Zork for the Kindle: Text Adventure Games on an E-Reader

Filed under Found on the Web

You are in a maze of twisty e-readers, all alike:

This is possibly the coolest use I’ve heard of for an e-reader device.

As I said previously I have two strong feelings about e-readers: first, that the devices are inherently neat and desirable; and second, that the licensing restrictions on e-books make them a terribly stupid thing to buy.

This is something else: it’s a Kindle-formatted web interface to several of the old Infocom text adventures (as I write, Zork 1-3). Kindle users can connect to the web site and type their way through the craziness. Of course I used to rely so heavily on my scribbled maps when I played these that the player might also want to pack a notebook along.

It’s truly interactive because it’s communicating with an interpreter on the Internet. It would also be possible to convert a multiple-choice adventure game for the Kindle by starting with one long HTML file with internal anchor links, and converting from there: that end product, though, would be an actual e-book. This is something else, and it’s a great idea!

Via Ars Technica.