It’s pretty cool to see a Chronicle of Higher Education blog covering text games:

It’s noon and you’ve still got 1,000 words to type. That might not
seem like much, but it’s been months since you’ve last worked on your
dissertation and distractions are plentiful. To make matters worse,
your girlfriend, Violet, says she’s out the door and flying back to
Australia if you don’t finish the paper by the end of the day.

What’s your next move?

This is the premise for Violet,
a text-based computer game in which a graduate student is the main
character. As the student, you must fight through countless
distractions and solve a number of puzzles to finish the paper in time
to save your relationship. The story is told by Violet, who allows you
to examine objects in your office and ask for hints.

Created by Jeremy Freese, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University, Violet recently won the 14th annual Interactive Fiction Competition.