Hi Sarah.
i must admit this is exactly why i no longer play many text adventures,
sinse I just got frustrated with about five out of six I played ending as
you describe, even when i tried those such as glowgrass that were billed as
beginner games.
I did however find some good ones.
Dreamhold by Andrew plotkin. This is a rather surreal magic fantasy game
where you play as a wizard who's lost his memory. It actually serves as a
general introduction to conventions and styles of if, but I found it
extremely playable on it's own and unlike other if introductions I've seen,
it was actually really nicely written with an absorbing story and world.
Probably the only puzzle dungeon crawl style thing I've ever actually
finished.
Worlds apart:
The single best if game I've ever played, beautiful writing, and puzzles
that all depend entirely upon examining your surroundings and understand a
very alien world and the identity of your character. I've seen it cryticized
because reviewers couldn't cope with the alien concepts such as being able
to mentally enter and explore certain alien objects or communicate with
different types of animals and preferd standard if puzzles, but I personally
found it far easier than the normal if sinse it required much more an
understanding of a very different world, your character and her relation to
it than just some random leaps of logic. Note though that this is a tads
game, so you'll need a tads interpreter like wintads or html tads to play it
rather than the standard zcode one.
Pytho's mask by emily short.
A really nice, short (no pun intended), game with again a very unique world
and protagonist. In particular I really admire the way all the puzzles come
from the menue based conversation system, rather than manipulating objects,
which means this a very character and story driven game, but all the better
for that.
Lash by paul obrian.
A mix of scifi and historical, with a very unique idea, you controlling a
robot by textual interface in a post appocalypse America that then has links
back to pre civil war days of slavery. Puzzles weren't too bad, especially
considdering that to progress you pretty much only have to explore and do a
couple of actions, and while there were a couple of object puzzles, (some I
didn't guess), these didn't really serve much purpose, and most of the
crucial stuff in the game is purely story driven or given to you in
environmental clues. Note though that the title lash is not idle, and this
game has some pretty nasty moments, albeit probably historically accurate
ones.
Earth and sky 1-3 by paul obrian, (note that the 2nd and 3rd are glulx,
requiring the winglulx interpreter to run).
In complete contrast to lash, these are really fun, pure super hero
adventures where you play as Emily and austin, who's parents have made them
super powered earth and sky suits then disappeared. There is only really one
puzzle I found hard in the second game, and there is a walkthru if you need
one, otherwise everything was doable.
Babel, (a tads game).
This is a scifi game set in an abandoned research base. it had very much the
feeling of a film like alien or the thing, sinse you are wandering around
trying to discover a desaster. The writing was great and atmospheric, and
most of the actions you need to take were obvious from the clues you got in
the environment such as journal entries about the base, however there was
one puzzle I needed the walkthru for involving making a potion. The plot,
while predictable was also rather fun as well.
I've played several others, but these are probably my favourites, and
certainly these are some of the few if titles I've actually managed to
complete without extensive use of a hints file.
I must confess though, generally I just don't bother with if anymore, sinse
the "oh look, I should've opened the door by using the dog whistle to call
down the bird, pulling off it's beak and using it to pick the lock" type of
puzzles, not to mention getting line after line of "I don't know how to put"
type of response when i try a perfectly simple thing like put cup on table
just got far too much on my whick.
These days, i much prefer text games such as the Eamon system that employ a
limited parza, thus limiting your choice of responses and thus making it far
easier to work out how to progress the game.
Also, I haven't mentioned here any of the few rpgs written in if formats
such as kerkerkruip or wumpus 2000.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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