Glowgrass

Glowgrass is an Interactive Fiction adventure by Nate Cull in 1997 and a finalist for Best Game and Best Story in the 1997 Xyzzy Awards.

The game takes place on an alien planet where you were sent on a xenohistory mission. You play a stranded xenohistorian after your dropship crashes. Left alone at the site of what seems to the greatest discovery of the Ancient's technology you have to find a way home. Glowgrass is relatively short, more focused on telling a story than with presenting the player with puzzles. However, the parser has a habit of making a few simple actions feel like puzzles.

It can be downloaded here. It requires a TADS interpreter.

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Tropes used in Glowgrass include:

• Brain Uploading
• Empty Room Psych: The kitchen certainly is described as empty.
• You Can't Get Ye Flask: Players commonly have difficulty plugging cables in, as the parser doesn't recognize the verb and instead uses put.
• Insurmountable Waist High Fence: That crumbling wall is sure difficult to climb.
• Locked Door: Only occurs once.
• Precursors: The Ancients seem like this at first.
• Virtual Ghost: A consequence of brain uploading.