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Cairn: Interactive Fiction

by Daniel Ducat more by this developer →

#389,608 of 726,372 by ratings on Apple · #81,613 of 125,682 in Games

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Category: Games

Description

Cairn is a player for classic text adventures. It does not include any games — you bring your own story files.

Many classic and modern titles are available free from the Interactive Fiction Database and community archives. If you own Infocom games, Cairn plays those too.

One app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, included with a single purchase. Your stories, saved games, materials, and the maps Cairn draws all travel with you through iCloud — begin an adventure on your Mac, continue it on your iPad, and check a hint on your phone.

Unlike traditional interpreters, Cairn automatically builds a visual map of the world as you explore, so you can focus on puzzles and discovery instead of keeping graph-paper maps by hand.

Cairn is a rich play desk for classic adventures. Attach your own PDFs and images to each story — manuals, maps, feelies, and other reference materials — then read them beside the game. PDFs include page navigation, single- and two-page layouts, and fit and zoom controls.

Cairn also supports user-supplied InvisiClues hint files in a compatible JSON format. Hints appear in their own tab, grouped into booklet-style sections, and reveal one clue at a time.

Every playthrough carries a notebook. Write down door codes, maze mappings, and the thing to come back to once you find the lamp, in a tab beside the story rather than on paper. A button drops in where you are, what you are carrying, your score, the move count, or the last thing you typed. Notes travel in the saved game, so restoring a save brings back what you knew at the time along with the map and the transcript.

An at-a-glance inventory bar shows what you are carrying below the transcript, without typing an inventory command and without costing you a turn. The live map is flexible too: rooms take custom shapes, and you can hide or restore any of them.

On iPhone and iPad the story takes the whole screen, and the map, your notes, and every attached document are one tap away.

Cairn offers readable themes, including IBM PC Color and DEC VT241-inspired options, with previews and immediate Settings changes.

Cairn supports the complete classic Infocom Z3, Z4, and Z5 catalog and also plays Z-machine version 7 and version 8 stories, opening the door to modern Inform 6 and Inform 7 interactive fiction beyond the Infocom era. Beyond Zork and Version 6 graphical stories are not supported.

Compatible adventures include classics such as Zork, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Planetfall, Enchanter, Trinity, Bureaucracy, Suspended, Deadline, Wishbringer, Spellbreaker, and many more.

Features

- A session notebook saved with each game
- Automatic live mapping as you explore
- Visual room and connection tracking
- Support for Z3, Z4, Z5, Z7, and Z8 story files
- Attached PDF and image materials
- PDF page navigation, layouts, fit, and zoom controls
- Image zooming and scrolling
- InvisiClues hint browsing from compatible JSON files
- Spoiler-safe clue reveal controls
- At-a-glance inventory bar
- Adaptive side-panel tabs for maps, notes, PDFs, images, and hints
- Custom room shapes, hidden rooms, and per-connection line routing, stroke, and labels
- Separate map and text presentation options
- Library management for your adventures
- Tag your stories however you think of them, then filter, group, and search by tag
- Add several stories at once, with covers and descriptions from the Interactive Fiction Database
- One app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac with a single purchase
- Stories, saved games, and materials synced across your devices with iCloud
- Native menus and keyboard shortcuts on Mac and iPad
- Layouts that adapt from iPhone to ultrawide displays
- Designed for newcomers and longtime interactive fiction fans

IMPORTANT! Cairn does not include any game files, manuals, maps, images, or hint files. You supply your own from your personal collection or other legal distribution channels.

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History

Tracking since 09/05/2026. History accumulates as changes are observed — check back soon.