Like Talon Karrde said, text based games have kind of evolved into graphical games (but not fully replaced). I grue up in my teens on Zork and Infocom, but I never have gotten around to checking out any of the more recent free interactive fiction games that have been coming out for years.
I do tend to play a lot of the point and click graphical adventure games these days. There aren’t many such commercial games, but there are plenty of free ones to be found here, for example:
There’s a wide range of quality in the games. For me, some of them are virtually unplayable, but some of them have been great. Right now I’ve been playing Bog’s Adventure in the Underworld, which is enjoyable (and a huge game).
I’ll agree with your assessment, but disagree with your opinion. This was my favorite of the graphic Zork games. There were four puzzle threads that could be solved independently, but all twined together into one satisfying conclusion. That, for me, was worth sacrificing the usual silliness.
There is a style of interactive fiction that borrows heavily from text based games. Adam Cadre does a great job with this. I highly recommend “Photopia.”
[old man]
Zork was a game for people of character. No looking on the web for the hints and walkthroughs. We had to figure the whole damn thing out ourselves. Nowadays people just don’t have the gumption for that kind of thing, stupid kids.
[/old man]
Well, there were the ‘Invisclue’ books, but you had to buy them. They were fun in and of themselves.