In a mini game I have been working on in my spare time, the action takes place in one very long corridor, going from north to south. However, my problem here is that I ran out of room names in my first room, and have since been calling the rooms long corridor 2, long corridor 3, long corridor 4, long corridor 5…
Not only is that monotonous, but it gives the game a cheap feeling, like I’ve just slapped something together.
Surely there must be some way to have rooms with the same name, even if it means ‘tricking’ inform by calling the room something else, but displaying it as long corridor.
Unless you want to give the player a sense of confusion as to where he is in the corridor at any given time (which you might want to do), you might want to distinguish the rooms in some way (in the description, if nothing else). Otherwise, you have the equivalent of twisty (well, not so twisty, maybe) little passages, all alike.
You can also use a kind of room, so you don’t have to keep typing “The printed name of Long Corridor n is ‘Long Corridor’.” Illustrated in unnecessary detail with a full game:
[code]“Annoytron Defeated” by Matt Weiner
A long room is a kind of room. The printed name of a long room is usually “Long Corridor”. The description of a long room is usually “A long east-west corridor.” Long corridor 1 is a long room. Long corridor 2 is a long room. It is west of long corridor 1. Long corridor 3 is a long room. It is west of long corridor 2. Long corridor 3 is a long room. It is west of long corridor 2. Long corridor 4 is a long room. It is west of long corridor 3.
East End is a room. It is east of long corridor 1. “The very east end of a long east-west corridor. It ends in a blank wall.” A brass key is in East End. The player is in East End.
West End is a room. It is west of long corridor 4. “The west end of the corridor ends in a wooden door.”
Freedom is a room.
The wooden door is a door. It is scenery. It is west of West End and east of Freedom. The wooden door is closed and locked. The brass key unlocks the wooden door.
After going to Freedom:
say “You escape the corridor to a lovely annoyance-free world!”;
end the story finally saying “You have won”.
Understand “about” or “credits” or “help” as a mistake (“Apologies to Ben Parrish. Or maybe he should apologize to me.”).[/code]
[Robert posted while I was testing this – as the name of this game suggests, he has a point. If you just want to have the player walk down a corridor for several steps for pacing purposes, that’s fine, though some people might assume they were in an infinite loop and give up.]
It all depends on how important those similarly-named rooms are. If they have stuff in them, then it’s better to distinguish them somehow. If they serve no purpose but to take up space, you’re better off capturing player movement down the long hall with something like, “You proceed to the end of the hall, catch your breath and look around.” What I’m getting at is that the players aren’t going to like going n, n, n, repeatedly through nondescript rooms, so spare them from that.
Also, if you say, were doing some sort of maze, a player could drop items in certain rooms to keep track of them - thus the rooms would no longer be identical.