Inform 7 If you care about the genre, and are willing to spend the time learning the language, Inform 7 is an excellent tool for creating and publishing full-fledged text-adventure games.

Inform 7

  • Pros

    Extremely powerful tool for creating elaborate interactive fiction games. Lots of helpful documentation. Flexible interface. Impressive community.

  • Cons

    Complex syntax to learn. Only built for creating games in the niche text-adventure genre. Convoluted export process.

  • Bottom Line


Not every video game needs graphics. From Adventure to Zork to Leather Goddesses of Phobos, a whole genre of classic games enthralled players with nothing but the written word. And since the only things an interactive fiction game needs to succeed are some words and some logic to string them together, the tools for making them tend to be relatively simple compared to other tools for learning how to code. Although Inform 7 does allow you to make interactive fiction games, however, it's anything but simple. Some may not want to spend the time learning its complex syntax to make games in a relatively niche genre, but if you care about text adventures Inform 7 is an extremely powerful, free tool for creating elaborate works of interactive fiction on PC, Mac, and Linux.

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First Page
A text adventure is a game where everything from environments to objects to player actions are controlled and conveyed through words. For example, in my test game I whipped up after downloading the free Inform 7 client, players are told they are on the moon and a hamburger is there. If you type "eat hamburger" the game says "You chomp on the two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun and exclaim Dinnah!"

However, getting that result took some time, and the first step was wrapping my head around the flexible, but dense, beige interface. At the top of the screen are buttons for playing and publishing the game, but the real work happens in the two windows below it that can independently display one of nine tabs. The key tabs you use are the Source tab, where you enter the language that defines the rules of the game, and the Results tab, where you test how the game plays and receive specific instructions on how to fix what's broken. Other tabs show other views on your game, such as transcripts and maps of story skeins. There's a tab for managing export settings and another for adding extensions enabling advanced features. And when you get confused, which will happen, help is always a tab away.

Inform 7
Deep Reading
Once you're familiar with the tools, it's time to start making a game. A text adventure, like any other game, is comprised of content and rules to govern that content. The only difference is that here both of those things are made of words. In Inform 7 you program your game using language that sounds pretty natural but leaves little room for error when it comes to syntax. To go back to my test example, here are the exact words I entered to achieve my desired result:

"Guess Who's Coming to Dinnah" by Jordan Minor

The Moon is a room.

A hamburger is here. It is edible.

A Mac Tonight is here.

After eating the hamburger:

That took me quite a few attempts to get working, and it's barely a game at all! Inform 7 lets you create games with characters, interlocking environments, objects with different attributes and variables, different ways to interact with these objects, metrics to track, various win states, and everything else you would want from serious, professional game design tools. Crowdsourced extensions add even more features, such as multimedia support and other kinds of visual effects. And if you can write as well as a celebrated novelist, even better.

After playing a few recommended games, particularly the work of Emily Short, I'm impressed by the depth of what the Inform 7 community has been able to accomplish with the program. But to make the most of those tools you must spend the time and mental effort expected from serious game developers. The Documentation tab has incredibly helpful educational resources. But the fact that those resources are as long as books should tell you something.

Even making your games playable can be a bit of an ordeal. Inform 7 exports Blorb package files for Z-code or Glulx, virtual machines designed specifically for interactive fiction story formats. To showcase your game, you must build a whole website to house it. Fortunately, Inform 7 gives you several publishing templates to choose from, and the larger community offers even more.

I'm not advocating that the powerful Inform 7 dumb itself down. I just think the effort combined with the obscurity of the genre limits the audience. Indie darling Twine also lets you make text adventures, but it's a simple and immediate tool that exports games as easily readable HTML documents. That advantage, only really possible with games made of nothing but words, is one Inform 7 willingly forfeits. On the other end, Editors' Choice coding education service Youth Digital has kid-friendly game-creation tools that are about as complex and time-consuming compared as those offered by Inform 7. However, the various styles of games you can create with Youth Digital, from sidescrollers to 3D platformers to Minecraft mods, are far more popular than the semi-dormant text adventure genre.

Stranger Than Interactive Fiction
Just because these days text adventures rely on niche appeal doesn't mean they are bad. Far from it. The old-fashioned vibe of Inform 7 creations is charming, in a way. The trial-and-error of figuring out the language, while occasionally frustrating, can also lead to satisfyingly thorough creative exploration. It may not hold your hand, but if you care about the genre Inform 7 is your best option for creating and publishing full-fledged text-adventure games.

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