MailPlay is a python free open source package for creating and running text adventures. It's primarily created for adventures to be played over mail. The game-server is connected to an account and responds to any mails sent to it, tracking each mail address as a player and serving each player with their part of the story.
Several games exist here at the unknown incubator, it's just a matter of finding them. But for those not intent on searching and finding them, there's one right here. And it's not a half-baked kind of adventure. In fact, it's the most ambitious to date.
To start, simply send a mail to:
You will get a story and at the end, some options. To continue, just write which one you want as a reply. You don't have to be dictating the exact option, mailplay will look in the text body of your reply and try to infer which one you wanted. If mailplay gets confused, it will select an option at random. So don't be too fuzzy in the way you respond!
Note: Mailplay does not at all care for what you put as subject, nore does it care for what comes after the (if any) quouted email starts. So put your response at the begininng of the text body of the email.
MailPlay was written in python. The game engine can be run (at least) from python 2.4 to 3.0. MailPlay relies heavily on several libraries, some deserving special mention:
The code can be downloaded as a Git-repository, and is actually quite well documented.