Text Games during the Flash era: A non interactive article

The technology of the future with the genre from the past

This is the non-interactive version of the interactive article Text Games during the Flash era. To play the interactive version click here.

Text adventure was always a thriving genre. Arguably it was even the first genre of videogame.Theypredate the Internet, and yet managed to stay relevant on this new support, in an era dominated by game with real time graphics. You can find games made only out of HTML pages and Hyperlink, or with powerful and easy to use engines such as Inform or Twine. The serie of articles 50 Years of Text Games by Aaron A. Reed show the rich diversity of the genre that is not solely defined by its constraints, but by it’s powerful possibilites as a interactive media.

And, there was Flash. Probably the most popular and the most widespread engine for web games. Flash, and its programming language ActionScript, allowed for fluid, complex animations and a lot of interactivity. But here is the thing: As an engine, Flash was always meant for graphical interface, with a wide variety of tools for drawings and animations. Text games would simply not make sense on this platform. Plus, it was the early 2000s and in the mind of a lot of young players and developpers, text adventures were products of the past, only born from hardware limitation, that didn’t belong on the modern Internet. This was never true of course, but it was a legitimate sentiment at the time

And yet, some creators still managed to make text based games in Flash. Whether they were small narrative experiences, puzzle games or simply parodies, theses games brought the genre of text Adventure to a new territory, opening it to a whole new generation of young players, proving once and for all the strenght of the genre.

Thy Dungeonman! (Videlectrix, 2004)

Homestar Runner is a webserie created in 2000 that everyone on the Internet had at least heard about once, whether it is the main show, the numerous spin offs, or even their appearance in Poker Night at the Inventory. The show, still running after more than twenty years, is the perfect encapsulation of 2000s random humor, you know the one. It was even said to be the most viewed Flash website in 2003. And like every Flash website of that era, it was (and still is!) all about the interactivity. So, everytime a game appeared in the universe of Homestar Runner, always made by the fictional studio Videlectrix, you could be sure a playable version would be available.

This is how Thy Dungeonman! came to be, a text adventure game that takes about 5 minutes to beat. The puzzles are obscure, most interactions are random, and you can die by doing things such as taking a rope. It still plays like a text adventure game, with limited interaction, but with most tropes we associate with it. With the very drab presentation of big green pixelated letters, and a ASCII art as a title screen, it reflected the 2003 vision we had of Text adventure games of the 80s, complete with a fake screen aliasing.

The makers of Homestar Runner, The Brother Chaps, were kids during the 80s and there’s no doubt they might have come across a text adventure game on old timey monochrome computers like this, but it is safe to assume most of their audience in the 2000s didn’t. It was a parody of an outdated genre, but not a mean spirited one. It embraced a style of presentation that was not quite like this, but felt like this from a modern perspective, in service of a silly game about failing at simple talks, and going to DENNIS.

Llama Adventure (jmtb02, 2009)

John Cooney, aka jmtb02 is the CEO of Armor Games studio. But if you were on Newgrounds, Armor Games or Kongregate between 2004 and 2014, you probably played one of his (literally) hundreds of games. Award winning game creators of the Flash era, many of his games became classics, using a minimalist approach to design in order to make unique games full of humor that are still talked about today. It is hard to sum up his game making style in a few words, but most of his games were centered around a simple mechanic with a twist.

Released in 2009 Llama Adventure is a text based adventure game that didn’t try to emulate or parody the look of old text games, but tried to look inward, to find a new angle in which to tackle the genre. The premise is very simple: There are ten levels, each level is a room you have to get out of. To do so, you have to solve puzzles, take items and type codes, all using text commands like an old school text game. Oh, and also you’re a llama.

We can see the obvious influence of escape games of the time, like how it was divided into distinct small puzzles represented by rooms, with an increasing complexity. The challenge arises from the limitation of the text genre, where not every piece of a puzzle is given to you unless you specifically ask for them. In this way, the game is very accessible but with a hands off approach. The most interesting thing about this game is its presentation, taking advantage of the capacity of Flash: The game looks like a chatroom, or a messaging application with message boxes delimiting what you type and what the game answer. And with animations and sounds effect giving a dynamic feel to the text adventure genre, we can see how this game attempted to show a new way to make text games, to modernize the genre with modern tools.

Dead Frontier: Outbreak (JaggedBlade Software, 2009)

Dead Frontier is a series of Flash games about zombies that started in 2007. They are mostly gory arcade shooters with simple stories and an emphasis on moment-to-moment gameplay, the kind of game that was popular on Flash websites such as Newgrounds. So imagine the surprise upon seeing in 2009 the fourth entry in the series being a text adventure game, and becoming the most popular of all of them.

Dead Frontier: Outbreak is an interactive story, where instead of a text parser you choose an action from a list at several points in the story. You are a regular guy on the first day of a zombie outbreak. Your goal, simply put, is to stay alive. There are many branching paths depending on your actions, but a lot of them will simply lead to your death. There are a few different images but most of the experience takes place in the text, enhanced by an oppressive music, and most important, a narrator voice reading the text. It is simple yet very effective at setting the tone, a violent story of life and death in a world that is slowly coming to an end.

At the end of your playthrough, you are given a note on ‘tactic’ and ‘compassion’. It is a very interesting game mechanic, very reminiscent of old school adventure games where you were awarded points when you solved a puzzle in an interesting, or plot-coherent way. Here, the approach is simple but very unique at the time, showing the weight of your actions during the course of your adventure.

Today the Dead Frontier series is still running with a Free-To-Play MMO released in 2019. But we can’t forget this unique game that took the zombie genre in an unexpected direction, giving us a quiet and visceral experience with only text.

Don't Shit your Pants (Cellar Door Games, 2009)

By the makers of Rogue Legacy, I present to you: Don’t Shit Your Pants, one of the less tasteful games I ever talked about. You are about to shit, and all you have to do is… Well, do not shit your pants. That’s it, that’s the game, type instructions to do everything you can to not shit your pants.

Text games with a text parser are inherently silly. It is not a critique: Every game genre is silly in its own way. For text games, it is the very literal interpretation of the text you input that is silly. This complaint of obtuse controls that vary from one game to another existed since the dawn of the genre. This game uses this trope to its advantage, by literally interpreting what you are typing. The challenge comes from the limitation of the text parser, making you think of what you can and can’t do, and what would inadvertently make you shit your pants. There are nine endings by the way.

Don’t Shit Your Pants might be one of the most well known games on this list. It is easy to understand why, it was a viral hit when it was released in 2009, and after the release of Rogue Legacy it became a curiosity in their back catalog. But the viral success is deserved, not only because of the eye-catching title. It is not the most high brow game, but it is a funny game and very clever, forcing you to think out of the box to get every ending, with a lot of twists, despite the very simple gameplay. It is no longer than a half hour, but it is very addictive, making you keep experimenting to see in what way you can not shit your pants.

You Find Yourself In A Room (2DArray, 2010)

In 2011, The Stanley Parable was released, an Half-Life mod telling the story of a man named Stanley, told by an omniscient narrator that desperately tried to lead the story in the way he intended. The game was praised for its original take on the conflict between a narrator and a character in an interactive medium. But a year before, a free game called YouFindYourselfInARoom did exactly that.

In 2007, Eli Piilonen aka. 2DArray, made a text adventure editor entirely in Flash. It was very impressive to cram a visual editor in Flash, even with very simple commands, bringing the genre to a new medium and new era just like the Inform engine did years ago. Keep in mind, Twine wouldn’t get released until 2009.

In 2010, after a few other experiments in Text adventure games, 2DArray made You Find Yourself In A Room, a Flash game that would become one of the most iconic text adventures in Flash. The story is very simple: there are none. Just like an old-school Flash escape game, you are just in a room, and you have to get out. If you manage to do so, you are again in another room. Slowly, the voice describing your action takes a more active part, mocking your failures, hiding you deliberately. It is, like the description says, the game that hates you.

With a strange claustrophobic atmosphere enhanced by the oppressive music of David Carney, it is a short experience that can get very intense at times. I won’t get into much detail, it’s better that you experience it by yourself, but read carefully the content warning, like I said: It is just text, but it is very intense.

A small talk (ScriptWelder, 2013)

Most text games are read like a story, with a narrator describing the scene, and you giving directions from time to time. But sometimes, text games use the medium in a more organic way, incorporating the text like some kind of in-universe discussion, like the 2015 iOS cult game Lifeline. The game becomes a discussion between a virtual character and you. This is no easy task: No computer can simulate everything you can say to a person and give a proper, coherent answer. But many games used various tricks to tell this kind of story.

A small talk (full name ‘A small talk at the back of beyond’) is a short narrative game about a discussion between you and someone you don’t know, but seems to talk like an artificial intelligence. They are not threatening, they just want to talk. You don’t know where you are, you lose your memory, and you start to feel like they are hiding something. But they seem so friendly…

Like any narrative game, I can’t say much about it. It is best to experience it by yourself. It is not a fully textual game, you can look around the room you’re stuck in, but the main interaction is typing to talk to the other person. It is a simple interaction with not many pre-made answers, but the game tricks you to make you feel like you have an actual conversation, by leading questions or telling you clues of things to ask. It is short but quite surprising, with several endings.

The game was made by Mateusz Sokalszczuk, aka Scriptwelder, a game maker known for his point n’ click games in pixelart, and most notably the Don’t Escape series. His games often set a creepy atmosphere, sometimes going into full horror. This game definitely has an uneasy atmosphere, but its story aims more toward melancholy. There is no jumpscare or horror imagery, it is just, like the title said, a small talk.