Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the form of interactive narratives or interactive narrations. These works can also be understood as a form of video game, either in the form of an adventure game or role-playing game. In common usage, the term refers to text adventures, a type of adventure game where the entire interface can be "text-only", however, graphic text adventures still fall under the text adventure category if the main way to interact with the game is by typing text. Some users of the term distinguish between interactive fiction, known as "Puzzle-free", that focuses on narrative, and "text adventures" that focus on puzzles.
The Interactive Fiction Competition is one of several annual competitions for works of interactive fiction. It has been held since 1995. It is intended for fairly short games, as judges are only allowed to spend two hours playing a game before deciding how many points to award it. The competition has been described as the "Super Bowl" of interactive fiction.
Inform is a programming language and design system for interactive fiction originally created in 1993 by Graham Nelson. Inform can generate programs designed for the Z-code or Glulx virtual machines. Versions 1 through 5 were released between 1993 and 1996. Around 1996, Nelson rewrote Inform from first principles to create version 6. Over the following decade, version 6 became reasonably stable and a popular language for writing interactive fiction. In 2006, Nelson released Inform 7, a completely new language based on principles of natural language and a new set of tools based around a book-publishing metaphor.
Adam Cadre is an American writer active in a number of forms—novels, screenplays, webcomics, essays—but best known for his work in interactive fiction.
Photopia is a piece of literature by Adam Cadre rendered in the form of interactive fiction, and written in Inform. It has received both praise and criticism for its heavy focus on fiction rather than on interactivity. It won first place in the 1998 Interactive Fiction Competition. Photopia has few puzzles and a linear structure, allowing the player no way to alter the eventual conclusion but maintaining the illusion of non-linearity.
The XYZZY Awards are the annual awards given to works of interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards for film. The awards were inaugurated in 1997 by Eileen Mullin, the editor of XYZZYnews. Any game released during the year prior to the award ceremony is eligible for nomination to receive an award. The decision process takes place in two stages: members of the interactive fiction community nominate works within specific categories and sufficiently supported nominations become finalists within those categories. Community members then vote among the finalists, and the game receiving a plurality of votes is given the award in an online ceremony.
FanFiction.Net is an automated fan fiction archive site. It was first launched in 1998 by software designer Xing Li, and currently has over 12 million registered users.
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is the world's largest documentary film festival held annually since 1988 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Emily Short is an interactive fiction (IF) writer and creative director of Failbetter Games, the studio behind Fallen London and its spinoffs.
Jon Ingold is a British author of interactive fiction and co-founder of inkle, where he co-directed and co-wrote 80 Days, and wrote Heaven's Vault and Overboard!. His interactive fiction has frequently been nominated for XYZZY Awards and has won on multiple occasions, including Best Game, Best Story and Best Setting awards for All Roads in 2001. Ingold's works are notable for their attention to the levels of knowledge that the player and player character have of the in-game situation, with the effect often depending on a player who understands more than the character or vice versa. Ingold has also written a number of plays, short stories and novels.
Westdale Secondary School is a public high school founded in 1931 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It is a school in the city of Hamilton and is located in Westdale Village, a suburb in the west-end of the city. It is administered by the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board. Westdale is also the most populated public high school in Hamilton, Ontario.
Art competitions formed part of the modern Olympic Games during its early years, from 1912 to 1948. The competitions were part of the original intention of the Olympic Movement's founder, Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin. Medals were awarded for works of art inspired by sport, divided into five categories: architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture.
Spring Fling can refer to:
Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! is a casual video game by American independent developer Mousechief. After a series of beta releases and demos in 2007 and 2008, the finished title was released in mid-2008, with versions for both Windows and Mac OS X.
Lost Pig is a comedic work of interactive fiction about an orc retrieving an escaped pig. It was created by Admiral Jota and released as freeware. It took first place in the 2007 Interactive Fiction Competition with an average score of 8.27. Lost Pig won best game, best writing, best individual non-player character, and best individual player character in the 2007 XYZZY Awards. Lost Pig finished with 18.7% of the votes for the Audience Award in the interactive fiction category in the 2008 Jay Is Games Best of Casual Gameplay awards, placing it second after Violet.
Violet is a work of interactive fiction by American author Jeremy Freese. It is a one-room puzzle game.
Alice Kuipers is a British-born author living in Saskatchewan, Canada who is best known for her young adult novels. Life on the Refrigerator Door won the Grand Prix de Viarmes, the Livrentête Prize, the Redbridge Teenage Book Award in 2008 and the Saskatchewan First Book Award in 2007, was narrated as an audio book by Amanda Seyfried and Dana Delany, and has been adapted for theater in England, France and Japan. 40 Things I Want To Tell You won a Saskatchewan Book Award for Young Adult Literature in 2013. The Worst Thing She Ever Did won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Juvenile/YA Crime Book in 2011.
Archive of Our Own is a nonprofit open source repository for fanfiction and other fanworks contributed by users. The site was created in 2008 by the Organization for Transformative Works and went into open beta in 2009. As of 6 November 2023, Archive of Our Own hosts 12,010,000 works in over 61,470 fandoms. The site has received positive reception for its curation, organization, and design, mostly done by readers and writers of fanfiction.
The Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB) is a database of metadata and reviews of interactive fiction.
The Wizard Sniffer is a 2017 interactive fiction fantasy comedy game by Buster Hudson.