(Apols if there is a better place to put this - I couldn’t find one)
While posting, I was recommended to see this thread/game from 12 years ago, which is fascinating as something that approaches a similar idea but in a very different way: DEMO: Combining text adventure and 3D graphics - Playing / Game Hints - The Interactive Fiction Community Forum
I’ve posted a little about my custom parser in the last year, but in the meantime I’ve fleshed out a lot more of the 3D side of my game, which (elevator pitch) embeds text adventure ‘vignettes’ within a 3D world. In the text adventure segments, you control ‘AI agents’ in the past, and what you do there changes the future (which is uhh the present, but also the future. Yeah I need to work on this bit).
I thought you might be interested to see a bit of the 3D world. I made a couple of videos showing different stages of the game (so far), with lots of placeholder stuff around. But hopefully you get the gist. The actual interactive fiction elements (arguably the most important part) are now lagging behind the 3D side, but I’ll switch back to them shortly.
Chapter 1 intro: “Rewriter” start of Chapter 1 (demo version 26 Apr 2026) - WORK IN PROGRESS
Chapter 3 intro: “Rewriter” start of Chapter 3 (demo version 26 Apr 2026) - WORK IN PROGRESS
(Apologies for terrible video compression, which is Youtube’s doing, not mine.)
What is not very evident from the videos is how the 3D world and the text adventure worlds are linked up. Items and locations you see in the text adventures are embedded in the 3D world as (mostly) actual physical items, some of which can be interacted with in either world. It’s all custom, which means that there are probably a lot of dumb ideas floating around. My priority is to get the game finished, but it is possible that I may decide to put time into making some tools to make this system (based in Unreal Engine 5) more of a general-purpose development system. I will probably see how things pan out with the game itself and whether I am motivated to make any kind of sequel or to make something else similar.
I’ll be happy to chat about any aspect of the adventure system (3D or text), though the very custom nature means that there are probably few useful lessons to be learned from it (yet).
But hopefully this is of interest to some. And still the big questions remain: does combining the 3D side and the text side actually make any sense? Is it actually enjoyable gameplay? I’m still not sure… hey ho.
Edit: just a word about the general approach perhaps - my aim is to make the text adventure segments as accessible as possible and to avoid (where possible) people getting stuck on solutions. There will be a very comprehensive hint system (called research) which aims to be at least partly proactive. I am also trying to provide lots of different UI elements to assist the more casual player. For example, there is an automatic generation of problems and solutions (bottom right window) as you progress through the adventure, to help people keep track of what they need to be solving, and to make it feel less open-ended. It would be stupid for me to say I think this is a new idea, because I’m sure it’s been done about 20 times before.