Mainland, the first parser game on Steam   Leave a comment

Mainland had been approved on Steam Greenlight (I think due to longevity — it had been on there a while) and has just appeared on the service.

mainlandsteam

Click here to go to the Steam main page

Note that the “parser” is somewhat hybridized. You type a verb you want to use and the initial letters you type are used to generate suggestions that you can click (essentially like texting).

mainlandscreen

However, to finalize picking a verb you have to click, you can’t just type. The space bar does nothing.

nounlist

After clicking a noun, there’s an option to continue using “with” or to simply enter the command.

Despite the oddities, this is good news for followers of commercial interactive fiction. Steam opens a vast new audience for text adventures. The game is free-to-play and should gather curious people that might normally not buy it.

At the time of this writing there’s a weird bug that makes the game hard to install. If you have the Steam service installed, clicking here should do the trick. (NOTE: The game is Windows-only.)

Posted May 9, 2015 by Jason Dyer in Interactive Fiction, Video Games

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