IF50 Hint Book

These hint books were produced as a bonus reward for the “50 Years of Text Games” Kickstarter. They feature hints for all fifty of the games covered in the book, revealed by a red decoder wand that comes included.

Hint books were common in the days when most games had puzzles. Early game companies figured out this could be a valuable secondary revenue stream: they opened 900 number phone trees and sold hint books of varying designs to desperate fans. At one point, both Infocom’s and Adventure International’s hint books were outselling their games (probably due to rampant software piracy).

To keep from accidentally seeing hints you didn’t need, and also to prevent hint books from being easily photocopied, companies used various forms of obfuscation in their books, from invisible ink to numeric cyphers to cardboard decoder wheels. The “50 Years” hint book honors this tradition by obscuring hint answers with a red pattern. Hold the decoder wand over an answer to reveal it (you may need strong direct lighting for the text to be legible).

The hint book contains at least one hint for each of the fifty titles covered in the book— yes, even for games which are no longer playable or don’t have any puzzles! Don’t expect comprehensive hints for each game— this is a sampler, not an omnibus!— but the hints aim to be helpful to new players just encountering each game for the first time.