While playing a game called Device 6 on iOS recently (interactive novel type game) I thought to myself, could text adventure games still work these days?

I'm sure many talented game designers could craft brilliant text adventure games, the problem still persists that graphics these days is used to market games. Since people cannot play the game they get shown pictures and videos. This can't work for a text adventure game.

I thought maybe a well made demo could replace trailers and images to entice players more. The recently released Stanley Parable has shown me that, when done well demo's can be very effective. Most demo's these days cause a drop in sales of the game in question.

So theres two parts to this. Firstly can a text adventure game be fun when compared to modern games? And secondly, would it sell?

I suppose this is a wide question but I thought it would make for a nice conversation topic.

I think if it were ever to work it would have to be revamped heavily. I tend to agree that the super nostalgic old school text adventures would not work.

Device 6 is a promising game for me, mostly because its a game book that really makes sense and is fun to play. It gives me hope that if done well text based games might still work, provided they are mixed, just a little bit with some modern game design.

Its a type of game I wish to pursue when I get some time to make prototypes.

I think that the text adventure games of old are gone, but there is a new wave that is coming through (I'm actually working on an idea right now that I'm going to try and implement for the next Ludum Dare). If you have an iPhone, go check out Bar Oasis, or google it if you don't have one. That's a great example of more common day text adventures.

Those text adventure games where you continually do "guess what the next word to input is from a 5 word description" never appealed to me. Its too frustrating to be playing with a dictionary to find the alternative of the word that says the same but is actually wanted by the game.

I think nowadays you would have more luck with a visual novel where the text is framed nicely, you can do your choices with the mouse and there are some pictures that dont even need to move. Though even with a visual novel you need to work to get people interested.

For a nice example take a look at Long Live The Queen, they worked hard to get it on steam, and if you are not allergic to pink its fun to play and die from all kinds of things. I tried the demo once, played it more than one time and loved it although its not really one of the genre types I normally play.