Help! I am Locked in a Fortune Cookie Factory!

6:02 AM. You overslept in the breakroom. The demolition crew started at 6:00. The east wing is already gone. The wrecking ball is closing in.

Find any way out.

Every exit looks promising until it doesn't.

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A parser text adventure for 2,880 pixels

This is a Thumby game — built for a 72 × 40 pixel OLED display physically 9.7 × 6.9 mm, smaller than a postage stamp. Here it runs in your browser on a faithful emulator of that tiny screen, so you can play the full thing without the hardware.

Parser text adventures have existed since 1976. Every title from Colossal Cave to Zork to everything Infocom shipped was designed for screens with tens of thousands of pixels. The historic lower bound was the ZX Spectrum at 256 × 192 — roughly 17× larger than this display. This game has 2,880 pixels total.

• Colossal Cave Adventure — DEC PDP-10 — ~92,000 pixels
• Zork — Infocom Z-machine — ~92,000 pixels
• ZX Spectrum text adventures — 49,152 pixels
• This game — TinyCircuits Thumby — 2,880 pixels

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On the matter of small things

In 2007, Malcolm and Robert Chaplin etched a book onto a sliver of crystalline silicon 70 micrometers wide. The book was called Teeny Ted from Turnip Town — a fable about a small farmer who wins a small contest at a small county fair. They chose a turnip deliberately. A microscopic book about Pulitzer-worthy literature would feel pompous. A book about a small vegetable is honest about its medium. Guinness certified it the world's smallest book.

Help! I am Locked in a Fortune Cookie Factory! was made in that spirit. A tiny game on a tiny screen, about someone trying to get a tiny message out into the world. The subject fits the medium. The ending earns the title.

Proposed: world's smallest parser text adventure — 2,880 pixels / 9.7 × 6.9 mm / 17× smaller than the historic lower bound.

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Three ways to play

All three versions play the same game with identical outcomes. Only the way you issue commands differs.

• Predictive Wheel — Letter wheel with autocomplete suggestions. Closest to the Thumby hardware feel. Recommended for first-time players.
• QWERTY — Type commands at your keyboard. Freeform parser. Best for desktop.
• Letter Wheel — Cycle letters one at a time. Slowest but most faithful to the vintage IF feel.

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Commands

The parser understands natural two-word commands:

• TAKE / GET / GRAB — pick up an item
• USE / TRY / OPEN / PUSH / PULL — interact with something
• EXAMINE / X / READ / CHECK — look closely at something
• GO / MOVE / WALK + direction — move between rooms
• LOOK / L — describe the current room
• INV / I / POCKETS — list what you carry
• DROP / LEAVE / PUT — set something down
• WAIT — do nothing for a moment

Directions: north / south / east / west (n/s/e/w), out, down, back. Two words are always enough — "take bar", "use vent", "go n" all work.

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What you get

• fortune_cookie_factory.html — Single-file browser bundle running the game on an emulated 72 × 40 Thumby screen. All three input variants, skin and view controls, built-in reference panel with map, command list, hints, and spoiler-gated walkthrough. Play in any browser, no install.
• cookie_faq.txt — Full offline walkthrough in GameFAQs style.

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About

Engine: This game runs on Tharser — a parser IF engine for the TinyCircuits Thumby (72 × 40 OLED) and the browser. Games are authored in JSON; the browser build here emulates the Thumby screen so anyone can play. The engine handles world state, verb parsing, synonym resolution, marquee text display, image overlays, and three distinct input schemes.

Want to make your own? Tharser is free and now available. Build your own tiny parser adventures — for the Thumby, the browser, or both — with the same engine that made this game. The editor runs in your browser, no install required.
→ outgrabe.itch.io/tharser

Studio: Outgrabe — indie games, interactive fiction, and scent-scored paper works. New Haven, Missouri.

ParserComp 2026 submission. Free. No ads. No tracking.

Also submitted to ParserComp: Moon-house Technician (ParserComp 2024) — a slice-of-life parser game about maintenance work on a Victorian-era lunar outpost.

Game narrative, design, and engine by Tyler Wright, DET.