''The Dreamhold'' is an

interactive fiction '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...

game by

Andrew Plotkin Andrew Plotkin (born May 15, 1970), also known as Zarf, is a central figure in the modern interactive fiction (IF) community. Having both written a number of award-winning games and developed a range of new file formats, interpreters, and other ...

released in 2004. Its primary purpose is to be a tutorial to interactive fiction, and because of that the "core" of the game is relatively easy to finish. As an attempt to make it more appealing for seasoned IF players, Plotkin added an "expert mode", which can be activated early in the game and makes certain puzzles harder. It won the 2004

XYZZY Award The XYZZY Awards are the annual awards given to works of interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards for film. The awards were inaugurated in 1997 by Eileen Mullin, the editor of ''XYZZYnews''. Any game released during the year ...

s for Best Puzzles and Best Use of Medium. On June 24, 2014, the author released the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

for educational purposes.Old Zarf code
by Andrew Plotkin (June 24, 2014)

References

External links

Baf's Guide entry for The Dreamhold

— a review by Dan Shiovitz

— a review by Magnus Ollson

2000s interactive fiction 2004 video games Video games developed in the United States Video games with alternate endings {{adventure-videogame-stub