Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Language of adventures
The logic of adventure games can be figuratively considered as a primitive language,
or better still, a dialect (very close to the telegraphic style because there are no art-
icles, conjunctions, copulas, and prepositions in an apparent form) that describes
situations and actions in the scene. It is made up of several basic parts:
•
Nouns
: All the objects in the game have their unique names, for example, a
Key, a Door, a Lock, and so on.
•
Adjectives
: These illustrate the current state of an individual item. Their role
is pragmatical rather than ornamental. Their main goal is to signal whether
an object is in order, broken, locked, and so on. Most popular entries are
Locked, Broken, and Busy.
•
Verbs
: This is a list of actions a protagonist can commit. Its length is directly
correlated with the complexity of the game. The basic list consists of simple
verbs in imperative form such as Check, Use, Combine, Push, and Talk.
The gameplay of an adventure game is an improvised conversation. The game is
telling a story by short descriptions (declarative sentences), but the player may ask
some questions or give some commands in the form of an imperative sentence,
which I call the action sentence.
Imagine that there is a room with a door and a mat below it. Here is an example of a
dialogue that may occur between the game and a player:
Game [description]
: "Protagonist," "Room," "Door," and "Mat"
Player [action sentence]
: "Protagonist," "Use" and "Door"
Game
: "Door" and "Locked!"
Player
: "Protagonist," "Check," and "Mat"
Game
: ""Mat" and "Movable"
