My name is Jason Dyer. I live in Arizona. I have played interactive fiction since I can first remember.
I keep up the All the Adventures project where I endeavor to play and write about every adventure game ever made.
I work as a game designer, mostly on educational software. You can find me at Bluesky here or you can contact me via my gmail address (jason.b.dyer).
A tale of love and greed.
Commended in ShuffleComp 2014.
The preamble hints at something adventurous — a heist gone wrong? a boyfriend shot dead? a hastily purchased shovel? — but ultimately it’s the way the game mixes this with the ordinary and domestic that I found particularly compelling.
— Rock Paper Shotgun
>kite
Hovering, unobtrusive
watching over
the grey-sanded beach
…it works best when the player takes seriously the author’s note:
Keep in mind that what you type is much a part of the poem as the verse.
— Review by Emily Short
Renga in Blue 
Greetings – I found your blog while looking up some information on the Adventure mainframe version. Way back in the 80’s I had a friend whose dad worked at an Insurance company that had a version of Adventure running on their mainframe. His dad mentioned that there was a room that contained a hobbit that if you defeated (perhaps by answering a riddle) you managed to get Sting from his mantel. After searching the internet, I cannot find confirmation of this – do you know of any version that had such a room? There was a map drawn out similar to the Zork/Adventure maps that had the room and treasure noted – supposedly after that room you needed to defeat the dragon with Sting. Any info would be appreciated. Thank you. Martin
Love your full list of adventure games. One that seems to be missing is KimVenture. You can download the instructions here: http://retro.hansotten.nl/uploads/kimventure/KIM-Venture%20Game%20Instructions.pdf And you can play it here: https://maksimkorzh.github.io/KIM-1/mobile-kim-venture.html
Yeah, Kim Venture is on my list of 1979 I need to loop back to. I had technical issues my first time through. (I remember writing an emulator author who straight up said “sorry, it doesn’t support playing the game”.)
I’m not sure how that mobile one you linked actually loads the game? I do have one that supposedly runs it now.
And 2 more games to consider: Jakarta Jim and Humbug.
https://grahamcluley.com/misc/
they’re a bit in the future for the project! I’ve played Humbug before back in the 90s, I remember it being solid
Awesome project Jason. I started on a similar journey a couple years ago (https://www.alexbevi.com/blog/2021/07/28/adventure-games-1980-1999/), but with a much more limited scope :)
I look forward to catching up on the massive backlog of content you’ve generated.
It looks like you also hit the Kabul Spy issue with the WOZ file.
To what extent are you using walkthroughs and the like?
I typically find a walkthrough first, scan through it then start playing. My goal is to have a general idea as to what I’m trying to do with each game before I start playing, then if I get stuck try to work through it myself before referring back to the walkthrough.
I’ve used longplay videos to get through certain puzzles if after 10-15 minutes I’m not making progress (my time to play is pretty limited these days).
Also that Kabul Spy WOZ issue took me like 5x longer to solve than beating the game did :P
I went to USU(1980 – 1984) and during my studies, me and my other played adventure(adv) on a Vax/vms 11780 system many many times. Sometimes to avoid classes. Where can I download the 350 adv games with data and doc files. Also it was mentioned it converted from fortran to “C”. I believe this is the 430 pt adventure games – May I also download the 430 game “C” source, data file, and doc files please. I do miss playing that game. Is there a fee? Please RSVP.
adventure 430
https://github.com/AaronTraas/open-adventure/
for 350 there should be a file here that works
https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=fft6pu91j85y4acv
like maybe this one?
https://unbox.ifarchive.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fsource%2Fadv350r4_f77.tar.gz
Jason, my name is Roy Niederhoffer. I came across your gameplay of my program City Adventure which I wrote when I was 15. Sorry to confound you with the careless programming… I guess my quality control needed some improvement. In case you were wondering, Suzy was (of course) a real girl that I had a crush on, who was in my sailing class in Great Neck. I think we’re Facebook friends to this day. Love what you’re doing.
Can you tell a little more about the creation of the game? The city grid is pretty unusual. Also, was it just you or did everyone contribute?
Did the company make anything else after?