The Interactive Fiction Archive

"The northern 'wall' of the room is a shimmering curtain of light. In the center of the room is a large stone cube, about 10 feet on a side. Engraved on the side of the cube is some lettering."
-- Zork 2

Walk through here to enter the IF Archive.

Note: This not really the IF Archive home page. This is a sample page for the IF Archive CSS Competition. For the real IF Archive, go here.

IF Archive Mirrors

If your path to this server is slow and cranky, consider using a mirror. Here are the many sources by which you can access the IF Archive:

New to IF?

Unsure how to get started in the world of text adventures? Try these web sites:

A Beginner's Guide to Playing Interactive Fiction: a step-by-step guide to downloading and playing the games. (By Fredrik Ramsberg)
Brass Lantern Beginner Resources: a collection of articles for IF newcomers. (By Stephen Granade)
Baf's Guide to the IF Archive: an indexed, searchable database of the games in the Archive, plus contributed reviews. (Maintained by Carl Muckenhoupt)
The Interactive Fiction Database: another database of IF games. (Maintained by Mike Roberts)

To Submit Files

Files may be submitted through a web form, or by FTP to the directory ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/incoming/. See the IF Archive README for more information.

Bibliography

The IF Archive is maintained by David Kinder and Stephen Granade, with technical assistance from Goob and Zarf. Please contact <submissions .at. ifarchive .dot. org> if you have questions about the organization or contents of the Archive.

The contents of the IF Archive -- including thousands of text adventures, text adventure development tools, articles, essays, hint files, walkthroughs, jokes, and sly references to Greek politics -- are contributed by the interactive fiction community, past and present. Thanks!

(That means that the files archived here are owned by their contributors, not by the IF Archive or its maintainers. Please respect this.)

This Archive runs under Unix and Apache 1.3. The server machine is a state-of-the-art ball-bearing transaxle hamster wheel.

(Please do not abuse the hamsters. They are volunteer hamsters, and can only run so fast before the wheel starts to squeak. Therefore, we ask that you do not scrape or crawl this HTTP server. If you want a complete copy of the Archive, please contact us by email -- we can work something out, particularly if you are willing to make your copy available by becoming an Archive mirror.)

The index-generation program was written by Zarf, based on scripts by Stephen van Egmond. Please contact <tech .at. ifarchive .dot. org> if you have problems with the index files on this site. (Or server or other technical issues.)

The MIME types list for this web server is also maintained by Zarf.

Server hosting thanks to the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science.