Spider And Web

Spider And Web is a 1998 interactive fiction by Andrew Plotkin ("Zarf") in which the player is a captured spy being interrogated about a botched mission. The story unfolds as a dialogue between captor and captive: every command is a memory the prisoner offers up, and every misstep is a lie the interrogator catches.

Premise

The framing fiction casts the player's commands as a recollected past. The interrogator listens, occasionally interjects, and rewinds the narrative when the player's account contradicts what he already knows. The result is a parser game about deception and incomplete knowledge.

Puzzles

Most puzzles hinge on the gap between what the player character knows and what the interrogator believes. The game's centerpiece is widely considered one of the finest puzzles in interactive fiction, turning the parser convention itself into a trap and a tool.

Awards

Spider And Web won the 1998 XYZZY Award for Best Game, along with Best Individual Puzzle, and is routinely cited in best-of-IF lists. It cemented Plotkin's reputation as a leading craftsman of post-Infocom parser fiction.

Distribution

The Mac release wraps the Z-code story file in an interpreter application; the underlying story file runs in any modern Z-machine, including Frotz and Lectrote.