Technology for writers: Write your own adventure
> A runaway success in the early days of home computing, the text-based adventure game is enjoying a resurgence on modern mobile devices. CHRIS GLITHERO explains how you can get started
>Take a look at some of the latest video games with their impressive graphics, complex gameplay and epic scope, and you could be forgiven for thinking that simple textbased adventure games are a forgotten relic of the digital primordial soup. But in fact they are alive and well, and currently experiencing something of a resurgence thanks to their packaging as phone apps that can be easily indulged during the daily commute.
In this article we’re going to take a broad overview of how you can create and share your own text-based adventure game, with no programming knowledge required.
>You enter a room with an archaic machine in the corner…
First we should begin with a quick reminder of concept. In the homecomputing dawn of the late 1970s and eighties, text-based adventure games without graphics were very much de rigeur due to the relative ease with which they could be created and ported across to many different platforms. In these games, players were presented with a simple window showing textual descriptions – such as, ‘You are in a darkened forest facing north,’ – and in which they could type commands (ie ‘walk’, ‘pick up’, ‘look’) to progress through the adventure.
Despite their apparent simplicity, such games became immensely popular due to their compelling storylines and the depth and detail of the worlds that they thrust players into. Popular games from this time include Zork and its sequels, Adventureland and even a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy text-based game written by Douglas Adams himself.