Diction

Play interactive fiction with your voice, while your device reads the game aloud.

What is interactive fiction?

Interactive fiction, also called text adventures, are games you play with words. The game describes a world in words, and you reply with commands like GO NORTH, TAKE LAMP, or OPEN MAILBOX. The classics include Zork, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Photopia, and Galatea.

What Diction does

First of all, Diction is an interactive fiction player that reads the game's text aloud, so you can listen instead of staring at the screen. It'a an Audiobook verion.

The free version narrates with Apple's built-in accessibility text-to-speech voices, and you play by typing.

Unlock the full version to give commands with your voice and to use the upgraded neural voice engine for more natural narration.

Browse a built-in list of classic games that are a tap away, or search [the Interactive Fiction Database](https://ifdb.org) for thousands more.

Game commands

Say or type game followed by one of these to control Diction itself:

game stop: stop narrating the current game output
game repeat: narrate the current game output again
game windows: explain what grid panels are open, such as a status bar
game window 2: read out what is in window 2, such as the status bar
game keywords: read which words in the last output were bolded or colored (important for Blue Lacuna)
game inputs: read the last 20 commands you gave, newest first
game input 2: issue one of your previous commands again

Tips/Features

Double-tap a word in the game log to add it to your input.
To add more Apple voices, visit your device's Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak > Voices > English > Voice.
Tap the speaker icon in the top toolbar to silence the narration. Turn it back on at any time.
(Full version) The mic is automatically listening and can tell when you're done talking.
(Full version) Mute the mic in the top toolbar to stop giving voice input.
(Full version) The recognition favors words in the recent game log, to help with accuracy and to include unusual words and names.

Acknowledgements

I blogged in 2008 about wanting to make an IF app like this. I stand on the shoulders of giants. Diction is built on these open-source projects. The full license texts ship inside the app.

Quixe, MIT: Glulx interpreter and classic Glk stack. By Andrew Plotkin.
GlkOte, MIT: Web display layer: text, grid, and graphics windows. By Andrew Plotkin.
jQuery, MIT: DOM toolkit required by GlkOte. By the jQuery Foundation.
ifvms.js (ZVM), MIT: Z-machine interpreter. By Dannii Willis.
FluidAudio, Apache 2.0: Neural-voice runtime. By FluidInference.
Kokoro, Apache 2.0: Neural-voice model. By hexgrad.
MisakiSwift, Apache 2.0: Phonemizer, a Swift port of misaki. By mlalma.
misaki, Apache 2.0: Phonemizer (upstream). By hexgrad.

Curated game listings draw on 50 Years of Text Games by Aaron A. Reed, and game files and metadata come from the Interactive Fiction Database.

Contact

Questions or feedback? Email help_luminous@luminousdesigns.tech.