One interesting feature of Planetfall is that different actions take different amounts of in-game time.
Can anyone suggest a compact phrase for this? I was thinking variable time cost, but that doesn’t seem descriptive enough.
actions take different amounts of game time ?
actions take different lengths of game time ?
actions use different amounts of game time ?
It might be hard to make it really compact while still being understandable, and if that’s the case, you could just settle for making it understandable.
A tag for this?
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There are a few existing tags for that: “NPC parser”, “NPC narrator” (an NPC parser is usually also an NPC narrator, but “NPC narrator” also covers choice games), and the not-much-used “triangle of identities”. But some of the games in that poll might not quite fall under any of those, and I could see the argument for a more overarching tag. (“Split PC functionality”, maybe? Though without the explanation that might not be clear enough.)
actions are different lengths?
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The ‘actions are different lengths’ might work better as a poll or list, just due to the complicated nature of the topic.
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What would games be called where you are allowed to refer to a list of current goals? Both The King of Shreds and Patches and The Bat do this by allowing you to >THINK.
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running list of goals
updating goal list
updating list of goals
list of current goals
Just going off how I’d describe it in conversation…
in-game task list?
in-game goal list?
in-game quest log?
in-game goal tracker?
“Quest log” feels like the closest to a standard game term for this, but it has a bit of a fantasy-RPG flavor to it. “Task list” is the best alternative I can think of. “Tracker” could work as a shorter alternative to “updating list” or “list of current…”
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“Automatic task list”?
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What if there is only one goal tracked at a time? Maybe emphasizing the tracking aspect would be productive. Unless that would be a different tag.
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This would work for any number of goals, I think (including just one):
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agreed, and that would be my preference, but I wasn’t sure if the original suggestion was exclusively interested in more sophisticated systems.
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