[JoshTriplett]

My favorite of all time is "Ad Verbum".

> With the cantankerous Wizard of Wordplay evicted from his mansion, the worthless plot can now be redeveloped. The city regulations declare, however, that the rip-down job can't proceed until all the items within have been removed.

It's full of delightful wordplay and puzzles that play with the text-adventure medium, constraining what words you can use. Highly recommended.

[nathell]

Mine is ‘Anchorhead’ (1998), by Michael Gentry. I think it’s actually my favourite game of all time, of all genres.

I’ve played the old, text-only, Z-code version back in high school, around 1999, and the experience was so vivid and immersive that to this day I can draw a map of Anchorhead from memory and recite the lineage of the Verlac family. I think it’s still my favourite game of all time (although I spent much more time on some others).

These days, an illustrated version can be bought on Steam for something like $10. Highly recommended!

[kleiba2]

...which you can also play online: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=op0uw1gn1tjqmjt7

[kleiba2]

There was a time where I spent most evenings playing "A Mind Forever Voyaging" by Steve Meretzky [1], complete with trying to draw maps and jot down notes and clues, while listening to a Dave Brubeck album on repeat. The fact that I still remember that more than a decade later is a testament to how good that experience was.

[1] https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=4h62dvooeg9ajtfa

[waisbrot]

"Spider and Web" is quite short, pretty easy, mostly gives good hints. A great starter-game, I think. I also love Zarf's writing.

https://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/tangle/

[mrob]

"Spider and Web" is famous because it's a subversion of genre norms. It does not play fair by traditional text adventure game standards. I don't recommend it for beginners, because other than the central gimmick, the puzzles are not particularly interesting. You won't appreciate it unless you know how unusual it is.

And even if you do know how unusual it is, you won't necessarily like it. I can't go into detail without spoilers, but I can compare it to an analogous situation with the Fighting Fantasy gamebook "Creature of Havoc", which is, depending on your point of view, either a work of genius or a broken mess. You opinion of "Spider and Web" will likely match that of "Creature of Havoc".

[ZeroGravitas]

Counterfeit Monkey similarly fuses classic text adventure mechanics with a wordplay mechanic where you can transform objects by adding and removing letters to solve puzzles.