Skip to main content
This is the in-class activity for Thursday January 18.
The materials that you will need for this in-class activity are:

In Class Activity: Play Text Adventure Games

Today in class you will play a text adventure game in groups of 2-5 people. You can pick a game from this list:

  1. Text Adventure Games by Grizel. Grizel writes text adventure games in the style of classic games like Zork and other Infocom games using a platform called Adventuron. She has a lot of very lovely games, including
    • Snowhaven - a quiet, contemplative game with an optional sinister variant (let me know if you want the password for the sinister version)
    • Reflections and Midsummer Eve - child-friendly games meant to introduce a new generation to the text adventure genre
    • Sentient Beings - an exploration game set on another planet

Grizel won the “Text Adventure Literacy Jam” which is designed to introduce younger people to text-based adventure games. Helpfully, her games will offer you a tutorial mode. If you enable the tutorial mode then her games will display a bunch of userful hints about what commands you can use at each location in the game.

What to do

  1. After the game asks whether you want the tutorial model, please issue the command TSTART. Doing so will start a log of your game transcript. Once you’re done playing, then type TSTOP and the trascript will be downloaded to your Downloads folder (be sure to click OK if your computer prompts you to allow a download).
  2. While you’re playing, you should draw a map of the locations and items in the game.
  3. Please submit your game transcript and your map to Gradescope by Friday, January 19, 2024 before 01:45PM. We will also ask you to answer these questions
    • What game did you play?
    • Was this your first time playing a classic text adventure game?
    • What commands did you try that didn’t work?
    • How far did you get in the game?
    • How does this experience differ from reading a non-interactive story?
    • How do you think AI could be used to enhance this kind of gaming experience?

Cheatsheet

The parser for text adventure games typically has a limited vocabulary. This cheatsheet should guide to what commands are allowable in text adventure games: