Nick Montfort, Professor für Digitale Medien am MIT, empfiehlt in seinem Weblog regelmäßig englischsprachige IF-Titel für Einsteiger, die noch nie oder erst wenige Textadventures gespielt haben. Für Herbst 2009 stehen Titel auf der Liste, die zwischen …

At least, it did for me. I haven’t suggested it to large numbers of people, so I don’t know how it would work as an introduction for others..

Alex, I think one possibility might be to simply not expect students to play though an entire game and win. Many people are horrified when they hear that I show IF novices Varicella, a huge, complex, and very difficult game. But after having more than 50 people play the game in small groups, I’ve seen the understanding of and interest in IF that it’s awakened again and again. There’s witty writing, and the responses to almost every input (including the “you can’t do that” ones) are funny. The game has a strange setting that isn’t what it seems to be at first, showing you the importance of close reading. If you get three groups of four people each playing the game, they’ll each do different things and can compare notes afterwards, learning that many different directions and options are available. Players can have Primo killed in a variety of ways rather quickly — amusing players, showing them that you do need to restart and try again, and giving everyone insight into what a violent world this is. And you can see there there are objects, characters, and systems of different sorts, and that, even if don’t know how to solve or how to start solving the game, it’s going to involve a lot of discussion, searching, scheming, and so on. Even if you don’t play for 20 hours and solve the game, you can see why you might want to.

(Without my requiring it, or grading students on any further play, some of my students, new to interactive fiction, have gone off after class and managed to defeat one of the rivals in Varicella. No mean first for someone playing their first interactive fiction!)

Shade is a game that, if you play through it, is tremendously rewarding, but it doesn’t really have any of these properties. It’s not clear to me that it even really has puzzles, as opposed to tasks. If you have two groups playing Shade, one is just going to get farther along than in the other; they’re not going to meet different characters and learn different things. Instead, Shade does something else that’s radical, striking, and, in a different way, very interesting to experience and discuss.

I also teach fellow commentator Victor Gijsber’s The Baron, which really highlights the powerful emotional impact of the best interactive fiction.

I just had my students read “Aisle”, “Dead Reckoning” and “Shade”, and got the usual complaints that they have no idea what to do, that IF in general is inaccessible, etc. (And of course some complained that there were no graphics, but I tend to ignore that one…) Any suggestions for more accessible works that a student being “forced” to go through an IF work might find easy to get into? Victor mentioned Blue Lacuna – any suggestions for something a bit shorter? :)

Jimmy Maher’s recent The King of Shreds and Patches is also good, long and accessible.

Oh, and now that I’m at it, I’ll recommend two Spanish games: El archipiélago, by Depresiv, and La cara oculta de la luna, by someone whose name I can’t remember. (He was such a nice guy, so I’m doubly sorry for my forgetfulness.)

My three proposed additions are Worlds Apart, Hunter in Darkness and (especially designed for beginners) The Dreamhold.