Throughout the year of 2021, Aaron Reed embarked on an epic project: going through 50 years of text game history, picking one game for each year, and writing about one each week. Given the intercross of my readership, perhaps you’ve already read it.
I received a review copy of the “Collector’s Edition” printed book version — as funded through Kickstarter — which comes with a bonus booklet (“Further Explorations”) of both individual games and some “genre” explorations, like “one room games”.
The choice of text games is very wide, and while it includes quite a fair number of “traditional text adventures”, there’s early simulation (ROCKET, Super Star Trek) more academic experimental narrative (Patchwork Girl, Screen) and for some reason, Dwarf Fortress, which sneaks in by virtue of the original being ASCII characters.
ASCII admittedly makes for a stunning page.
The writeups are universally entertaining and deftly mix historical and theoretical study. Example:
Designer Steve Meretzky recalled that one of his goals with Planetfall was “to try to concentrate on a single NPC. By devoting the writing time — and more importantly, the precious disk space — to a single character, that NPC could be much deeper and more interesting.”4 Meretzky only had around 100K of space to work with, but he stuffed as much Floyd as he could fit alongside the game’s parser, rooms, and puzzles. The cheerful robot can be given orders to do things you can’t, useful to solve at least one puzzle. He can hold things for you, and reluctantly give them back when asked: “Okay,” he says, “but only because you’re Floyd’s best friend.”
See how this passage integrates an actual quote by the author of the game (the footnote goes to an essay by Meretzky) with the development constraints (noting the 100K) with the actual gameplay effects that the character has.
The book’s design is stark and attractive, with interspersed maps (isometric and elsewise) and careful layouts that separate game text from the main text.
This is about as good a book as is possible given the premise.
The only weakness, really — and this is acknowledged by the author — is that the premise of one-game-a-year-or-bust does end up being limiting on some explorations. Tradewars 2002 is included, but I can’t help but think of all the games before and after that had to be left out to make a stronger analysis. (LambdaMOO in 1990 and Achaea from 1997 also represent online gameplay but are still very different beasts.) The main book hits a massive 623 pages, though; this is a matter of there needing to be thirty books rather than just one, so the one will do for now as something humanly writable and readable.
To be fair, the wild jumps between genres can make for interesting connections; the early text experiment Uncle Roger is nestled between A Mind Forever Voyaging and Plundered Hearts.
Speaking of A Mind Forever Voyaging, here’s an internal map which reflects one of the other issues:
Namely, there are some staggeringly attractive two-page maps, but due to being a book format with a crease in the middle, are hard to fully take in; see how some of the center names are hard to read. The picture from the top of this review (taken from the author’s Kickstarter) looks fantastic when spread out, but in my copy I genuinely have trouble following some of the connections from the left to the right side.
The book is also (understandably) in black and white, and that means some of the color pictures from the original articles had to be taken out. Silverwolf (apparently the most popular article of the whole project) sadly loses its captions like “This Priscilla Langridge may or may not be the same as other Priscilla Langridges.” On the other hand, a fair number of images have been added, and the printings of the black-and-white reproductions are stellar.
This still is a marvelous volume which makes me hope to live for Aaron Reed’s inevitable next volume scheduled to arrive in 2071, 50 More Years of Text Games.
As of this writing you can pre-order the book here.
Disclaimer: I have no personal connection to Aaron Reed. He mentions this blog in the book several times.
Renga in Blue 
Excellent review. I can’t wait for my copy to arrive. Thanks, Fos1
Also awaiting my copy, seems great! I think the issue with the two-page spread images might become less prominent over time, at least with the hardcover, as long as there wasn’t an error taking the binding space into account.
going through the old text adventure games of my youth with my son, i found a book i had tucked away and didnt know if you had seen it called “parsley” http://www.memento-mori.com/books/parsely-book its a text adventure game/rpg where instead of a DM you have a Parcer.
I’ve heard of Action Castle, I didn’t know there were more of those. fun!