9 ms·

Improbable Island, one of the largest and longest-running online text adventures

231 points by alentred 3y ago

NooneAtAll3 3y ago
My main complaint - choice buttons extend faaar too far to the right I'm clicking the website to be sure it's in focus, but keep choosing an action
fermentation 3y ago
Some basic searching says this is based on an even older game called Legend of the Green Dragon. Looks kinda cool honestly. Anyone know if the writing is okay?
- 0xEF 3y ago
  You can try the game without logging in. The writing reads like tolerable fanfiction, so it's not stellar, but cringe moments and needless cussing are still present to some degree. As someone who used to write room descriptions on MUDs, I can say I I remarkably difficult to strike a balance between immersive writing and functional prose that English speaking persons of different comprehension levels can engage with. We also had to be mindful of screen readers for sight-impared players, the idea being keep your descriptions informative and short without being boring. I'm not a big fan of Impossible Islands writing, but they have my respect for it because it is quite the task to please an audience like that.
- rykar 3y ago
  I'm heavily biased, having been an avid player of the game for ages. It's got a very distinct style, and I can definitely see how it's changed over the years, but I quite like it. The world that's been built in it is a delightfully quirky and fun one, but the writing also delves into some interesting territory both in darkness and in philosophy. I'm also somewhat biased because one of the most well-fleshed out stories hits a nerve for me in how it confronts the horror of the loss of one's identity, enough that I can't comfortably read it. I say that in an absolutely positive way, much like a horror movie might be so unnerving that I can't bear to watch the whole thing. It's generally light-hearted, with some dark humor, odd humor and silly humor, and I highly recommend giving it a go. Meet the community! Discover the setting,! Fight your own tongue, an ambulatory pair of pants, your past self, and a Panthzer (50% jungle panther, 50% Panzer tank, don't ask questions)!
savolai 3y ago
Anyone hook this up with a GAN yet to keep it peaceful yet make it visual? Plus translations.
andrewstuart 3y ago
Tried it, didn't like the feel of it. Text adventures are wildly different from one to another and personal taste. This one didn't grab me.
wly_cdgr 3y ago
I really just deeply do not care about the code of conduct but the game seems cool. I mean, the writing is very bad, but the thing's got spirit
nextaccountic 3y ago
Is this a MUD? Can it be accessed through telnet or a MUD client?
- gustavorg 3y ago
  No, it's a text adventure, an RPG, online, in a browser.
- rykar 3y ago
  It's kind of got MUD energy to it from my understanding, but it's purely browser-based. There's a whole game to it, but the draw for me is the roleplay and the player-built places.
  - nextaccountic 3y ago
    Does it have a map? Like with rooms connected to each other. I tried a little but didn't find any part where I would go "north", "south" etc Or there are rooms, but without directions?
    - rykar 3y ago
      There are rooms but without directions, because they can be arbitrarily connected to each other by doors! Fun fact, rooms USED to connect only directionally because at the time I think they were implemented as linked lists. But now, it's arbitrary and you can do hidden passageways and shortcuts and cool little things like that.
gnabgib 3y ago
Was this maybe meant to be a link to the "What even is this website, please help me" in the bottom right? (Which it doesn't seem to be possible to hyperlink to).. as it is this just throws you into.. that mess.
- pimlottc 3y ago
  Throwing you directly into the mess is completely intentional
camel-cdr 3y ago
Does anybody know what the total word count is?
- blep_ 3y ago
  No.
- rykar 3y ago
  Hundreds of thousands of words, and that's not counting the fantastic roleplay community and the places that they've built. Some of which have programming. Some of THOSE have created miniature games inside of those places, complete with events, character statistics, and a character creator. I've been on this site for ten years and never come close to that level of creative madness, and I will always deeply respect those loveable maniacs.
JohnMakin 3y ago
This is cool. I really enjoyed choose-your-own-adventure books when I was a kid a long time ago, part of the fun being that as you were flipping to the page you were supposed to go to, you'd come across wild sections of text you hadn't quite visited, and it became a game to see if you could navigate all possible paths of the book. The really clever ones would have tantalizing pages that were unreachable paths just to frustrate you, or would trap you in infinite loops.
smusamashah 3y ago
It talks about building your own shrine as a player owned place using some drag drop interface but I can not find any more info on that. Not in the wiki or image search on Google.
- rykar 3y ago
  The wiki is very, very out of date and it's something that's undergoing an overhaul (when Dan can get time to do so). Player-owned places are fairly straightforward to learn once you're in there, but the drag-and-drop is a reference to the programming aspects of a place. They're mostly conditional things, like being able to display different descriptions for different times of day... but they go all the way up to being able to set up logic chains sufficient to set variables based on past events, displaying different things depending on what room a player came into a given room from... there's a lot of depth to it that I've never mucked with.
- drewzero1 3y ago
  From what I can tell 'shrine' is being used metaphorically to describe a player 'Place', and the drag-drop part might be a Place Program? There's not a lot of documentation without jumping in. I haven't played but I've read way too much about it since following Dan on Masto/Fediverse. Someday if I ever have time and bandwidth again I've really got to get on there.
howenterprisey 3y ago
I'm sure the game is good, but (not to say it's bad, just haven't had the time yet) the only part I've browsed for a significant period of time so far is the code of conduct, which I think is absolutely amazing and helped form a lot of my thinking around online communities: https://www.improbableisland.com/coc.php https://www.improbableisland.com/coc.php Edit: HN user drewzero1 also linked a long Mastodon thread written by the admin, https://mstdn.social/@ifixcoinops/109354147264054179 https://mstdn.social/@ifixcoinops/109354147264054179, which is equally critical reading. I cannot recommend both highly enough.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ddingus 3y ago
  You are not kidding! I just sent a quick note to CMJ in recognition of what I must call a sustained, exemplary act of community management. Reading that was gratifying. That team should feel really good about their work.
- DoItToMe81 3y ago
  The code of conduct immediately made me realize that this place will be cliquey and run by rules lawyers who take delight in making a billion subcategories for the sake of empowering themselves to ban. I've never seen an instance where this was not the case. Anything that needs to write paragraph after paragraph for what could be summarized in 4 to 8 rules, especially with weird, no doubt completely irrelevant to the game itself "DRUMPF GAMERGATE VACCINE" clauses on top of that, is not something anybody who values their time should involve themselves in.
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    Or it's a community that's successfully kept itself alive for a very long time and "simple" rules get interpreted wildly differently so over time you're naturally going to build up at lot of explicit rules around edge cases.
    - 3y ago
TehCorwiz 3y ago
I've never seen this before but I instantly love it! It has real Kingdom of Loathing vibes for me.
- hoten 3y ago
  KoL really scratched an itch for me for many years. It's too much of a time sink for me these days (I've replaced it with other time sinks...), but the studios newer single player games are quite fun with the same charm!
harimau777 3y ago
The game's wiki is amazing! It cleverly manages to avoid excessive spoilers while staying (mostly) useful by mandating that 20% of all content must be lies!
- RugnirViking 3y ago
  thats.... actually incredible? I think more game wikis should strive to something like that. Whole genres of games have been irrevocably changed by omniscience.
its-summertime 3y ago
A while back, I had multiple people respond to my support request, with impeccable results, no back and fourth responding to automated messages. Which easily puts the game well above the bar set by many others.
chrisweekly 3y ago
amazing.

231 points by alentred 3y ago

My main complaint - choice buttons extend faaar too far to the right I'm clicking the website to be sure it's in focus, but keep choosing an action

fermentation 3y ago

Some basic searching says this is based on an even older game called Legend of the Green Dragon. Looks kinda cool honestly. Anyone know if the writing is okay?

0xEF 3y ago
You can try the game without logging in. The writing reads like tolerable fanfiction, so it's not stellar, but cringe moments and needless cussing are still present to some degree. As someone who used to write room descriptions on MUDs, I can say I I remarkably difficult to strike a balance between immersive writing and functional prose that English speaking persons of different comprehension levels can engage with. We also had to be mindful of screen readers for sight-impared players, the idea being keep your descriptions informative and short without being boring. I'm not a big fan of Impossible Islands writing, but they have my respect for it because it is quite the task to please an audience like that.
rykar 3y ago
I'm heavily biased, having been an avid player of the game for ages. It's got a very distinct style, and I can definitely see how it's changed over the years, but I quite like it. The world that's been built in it is a delightfully quirky and fun one, but the writing also delves into some interesting territory both in darkness and in philosophy. I'm also somewhat biased because one of the most well-fleshed out stories hits a nerve for me in how it confronts the horror of the loss of one's identity, enough that I can't comfortably read it. I say that in an absolutely positive way, much like a horror movie might be so unnerving that I can't bear to watch the whole thing. It's generally light-hearted, with some dark humor, odd humor and silly humor, and I highly recommend giving it a go. Meet the community! Discover the setting,! Fight your own tongue, an ambulatory pair of pants, your past self, and a Panthzer (50% jungle panther, 50% Panzer tank, don't ask questions)!

savolai 3y ago

Anyone hook this up with a GAN yet to keep it peaceful yet make it visual? Plus translations.

andrewstuart 3y ago

Tried it, didn't like the feel of it. Text adventures are wildly different from one to another and personal taste. This one didn't grab me.

wly_cdgr 3y ago

I really just deeply do not care about the code of conduct but the game seems cool. I mean, the writing is very bad, but the thing's got spirit

nextaccountic 3y ago

Is this a MUD? Can it be accessed through telnet or a MUD client?

gustavorg 3y ago
No, it's a text adventure, an RPG, online, in a browser.
rykar 3y ago
It's kind of got MUD energy to it from my understanding, but it's purely browser-based. There's a whole game to it, but the draw for me is the roleplay and the player-built places.
- nextaccountic 3y ago
  Does it have a map? Like with rooms connected to each other. I tried a little but didn't find any part where I would go "north", "south" etc Or there are rooms, but without directions?
  - rykar 3y ago
    There are rooms but without directions, because they can be arbitrarily connected to each other by doors! Fun fact, rooms USED to connect only directionally because at the time I think they were implemented as linked lists. But now, it's arbitrary and you can do hidden passageways and shortcuts and cool little things like that.

gnabgib 3y ago

Was this maybe meant to be a link to the "What even is this website, please help me" in the bottom right? (Which it doesn't seem to be possible to hyperlink to).. as it is this just throws you into.. that mess.

pimlottc 3y ago
Throwing you directly into the mess is completely intentional

camel-cdr 3y ago

Does anybody know what the total word count is?

blep_ 3y ago
No.
rykar 3y ago
Hundreds of thousands of words, and that's not counting the fantastic roleplay community and the places that they've built. Some of which have programming. Some of THOSE have created miniature games inside of those places, complete with events, character statistics, and a character creator. I've been on this site for ten years and never come close to that level of creative madness, and I will always deeply respect those loveable maniacs.

JohnMakin 3y ago

This is cool. I really enjoyed choose-your-own-adventure books when I was a kid a long time ago, part of the fun being that as you were flipping to the page you were supposed to go to, you'd come across wild sections of text you hadn't quite visited, and it became a game to see if you could navigate all possible paths of the book. The really clever ones would have tantalizing pages that were unreachable paths just to frustrate you, or would trap you in infinite loops.

smusamashah 3y ago

It talks about building your own shrine as a player owned place using some drag drop interface but I can not find any more info on that. Not in the wiki or image search on Google.

rykar 3y ago
The wiki is very, very out of date and it's something that's undergoing an overhaul (when Dan can get time to do so). Player-owned places are fairly straightforward to learn once you're in there, but the drag-and-drop is a reference to the programming aspects of a place. They're mostly conditional things, like being able to display different descriptions for different times of day... but they go all the way up to being able to set up logic chains sufficient to set variables based on past events, displaying different things depending on what room a player came into a given room from... there's a lot of depth to it that I've never mucked with.
drewzero1 3y ago
From what I can tell 'shrine' is being used metaphorically to describe a player 'Place', and the drag-drop part might be a Place Program? There's not a lot of documentation without jumping in. I haven't played but I've read way too much about it since following Dan on Masto/Fediverse. Someday if I ever have time and bandwidth again I've really got to get on there.

howenterprisey 3y ago

I'm sure the game is good, but (not to say it's bad, just haven't had the time yet) the only part I've browsed for a significant period of time so far is the code of conduct, which I think is absolutely amazing and helped form a lot of my thinking around online communities: https://www.improbableisland.com/coc.php https://www.improbableisland.com/coc.php Edit: HN user drewzero1 also linked a long Mastodon thread written by the admin, https://mstdn.social/@ifixcoinops/109354147264054179 https://mstdn.social/@ifixcoinops/109354147264054179, which is equally critical reading. I cannot recommend both highly enough.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ddingus 3y ago
You are not kidding! I just sent a quick note to CMJ in recognition of what I must call a sustained, exemplary act of community management. Reading that was gratifying. That team should feel really good about their work.
DoItToMe81 3y ago
The code of conduct immediately made me realize that this place will be cliquey and run by rules lawyers who take delight in making a billion subcategories for the sake of empowering themselves to ban. I've never seen an instance where this was not the case. Anything that needs to write paragraph after paragraph for what could be summarized in 4 to 8 rules, especially with weird, no doubt completely irrelevant to the game itself "DRUMPF GAMERGATE VACCINE" clauses on top of that, is not something anybody who values their time should involve themselves in.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  Or it's a community that's successfully kept itself alive for a very long time and "simple" rules get interpreted wildly differently so over time you're naturally going to build up at lot of explicit rules around edge cases.
  - 3y ago

TehCorwiz 3y ago

I've never seen this before but I instantly love it! It has real Kingdom of Loathing vibes for me.

hoten 3y ago
KoL really scratched an itch for me for many years. It's too much of a time sink for me these days (I've replaced it with other time sinks...), but the studios newer single player games are quite fun with the same charm!

harimau777 3y ago

The game's wiki is amazing! It cleverly manages to avoid excessive spoilers while staying (mostly) useful by mandating that 20% of all content must be lies!

RugnirViking 3y ago
thats.... actually incredible? I think more game wikis should strive to something like that. Whole genres of games have been irrevocably changed by omniscience.

its-summertime 3y ago

A while back, I had multiple people respond to my support request, with impeccable results, no back and fourth responding to automated messages. Which easily puts the game well above the bar set by many others.

chrisweekly 3y ago

amazing.