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Lessons from creating my first text adventure

75 points by kqr

by chrismorgan

1 subcomments

by thrtythreeforty

3 subcomments

I'm so glad someone finally echo'd how I felt trying and failing to learn Inform 7. It was very much "there is a syntax. We are not going to tell you what it is." It was a shame because it looked so cool to be fluent at. The learning curve was just too high for me.

by bdunks

0 subcomment

Thank you for sharing! After reading the article, I played your game and really enjoyed it. My first text based game in ~30 years.
I was inspired and went on to play one of the games listed on IFDB tagged “short” and “recommended for beginners”. (Suveh Nux).
Also super fun and satisfying to beat!

by ianbicking

1 subcomments

Some of the issues with parsers and knowing what to type could be helped quite a bit if the text adventure interfaces had a bit more affordances. Making important objects bold is an easy one (unless you feel that determining the importance of objects is part of the puzzle). But if you break out of the linear-narrative approach there's a lot to do. Label exits with their destinations (if you have traveled there before). Use colors akin to blue/purple links to indicate history. Inventory doesn't need to be a command. If mapmaking isn't part of the challenge, then give people ways to move quickly (e.g., "go to throne room" could just find a path to the throne room based on your knowledge).