Portal

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.

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.

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.

Welcome to Dryzandia, convict 76954. Oh, you're a human? We don't get many of your kind around here, and when we do they don't last for long. Escape? To where? There's nothing out there but barren wasteland and a saurian civilisation that'll eat you alive. But... every so often one of you alien inmates gets selected for some government programme or something. I don't know what they do there, but it can't be worse than this place... Can it?

Someplace on Venus a secret weapon is being built that threatens Earth with total destruction. You and your comrade must penetrate the Xavian base and save the world -- before it's too late!

Final Exam takes place in the near future after an AI revolution has led to the establishment of a new sort of government. You are seeking a job within this government: your performance in the “final exam” determines the outcome. You wake up on the day of your exam to find that your world has unexpectedly changed. You leave your room to seek answers, and find the Administration Centre deserted... A game written by Jack Whitham for the 21st Annual Interactive Fiction Competition.

It is night on this side of the planet. Settled areas are lit: a jagged crescent in the tropics, lining the inland sea. The bright splatter along the top of the curve is Tanhua, as bright from space as New York. The north continent is darker, sprinkled finely with small lights, where the failing climate makes it hard to survive a winter. And the northernmost point, almost lost on the slope of Mt. Cordia, is the original Aleheart Colony, where the first settlers from Earth landed. It is your destination as well. A piece of interactive fiction written by Emily Short.

Marrow is delicious but that's not why you're here. You're supposed to pick up a single jar of alien bone jelly, which of course can't exist and doesn't exist, so you've convinced yourself that transporting it is no crime. Getting worked up about such nonsense would be like fretting about mermaids getting caught in tuna nets, and you've got other fur-bearing fish to fry. A piece of interactive fiction written by Robb Sherwin.

A short piece of Interactive Fiction written by Jon Ingold.