The Evolution of the Adventure Game, Part One
Articles
 by Jeff Strand |
The Seriously Whacked Point of View “The Evolution of the Adventure Game, Part One” |
In this series of anywhere from two to seventy-eight articles (I dont plan ahead very well) I will be tracing the evolution of the computer adventure game.
Now, you may be thinking, Wow, hes only on his second column and hes already doing research! What a stud muffin! Therefore, I must offer the legal disclaimer that this column is based purely on my own flawed recollections and is not meant to be complete, accurate, typed well, or even in English. This is not to say that youre not allowed to criticize me, but please use the following guidelines:
UNACCEPTABLE CRITICISM: You reprehensible wanker, how could you not say anything about Hunt the Wumpus? My friend Bob and I spent 67% of the year 1973 hunting that Wumpus, and this one time Bob was so tired from playing that he fell asleep at the computer so my friend Chuck and I took off his shirt and shaved his armpits and the next day Bob was walking all over going Hey, who shaved my armpits? and we blamed it on this one guy who always ate soap and Bob told the guy that he looked like a Wumpus and the guy cried and you really need to write better columns or at least not forget Hunt the Wumpus next time.
ACCEPTABLE CRITICISM: Dear Mr. Strand, youre a doofus.
Just think of this as a history lesson where youre encouraged to doodle and fling spitballs at the teacher. So, lets proceed…
In the beginning, adventure games were text-only. This gave players an unparalleled ability to use their imaginations to fully immerse themselves in the game designers world, and they could pretend that all of the characters were naked. The first parsers could only understand two words at a time (much like my college roommate), but they soon became more sophisticated. Nevertheless, gameplay often resembled the following:
>TAKE ROPE
Rope: Taken.
>TIE ROPE TO TREE
You don’t see a tie here.
>FASTEN ROPE TO TREE
I don’t know the word “fasten.”
>USE ROPE ON TREE
How do you want to use the rope?
>WITH TREE
What do you want to do with the tree?
>PUT ROPE ON IT
I don’t know the word “put.”
>USE ROPE WITH TREE
You’re not holding the tree.
…and so on. Game designers were also much more heartless in the early days, so characters died often and without warning:
You are in a square room. Possible exits are north and south.
>GO NORTH
Dragon Room
The fierce Dragon of Kalackas sinks its fangs into your flesh, causing you to shriek with agony as you are slowly devoured and flame from the dragons nostrils cooks your face. You have failed in your quest. Your kingdom is destroyed and all of your people starve to death. Then the world blows up, and there is no afterlife.
Play again? (Y/N)
It wasn’t long before graphics were added. While the text parser remained and players did not actually interact with the visuals, graphics added a whole new dimension to game play.
>TAKE KNIFE
No knife here!
>TAKE SWORD
No sword here!
>TAKE BLADE
No blade here!
>TAKE POINTY THING IN THE LOWER RIGHT CORNER OF THE SCREEN
No pointy here!
>YOU DON’T HAVE A CLUE WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT, DO YOU?
I do not know the word “don’t.”
This is an example of one of the most important elements of playing text adventure games: talking back to the game. It was required. There is not a player alive who did not at some point turn abusive and desperately hope that there was a little man inside of their computer actually reading the responses.
>TAKE STAIRS
The stairs are too heavy to carry.
>I MEANT WALK UP THE STAIRS, YOU STUPID COMPUTER
Please rephrase that.
>YOU CAN JUST KISS MY EVER-EXPANDING BUTT
Please rephrase that.
>EAT $#!% AND DIE
There is nothing to eat here.
Yes, every gamer resorted to profanity. And the designers, well aware of this phenomenon, often had responses prepared. The finest was probably Zork Zero, where your character had RPG-style statistics, and swearing at the computer reduced your intelligence points.
Now, Im not saying that early adventure games were nothing but frustration. Okay, they were…but often it was a good frustration, since the text parser allowed designers to create much more challenging puzzles than a point-and-click system allows. If a puzzle called for you to tickle the drunken elf, you couldnt just right-click on the elf and have your character magically realize that a hearty tickling was in order; you actually had to figure it out for yourself.
>TICKLE DRUNKEN ELF
The elf giggles with delight and drops the coin.
>TAKE COIN
The coin burns through your hand, and your shrieks echo throughout the antechamber like a cursed chorus of lonely souls in torment. The elf cuts your head off and plays Quidditch with it.
*** You have died ***
Your score is 3 out of a possible 7500. This gives you the rank of total wiener.
Play again? (Y/N)
I should probably point out that all-text adventure games are still being made by fans to this day (Friday, January 4, 2002), although now you have to call them Interactive Fiction, which sounds like the work of pretentious snots but is actually an accurate description. Instead of puzzles designed to make you slam your head against the nearest jagged object, text adventures today generally focus on storytelling and characters and wimpy stuff like that. If you try to hand over a game where the entire plot is to find twenty treasures, the Interactive Fiction community will take you out back and spank you with tire irons.
Just a second, let me check my e-mail…
Dear Mr. Strand, I would like to point out that the term Interactive Fiction was actually used by Infocom way back in 1984. And Floyd the Robot from Planetfall is the best character ever. Youre a doofus.
Yes, I am.
Well, it looks like Ive run out of room and/or motivation for this installment. Ill be back in two weeks, but in the meantime, if you have any fond, amusing, and/or frustrating memories of the old text-parser adventure games, send em to [email protected] and I may use them to pad out a future column. Seeya!
