<i>You take a deep breath of salty air as the first raindrops begin to spatter the pavement, and the swollen, slate-colored clouds that blanket the sky mutter ominous portents amongst themselves over the little coastal town of Anchorhead.</i> <p>Travel to the haunted coastal town of Anchorhead, Massachusetts and uncover the roots of a horrific conspiracy inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Search through musty archives and tomes of esoteric lore; dodge hostile townsfolk; combat a generation-spanning evil that threatens your family and the entire world. </p><p>The original version was and remains freely available.<br>To mark the twentieth anniversary of its initial publication, <i>Anchorhead</i> is now available in a special Illustrated Edition. Every aspect of the game has been rebuilt and redesigned from the ground up: </p><ul><li>The code has been rewritten in Inform 7 and compiled to the glulx format, allowing far more detail and interactivity than before.</li><li>The prose has been revised and polished to reflect 20 years of accumulated writing experience.</li><li>Additional puzzles, scenes, and background information to explore.</li><li>Decorated with over 50 gorgeous illustrations by Carlos Cara Àlvarez.</li></ul> <i>Anchorhead: the Illustrated Edition</i> is a commercial game. See the <a href="https://mikegentry5.itch.io/anchorhead">itch.io page</a> for purchasing information.<br> (The <a href="http://www.anchorhead-game.com/">website</a>, no longer active, allowed ordering feelies.)

Stolen away by apathetic Blind Ones, your only desire is to return to your Cellarium and the Song of the Universe. They should understand. You shall make them to understand.

Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving… Come home to Goldengrove, a beautiful old house haunted by a lost soul. Uncover the secrets of your tormented past in a tale of unrequited love, jealousy, violence, betrayal, and vengeance. "What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed" is a puzzle-driven, parser-based gothic horror story with a unique command set.

On the night of August 14th, 1799, eight days off St. Stellio, the sloop Meleagris was smashed apart by a storm. Most of the crew and passengers alike were crushed by fallen rigging, or drowned, or eaten by sharks. One passenger was not so lucky.

Travel down into an abandoned Antarctic Base and unveil the mysteries within. A game made in the paper-telephone style, with each person only having access to the section before, with a co-ordinated ending that ties everything beautifully together.

You are awake and alone. Unable to move. Unable to fight against the thing slowly rising from within you. Is there any part of you that can resist? Any part that you can still move? (Based on a true event in my life when I was fourteen) * An EctoComp2018 Game

It is the fifteenth corpse. Among those they found. More than twenty people have disappeared in the last few months. Some say it's a wild animal, stalking the outskirts of town. Some say it's a killer, a new kind of deviated christian, hunting his own kind. But there's more to it. This town is no normal town. We have a history unlike any other. It's November the seventh, in Elmville. And we sleep under the Wolfsmoon. --- An old-style experience, with all the comforts of 2019. Unravel the mysteries of Elmville, while you bathe in a pixel panorama!

You are an antique store proprietor trying to make ends meet. Use your wits, manage your resources, play the hand you are dealt. This game features a story with multiple endings, achievements as well as an unique style of gameplay that is inspired by roguelite and card-based games.

You wanted to get away from it all. And boy, did you ever.

Your job as a real estate agent brings you into contact with many old buildings, but none are quite like the old theatre that has stood deserted for almost thirty years. After visiting it with some prospective buyers, you discover that you have left your pager behind. You quickly stop off there, on your way out for the evening, to pick it up. However, at night, you soon learn, the theatre's denizens are more than just rats and spiders. Now you find yourself trapped in a world of secrets and of shadows, while a century-old evil awakens to hatch her nefarious plans. In order to survive the horror and insanity, you must use all your wits and cunning, and, to escape, you must solve the dark secret of the THEATRE! [--blurb from The Z-Files Catalogue]

Geist was used as a site-wide adventure for Board Game Geek in January of 2014. During the week of the event, nearly 700 players worked their way through this game. The community rallied around the players in the form of providing hints and clues as people were stuck on puzzles. Geist was written by Dave Bernazzani, Dean Svendsen, Jonna Hind and Steven Robert. It was designed/coded by Dave Bernazzani. Geist is decidedly old-school IF. It's not likely to be the kind of game well regarded by the inner sanctum of the Interactive Fiction community. It's a treasure hunt. A puzzle fest. In other words: it's a <i>Text Adventure</i>. Further, it has a number of in-jokes, breaks mimesis and targets and rewards a subset of players (those who are members on BGG). It is still playable and can be enjoyed outside that sphere... but you have been warned. <b>*GEIST*</b> You were celebrating the arrival of the not-quite-second-half of the 21st century with your buddies in your gaming basement when the bad news arrived: Crazy Uncle Scott had finally given up the good fight and passed off into gaming nirvana. He was an unusual man, with a firm belief that the world went to hell in a hand-basket with the arrival of text messages, always claiming that their phones were smarter than them! So he bought himself a huge mansion and spent his last days there pining for the glory days of yore, when websites were nothing more than acres of bright blue links thrown willy-nilly onto a computer screen. Somehow, though, he took a shine to you, and you were smart enough to hide your smartphone whenever he came calling. Nevertheless, it was quite a surprise to learn that he left you exactly half his will. And even more of a surprise to discover that the lawyer's language was precise: not half his massive fortune in Geekgold, but literally half his will. Along with a short note explaining that to collect your full inheritance, you must retrieve the second half of Crazy Uncle Scott's will from his old estate, Alden Manor. The very name brings chills to your spine: that place is haunted! But the true horror lay in the closing passage of the note: <b>Leave your Smartphone at home!</b>

Help the person on the other end of the machine get free. You find a small black box with a keyboard and a little screen buzzing and flashing at you. When you pick it up, you see the numbers "1979" scratched into the black plastic. You also see a message printed out on its screen.

Surely the reed bank counts as a wild place. While it gives you so much, you've never tended it, not really, not like you do with your garden. It's something like the forest, then, but much safer to search without attracting attention. So here you are.

An eerie exploration of an abandoned historic house. Acquire pictures with your trusty camera to get paid and search for evidence of the 2nd unit crew who is supposed to be there with you. Someone is definitely making those sounds in the dark. Play in an offline, sound and graphics-capable interpreter is recommended. Contains creepy and possibly surprising atmospheric sound effects. Does not contain "screamer" type audio/visual jump-scares.

You are a nightmare in paradise.

You're the nightmare from which people can't wake. Dead twice. One by the hand of your maker, the second by the fiend who drove a stake through your heart while you were sleeping defenceless in your coffin. Alive thrice, it seems, although this last one shouldn't be possible. Something happened.

This isn't the safest neighborhood. A young woman was abducted near here only recently. But as a city sanitarian you are obligated to complete your annual inspection of the local dive. [blurb from IF Comp 2008]

Your surgery went very well. But you couldn't really afford it... Be aware that this is a work of horror. This game involves situations that may be violent, distressing, disturbing, or triggering. This game may involve positive interactions with a violent sociopath. The game may involve elements of coercion and powerlessness. The game is not sexually explicit but does involve some adult language and potentially dark imagery. The tone this work will take about grim situations is fairly clinical. If any of these things sound like they will upset you, I would advise you not to play. To the rest of you: enjoy!

Guide your sister through a game of visualization, adventure, and danger, and perhaps discover truths about each other along the way. This was originally intended for SeedComp!, but winded up being a bigger project than anticipated. It was submitted to Spring Thing 2023.

Every year your friend hosts a Halloween party where guests are expected to complete three dares. This is the third. A Grand Guignol entry for ECTOCOMP 2016.