I disagree with the assertion that a verb noun requirement is regressive/retro.
The purpose of the jam is not to introduce children to more complex forms of text adventures or interactive fiction, but the basic fun of manipulating world state or story via simple textual commands in a known format.
As stated earlier in the thread, a VERB NOUN parser requirement avoids undue stress of fighting with the parser.
If you know everything is two words, there is no stress. Adventuron as with other engines supports parsing many more words than two words, so it’s crippling itself for the purposes of this too.
Verb noun games are very fast paced, and the other rules tries to add a brevity to the storytelling too. Fast pace and fast rewards are more important than parser precision or complexity.
Over Here! by aureas is a good example of VERB NOUN magic. Parser grappling is non existent, and the game is all about the characters and the puzzles. It’s not perfectly suitable as a TALP game due to lack of tutorial but the concept of a minimal game with lots of interactive media attached is demonstrated well. Game in the jam can use a modern or retro aesthetic. It could all be hand drawn art, or no art at all. Animations, mp3 sound effects. It could be any Google font, or ttf. Nothing about the presentation has to be retro.
There are certainly strong limitations in the parser elements of the jam, but you (generally speaking) couldn’t add complex graphics, animations, sound effects, interactive maps, or other innovations to 70s games, because of technical limitations of storage / hardware.
The VERB NOUN requirement is purposeful, and a limitation of this iteration of the jam. Children will understand the rule quickly, and be able to structure their commands accordingly.
The sentence caps are there because of attention span deficits, and being inclusive for an increasing number of children that have ADHD. There are plenty of books and comics that convey their stories with low amounts of text, so that is another design challenge for authors.
I think the modern approach is not to design a regular game with a tutorial, but to design a completely streamlined game with a tutorial. Sentence caps are part of that. There is no sentence cap on game startup text now, but there are still caps on location description and response text. I think this is 100% the right decision for being as inclusive as possible, and appealing to the widest possible range of children, including those that would immediacy switch off when confronted with a screen full of text. In many ways, I wish the sentence cap was just one sentence, and I think the most minimal games will do well in the jam, so allowing two sentences is a good A-B test.