Gargoyled

An interactive fiction player with LLM-powered natural language input.

Gargoyled is a fork of Gargoyle that adds natural language input translation. Type plain English prose and Claude translates it into standard IF parser commands before delivering them to the game interpreter.

For example, instead of typing TAKE LAMP. GO NORTH. OPEN DOOR, you can type “grab the lamp, head north, and open the door” and Gargoyled will translate it for you.

When input is already a valid parser command (like LOOK or TAKE KEY), it passes through unchanged — no API call needed.

Setup

API Key

Gargoyled requires an Anthropic API key to enable natural language translation.

macOS: On first launch, Gargoyled will prompt you to enter your API key. It is stored securely in the macOS Keychain.

Alternatively, set the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..."

Without an API key, Gargoyled behaves identically to standard Gargoyle.

Building (macOS)

Requires Homebrew (or MacPorts) with CMake and standard build tools.

# Full build + DMG packaging:
./gargoyle_osx.sh

# Build without creating DMG:
./gargoyle_osx.sh -n

# Clean build:
./gargoyle_osx.sh -c

The resulting Gargoyled.app is self-contained and can be moved to /Applications.

Supported Formats

Gargoyled includes interpreters for all major IF formats: Z-machine (Infocom), Glulx, Hugo, TADS 2/3, Alan 2/3, ADRIFT, AdvSys, JACL, Level 9, Magnetic, Scott Adams, and more.

License

GPLv2+. Original Gargoyle by Tor Andersson and contributors. LLM integration by Jonathan Huston.