Hypercard returns in free adventure Madness of the Coastal Structure

(Image credit: Porpentine Charity Heartscape)

Interactive fictioner Porpentine has released a new adventure that feels a lot like an old one. You're familiar with Hypercard, of course, the '80s/'90s Mac development tool that did hyperlinks before the World Wide Web. Well, Madness of the Coastal Structure looks and feels like a Hypercard game, but with some playful Infocom-style writing mixed in as well.

It's a text-based adventure with RPG-style dice rolling and items to collect, and it's set in and around a strange tower in the jungle. After a plane crash, you have to pick yourself up and think your way out of the situation—but be warned, death could come at any moment.

This really did remind me of games from the golden age of interactive fiction. It's a silly, playful and occasionally mean adventure, one with an incohesive world, but that's all the better for the strange, imaginative scenes that come from that.

For more great free experiences, check out our roundup of the best free PC games.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.