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So working on a text adventure game...thoughts? Follow

#1 Jun 09 2012 at 11:12 PM Rating: Decent
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So I recently started playing around with Q64 which is Qbasic that works on newer PCs. Starting working on a interactive story/text adventure sort of game. The story will involve exploring an old abandoned mine. It isn't going to be one of those games where you have to actually type out "Get this" or "Go North" etc. It also will be more than simply reading a story and picking 1 to go left and 2 to go right. While most choices generally will be "Press 1 to do this, Press 2 to go North, etc there will also be items to be collected, puzzles to be solved, items to be crafted, etc. For example the game starts off in your apartment. Your first choices are to read a newspaper, go into kitchen, go to bedroom, exit apartment, or quit. In order to go outside you have to at minimum read the newspaper and get a bottle of water out of the kitchen. There is another item in the house you can get from the bedroom.

The newspaper has to be read because in short it has an article about this mine and gives some background as to why you would want to go there in the first place. The water is basically just used as a heal potion. The other item isn't required to complete the game/story but it makes it a whole lot easier. Once you get into the mine certain areas are blocked off until you obtain certain item(s) from other rooms. There are also "Notes" which can be collect optionally for extra points and they add to the story. The health bar is there for when a player makes a poor choice. For example lets say the room your in tells you the path to your east has spikes on the floor. Player decides to go east. You will get a message telling you how you tried to cross the spikes and couldn't do it and you take X amound of damage (max health is 100) . If your health hits 0 you get a different message telling you how you died. When there is a bad choice to be made there will be hints that it might be risky, not just simply you made a choice with no information and didn't guess right. When certain conditions are met to progress through the game the text will change accordingly and new options will become available.

Anyways does this sound like something a modern gamer would be interested in playing? I know text adventure games were kinda popular 30 years ago, not sure if anybody would have any desire to play something like this now?
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#2 Jun 10 2012 at 11:12 PM Rating: Decent
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So working on a text adventure game...thoughts?


Don't bother.
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#3 Jun 11 2012 at 7:10 AM Rating: Excellent
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Omegavegeta wrote:
Don't bother.

Harsh but probably close to true. Maybe someone would play around with it on a website but I don't imagine there's an audience to actually download it and mess around with it.
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#4 Jun 11 2012 at 7:14 AM Rating: Good
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fronglo wrote:
Anyways does this sound like something a modern gamer would be interested in playing?
Not really, especially when you consider there are countless real free games on the internet.
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#5 Jun 11 2012 at 10:28 AM Rating: Good
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If it's good practice and fun for you then go for it. If your aim is widespread interest or commercial success I would temper that greatly. Now if you added cute anime girls that stand around in the background while you decide to pick up the torch or not, then you might be on to something!
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#6 Jun 11 2012 at 10:58 PM Rating: Decent
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Master Shojindo wrote:
Now if you added cute anime girls that stand around in the background while you decide to pick up the torch or not, then you might be on to something!



I wonder how many of those Xbox indie games sell using that practice lol.

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#7 Jun 21 2012 at 8:54 PM Rating: Decent
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I finished Chapter one on here. Might be some bugs in it still but should work if anybody would like to try it. Game is called Mystery of the Mushroom Mine. It is completely text. Basically you hit a number to make a choice. There is an inventory screen and some choices can cause harm to you which takes away from your health. At the end there is a rpgish fight. Was compiled with QB64 thus the reason for all the .dll files. I figure if a handful of people actually like it I might continuing working on it.

This link shows an advertisement I think just giving everyone a heads up if that offends you, figure if all the free download services going to force an ad on people might at well be this one.

Click Here
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#8 Jun 21 2012 at 10:50 PM Rating: Good
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There are fans for niche games like this. It matters great deal to have a "hook" though. Merely creating a functioning game is insufficient to attract attention. If you think the novelty of a modern adventure game done in the classic style is enough to make it interesting, then I'll tell you that you're wrong. It's been done.

A potential trap many lone wolf developers fall into is the retro trap. They'll design an old style game in the old style for deliberate effect. This includes often includes game art designed to look like classic pixel sprites and music limited to midi type sounds. As a hook, it does work, but it's a very common one, and so it loses a lot novelty fast.

A more common technique is to have a very defining game feature. Ookami is Zelda, but it got some attention because of its unique art style and use of a brush mechanic during fighting. It was a gimmick that worked. I've played a shooting game that starred blind protagonist and your view was entirely second person. It was a terrible execution, but it got my attention.

And finally, as a text adventure game, you're going to need clever writing. There's no avoiding that.

#9 Jun 22 2012 at 6:46 AM Rating: Decent
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i got this far and gave up: http://i.imgur.com/2hmul.png
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