Text Adventure Literacy Jam games as introductions to IF

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Continuing the discussion from Modern Inform IF recommendations?:

In the linked thread, AmandaB was suggesting the Text Adventure Literacy Jam games as introductions to parser games.

That’s what they’re designed for. I’m interested to know, for people on this forum, or their friends and family, how well have they worked as introductions to IF?

Has anyone on here tried them, either because someone suggested it to you before they found this place, or because you came in from a choice-based background and thought this would be a good introduction?

Basically, I’m asking, how well is the Text Adventure Literacy Project doing at its goal of introducing people? (the answer will have no effect on the actual project, since I’m not involved, but I think it’s interesting)

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Here’s a link to all TALJ games:

I haven’t used them as introductions to IF, but I like Lonely Troll and Carpathian Vampire and a lot of the Adventuron games.

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That search isn’t working for me. I think this one should, though:

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I’ve used my own TALP game (Deer Creek) to introduce text adventures to my youngest. The eldest already knew what they were by that point as she sat and played through several of my 1990s games… and managed to find some bugs.:wink:

My youngest daughter really enjoyed Dee’s ‘Barry Basic and the Quick Escape’ game, so I would definitely recommend that. She went out to write her own simple adventure in Adventuron. She’s more into writing games with Python these days.

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As organiser for the last two years, I’ll be brutally honest and say that I don’t think it’s been very effective at all.

There are two aspects to consider. Firstly, does it draw new people to the wonderful world of text adventures? Despite promoting TALJ in a lot of places, those places are already inhabited by people familiar with text adventures and I don’t think those people are drawn to the contest as authors or players. However, that is just my gut feel and I have no data to prove or disprove it.

Secondly, does it teach people how to play text adventures? I think the better games are fairly good at achieving this goal, but we don’t get much feedback from new players, so we don’t really know whether they are effective or not.

If anyone has any ideas on how to measure effectiveness, then I’d certainly be interested to hear.

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I think introducing new players to IF is kind of like asking people to appreciate Pong or Pacman. It seems archaic and not very engaging… on the surface.

I think IF games need to be jazzed up to make an impression. The basic presentation of most IF is… not enticing at all. Presentation is everything. I believe a visually slick interpreter is what is needed. Like, an interpreter with multiple themes to take these “dinosaur” game mechanics and put a lick of paint on them. What I’m getting at, is an interpreter that makes text adventure games look like they’re worth $40.

I’d love to switch between themes for games and feel like the experiences are better for it. Themes would have subtle animations that don’t distract and simple customization. With web-based interpreters, leveraging HTML and CSS should be quite straight forward.

Anyway, I don’t think it’s marketing that’s holding back text adventures… I think it’s presentation. Get the Fallen London people to make themes for an open source interpreter and I’m sure you’d have more people playing text adventures.

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