There are two ways to play this game: either right in your web browser, or though an interpreter, a separate program that’s specifically for playing parser-based IF games like this one. We are interested in testing the accessibility of many IF play-styles, so the way you approach this is yours to choose.
Please try to get as far as you can in this game. It is intentionally filled with challenges to the accessibility of various IF platforms, and you might find yourself stuck on some, through no fault of your own. If you find that accessibility issues prevent you from continuing through the game, even with the assistance of the included walkthrough (linked below), stop playing and proceed to fill out the post-game survey.
Before playing, please read a preparatory guide written by the game’s author.
If you get stuck while playing, you may also consult a walkthrough. Our preliminary testing makes us expect that the game will fall short of good accessibility on many platforms, so do not feel shy about using that walkthrough if you need to in order to play as much of this game as you can.
If you are already familiar with playing parser-based IF games and have a favorite way to play them, please do make use of it here! It doesn’t need to be one of the interpreter programs we’ve listed below. Just be sure to tell us about your setup in the post-game survey. The game will run in any interpreter program capable of loading Glulx games.
If you don’t already have IF software installed on your computer, no worries! The rest of this guide is for you.)
If you’d like to play A Night Below the Opera in your web browser, just follow this link. The game should begin immediately.
We assume that you will play in a fairly recent version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge. If you prefer or require an older or different browser, please do use that instead, and mention this on your post-play survey.
There exist several different interpreter programs we’d like to test. If you’d like to try this route, then you may choose any of the ones listed below, depending upon your operating system.
In every case, you can play the game on the interpreter you choose by downloading and installing that interpreter’s most recent version onto your computer or mobile device, and then opening the file A Night Below the Opera.glorb in it. You can download that file at this link.
If you find yourself stuck trying to get the game working in an interpreter, please drop us a line and we’ll do our best to help. (Note that there’s a chance an interpreter might be flat-out inaccessible with your AT setup – in which case, we definitely want to know that as well!)
Lectrote is an open-source parser IF interpreter by Andrew Plotkin, first released in 2016. It runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Gargoyle a cross-platform interpreter originally created by Tor Andersson. It is meant to run on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Please note that our preliminary testing suggests that Gargoyle works very poorly with screen readers. We absolutely invite you to try anyways if you’d like (and especially if you are both technically inclined and brave enough to try installing it from source).
If you do, and find yourself making no progress at all with it, let us know, and then please feel free to try a different way to play this game. (And if you do and it works beautifully, by all means let us know that as well!)
Frotz is an IF interpreter for iOS devices (including iPhone and iPad) by Craig Smith. You can download and install it via the App Store.
Fabularium is an IF interpreter for Android devices by Tim Cadogan-Cowper. You can download and install it via Google Play.
As the name implies, David Kinder’s WinGlulxe runs only on Windows. You can download it here.
Glkterm is a software library by Andrew Plotkin; when compiled along with his separate Glulxe software, it creates an IF interpreter that runs in a terminal window. It has no OS-specific releases, but you can download its most recent source code here.
As this description has probably already made clear, you should give this one a try only if you already feel comfortable with compiling C programs from source, using a given Makefile and following instructions and advice in a README file. If none of that makes sense to you (or if it does make sense but doesn’t sound like any fun at all), no worries – just use of the other interpreters instead!