Babel

In a world that never quite got over the '80s, Delarion Yar dispenses quarters for the local arcade... badly. A software pirate from better days, he's crossed the wrong people one too many times. Locked into the city of New Haz with a criminal record, he's reached his lowest point and he'll do anything to get out. A splatterpunk mystery in an alternate future.

It was meant to be a routine visit on behalf of the imperial government, just to remind the settlers that the Empire hadn't forgotten them, and if you stick rigidly to the letter of your orders and refuse to use either your eyes or your initiative that's all it'll be. But with an interstellar war brewing in the background, you'd be wise not to take anything for granted. A piece of Interactive Fiction written by Eric Eve.

You play as a xenohistorian on an expedition. You've been dropped (more literally than you planned) by a dropship over the ground of the Ancients. Your equipment was scattered and the dropship crashed. Now it's just you, your wits, and the Ancients to help you find a way home.

This intricate all-text reworking draws on the Gothic, as well as Clue, to simulate seven characters working to outwit the killer in their midst.

Lieutenant Huchess came to, an hour or so ago. That was around the time Runoma, blazing orange-hot so near this, its second planet, fell below the distant, jagged crag line. Ensign Covegn died not long after -- Sandra Marie Covegn, both legs crushed under the weight of the pod's torn hatch. Night came quickly, bringing with it cool and howling winds that whistle through desert rocks and carry other, more dangerous sounds.

This is where I end and you begin. That, at least, is what I want to think. I don’t know you. Perhaps one day I will. But this Implementation-rather, its copies-are my seeds blowing to the wind. The palm-parsers, their oak gears whirring, will be pressed into hands long after I finish this. Hands like yours. A metatextual work of interactive fiction by Anya Johanna DeNiro.

A country house mystery with a randomized culprit.

They all stare at you expectantly, like children waiting to be told a bedtime story. Who can blame them? You are, after all, Antoine Saint Germain, the great French detective. No criminal has ever been a match for you, and everybody is looking forward to a description of your brilliant deductions. There is just one small problem. One tiny detail that makes it different this time. A mere trifle, really. This time you have no idea who did it.

The Baron's daughter is missing, and you are the man to find her. No problem. With your inexhaustible arsenal of hard-boiled similes, there is nothing you can't handle.

Manhattan, May, 1954. The last few years, you've settled into a routine. You work at the bank, you go home, you occasionally have dinner with your mother. It is all acceptably ordinary. One day a strange creature crosses your path, and disrupts the schedule entirely. A work of interactive fiction by Emily Short.