Simple IF consists of two programs, SimpleIF which is used to create Interactive Fiction (text) Adventures, and SIFRunner which is used to play adventures. The style of both can be termed extreme minimalist! Why is that?

Whilst I've always had a passing interest in IF, I've never been very good at it, neither playing nor authoring. But I was a software consultant, (mainly design), hence I was always more interested in the creation tools as tools per se rather than their actual use. Call it scientific curiosity!

Anyway, some years ago I came across the game, GUI Colossal Cave (Intelligent-Digital, C. Yong). I was astonished by the simplicity of the user interface. It occurred to me that it shouldn't be too difficult (wrong!) to do something similar but more generic, which implies the need for a generator program and that that should also be simple in nature. The purpose would be to encourage I.F. beginners, and the more experienced who had found other authoring tools overly complex, to have a go at producing their own adventures.

There was no immediate impulse to actually do that though!

Time passed. Then we had Covid and Lock-down. By the time we here in the UK got to Lock-down 3, I had run out of ideas for software projects with which to while away my retirement, when I remembered GUI Colossal Cave, and thus Simple IF was born.

This slide show shows what the creator looks like...

And this is what the runner looks like...

The kit includes help files for both the creator, Simple IF, and the runner, SIF Runner, in both .chm and .pdf formats. The content is the same in both formats.

Both the generator kit and the runner kit also include three games. One is a very trivial room escape game which is mainly intended as a starting point for you to write your own game. The other two are complete games to demonstrate just how much can be done despite the minimalist style.

The first of the complete games won the Adrift "Finish the Game" Competition of 2005 and is Pathway to Destruction by Richard Otter, which he kindly allowed me to translate from Adrift 4 to Simple IF and to use in this kit. It is not a large game, as you would expect for a competition entry, but none the less tricky to complete.

The second complete game is yet another derivative of Colossal Cave. As with GUI Colossal Cave, which started me on this path, it is simplified for beginners, which is why I called it Large-ish Cave. What that means is that it still has 81 Rooms, 51 Objects, 124 Tasks, 7 Sayings, 6 Flags, 6 Variables and 1042 Conditions. So whilst that may only be be regarded as a medium sized game compared to some modern games, it does plainly show that minimalism is not as restrictive as that word might otherwise imply. And if any of you fancy extending it back to a full Colossal Cave, please feel free, but send me a copy please!

All the Simple IF files are text files. This makes it very easy to use existing games to learn how things are done as they can be searched by text editors or multi-file text search utilities. So answering simple questions such as "which Tasks use this variable" are trivially easy to answer. Such questions can be surprisingly hard to answer in some of the more advanced platforms!

Mutual back scratching! As I indicated above, I am not an I.F. author. So to help prevent this project from becoming a glorious waste of time, I really do need some help from you good people in the form of games for free download (see below). And wouldn't you like an extra outlet for your efforts? So can you please consider not just writing new games, but also translating old competition games, as those are less likely to be making heavy use of the advanced features of other platforms which can be tricky to simulate in Simple IF.

So please use the Feedback link to submit games (no gratuitous sex and violence though please!)

The other thing that is not me is running forums. This project could really do with a forum, so if you think you can do that, please get in touch via the feedback link above.

Simple IF Games

Click on a game name to download the game files in a zip. Unzip them to your Simple IF folder

The 5 Star Game!!!

Title	Author	Translator	Description
Mystery Fun House	Scott Adams	Me	The classic Scott Adams adventure #7. Can you find your way completely through the strangest fun house in existance, or will you always be kicked out when the park closes?…..

If you need to refresh the distributed games...

Title	Author	Translator	Description
House Escape	jankupila	Me	An exceedingly simple example of the genre for you to expand.
Large-ish Cave	Me and all who went before	Me	A cross between Colossal Cave and GUI Colossal Cave.
Pathway to Destruction	Richard Otter	Me	Thrust into a strangely empty future, can you save the past you left behind?

Small games.

Title	Author	Translator	Description
Pieces of Eden	GhostofDanzig	Me	You are an assassin with temporary amnesia quietly drinking your coffee, but the cops are closing in. Can you avoid capture? As well as translating this I addressed the reviews on the Adrift web site.
Dance Fever USA	MelS	Me	A more comedic game. Can you destroy the machine that is broadcasting music containing subliminal messaging that would destroy the world?
The Evil Chicken of Doom	MelS	Me	Another surreal offering from MelS. Can you kill a chicken that has massive evil powers?
The Ghost of the Evil Chicken of Doom	MelS	Me	A sequel to The Evil Chicken game.
Shadrick's Travels	Mystery	Me	One for junior gamers. Your parents are pitching camp, but your little brother has wandered off, can you find him?
Adventure Strikes When You Least Expect It	Dylan Clarke	Me	You are in a dingy, abandoned flat, injured. You need to get out to get medical aid, but there doesn't seem to be a way.

Bigger games.

Title	Author	Translator	Description
A Place	Jordan Smith	Me	As ever you wake up in a room with no idea. It's basically a straight forward escape game. It was originally written for a specific event that happened ages ago, so to make the game timeless I had to change the ending.
The Marlin Affair	Lumin	Me	You are in a spacecraft in dire peril, but can you save yourself? Unfortunately you are currently handcuffed to a sturdy bar attached firmly to a wall.
Akron	Markus Kolic	Me	You come to in a dingy alley, but who are you, where are you? Can you find out?
Selma's Will	Mytery	Me	If your late Aunt Selma's will isn't found by sundown the old house will be auctioned off. Can you find the will in time?

Downloads