A Change in the Weather

A Change in the Weather is a 1995 work of interactive fiction by Andrew Plotkin, in which the player-character is caught in a rainstorm while out in the countryside. It won the Inform category at the inaugural 1995 Interactive Fiction Competition. The game was included on Activision's 1996 commercial release of Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom.

The game is unusual in that its objective - to prevent a bridge, that the hero crosses early in the game, from being destroyed by the storm - is not apparent from the outset. The player has the option of simply walking away at the start of the game and never crossing the bridge, which ends the game immediately. Once the bridge has been crossed, the game ends immediately if the bridge is destroyed - although the ending states that the player character was able to safely return by other means, regardless. Likewise, if the player manages to save the bridge, they are simply returned to the start location, where all they can do is to leave by the same means that was available at the very start of the game, yielding the same ending message, but with an additional quote at the end. The game is thus taken to represent a literary message about the intrinsic value of personal experiences.