There’s a well-known roguelike inspired by Doom which is called DoomRL. I’ve never heard of any objections coming from ID!
Scrap that. They actually did have to change the name to DRL…
I’ve played that game actually. It’s really good. But yeah, they had to change the name.
Ironically though, everyone uses the term “roguelike” for nearly everything these days and I haven’t heard the creators of Rogue complain. Do they not have a trademark on the name? Or maybe it wasn’t for sale in the first place? I don’t know much about the history of Rogue.
Rogue was an open-source game. Or rather it was freely shared on mainframes before the idea of “open source” was codified. Same as Adventure / Colossal Cave.
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Could you imagine the ramifications if the creators of Adventure somehow managed to trademark the term? 
Although CYOA getting hit with a trademark violation would be kind of fun.
We would have called them something else in 1979 and not noticed that this was weird.
And then they made it into a remake/full game named Jupiter Hell, if anyone wants a more polished game.
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I meant more like right now. I don’t know enough about trademark laws though. Is there a limitation to when you can claim a trademark on something?
Short answer, it can’t happen now.
(Not bothering with the long answer, which would be a long detour and I’m not a lawyer.)
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In the US a trademark can be registered forever. It’s not like it automatically expires after a number of years, like copyright.
Now, I’m not a lawyer either (I’m not even American), but as I understand it, you need to actively defend your trademark to keep the legal protection, and it needs to be renewed every ten years, and at renewal it needs to be in active use for interstate commerce. Even unregistered (or lapsed) trademarks are somewhat protected, though, just not nationally.
Just an attempt at contextualizing. Again, I have no idea what I’m talking about and actually basically just googled this five minutes ago.
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Looks very nice indeed. But technically speaking, it’s not a text adventure.
Text adventure games require a parser and the ability to try bespoke actions rather than on rails choices. This is a fundamental feature of the genre.
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Thanks for the feedback. 
I’m surprised how much information I gain through this threat. But I must admit I’m new to the android game world, so thanks for the insights.
Someone did register “Interactive Fiction”… in 2008. Abandoned less than a year later though.
Ah, that’s a very… 1990s statement.
We stopped saying “text adventure” in any defined, systematic way before Twine came along. Just so you know.
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It’s a 2021 statement.
… started a thread on this now so as to move this topic there.
Finding this game on Play Store was not easy indeed, but I’m happy to report I downloaded and started playing it. So far, so good, I like the art style, the music and the story is interesting (I did not go that far yet, though I’m happy to do so once I have a bit more time). 
There are two things that I would suggest:
- break wall of text into smaller paragraphs. This will help, especially for a phone game where a person sees that there is just one paragraph that they need to scroll through three times or so to get to the end. It’s easier to read and less intimidating for general audience
- would be nice to get option to increase font size. Bigger font helps those of us who do not see that well
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Thanks for the feedback. 
Yes, it’s not easy to find the app unless you use the tag ‘new’. And I intend to support different text sizes in the settings with the next update, but it could take some time. I will also try to make the paragraphs smaller next time, I actually never thought that the length was unhandy, but that’s just what feedback is for!
It would be great if you leave a review on Play Store once you finished the first part. 
Greetings, Callandha
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It is not just the text size. That can be adjusted in the phone settings. There should be “breaks” in the narrative. As mentioned a wall of text is discouraging and difficult to read.
I enjoyed the game.
Ah, now I got the point, it’s better readable with breaks between lines when a new person is speaking for example. 
I’ll adjust it. 
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Exactly! Paragraphs, spacing (before and after a paragraph), and also indents (sometimes the text goes over the frame and into the white space, which is a nitpick, I know, but if you fix the formatting you can do it as well) all help with reading the text.
You may also consider breaking one page into a few smaller pages (with continue button) - this can help readability as well
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Hello there, I’d like to announce that Part 2 of One hint of magic is now finally available on Google Play Store! 
There have also been new features added, for example you can adjust the font size now and the text appearance has been adjusted, paragraphs have been reduced and breaks added.
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