Text Adventures

[Stark]

I recommend:
-Hitchhiker's Guide
-A Mind Forever Voyaging

There's really not a lot to choose from in this genre outside of the aforementioned Zork. I think they still make sense, because they're essentially interactive fiction. This will make sense as long as people still read books.

Speaking of which, why can't I get Zork on my Nook?

[gtmtnbiker]

The only one I ever finished was Planetfall. I do remember playing Zork I on my uncle's $10K IBM PC in the late 70s.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Try The Count on VIC-20 sometime.

[CRTGAMER]

Try The Count on VIC-20 sometime.

I remember some of those old Scott Adams games! Oh that 22 column screen.

I've recently begun looking into creating and designing my own text adventures, just to have fun watching my creation come together. But despite being exceedingly graphically limited, the expansiveness of the medium amazes me, since any setting or concept can be used as long as you are able to express it with the written word. Sure, what I am creating is simplistic when compared to the more ambitious text games, but I love being able to write my way through creation. It's a powerful feeling.

Maybe tie in the standard single letter commands in your own programming? Unlike Eliza that I mentioned earlier that thrives on a long input, a Text Adventure would be less tedious when the basic commands are implemented as single letter.

So instead of gamer typing:

>go north

Add the direction recognition and a few other key letters:

>n


I = Inventory
N, E, S, W, U, D = North, East, South, West, Up, Down
L N = Look North

A limit of 26 letters and also a way for the program to differentiate a single letter versus the same letter in a phrase. For instance "I Quit" won't be misinterpreted as Inventory, come to think of it that might be good phrase for ending a game.

[noiseredux]

Ack, you should make your game compatible with the FrotzDC interpreter so you can "port" your text adventure to the Dreamcast.

[Ack]

Haha, I appreciate the advice and the encouragement, but I don't think I'm going to make a big public release of it when I finish! This is more of me just seeing if I can do it. Truth is, I'm mainly just learning the ropes and seeing what the medium is capable of, as I'd like to play a bit with gaming. Maybe focus on difficult themes or play with genre concepts. This is mostly for me.

Heck, all I'm doing right now is fairly simple: a kid is in his tree house and is asked to come down by his mother, so he must get down by finding the devices which will get him down a couple of levels out of the tree. Simple, straightforward, let's me get a basic idea. I might let a few of you guys play it for laughs when I finish, but I have no idea when that will be, and I certainly don't expect it to be much of anything beyond me passing it around to friends.

[J T]

I think anyone who is going to claim that the most important aspect of a video game is the "story," needs to play through at least one text adventure from start to finish without whining.

I really have a hard time getting into text-adventure games, especially if they involve a lot of spacial navigation.

The one text-based game I played recently that I enjoyed is Christine Love's Digital: A Love Story. It has a bit of a graphical interface as it tries to recreate the experience of being on bulletin boards in the early days of the internet, but it is largely text-based.

Cypher: Cyberpunk Text Adventure also looks cool, but I haven't played it yet.

I think if you can keep the prose flowing, then these kinds of games can be fun, but if the player gets stuck on some obnoxious puzzle, they suddenly become less fun than a book.

If you're serious about making a text-adventure, you might want to check out this program called ADRIFT.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Also the people that always claim "graphics don't matter" ^.

Let's see how much fun you have without them.

[Menegrothx]

I've never actually played a text adventure game but I dont see why one couldn't be good. I sadly can't remember the name of the games, but I've heard some good things about few other text adventure games besides the Hitchhiker's guide. Aslong as the game has excellent writing and sane game design/puzzles, any person with a normal attention span should be able to enjoy a text adventure game. Although I guess it somewhat destroys the "purity", you can add sound effects, GUI, music and even some images to a text adventure to amplify the athmosphere. I've seen screenshots of text adventure games that used pictures to some extent (showing the player what some object looks like, maps and things like that). You could use pictures both to show players what certain people/objects/places look like, but also use them as hints to puzzles or as a way to solve certain puzzles.

You could also make great RPGs that way, way more proper than any RPG with actual gameplay and graphics.

[BogusMeatFactory]

I have had extensive experience with Text Adventures, playing them back when they were popular and alive to now with the independent scene. Games I recommend aaaaarrreeee.....

I highly recommend playing, A Mind Forever Voyaging, first and foremost, simply because it is one of the most intelligently written and interesting dystopian worlds created. Invest time in playing this for sure.

Other great ones are Suspended, where you are a human embedded in the mainframe of this computer system and things have run awry. You have to control various machines that serve different functions and provide unique senses that help give you clues on what you need to do as you repair and explore the facility.

The planetfall series as well are great and hysterical with very enjoyable characters and story.

Stay away from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Unless you have read the books recently and have them committed to memory, a lot of the puzzles will be impossible. If you met those requirements the puzzles will be near impossible and nonsensical. Stay away.

If you want Text Based adventures with some graphical elements, I highly recommend, spellcasting 101, 201 and 301. They are still a text adventure game just with background images that you see as you explore.



With that aside, what engine are you running? I recommend either using Inform 7, or TADS. Inform gives you a freeform style that reflects conversational speech, but lacks the flexibility that TADS has, which uses a more standard programming language, but can do a LOT more, as well as include art, sound effects etc. through HTML if you wanted.

I have been learning TADS slowly for a while now and love it to death. It has a lot more customization in npc interaction and in depth conversation options that just aren't in Inform (but can be through fan-made add-ons). It really is just a preference thing.

Good luck! and I will definitely play and give tips if you need it, even though my experience is not too good.