5.2.- Exploration
At that point, having or not having the apple, the player would be probably trying to move to another side to explore. I love the usual way to move using cardinal points, like north, and east. But I mainly only love it for places like caves, where it makes sense. In any other games I hate this standard. If you try to use this in this game, Gent Stickman will tell you that he doesn’t have a compass, and if you try to simply “go out”, “move away”, and so, the system will guide the player showing hands pointing left and right with a question mark, inviting them to use these commands.
One of the beta testers told me about including alternative east and west movements available, as he always typed them automatically instead of left and right and he told me about not making a puzzle about basic movements.
This is a good point (my beta testers were the best ones), but I decided not to follow his advice. On principle I am against the use of the cardinal points to execute the movements as a standard (are you fighting against standards? Are you crazy?), especially because that is only known by people that already have played text adventures and have been told about how to move in them. People that have never played this kind of games don’t try to type cardinal points, and the left and right movements in this case are the most natural for them.
Another standard I don’t like is the “take all” command. If you want to know what my response to that is in the game, you will need to try it.
At this point, once the player had decided to go and explore, he would reach either “the pit” location or “the signs” one.