This page is dedicated to my Interactive Fiction games. Interactive Fiction (or IF for short) is something between a computer game and a book. You take on the role of the main character in a story. The game tells you what happens to the character, and you tell the game how the character should act. This is not always simple, but can make for a very rewarding experience!

How to play: To play these games you will need either the HTML TADS Player's Kit (HyperTADS on the Mac) or the ADRIFT Runner (SCARE if you are using a Mac or Linux). To Hell in a Hamper and Escape from the Crazy Place can also be played online thanks to a nifty little Java applet called Jetty. Also available to play online is the HTML version of Escape from the Crazy Place. Click on the title to read more about each game.

You've been locked in a padded cell for no obvious reason with only a deranged hamburger-eating clown for company. The cell doesn't even have a door. So begins an adventure that will take you to many places including custard-filled caverns, the world's worst Indian restaurant, the planet Venus, and the inside of a cereal packet. You'll meet such strange characters as the peculiar Plugalug, Rampateuay (a prophet who predicts the present) and the sinister Boss. Can YOU escape from the Crazy Place?

Escape from the Crazy Place is a sprawling Choose-Your-Own-Adventure type game, like the Fighting Fantasy series only considerably sillier. Written over 32 years with contributions from more than 30 authors and artists, it is now available in a new TWINE version that includes over 300 new pages!

"Like the twisted literary lovechild of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo and Homsar, Escape From the Crazy Place is quite possibly one of the funniest things I've ever touched!" Ryusui - rec.arts.int.fiction.

"I've been playing your online Escape from the Crazy Place for the last half hour and I have to say it's... well, the best damn thing I've ever seen ever." Sprite - The Adrift Forum.

Play the TWINE version online

Download the 2006 TADS 2 version (illustrated!)

Download the HTML TADS player's kit (needed to play the game offline)

Professor Pettibone, eminent Victorian balloonist, has a problem. He can't get it up. His balloon that is. If he can't reach an altitude of 20,000 feet, and soon, both he and his mysterious travelling companion Hubert Booby will be burned to a cinder by an erupting volcano! But what is Mr. Booby concealing under his overcoat? Do all Ecuadorian peasants have BSc's? And what, in the name of all that's holy, is THE CURSE OF THE BLUE IBIS?

  • Finalist, Best Game, Xyzzy Awards 2003
  • Finalist, Best Writing, Xyzzy Awards 2003
  • Finalist, Best Story, Xyzzy Awards 2003
  • Finalist, Best Setting, Xyzzy Awards 2003
  • Finalist, Best Use of Medium, Xyzzy Awards 2003
  • 1st place, ADRIFT Spring Comp 2003
  • 1st place, ADRIFT End of Year Comp 2003

"Overall, this game fits into a growing category of works that combine light puzzles with strong pacing and good comic writing. I'd also put [2003]'s Best Puzzles winner Gourmet (Aaron Reed, 2003) into that group, along with the first chapters of Fine Tuned (Dennis Jerz, 2001) and several of J. Robinson Wheeler's games. As it happens, I really enjoy such pieces. They don't always get the recognition that other games do, perhaps because they're not perceived as groundbreaking experimental work or as hard-core puzzle-fests. But humor and pacing are a real challenge to get right in IF, and a good IF comedy has a special charm of its own." Emily Short, IF-Review

Download To Hell in a Hamper

Download the HTML TADS player's kit (needed to play the game offline)

Play online

You are Steve Goodwin. You're a regular guy, young, successful, dynamic. Recently promoted to the post of junior marketing executive at the Funhouse Novelty Company, you're the one who comes up with all those zany items you can buy for a Dollar in the pages of Cosmic Comics.

But something is missing in your life. A nagging question gnaws at your soul, undermines your joy at your new-found success and interferes with the very business of living. But this is not a answer you can find in the pages of any book; for what you yearn to know is the very meaning of life itself!

But then you learned about a man, a guru of great wisdom, endowed with the miraculous supreme realisation who could teach him the secrets of the universe. A six hundred year old hermit living at the top of a mountain in a kingdom most right-thinking people assume to be a myth. A man known as the Dada Lama!

And this is why we find you now, after many months of journeying, of fruitless searching, beaten and battered by the uncaring elements, in this mysterious valley hidden deep within the mountains...

...the mystical valley of Shangri-La!

Download Yak Shaving for Kicks and Giggles!

Download the FROTZ interpreter (needed to play the game offline)

Play online

Cover art by Eric Forgeot

Staggering back from yet another wild student party, blonde bombshell Goldilocks decides to take a shortcut through the enchanted forest. All she really wants is a nice hot bowl of porridge and somewhere to sleep off her hangover - but something tells her that quaint little cottage isn't as innocent as it seems...

Goldilocks is a FOX! is a zany romp through the world of fairytales. Along the way you'll meet a host of familiar characters, albeit not quite how you remember them! This is a new version of the game converted to Inform by Mark J. Tilford. The conversion required a significant amount of hand-coding to complete, giving us the opportunity to make a lot of improvements to the game.

"The storyline is fun and quirky and the writing crisp, simple and to the point. The game is full of original, well thought out puzzles that challenge and give you a real sense of achievement when you solve them, and nearly every action you could think of has been covered, from looking at the cows face to getting a little too friendly with the big bad wolf (if you know what I mean). I found the game a joy to play and is most definitely one of the best I've played. A quality game." T. Mulkerrins - Delron.

  • Finalist, Best Individual PC, Xyzzy Awards 2002
  • 1st place, ADRIFT End of Year Comp 2002
  • 2nd place, ADRIFT Spring Comp 2002

Download Goldilocks is a FOX!

Download the FROTZ interpreter (needed to play the game offline)

Play online