How to Create a Text Adventure Game

Where this advice comes from

I wrote, coded and tested PARANOID in the Quest engine — every room, object, synonym and failure message. The order below is the order I wish I had worked in, and most of it exists because I got it wrong the first time. If you have never played a parser game, read how to play text adventure games first: you cannot design for commands you have never typed.

Eight steps to a finished game

1. 1. Decide parser or choice-based

   Parser games let players type LOOK, EXAMINE DESK, OPEN DRAWER. Choice-based games offer links. Parser suits investigation and physical spaces; choice-based suits emotional, dialogue-heavy stories. Pick before you write a line — the two demand different prose.

2. 2. Choose an engine

   Quest is the friendliest full parser engine and exports to the browser. Inform 7 is more powerful and more demanding. Twine is the standard for choice-based stories and needs no code. TADS 3 sits at the deep end. Beginners: Quest or Twine.

3. 3. Map the world on paper first

   Draw rooms as boxes and exits as arrows before you touch the editor. Six to twelve rooms is plenty for a first game. A map you can see stops the two classic beginner failures: dead ends with nothing in them and puzzles that need an object the player can no longer reach.

4. 4. Write room descriptions that reward EXAMINE

   Every noun you mention becomes a promise. If the description says 'a stained calendar', the player will type EXAMINE CALENDAR — so implement it, even if the reply is one line. Two or three sentences per room, then depth in the objects.

5. 5. Build one puzzle chain, not many

   A working first game usually has one spine: find a thing, use it to reach a place, learn something that unlocks the ending. Fair puzzles are ones the player can solve from information already on screen. If a solution needs a leap, plant the clue two rooms earlier.

6. 6. Implement synonyms and failure messages

   Half of the craft is anticipating phrasing. Add synonyms for every object (knife/blade, note/paper/letter) and replace default refusals with written ones. 'You can't do that' breaks immersion; 'Your hand stops before the handle' keeps it.

7. 7. Test with someone who is not you

   Watch a real player type. You will discover verbs you never considered and descriptions that read differently to a stranger. Log every failed command they type and implement or redirect it. This step improves a game more than another week of writing.

8. 8. Publish where people can actually play

   Export to a web build so it runs in a browser tab — no download, no install. itch.io hosts free and paid games; the IFDB lists it for the interactive fiction audience; your own page gives you control over price and presentation. Do all three.

Which engine should you pick?

All four are free. The right answer is whichever one gets a finished short game out of you — an unpublished masterpiece in a powerful engine teaches you nothing.

Three mistakes that kill first games

• Scope. A mansion with forty rooms will never be finished. Write the house, not the city.
• Guess-the-verb. If only one exact phrasing works, the puzzle is broken, not clever. Accept every reasonable synonym.
• Unwinnable states. Never let a player destroy or lose something the ending needs — or say so clearly when they do.

See the finished version of this advice

The fastest way to learn the shape of a modern browser text adventure is to play one start to finish. PARANOID is a dark suburban mystery that runs in your browser with no download and no account: you wake in a house you don't remember entering, and the night gets worse from there. Roughly 30–120 minutes.

Frequently asked questions