Update: the series is now a beautiful full-length book, crowdfunding on Kickstarter summer 2022!

About the Series

“50 Years of Text Games” is a project that traces a path through the history of digital games without graphics, by picking one game from each year between 1971 to 2021 and taking an in-depth look at how it works and why it’s important. Each week throughout 2021, I covered a new year and game, working forward chronologically from The Oregon Trail in 1971 through the latest innovations in interactive fiction. Read a more detailed introduction to the series.

The series posts are still available, and will be collected into a book in 2022. Become a free subscriber to get notifications about the book and future projects connected to this series!

About the Author

Aaron A. Reed is an award-winning author of interactive fiction and digital games including Blue Lacuna, The Ice-Bound Concordance, and Hollywood Visionary. He is the author of the nonfiction books Creating Interactive Fiction With Inform 7 and the co-author of Adventure Games: Playing the Outsider.

Feel free to get in touch with me on Twitter @aaronareed, or aareed at gmail.

Subscribe to 50 Years of Text Games

A deep dive into text game history, from The Oregon Trail to A.I. Dungeon, now in book form! Click "Let me read it first" below and the top story to find out how to get your own copy.

People

Aaron A. Reed 

Building worlds with words: books, games, interactive fiction. Find me on Mastodon at @aaronareed@mastodon.gamedev.place.