So, what's the deal with adventure games?

[WarpZone]

Okay, see, just for the record, this is what I don't like about text parser games.  I had to try 11 commands before it actually recognized one of them, and the thing I was finally allowed to do was the exact opposite of what I WANTED to do:

Before the Building
The building rises before you, a hulking shadow, blocking out the stars above and disfiguring the moon. Windows upon windows pit its smooth obsidian surface, glinting like tiny gasoline-colored eyes. A garrulous display of floodlights spray up from the ground floor like failed fireworks, casting writhing shadows from the dense bushes that ring the building except where the sidewalk splits them asunder. The slate sidewalk continues from the building, between the hedges to end at your feet, eroded smooth.

>exits
[ You've discovered a verb that the game does not recognize. If you're frustrated, look for common verbs in the general IF help menu by tying 'help'. ]

>leave building
You are already outside the building!

>walk away
You do not see that here.

>exit
But you aren't in anything at the moment.

>flee
[ You've discovered a verb that the game does not recognize. If you're frustrated, look for common verbs in the general IF help menu by tying 'help'. ]

>do not enter building
[ You've discovered a verb that the game does not recognize. If you're frustrated, look for common verbs in the general IF help menu by tying 'help'. ]

>enter building
You see no entrance here.

>shoot self
[ You've discovered a verb that the game does not recognize. If you're frustrated, look for common verbs in the general IF help menu by tying 'help'. ]

>inventory
You are carrying nothing.

>look around
I only understood you as far as wanting to look.

>look

Before the Building
The building rises before you, a hulking shadow, blocking out the stars above and disfiguring the moon. Windows upon windows pit its smooth obsidian surface, glinting like tiny gasoline-colored eyes. A garrulous display of floodlights spray up from the ground floor like failed fireworks, casting writhing shadows from the dense bushes that ring the building except where the sidewalk splits them asunder. The slate sidewalk continues from the building, between the hedges to end at your feet, eroded smooth.

>follow sidewalk

South Entrance
Here, the sidewalk ends at double-glass doors, surrounded by hedges. The floodlights crouched near the building wall spew harsh fluorescent light upwards, making the doors nearly translucent. The wind sighs, rustling the hedges, and their shadows flicker in menacing serpent-shaped dances.

The yellowed glass doors are closed.

A sleek, black brick is mounted flush to the wall, blinking red. A narrow indentation bisects it left to right.

You can also see a spiky soft ball here.

>

All I wanted to do was, you know, get away from the building, since every single word of text in the introduction made it clear that entering the building would be pretty much a Bad Thing.  Failing that, I tried to enter the building, and was AGAIN thwarted.  It doesn't even use a nice simple N,S,W,E description so I can't properly visualize the area.  I guess I'm just the wrong type of player for parser games.

Oh.  But I've just realized that I was playing Building, the demo game that comes with not WinFrotz, and not Curses.  I'll be sure and give Curses a go before I dismiss the genre.  I just felt the log of my first steps in Building made a better demonstration of my issue with the genre than anything I could have come up with.

[WarpZone]

I started curses, but I couldn't figure out what was going on.  They refused to give you a list of obvious exits to each room, so finding the room directly below the attic room where I lost the key to the attic (which, correct me if I'm wrong, wouldn't that not be such a big deal if I was already IN the attic with an open attic door to begin with?) was already infinitely more difficult than it would be in real life.

When I meandered east a few times, and started to realize how large the house was, I quickly lost interest.  I'm sure it's a great text parser game, but it doesn't even try to meet me half way in terms of presenting the information I need in order to make choices in the game.  If anything, it only made me better appreciate the games that have pictures of each room with big, obvious doors connecting them.  

Sorry, Ghost.

[Ghost]

I meant to showcase Curses! because it is considered a genre milestone, despite its shortcomings. Some puzzles are pretty unforgiving, and you can blow up the game in certain places without noticing so.

Your reaction demonstrates the difference between an "oldfashioned" and a "modern" player. We (that is, people like me, who are well above 30) have grown up with this sort of game. If we read "banister rails leading east", we know that we can go east, and leave it at that. Leaving the attic means losing the game, so the dropped key is considered a challenge that will be faced later (in this case you will, later in the game, use a toy mouse with a magnet attached to it to get the key back).
We learned the rules a long time ago and still remember them.

A modern player, on the other hand, has never experienced this strange feeling that a computer seems to "understand" natural language. That a game reacts. That someone actually wrote code that punishes you for using swearwords. It's something that's oldfashioned. But as Radiant said, these games are still played, and enjoyed. I just wanted to show you the graphic-less side of the coin. Somehow I'm a bit disappointed you dismissed it so quickly, but no offence taken.

[WarpZone]

None intended, man.

But, I mean, not telling the player up front that leaving the attic means you lose?  Not ending the game after the player loses?  Building dozens of rooms well outside the playable area of the game?  Forget video game theory; this game doesn't even follow the basic precepts of most board games, sports, or indeed fiction.

Maybe I'll read a walkthrough some time in order to understand what's so great about it without the tedium of actually playing it.  Seriously.  It's so unapproachable, I can't immagine anyone ever deliberately playing it unless it was released under circumstances in which it was the only game availible to play, ever, and no one had ever played a computer game before or had any expectations whatsoever.

I actually have played one or two interactive fiction games before, and I've got three words for you.  Obvious Exits Are:

I'll certianly do some digging on the staple text-only games when I find the time.  CCC and all that.  And yes, I can appreciate that discovering the rules of this game can be a game in itself.  I've certianly played some Flash games before that wove a compelling, if visual thread of egnigmatic interactivity and discovery, just by making you wonder what you should click on, then surprising you with the results when you do finally click.  I suppose there's no reason why you can't do that same mysterious thing with text.  But enjoyment of such a game requires a certian mindset, going into it, and I certianly wasn't expecting what I got.

It's basically a video game that plays like performance art.  That's not neccessarily an insult, or a compliment, but it's my sincere first impression.

You weren't just showing me the text side of the coin, you see.  Any well-written text-only game could do that.  Any MUD, MUSH, or MOO, for that matter.  You were actually inadvertantly also showing me the minimalist-usability approach.  The not-even-pretending-to-hold-the-player's-hand approach.  And while I can certianly appreciate the mystique of that approach (Alternate Reality Games are the wave of the future, y'know,) I think it's important to at least let the player know up front what he's getting into.  Otherwise, you end up with confusion like mine.

And I mean, now that I realize the game has a secret agenda of its own, it definitely warrants further consideration.  The real takeaway from Curses! is the philosophical opposite of a simplistic GUI.  It's not just a text game, but a deliberately obtuse text game.  The kind of game that causes 30 or 40 players to discuss the game at lunch or over late-night phone calls.  Because honestly, there's no other way to get through it.

I'm familiar with this concept, it's the driving force behind the newly-emerging field of ARGs.  I just never expected to be handed a single-player video game that used it.  And I certianly wouldn't develop such a game at this day in age, because as soon as The Internet has all the pieces to the puzzle, the complete solution will be availible via Google overnight.  The only reason ARGs manage to build and sustain that kind of communication is because the pieces of the puzzle are released one by one, very gradually, over a period of months.  And as soon as the game is over, it's over, and no newcomers to the game can really get anything new out of it, because the public discourse, speculation, and experimentation has all already been accomplished.

It's an interesting methodology, though, and certianly the antidote to all my previous complaints about Adventure Games not being transparent enough.  I'll definitely try to learn what I can from Curses!, when I have the time.

Thank you.

[Ghost]

None intended, man.

But, I mean, not telling the player up front that leaving the attic means you lose?  Not ending the game after the player loses?  Building dozens of rooms well outside the playable area of the game?  Forget video game theory; this game doesn't even follow the basic precepts of most board games, sports, or indeed fiction.

The preface tells you that you want to find a key in the attics, and you start in the attics. All locations you visit are part of the attics. If you leave the attic through the trapdoor, you lose, and the game says so.

I won't go defending a game here- games are, after all, a matter of style, but I wanted to clear this up. 

One thing I find important, however, is your mentioning that "non-accessibilty" aspect. Adventure games, as has been mentioned here before, are about exploration, discovery. It has also been said that all those commands are actually part of a game to support the exploration. You seem to wish for a clear, simple interface, with the largest effectiveness and accessibility possible.

The old joke about the "press a to win the game" effect suddenly pops up. An interface should be slick and simple, just don't forget to take care that a GUI never solves your game for you.

[WarpZone]

Ehhh?  I thought it said "to the west the banister goes down a flight of stairs, following it east goes blah de blah de blah"  I went west.  I figured that meant I was on the second floor of the house now.  It had a greenhouse and a sitting room and everything.  Or so I thought.  Maybe I was reading it wrong.

For that matter, just the fact that the word "attic" was plural threw me.  Was this supposed to be some kinda mansion or something?  Or was every move command the equivilent of a 5-foot step?

Now I'm more ocnfused than ever.  The more I learn, the less I know.  Heh.

[Ghost]

The game takes place in The Meldrew Halls, and it is indeed a large manor, and by and by you can puzzle together that you're the last Meldrew, who has all the junk and none of the splendor. 

During the game you eventually explore the attics and will find them about 20 locations in size and a century or so deep. I was quite comfortable with that but I agree that it can surprise anyone not familiar with the, well, mechanics of IF.

I was a bit unfair, because Curses really is a hard game. There is a walkthrough, though. If you're willing to give it a second chance, d'load it and play the game with the walkthough by your side. I promise you will not regret it.

[Radiant]

Okay, see, just for the record, this is what I don't like about text parser games.

No, this is the fallacy that people always bring up when talking about text parser games. Any decent parser, which includes just about everything by Infocom and Legend, won't have you verb hunting. The problem is that the parsers people are most familiar with, i.e. Sierra, are abysmal in quality.

But text games tend not to take you "by the hand" as much as most contemporary games. Sandboxing hath its charms.

[WarpZone]

So is the AGS parser "one of the good ones?"  It sounds like what really makes or breaks a text parser game isn't the parser itself, but the words you populate it with and the relationships between those words.  Synonyms, combinations of verbs and objects, and so forth.

For reference, I made it through Trilby's Notes, and I considered it a "pretty good" game as far as text-parser games go.  But I was still mildly annoyed in a few spots where solutions I thought were obvious simply hadn't been considered by the guy who wrote the game.  Do you cosnider that a parser issue?  I think of it as more of a content oversight.  I.E., just to make sure I understand what you're saying, do you think of keywords as content or part of the parser?

I realize that it's possible to make good text-parser games.  Don't worry about that.  In fact, I'm fairly certian (based on anecdotal evidence) that a text-parser adventure game would be more popular than the same game content implemented as a point-&-click.  I'm just not sure at this point if I'd want to do it that way or not.  Frankly, I don't trust myself to adequately predict what the players would attempt.

I do appreciate your opinions, though, and I hope you'll keep sharing them.  I don't learn anything when everyone agrees with me.

[Radiant]

So is the AGS parser "one of the good ones?"

Unfortunately, not really, although you can help by filling it's synonym table.

What makes a good parser is being able to "put all books except the green in the big suitcase then lock it". No, I'm not kidding.

[WarpZone]

Fascinating.

You know, I'd always heard that Starship Titanic had "the most advanced parser evar" or something, since it was produced years after the genre was largely played-out in a commercial sense.  It was supposed to allow all kinds of unheard-of interactivity, even capable of going off on tangents and getting into conversations with the player.  But when I finally got the game and installed it, it just kept trying to nudge me along its own pre-defined path on rails.  Then it turned out the Suck-U-Bus graphics wouldn't display.  Patches didn't help, so I assumed it was just a graphics driver incompatability or a dammaged disk.  It wasn't living up to the hype, and for all I know there could have been important buttons to click hidden in that black void, so I eventually uninstalled it.

Tell me, what are some of the best text games with the best parsers?  They can be graphical or text-only.  Either way.  Parsers seem very important to you, so I might as well learn about them by studying some of your favorites.

And more directly relevant to the matter at hand, what are some of your favorite AGS games, and why?  I assume you're here because you like Adventure Games, even if they don't have a text parser, or have a mediocre one.

[Ghost]

Inform can be considered the leading standard in the text parser genre, on the base that it
a) comes with a huge library of pre-made commands
b) can easily be custom-made to include even more commands
c) can digest relatively natural and complex sentences
and
d) is capable of parsing even vague input by asking sensible questions.

Inform can be found here.
http://www.inform-fiction.org/inform6.html

And this magazine might also be of interest...
http://www.xyzzynews.com/

The Starship parser could have been great but was, in my oppinion, a let-down. The same goes for the game itself.

Parsers are just tools, but I surely appreciate the interest. The hidden beauty of a parser is that the seem so old-fashioned, but are in fact highly sophisticated. I mean, it's a software that must understand grammar and reply to it. Typing "eat fish" is easy but feels a bit like writing a stenograph; "look under the table, take everything from under the table but the large imp with a chainsaw", however, feels natural and can be parsed by Inform.
Also, disambiguities like "fire the waiter" can be automatically sorted out 

Since you seem to be very open-minded (always highly appreciated) I have another little gem: Nord and Bert Can't Make Head Or Tails Of It is a superb IF that relies on puns. Only on puns. The whole gameplay is to re-style the scenery by finding plays on word, so that a gritty pearl can become a pretty girl or you can gobble up your words.

I don't know if it can be (legally) found on the 'nets, but it might be at some abandonware site.

[Radiant]

Oh don't get me wrong, I do enjoy graphical adventure games a lot. I just also like text parser games. Plus I'm took a class in college studying their back-ends.

The most advanced parser ever is surprisingly old. Try anything by Infocom, really. Most of them are downloadable for free, if you google them.

Wishbringer is good for beginners. Enchanter/Sorcerer/Spellbreaker is an excellent trilogy (note that the third part is really hard). Then, there are a lot of indie games in the genre, with a yearly contest (where you do get graded on literary qualities). Good games include The Meteor, The Sherbet and the Long Glass of Ice Tea (weird title, I know) and my personal fave would be Slouching Towards Bedlam (which is not really recommended to beginners).

The company Legend was founded by an infocommie, and borrowed their parser. Spellcasting 101 and (esp.) 202 are very nice, as is Eric the Unready. These are probably available on eBay or in bargain bins.

Finally, although they have somewhat less advanced parsers, three classics that are worth trying are Zork (aka Colossal Cave), The Hobbit, and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (all of which should be available for free, and the Hobbit has graphics albeit low-res ones).

Fave AGS games? I suppose it would not be humble to point out my own (see signature)? I haven't played any AGS games with a text parser, I don't think it is used much. Good games that come to mind are Larry Vales (for the humor), Spooks (for the main character) and Cirque de Zale (for the overall gamingness).

IMHO, of course. You owe me a penny for my thoughts

[Ghost]

abandonia.com has some of the games Radiant mentioned, plus Lurking Horror, a game that can only be considered a must-play. Tricky, though, but great atmosphere all the same.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

As an old player of adventure games, I'm pretty much tossing my hat in with you on the text parser issue, WarpZone.  I've played just about every game mentioned so far and found them lacking in the interactivity department and just not very engaging unless looked at as a novel you have some minor control over (when seen from this view I've enjoyed a few of them, though not because they were games). 
     The thing you have to understand about IF, though, is that they were designed around guiding a player towards a solution rather than drawing a big sign and saying 'here it is'.  The hand-holding nature of modern games has become more than a small problem in my opinion, relieving the player of all but the most simple decisions and showing or telling you exactly what you need to do in most cases to achieve the optimum result.  What this does is make you lazy, and the lazier you get the less likely you are to even try to enjoy a challenging game, often to the point where you'll just play with a walkthrough handy.  That isn't really enjoying a game, and I think there needs to be some place between not showing you anything and making it all obvious. 

I happened to play a Cthulhu-based IF awhile back that was like an rpg, with classes and combat and such and an interesting story.  I don't remember the name right now, but what it lacked in sheer input options it made up for with good dialog and amusing gameplay.

[Oddysseus]

Frankly, I don't trust myself to adequately predict what the players would attempt.

I just want to point out that you can always go back and modify the game after you release it, according to player suggestions.  Or you could have it extensively play-tested and write responses to all the commands the testers tried (Al Lowe used this method when creating Leisure Suit Larry 1).

[LUniqueDan]

How comfortable are you with me tainting the Adventure Game format with other genres?
If, and olny if, it makes sense with the thematic I'm sure it can be good.

Let's agree that Adventure Games are NOT dead.  Which would you prefer: nostalgia, or continued advancement of the genre?
As many have said before, it's somewhat a fake dilema.

I'm not a nostalgic. I'm just a realist. IMHO I have difficulties to appreciate actual commercial adventure game, mainly for their lack of possible interaction, their propention for pixel-hunting and their huge linearity. And most of those happens to be side effects of putting so many ressources on graphics / animations / movies.


The Dan Movie-Like Modern-Adventure-Game Emulator
- Put a movie in your dvd player. Every 5 minutes stop it and roll a D6 :

1 - Take a walk back and forth to the washroom D6 times. Press Play.
2 - Read a random page of a joke magazine. Rewind 2 minutes. Read the joke again.
3 - Do a crossword puzzle or a Chessmaster 2000 tutorial. For any hesitation you had, hit the |<< button.
4 - Unplugued your DVD-player. Wear boxing gloves. Replug it then press play.
5 - Put a totally different DVD in. Continue the game with this one for the next 15 minutes.
6 - Lock yourself in a cupboard. Stay there and roll the dice until you got 6 again. Get out.



If you want your characters to actually talk, or if your expecting them to have a fully realistic animation to everything they do you're taking the risk to shorten a lot the possible game play. The typical exemple was Phantasmagoria. You just can't do nothing. The gameplay is to found what you can actually interact to trigered a movie.

[bicilotti]

The Dan Movie-Like Modern-Adventure-Game Emulator
- Put a movie in your dvd player. Every 5 minutes stop it and roll a D6 :

1 - Take a walk back and forth to the washroom D6 times. Press Play.
2 - Read a random page of a joke magazine. Rewind 2 minutes. Read the joke again.
3 - Do a crossword puzzle or a Chessmaster 2000 tutorial. For any hesitation you had, hit the |<< button.
4 - Unplugued your DVD-player. Wear boxing gloves. Replug it then press play.
5 - Put a totally different DVD in. Continue the game with this one for the next 15 minutes.
6 - Lock yourself in a cupboard. Stay there and roll the dice until you got 6 again. Get out.

Spoiler

I'm stuck. Rolled a 6 and I cant continue cuz there's no light in my cupboard pl z someone ehlp!

[close]

It's something like half an hour I'm laughing while reading the MAGE (what an acrostic/acronym by the way)!

[blueskirt]

How important is it to include seperate "look," "talk," and "hands" commands?

It's not really important, what is important is to find an equilibrium between the simplicity of left click/right click and the challenge of text parser interfaces. A two mouse buttons interface's simplicity can be compensated with intelligent and more challenging inventory puzzles, witty dialogue trees and a varying range of puzzles. An interface need to be easy to use without being a "click the button to solve the puzzle" kind of game. Gobliins 2 come to my mind as another example of adventure game that only had a 1 button that was used to look, take, use, talk and yet was very challenging. The Kyrandia games too only had a 1 or 2 mouse button interfaces and were very good games.

Verbs and interface can also serve a bigger role in adventure game, an unique interface/set of verbs can greatly improve the game's experience and the range of verb available to the player can also tell a bit about your protagonist's personality. Loom's musical interface and Full Throttle's "Look, Talk, Interact/Punch, Kick" verb-coin interface are good examples of that.

Do I really need to worry about the 286s in the audience?

Personally the only thing that might pull me off is the installer file's size. For a .torrent I won't mind, but begining at 250mb, I'll think twice before I download an installer only available in direct download.

How comfortable are you with me tainting the Adventure Game format with other genres?

I am very confortable with it, but I represent only a fraction of a 0.0001% of the adventure community. From general experience, a significant chunk of the adventure community is allergic to any adventure games that doesn't fit their own personal definition of a traditionnal adventure game. For some not only arcade sequences are a problem but they would completly ditch the puzzle solving aspect of it and just keep the storytelling and exploration aspects.

Nothing prevent you from making experiment with the adventure game genre, but release one or two polished prototypes for free to test the market before you venture yourself in commercially releasing an adventure game that combine aspect of other genres.

Let's agree that Adventure Games are NOT dead.  Which would you prefer: nostalgia, or continued advancement of the genre?

I'm all for continued advancement of the genre, but this advancement isn't only limited to the graphical aspect of the game. Increasing the screen resolution or bringing 3D is a way, but so is introducing new graphical style, like noir for example, introducing new GUI and set of Verbs, introducing a new gameplay experience in an adventure game, new way to deal with puzzles, new way to tell a story or telling new kind of story unseen in the adventure genre before... A game may be visually retro, yet 10 years forward gameplay or storytelling speaking, or may be visually stunning yet 20 years backward gameplay or storytelling speaking.

I actually have played one or two interactive fiction games before, and I've got three words for you.  Obvious Exits Are:

I couldn't agree more with you there. Information in game should be obvious, not subtly hidden somewhere because the creator felt it would be a good idea to make their game not feel like a game. "Obvious exits are:" is as vital as seeing the ressources collected in a RTS, the amount of health in an action game or ammo in a FPS. How many people threw a fit because the amount of health in 1213 was subtly hidden in the heart beat noise?

[EldKatt]

I couldn't agree more with you there. Information in game should be obvious, not subtly hidden somewhere because the creator felt it would be a good idea to make their game not feel like a game. "Obvious exits are:" is as vital as seeing the ressources collected in a RTS, the amount of health in an action game or ammo in a FPS. How many people threw a fit because the amount of health in 1213 was subtly hidden in the heart beat noise?

I didn't. It still told me pretty unambiguously what my health level was. And I also think that "to the east lies a cornfield" is obvious enough to convey that if you want to go to the cornfield, go east. Assuming you actually read the room descriptions, and if you don't, why are you playing IF? Or, perhaps more importantly, if you don't want to read the room descriptions, the game fails for that reason. I think this is sort of a false dichotomy: deliberately hiding the exits is bad, so the most obvious presentation must be the optimal one. I disagree.