Single Room or Non Map IF Needed for the Easter Vacation

Hello

New to IF and going away for Easter. I will only have my IOS devices when I go away with me so won’t have any automapping or mapping software to hand as I would on my PC at home.

I would love to knuckle down to some IF in my hotel as it is going to snow like hell. Can anyone recommend so good single room or not too mappy IF for me to play whilst I am away?

Thank you for your help and happy easter!

Plotkin’s “Shade” comes to mind.

Most modern IF does not require significant mapping. Off the top of my head, Alabaster, Shrapnel, Gun Mute, Aisle, and Bonehead and The Moonlit Tower are all fine games and non-mappy, though some of them have small maps.

Photopia. Warbler’s Nest. Six. 9:05.
One rooms or no map needed.

Or: Anchorhead and Trinity.
I didnt use a map. It’s a way of getting used to it. I actually played Anchorhead in the iPhone.

EDIT: This as a joke. They are maybe the worst nightmare for mappers. Don’t try this at home!

I have downloaded pretty much all of the Z-Machine IF’s that you have mentioned so far. Thanks!

Zarf also came up with another excellent single-room IF, Dual Transform:

eblong.com/zarf/zweb/dual/

both can be completed in less than an hour or so…

Violet and Hoosegow are two other highly rated one room games, and both have the advantage of being pretty funny.

Nooooo. Certainly not Trinity, which has at least one timed puzzle that requires you to know where you’re going.

While Anchorhead’s map is pretty intuitive once you’ve got the hang of it, and I don’t dispute that it’s playable without mapping, I think that mapping would make life a lot easier at first. Particularly for a novice player.

Well, Trinity was a joke (and it is not freeware) but Anchorhead is pretty playble with no map. Apart from a single maze. A good training exercise anyway.

It isn’t one-room, but Emily Short’s Bronze is very playable without mapping. It has a command that lists all the rooms you’ve visited, and another that automatically navigates you back to any of them (likewise all the objects you’ve seen). It otherwise has much of the feel of a “classic” adventure game – puzzles and wandering around a castle and such – but with better prose and story.

Thanks all! Keep the ideas coming :slight_smile:

For something a little off the beaten track, try The Gostak or Suveh Nux.

Party Foul and Snack Time! are terrific, funny, and have just a few rooms each.

With the Easter weekend fast approaching (Maundy Thursday already!!!) and tensions running high, here, spoiler alert, is a link to a map of Anchorhead. This is mostly to remind the people recommending this game of what they’re getting our octopal into. Anyone who hasn’t played the game should just glance at it, at the very most. Don’t look at anything too closely.*

[spoiler]http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/games/video/ifmaps/anchor.pdf

If you don’t want to be spoiled at all, good for you. I’ll give you the rundown: There are about a hundred rooms, taking up five pages of PDF. One of these pages (the aforementioned maze) looks like it was designed by a crazy person.[/spoiler]
If you’re not very good with maps then you should probably build your skills with something else first. Probably Bronze. I’ve been known to get lost in Bronze, but I never used any of the commands tove alluded to.

Also, you should consider drawing out maps on paper! In my opinion this is one of the most enjoyable elements of IF.

*“Don’t look at anything too closely,” coincidentally, is also the town motto of Anchorhead.

Aw, really. I was joking. The first games I suggested were the good ones. Don’t make me feel (too much) like a bastard!

(Anyway: yes, one hundred rooms. But you don’t really need to map them! It’s just a matter of remembering the small bits, i.e. town north, town south etc. It worked for me. Really—)

I managed to play through Anchorhead in its entirety on my phone without a map. But then, I have excellent mental mapping skills: I could still tell you how to get from the ale tent to the ferret races at an agricultural fair that I visited for a few hours 7 years ago. Names and faces come and go, but I’ll always know to turn left by the olive stands then right at the goat tent.

Thank you for all of your suggestions, however I might leave ‘Anchorhead’ for when I get back and have my Trizbort mapping software to hand.

I am leaving for my three day trip in an hour or so and thanks to all of your suggestions, I have lots of stories to choose from. I look forward to sitting down in the hotel lobby, IOS device in hand and letting my mind wander off somewhere new.

I like name ‘octopal’, I have been using ‘Octofuzz’ for years in one form or another but ‘octopal’ is a new one on me!

Have a great Easter everyone, I am incredibly grateful for your help. I will update you when I get back as to how it all went.