Echoes of the Future (2025)
A downloadable game
Echoes of the Future is an interactive fiction adventure written in Inform 6 using the PunyInform library, specially designed for 8-bit computers and retro systems such as the Commodore 64.
Inspired by the classics of Infocom, this game invites you on a mysterious journey through time, with a slow-burning narrative that rewards curiosity, observation, and thoughtful reflection. In Echoes of the Future, the text is your map, and language is your tool. Reading carefully and thinking deeply are essential to progress.
The story unfolds within an intimate and existential science fiction framework, structured in three chapters that gradually reveal unexpected connections between distant eras. The boundaries of time begin to blur, and what once seemed far away begins to echo within the present narrative.
Available as a D64 image for Commodore 64, ST disk image for Atari ST, DSK image for MSX, ZX Spectrum (CP/M required), and Amstrad CPC, floppy disk for MS-DOS, ADF disk image for Commodore Amiga, and now also as a GBA-compatible file for Game Boy Advance. You can run it on an emulator or transfer it to original hardware — simple instructions are included.
The original Z-Machine .z5 file is also included, allowing the adventure to be played on any interpreter compatible with the Z-Machine format, such as Frotz (in the video, the adventure runs in Frotz on Linux inside a CoolRetroTerm terminal), Gargoyle, or Lectrote — making the story accessible on virtually any platform.
Additionally, an HTML version is now available, so you can play the game instantly in your web browser without installing anything — just click and enjoy!
The Official Solution is also available: Echoes of the Future: Chronicles of the Rebirth, now downloadable from the official section.
Download it and dive into a story where time twists and every discovery echoes beyond its moment. Echoes of the Future is a journey that unfolds, word by word.
Acknowledgements
My heartfelt thanks to:
- Graham Nelson, for creating Inform 6, the tool that made this adventure possible.
- Johan Berntsson and Fredrik Ramsberg, for their outstanding work on the PunyInform library, their invaluable technical support, and for developing the Ozmoo interpreter, which brings interactive fiction to life on classic systems like the Commodore 64.
- Shawn Sijnstra, for his excellent Vezza interpreter, enabling this story to run smoothly across a variety of retro platforms.
- Stefan Vogt, for his powerful Puny BuildTools, which greatly simplified the build and release process.
- Jade, for his dedication to testing, and for spotting the little things that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
- And to everyone who, in one way or another, encouraged, helped, or inspired me throughout the development of Echoes of the Future.
Thank you for believing in words, for traveling through time with me, and for keeping the magic of interactive fiction alive.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $2 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- Commodore Amiga, HTML and ZMachine Versions Now Available!17 days ago
- Sci-fi slips into your Amstrad!18 days ago
- The quest begins anew on Atari ST!21 days ago
- The adventure comes to Game Boy Advance24 days ago
- Now available on ZX Spectrum!27 days ago
- The adventure comes to your MSX32 days ago
- Play Now on Your MS-DOS PC!39 days ago
- Chronicles of the Rebirth: The Official Guide Has Arrived40 days ago
Comments
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Wow, this is amazing! I will definitely have a short comeback from my retro hiatus to play this. When I wrote Hibernated and Ghosts, I really wanted to push the boundaries and create meaningful modern adventures for retro systems. It's nice seeing someone carrying the torch and going even further with it.
Will mention this to PolyPlay, they might want to release it on real media.
PS: Thanks for mentioning the Puny BuildTools :)
Hi Stefan, thanks for stopping by and for the support. This is the first adventure I’ve written in Inform, although I’ve been on the journey of creating modern adventures for retro systems for a while, previously using tools like PAWS or DAAD. I’ve learned a lot from how you present your games, especially The Ghosts of Blackwood Manor, since horror is one of my favorite genres.
I couldn’t fail to mention your Puny BuildTools, which in my case have made it possible for this adventure to be played on multiple retro systems. It would be a real honor if PolyPlay released it on physical media!
Enjoy the game a lot, and here you have a fellow adventurer for anything you need.
Yes, it is now available!
Thanks for adding the Spectrum to the set of supported platforms. But it's a shame it's only for Spectrum +3 (CP/M). Could you please issue the game as an Inform file (z5 or whatever) so that it can be used better/more easily on a Spectrum Next, or indeed one of the countless other platforms that supports these files? Thank you!
Thank you for your interest and feedback! I understand the importance of broader compatibility with platforms like the Spectrum Next, so I plan to upload the game in Inform format (.z5) at a later date. I hope you’ll enjoy it once it’s available!
Thank you!
It’s now available in Z5, I hope you enjoy it!
Excellent! Thanks very much indeed for doing this. In fact, I'd extracted it myself from the Atari ST version (which can be mounted directly as a disk image by changing the file suffix!) – but making the Z5 file directly downloadable, as you now have, is by far the most helpful thing to do, and will be appreciated by anyone who wants to run the game in a Z-machine interpreter.
Thank you for your support — I hope you're enjoying the adventure!
If you extract the story.dat from the "echoes_speccy.dsk" disk image and change its file type to z3 or z5 (honestly, I do not know the differene) and select it from the file browser, then the ZX Spectrum's Next built in infocom interpreter will run it and it appears to work fine! (Just tried it out very briefly)
I made it work with the Next's built in CP/M too, but this isway more convenient! :-)
Hope This help you!
Oh, that’s great. Thanks very much! It makes sense that the file is accessible like that, but I don’t often use CP/M so I haven’t looked into it before. This is potentially a very useful tip for other +3-only adventures, actually.
You are welcome! Yes, you are right, if those games use the same mechanism. You probably know about the Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9 collections made for the spectrum next, very fine old text adventures, all of them. These can be downloaded free of charge and also there are several more new ones (beside the excellent Echoes of the Futures) available for purchase here in itch.io!
It's funny you should mention those compilations, because… not only am I familiar with them, but in fact I was the person who designed the packaging for the Level 9 Compilation! (Check the small-text credits on the back of the box – I got a nice commendation from Mike Austin for producing something that looked so authentic to the Level 9 style!) However, those adventures don't use Inform files; both sets use their own proprietary formats, and Stefan Bylund produced very nice Spectrum Next versions of the interpreters needed to run them. You're right that some of those games are indeed also available for the Spectrum +3 (either exclusively or with pictures exclusive to the +3), but they still use a special interpreter and aren't available as Inform files.
In my previous comment, I was thinking primarily of those few adventures for the Spectrum +3 that are ONLY available on the +3 (not other Spectrum models) on CP/M disks, and which could presumably be extracted from those disks and run 'natively' on some other Inform interpreter, such as ZXZVM on the Spectrum Next. Presumably the same would also be true of adventures packaged up as Ozmoo disks for other platforms, though I haven't investigating extracting those yet either. I don't suppose there are lots of adventures like this, because Inform-format adventures are mostly released as separate Inform files and don't need to be extracted from a platform-specific disk… but there may well be a few like that, so it's worth bearing in mind.
Yes, indeed it's funny that I mentioned this to you of all people! :-)
Very good job, thank you! I'm waiting for the Commodore 64 version.
Thank you so much! 🙏
The Commodore 64 version will be available on May 9th.
Wow, I'll be there, thank you!
Quite nice!
Thank you, I'm glad you liked it!
Are you open for some feedback? If so, what would be the best way to send some spoilers :)
I’m sharing the development version of the adventure precisely so you can send me your comments. Feel free to reach out to me directly via message on my Twitter account: @dareint. I’ll be happy to hear from you.
Nice!
Sadly, I closed my Twitter account because of the transphobic propaganda of the owner of the platform. Email would also work?
Hello, please feel free to send your feedback to my email at dareinteractive@outlook.com. Thank you for your support and collaboration.
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for your feedback! Stay tuned for more updates!
Waiting :)