjoint branches, so that two players could have wildly different playthroughs. Also implemented genitalia in a non-AIF game, which spawned numerous unfortunate imitators.
9. Anchorhead by Michael Gentry (1998) Average member rating: (399 ratings)
MathBrush says:
This game has excellent long form story designs slowly spooling out information without big dumps. Also had an innovative use of times splitting up gameplay over several days.
10. Photopia by Adam Cadre (1998) Average member rating: (563 ratings)
MathBrush says:
Although story-focused games existed earlier, Photopia is credited with changing the focus of interactive fiction from puzzle-based games to story-based games, and also had an unusual use of non-linear storytelling.
11. Aisle by Sam Barlow (1999) Average member rating: (325 ratings)
MathBrush says:
This game was the most popular and one of the first one-move games. It's also notable in that all of the moves tell essentially the same story, but with subtle or disturbing variations (so that the different stories contradict each other at times).
12. Varicella by Adam Cadre (1999) Average member rating: (128 ratings)
MathBrush says:
A game with tons of timed-action NPCs that can be dealt with one by one. Set a new standard for NPC interaction, and had many imitators.
13. Galatea by Emily Short (2000) Average member rating: (343 ratings)
MathBrush says:
Galatea was the most intricate conversation game up to its time, and rarely do games reach its level of NPC interaction even now. A single room game with strongly branching narrative.
14. Rameses by Stephen Bond (2000) Average member rating: (123 ratings)
MathBrush says:
This game was shocking at the time for its almost complete lack of player agency. A self-loathing college student tries to motivate himself to break free but can't overcome his inhibitions.
15. Shade by Andrew Plotkin (2000) Average member rating: (416 ratings)
MathBrush says:
2000 really was a big year for experimentation. Shade was not extremely well-received at its time of publication, but now is extremely well-regarded. It had unusually easy puzzles and an influential way of organizing things spatially (i.e. every area of the game is the same room, just with a different focus).
16. Shrapnel by Adam Cadre (2000) Average member rating: (169 ratings)
MathBrush says:
Experimented with mature themes, non-linear storytelling and constraints on player actions.
17. Best of Three by Emily Short (2001) Average member rating: (60 ratings)
MathBrush says:
A new conversation system combining menus and ask/tell.
18. City of Secrets by Emily Short (2003) Average member rating: (104 ratings)
MathBrush says:
A game that combined large-scale groups of NPCs with intricate conversation systems. Before, most games had deep conversations with one person or shallow conversations with many. This game had both.
19. Slouching Towards Bedlam by Star Foster and Daniel Ravipinto (2003) Average member rating: (214 ratings)
MathBrush says:
As Emily Short described in her blog, this game was innovative in having real moral choices that required large scale plans to execute, and where almost all reasonable courses of action were implemented.
20. Bronze by Emily Short (2006) Average member rating: (290 ratings)
MathBrush says:
While other games had had tutorial modes (such as Dreamhold), Bronze had a system of tutorials and help for beginners that set a new standard for introductory IF.
21. De Baron by Victor Gijsbers (2006) Average member rating: (165 ratings)
MathBrush says:
A plot-heavy, conversation-heavy game dealing with dark and sensitive issues. Innovative for its use of moral choice and for the way it treats the protagonist. People complained in following years that everyone in IFComp was trying to copy it.
22. Suveh Nux by David Fisher (2007) Average member rating: (228 ratings)
MathBrush says:
Suveh Nux reinvigorated the old chestnut of one-room games, and also showed how IF could be used to teach unfamiliar languages effectively.
23. An Act of Murder by Christopher Huang (2007) Average member rating: (80 ratings)
MathBrush says:
While not entirely successful, this game had a murder mystery with randomized villain and murder weapon, making it an early example of procedurally generated IF.
24. Blue Lacuna by Aaron A. Reed (2008) Average member rating: (109 ratings)
MathBrush says:
The author was attempting to make the single largest interactive fiction game of all time, and has most likely succeeded. But this game is perhaps notable for Progue, one of the by far most detailed and well-implemented NPCs in any game ever.
25. Alabaster by John Cater, Rob Dubbin, Eric Eve, Elizabeth Heller, Jayzee, Kazuki Mishima, Sarah Morayati, Mark Musante, Emily Short, Adam Thornton, Ziv Wities (2009) Average member rating: (122 ratings)
MathBrush says:
This game combined Short's continued experiments on conversations systems with a strongly branching narrative made possible by open authorship, with many people contributing to the story.
26. Choice of the Dragon by Dan Fabulich and Adam Strong-Morse (2010) Average member rating: (36 ratings)
MathBrush says:
This is the game that kicked off Choicescript. Very small by current standards, it remains popular to this day and exemplifies the philosophy of Choice of Games with no 'wrong' choices, delayed branching, and a focus on stats.
27. howling dogs by Porpentine (2012) Average member rating: (122 ratings)
MathBrush says:
Porpentine's first mega hit basically kicked off the Twine revolution in the IF world (although Anna Anthropy had been active for some time earlier). This game essentially set the tone for future Twine games in the way Adventure and Zork established parser conventions.
28. Counterfeit Monkey by Emily Short (2012) Average member rating: (247 ratings)
MathBrush says:
This game built upon previous conversation systems, again allowing in depth conversations with many NPCs and a new extension called Threaded Conversations.
A twine game with a very effective use graphics and styling, and one of the few mainstream breakout hits of interactive fiction.
30. 80 DAYS by inkle, Meg Jayanth (2014) Average member rating: (92 ratings)
MathBrush says:
80 DAYS features an impressive 3d interface but remains a text game at heart. With over 750,000 words, it was Time Magazine's Game of the Year. For authors, it was a proof-of-concept that a commercial game could be built up of independent, individual strands that could be experienced in non-linear order.
31. Lime Ergot by Caleb Wilson (as Rust Blight) (2014) Average member rating: (84 ratings)
MathBrush says:
It's hard to know whether to list this game or Arthur DiBianca's Excelsior, but these games started off the kick of limited parser games which continued for the next 5 years or so. This game in particular uses only one verb. Other games had done this before, but the big trend started around here.
32. Draculaland by Robin Johnson (2016) Average member rating: (27 ratings)
MathBrush says:
Robin Johnson has made several games with his parser-hybrid interface, but this is the first I know of. Parser/choice hybrids haven't taken off since then, but games that blur the boundaries have (like the Twine game Lux or the parser game Out).
33. Harmonia by Liza Daly (2017) Average member rating: (75 ratings)
MathBrush says:
Harmonia set a new standard for multimedia in choice games. Not built with time, it uses Daly's own system. It features gorgeous text and clean UI with highlighting and side notes. It comes after heavily modded but still recognizable games like Cactus Blue Motel, but before the almost unrecognizable-as-twine games Bogeyman and Heretic's Hope.
