Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software containing simulated environments in which players use text commands to control characters. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as computer games. In common usage, the word refers to text adventures, a type of adventure game with text-based input and output. The term is sometimes used to encompass the entirety of the medium, but is also sometimes used to distinguish games produced by the interactive fiction community from those created by games companies. It can also be used to disambiguate the more modern style of such works, focusing on narrative, from the more traditional focus on puzzles. More expansive definitions of interactive fiction may refer to all adventure games, including wholly graphical adventures such as Myst.

Today, interactive fiction no longer appears to be commercially viable, but a constant stream of new works is produced by an online interactive fiction community, using freely available development systems. Most of these games can be downloaded for free from the Interactive Fiction Archive (see external links).

Since 1995 there has been an annual Interactive Fiction Competition for relatively short works. There are also annual XYZZY Awards given out in various categories, modelled on the Academy Awards. Another annual competition, the Spring Thing, has been held since 2001 to highlight works considered to be too long for the Interactive Fiction Competition