The Howdy Glossary

Text Adventure Development System (TADS) is a game development engine that specializes in creating interactive fiction — the kind of games where players read descriptions and type commands to advance the story. The system was developed in 1987 by Michael J. Roberts and has been regularly updated since then. TADS lets developers write their games using a special markup language that's easy to understand, making it popular among indie game creators who want to focus on story and puzzles without having to worry too much about complex programming. Over time, TADS has evolved with support for multimedia elements like images and sound, enhancing the user experience while keeping true to its roots of text-driven gameplay.