The Bridge of Death

By A. J. Mako

Release 6

“The Bridge of Death” is an interactive fiction. Yeah, that’s a real thing. An interactive fiction is a fiction story you play, or maybe it’s an interactive game you read. Long before there were first-person shooters, 3D graphics and virtual reality—even before there were personal computers—this is how people played computer games.

This particular interactive fiction is an adaptation of the Bridge of Death scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was created exclusively as a learning exercise. It takes about 5 to 10 minutes to play The Bridge of Death unless you spend a lot of time looking around, or you happen to get thrown into the Gorge of Eternal Peril (here’s a hint: DON’T PANIC).

• Glulx Story File (Blorb, 925KB)
• Z-Machine Story File (Blorb, 621KB)
• Source Text
• Solution
• Play In-Browser with Quixe (link)
• Play In-Browser with Parchment (link)

The Bridge of Death was created with Inform and has IFID 8DDFFC7D-C290-47AC-89B0-F67505F67E0C.

To play a work like this one, you need an interpreter program. Many are available, among them Zoom for Mac OS X and for Unix; Windows Frotz or Windows Glulxe for Windows. Another option is Gargoyle, which is available for Windows, Mac and Unix. Or you can play without downloading anything by following the ”Play In-Browser“ links, using the Quixe or Parchment interpreters. You'll need to have Javascript enabled on your web browser.