Classic text adventures, also known as interactive fiction, can be particularly brutal, with hundreds of available actions and dozens of ways to die in a single playthrough. However, once you know the optimal route, their surprise factor drops to zero. Now imagine an interactive adventure backed by artificial intelligence where you can do or say anything, facing fabulous and unexpected situations that often border on the absurd. That’s what the project AI Dungeon offers.
The Origins of Interactive Fiction
If you decide to explore the roots of interactive fiction on your own, you’ll discover that all arrows point to Zork. Technically, it’s not the first adventure of its kind, but it became one of the fundamental pillars of the genre. Despite advances in graphics and sound, text adventures never completely disappeared. In fact, some hide in everyday tools, but if you want a more “modern” variant, so to speak, you need to include two words: artificial intelligence.
AI Dungeon: Interactive Fiction Powered by Artificial Intelligence
That’s how you get to AI Dungeon, a game where everything is possible. Think of an action, and the artificial intelligence will try to generate a story from it. As expected, some results lack coherence or continuity, but you’ll most likely end up surprised. The main commands are three: “Do” to perform a specific action, “Say” when you want to say something, and “Story” if you want the story to take a different direction.
Before you start, the game will ask you to choose an environment from seven available (although it recommends “Fantasy”), followed by a character type and your name. After a brief introduction, the rest is up to you. Some adventures have specific missions to complete, but in general, every step is pure uncertainty. For example, in one of my sessions I had to hunt a mythical creature, and I ended up fighting a horrible creature with punches, stabs, bites, and a couple of kicks to the groin. Naturally, the creature tore me to pieces.
In short, AI Dungeon definitely deserves your time even though it only works in English. You can play in the browser and create an account to save your progress, or download the mobile app, compatible with iOS and Android. You’ll also find a subscription that gives you access to special features, including a more advanced artificial intelligence model and narrations of your adventure. Give it a try!
Official site and downloads: Click here
