Text adventures

[Desktop Gaming]

Hello.

I used to play a lot of these things years ago - Heroes of Khan, Colossal Cave, Kentilla, Fantasia Diamond, Circus, Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle to name but a few.

If games like this were available now, would anyone bother with them any more?

The thing is, while a modern game might look 'pretty', you get everything laid out for you in proverbial black and white - what you see is what you get. With text adventures, it was sort of an interactive book. It follows a plot but you get to decide where you go and what you do, and the game environment is largely left to the imagination. You will never ever get that in a graphics-intensive game. Using Heroes Of Khan as an example, to this day I have a mental image of what the game world looked like - despite the game being represented in very basic, low resolution graphics. The world looks like what I wanted it to look like.

There might not be a place in modern gaming for text adventures, but I do kind of miss them.

If you were to go down the 'text adventure' avenue now - how would you do it? Typing in various words in the vain hope of performing a simple task correctly would still be incredibly irritating, but there must be a way around that.

Have we just become accustomed to playing games that don't require us to think too hard?

[papillon]

a) Text adventures still exist. There is an active freeware community for 'interactive fiction'. I used to be part of it. The games range from simple to really surreal literary stuff. And free tools for making them have expanded - there are at least three major languages. The IF Comp is one place to start looking, if you're interested.

b) People still sell text adventures, everything from paid-account text-only MUDs to some small-scale sales of big games from the IF community, to a guy calling himself 'Malinche Entertainment' who thinks that he is all that and routinely claims to have single-handedly revived the entire text adventure genre. (You may get the impression that he is not a popular figure in the IF community. Of course, it's better for his marketing if he pretends they don't exist. He claims sales figures that nobody quite believes, but on the other hand does flog his stuff around, including appearing at bookfairs and the like, so he probably sells SOME copies.


http://www.manifestogames.com/1893AWorldsFairMystery - not a Malinche game, much better received by the IF groupies

[Sybixsus]

Have we just become accustomed to playing games that don't require us to think too hard?

Yes, that, plus I think games have evolved to the point where we don't tolerate a lot of the crap we used to when games were a relatively new phenomenon. Did you play any of the Scott Adams adventures? They were ( generally ) very small games with complex, intricate little puzzles, but they were a frustrating pain in the ass and incredibly persnickety about which words they accepted and which words they didn't. People just wouldn't tolerate that kinda thing any more.

You can't really do a text adventure without typing in text, but in these days of massively powerful processors, surely there are some really intelligent parsers out there which can pull all the frustration factor out of things? Since Papillon has a background in IF, perhaps she can answer that. For my part, I don't think text input would be a barrier, but the parser would need to be a lot more tolerant than it often was on old text adventures, and I think you would probably need a lot more atmosphere. Characters to talk to and things to do which are not 100% about the puzzles, so there is actually something to do if you get stuck. Perhaps a bit more AI and interactivity. So if you spend a certain amount of "turns" struggling with a puzzle, a character might approach you and offer to assist, giving you the option to reject their help if you want to continue puzzling.

[papillon]

It's been a while since I've looked at it, but yeah, the popular parsers are way beyond the Scott Adams level.

A modern parser can handle:


>put everything except the card into the bucket

[Computer asks: Which card, the green card or the yellow card?]

>yellow

[And with this clarified, it carries out the original command]


as well as intelligent pronouns - things like 'it' and 'he' will default to the most recent object mentioned of that gender, so

>close the box then lock it

works.


You can still have plenty of frustrations if the author decides to implement really bizarre verbs or clue puzzles badly, but the parsers are less evil than they used to be.

[ZeHa]

Another form would be having pre-defined sentences (e.g. four) and just letting the player choose one. While I personally wouldn't prefer this, I think lots of the "I don't want to think too much"-audience definitely would. Also, your parser would have to be able to recognize spelling errors, and if you want to make the game available to nearly everybody, this could be hard to do, because you'd have to either save lots of wrong spelled words in your word-database, or you'd have to do some intelligent "did you mean....?"-system.

I never got too much into text-only adventures, but I also thought of coding a text-adventure engine that displays still pictures. I think it would be great to have some real horror text-adventure that uses the upper half of the screen for a creepy image, maybe not photo-realistic but more like a pencil-drawing or something, and it should also play moody background music. That would be a really nice experience, and I think it might also be easier for today's folks to dive into a game like that, as opposed to a game that's text only.

[Nauris]

Text adventures do not have to be just all black on white text. Take a look at Vespers3D- those guys are doing some neat things, read their blogs, quite interesting read on development process and some of the problems they are encountering due to use of 3D.

http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/51891/12138

[Jack Norton]

Wow that Vesper3d looks really amazing and innovative thanks for the link!

[ZeHa]

Hmmm... looking at that hand-drawn character and its 3D-counterpart, I'd say for me personally it would be the better way to do it with hand-drawn images

[Musenik]

Hmmm... looking at that hand-drawn character and its 3D-counterpart, I'd say for me personally it would be the better way to do it with hand-drawn images

I feel that way too. About the only 3D I can stand to look at is toon style. (by which I mean to encompass more than just toon shaded 3D.) Final Fantasy III on NDS is a good example of toon style that isn't toon shaded.

[cliffski]

Hello.
Have we just become accustomed to playing games that don't require us to think too hard?

If so, My next game is DOOMED.

I think now is the perfect time to do a text adventure. It doesn't have to be 100% just text, static images are fine. I think people are ready to be pleasantly amazed at just how clever a modern PC can be in terms of handling text input, and providing a huge game to explore.
Some reviewers called Kudos a text adventure, with some pretty pictures, and not in a bad way. It's not an adventure as such, but I see their point.
I would not be surprised if a modern indie text adventure that was well made and had some marketing budget, actually did quite well. Most casual games have a text-based story in them, do the gamers really need the match 3 bit?

[Desktop Gaming]

Well, this thread's taken a twist that I never expected it to! So they're called "Interactive Fiction" now, huh? Makes sense. Even cleaners are called 'domestic operatives' now. Everything has to have a fancy name to make it sound better than it is.

So you reckon a text adventure with a kick-ass parser is very viable? This is most interesting....

[Sol_HSA]

Well, this thread's taken a twist that I never expected it to! So they're called "Interactive Fiction" now, huh? Makes sense.

As far as I know, infocom always called it 'interactive fiction', even back then.

[ZeHa]

So you reckon a text adventure with a kick-ass parser is very viable? This is most interesting....

Yeah, I think so... I think there are many people today who aren't even aware of the existence of such a thing... and they could be amazed: "Wow! I can talk to my computer! And he even understands what I mean! Evn tho I canot spel corectly"

I think, often things develop further and further, and old things are just left behind for the sake of having new ones. But then again, no one asks if those old things are really "worse and outdated" or just "different from newer things".

[Sysiphus]

There were a bunch of parsers in certain moment...

Just trying to remember...TAD... Inform...PAWS(and winPAW)..

Yet tho I allways was more attracted by graphical adventures...maybe 'cause am an artist..I think the free Adventure Game Studio is quite good now... : www.bigbluecup.com

[Alistair Hutton]

Well, this thread's taken a twist that I never expected it to! So they're called "Interactive Fiction" now, huh? Makes sense. Even cleaners are called 'domestic operatives' now. Everything has to have a fancy name to make it sound better than it is.

So you reckon a text adventure with a kick-ass parser is very viable? This is most interesting....

The only thing you've got to look out for is that the quality of freeware text adventures (sorry, interactive fiction) is simply phenomenal. "Tangle (Spider and Web)" is a simply outstanding piece of craft with some of the finest puzzle based IF work I have ever seen. And that is one game amongst donzens of top quality stuff.

On the other hand the IF community is small and does not promote itself all that well to outsiders so a well produced text-adventure that was properly promoted could into a wider desire for the games that is not being reached.

You need to check out the top-rated stuff on Baf's Guide and peruse Brass Lantern and the interactive-fiction newsgroups to see what is currently considered state of the art.

EDIT: Incidentally the IF community have (with their extensive experiance of natural language parsing) does some pretty funky stuff with Inform 7, one of the standard languages they use, the following sample is how you define an enumerated type and apply it to an object that is also defined.

Colour is a kind of value. The colours are red, blue and green. 
A block is a kind of thing. A block has a colour. A block is usually blue. 
Before printing the name of a block: say "[colour] ". Before printing the 
plural name of a block: say "[colour] ". Understand the colour property 
as describing a block.

Personally, I think that's super neat.

[electronicStar]

Yeah interactive fiction has well evolved and some of the games are indeed impressive, but it's still not something that would appeal to the casual crowd.
Real adventure games inherently are based around enigma and investigation and you hae to enjoy restarting the same experience several times. It's still very hardcore.

[Jack Norton]

You should also consider the language. Non-english customers (yes, they do exist) could find very hard to play a game with LOT of texts.

[electronicStar]

But adventure games have already evolved once in history to become casual, it was called : Lucasarts.
I think a *simplified* version of this engine could work with the casual crowd.

[JoshuaSmyth]

I still like the 'Legend Entertainment' version of text adventures ie static images with a text parser and then later evolved to static images with a mouse driven interface.

I think the later could definitely work in the casual space if implemented correctly.

[Wirya]

I think text adventures can still be popular, but it would need a really neat and fresh game design.

I've played Resident Evil Outbreak (File II). One of the most interesting and fun features of that game is the "ad-lib" system. When you press triangle button, a line of dialog text would appear. I found the dialog text to be quite fun to read. Reading it was as fun as watching my character blasting zombies. So, yes, I think text is still a powerful tool to be used in a game.

[Rubes]

I see I'm a little late to the party, but what the heck...

I love text adventures myself, and I still play them through the IF community (mostly at rec.arts.int-fiction). As papillon mentioned, it's a small but dedicated community. I think most of the folks there wish IF could have a larger following, though I think there are many differing opinions on why it doesn't. Ironically, although people here have been talking about advancements in text parsing, a lot of people will tell you it's the parser that keeps them from playing more IF -- limited responses, "guess-the-verb" problems, and so on.

I enjoy IF for the good writing, similar to the way I would enjoy a well-written book. Well-crafted works of IF are good at helping the player visualize the story world in his or her head, and I think the most successful works of IF are appreciated in large part because of the job they do in this respect. Still, it's something of a conflict to me -- I think IF players don't really want to read long paragraphs of text in between turns, so IF authors need to efficiently convey a great deal of information in as few words as possible, to avoid losing the player. This is a skill that not many IF authors have.

IF games are also restricted in that the author needs to make the effort, at each game location, to express where the possible exits are and which objects are nearby. So a lot of times you end up with fairly routine descriptions of what is to the north, south, east, and west, leaving little extra room for stylistic expression. It's one of the things I often find tedious about playing some IF games -- taking the time to create the visual representation of each location in my head based on what is written.

That was one of the inspirations for our attempt at a hybrid 3D-IF game. I wanted to introduce 3D graphics to IF, and likewise to introduce IF to a 3D game. I certainly feel like 3D games can benefit from some of the things offered by text -- both output and input. We'll see, though. In all likelihood we'll probably just end up annoying both 3D and IF enthusiasts by forcing them to deal with the problems and limitations of the other genre.

Thanks Nauris for mentioning Vespers3D...
_________
Vespers3D: An experiment in 3D interactive fiction

[KNau]

Like Myst style adventure games, interactive fiction strikes me as something that could appeal to casual gamers but for that to happen the method of interaction has to change. We're talking about an audience that hates to right-click their mouse, how do you think they'd feel about having to type in "use the gold key in the treasure chest" or even "use key in chest"?

Casual games, so far as I can tell (and admittedly, it's not my field of expertise) are about decisions themselves. It's about meaningfully advancing in the game with each click. In a Mystery Case Files game, every time I click in the play area it's a decision (I think this is an object).

That's the reason I don't see a Lucasarts game working as well. It would be like having to walk a character around the screen in Myster Case Files in order to select objects (rather than just clicking on them). The process of character movement is a meaningless point of interaction that doesn't advance the game.

Hardcore IF fans see typing and "guess what the parser wants me to do" as an integral part of the experience. It's a sentiment that I don't think the wider mainstream audience shares.

[Musenik]

The Witch's Yarn was an attempt to bring adventure gaming to the casual market. It succeeded and it didn't.

It proved to have an interface that casual gamers could pick up and play. It was stylized as a sit-com, for approachability. It had decent art, excellent music, and slightly buggy but reasonable writing.

It failed in the market (not an abject failure, however), because:

1. Casual gamers are not readers, for the most part. They currently don't come to games for a reading experience.
2. The puzzles, although very simple compared to the genre, were too unfamiliar for casual gamers.

I would love to try again, with voice-acting and animation, but that would create a large download, and cost a lot more than most indies could risk.

Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble could be considered a second attempt, but it was conceived as an RPG, and like Papillon, I think there's an important difference.

[Sectarian]

A game I still like playing for PS2 is Manhunt by
Rockstar Games it to has text and lots of ways to eliminate the enemy to achive the objective which is to escape from Carson city.

[papillon]

Casual gamers are not readers, for the most part. They currently don't come to games for a reading experience.

Which is going to be my biggest problem coming up.

[Bad Sector]

Assuming that you're making a visual novel like those in your site and your blog (or wherever i got that free VN you made some time ago), I don't think casual gamers are your ideal audience. You might want to target people who are more into that kind of stuff. Possibly a nice place to put an ad for your next game is manga webcomics, like megatokyo (especially in this comic, one of the main characters plays similar games - on the other side, this site is a little too popular so the rates are a bit high, but a visit in the forums will convince you that the site is full of people interested in games like yours).

[papillon]

It's not entirely a VN, and they aren't entirely my ideal audience, and I've advertised there before but the guy's terrible about actually answering advertising emails - has taken him months when he bothers to answer at all - but getting into more points of why the 'perceived' audience for VNs isn't always the correct one would completely derail this thread.

[tolworthy]

In theory, I.F. should allow the best possible stories, because anything is possible. Think of the most complex crowd scenes in Assassins Creed - IF can describe bigger and better crowds. Think of the most amazing outer space scenes or other CGI in a Hollywood blockbuster - IF can do it better. Think of a game based in the Grand Canyon - other games are restricted to a screen in front of you, but IF can make you feel you are really there.

The obvious problem is the awkward interface and lack of pictures. I think the solution is to make that part of the story.

Make a game based on controlling a simple robot, somewhere that humans can't survive, or somewhere far distant. Like that probe at the start of The Empire Strikes Back, the one that spots the rebels and Chewie blasts it. The probe sent back low quality images (you could make those part of the game too). Imagine if the probe was on the side of the good guys, able to walk around, and could talk back to you in a mechanical voice. The possibilities are endless.

Windows has a built in mechanical voice, and may even have built in voice recognition - I haven't checked. Sure it's crude, and would often need to say "sorry I didn't understand" but that's because the robot is simple (like in Empire).

The game could be about Von Neumann probes - millions and billions of these simple robots are sent out to find life in distant stars, and one day one of them contacts you with amazing or terrifying news. Every kind of story is possible.

You could even tell the users that this was not a game, but was a genuine part of SETI (or the untrademarked equivalent). A similar tactic was used to great success in the Blair Witch project. Think of the marketing buzz you could create!

At least, that's what I'd do.

[MikeRozak]

FYI - I'm working on an interactive fiction authoring toolkit w/ graphics, text-to-speech, and multiplayer.

http://www.CircumReality.com

Still a ways off. My next update will be in about a month, with speed, memory, and text-to-speech improvements.

[bvanevery]

In theory, I.F. should allow the best possible stories, because anything is possible. Think of the most complex crowd scenes in Assassins Creed - IF can describe bigger and better crowds. Think of the most amazing outer space scenes or other CGI in a Hollywood blockbuster - IF can do it better. Think of a game based in the Grand Canyon - other games are restricted to a screen in front of you, but IF can make you feel you are really there.

The obvious problem is the awkward interface and lack of pictures. I think the solution is to make that part of the story.

Um, the other part of the problem is the quality of the writing. Are you a good enough writer to get the reader really jazzed up about all of that? This isn't the 1980's, you aren't going to make any sales based on the novelty value of a new computer gaming medium. Rather, you'll be competing against novelists and the presentation advantages of a linear book. Some of the old Infocom text adventures have sufficient literary flair, others don't.