Retro Rant: Text-Based Games

Have any of you ever played a text-based adventure game?  It’s unlikely, given today’s state of constant bleeps and bloops,  heavy light bloom and an overwhelming notion towards the brown end of the colour spectrum.  Now, this isn’t really a rant as such, but it’s retro-oriented.

Let me clarify something: some of the first computer games were incredibly wordy.  Even more wordy than Wordy McWorderson’s Very Wordy Word Compendium (that’s a dictionary, people, look it up).  In fact they consisted purely of words; you then had to apply your own imagination to get a sense of the world and what you could do.  And what’s more, you had to use your brain, and actually type things in via a keyboard.  Scary beans eh?

Mostly, they’re puzzle-based with a good mix of logic and physical puzzles to interact with.

Admittedly, I haven’t played much of them, the only one really being The HitchHiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, from Infocom and the legendary Douglas Adams.  A hilarious romp through space with fiendishly difficult puzzles and some of the best text graphics I’ve ever seen.  OK, maybe I’m slightly biased because I’m a fan of the series and I do love humour oh so much, but I really like it.

Maybe I’m not the best person to be bigging this forgotten genre up.  I know for a fact that Mezino has played a few text games in his time, after all, he’s got about ten or so years on the rest of us and he’s been around the gaming block a few times, so here’s a few words from him:

People can’t spell these days, so I doubt they can still read. *takes off cynic cap*.  The problem is, as already pointed out, that gaming these days is all about “look at what we can do”.  It (gaming) unlike a book doesn’t allow you to imagine things.  The great thing about text adventures was you had to imagine it.  I happily sat at a blue screen with white text playing some adventure where you had to type the commands, for example: Search room, Use Batteries.  Things like that.

I think it’s just the way the world is going. Everyone demands so much and makes so little time for it. I read a book at work, and you’ve no idea how many people say “Oh I’ve not read a book for years”. Text adventures are just retro now, while point ‘n’ clicks have a good niche.  Luckily there are a few people like myself who can say Legend of Kyrandia, Curse of Enchantia and (more lately) Simon the Sorceror, all point ‘n’ click games, not text.  All those are recommended if you have the retro equipment (and it works).

Text adventures are seen as lazy, especially when we have the graphical capapbility today to produce very pretty things.  However there are still throwbacks on the DS. Try Hotel Dusk: Room213 or Lux-Pain if you can find either.  If you like wordy games.  Anyway back to the one called peespee63.

- Andrew (Mezino), 2010.

Sometimes you need to go back to look to the future.  Monkey Island has had a surge in popularity again just recently, so why not some of these text games too?  Next time you want to try something different, try a text game, it’s like an interactive novel.  They’re the precursor to the modern adventure game that we see today, it’s just that the information we’re given is now visual. We’re so much more immersed in the visuals but we can be equally, if even more, absorbed in the world of a good book and hence a good text adventure.

If you think about it, simple as they may seem, there’s a lot of cleverness that goes into one of these games.  Infocom were probably the bestest at doing them, so they had the most experience at conversation and language inputs.  They must have been sophisticated engines, dealing with an unlimited number of different possible inputs to all the situations that gamers are presented to have responses on various levels for a broad range of them.  Just something as simple as “Turn on light” could be interpreted in so many different ways: “switch on light”, “turn on lamp”, “make lightbulb go bright” or “let there be light” (if you’re in a God-sim). Even the spelling and character cases must be accounted for, not to mention the writing has to be pretty stellar, because what’s the point in these games if you’re not telling a good story?

Just something to think about.  You know, I may attempt at writing my own one, if I can find a good language to do it in (and learn the ins and outs first) and actually write something of some worth.  Who knows, it might be a world-beater.  Maybe not, but I can at least try, eh?

Thanks to Mezino for his input on this one.