The Greatness of Text Adventures
4 points by jhd3
4 points by jhd3
Question to the lobster community, any recommendations for text games that folks recommend for elementary school aged kids? Or experience introducing family members to the genre (hints or tips that help, new to all computer games, players get into the mechanics)?
In a similar vein, I've been following Renga in Blue for years. His All the Adventures series is a liveblog of playing through every (text) adventure game ever made in (nearly) chronological order. Quite a bit of interesting history comes up throughout!
I loved Zork and the Hitchhiker's Guide text adventures as a kid, and programming my own text adventure was one of my first personal projects as a new coder in middle school. That low barrier to entry as a coder is another great quality. But text adventures always had a problem: the author couldn't anticipate every reasonable command the player might type. Whenever I entered something that made sense, like, "Flirt with goblin," and the game didn't respond sensibly, the immersive experience ended abruptly and left me frustrated. I hope AI-enhanced text adventures will transform the genre!