For me, it’s more that anything superfluous to a particular game is superfluous.
If I make a game focusing on using the imagination mechanism of words and language, like a novel, it is what it is by my choice. If anything, I want it to be more like the blank slate of a novel and less like anything with a UI. Not all IF games are like this, but for the ones that are, the idea of graphics isn’t relevant.
Maybe the angst is felt more on the choice side of things, the way it would be by readers of the world if every novel was published in the exact same page size and font and arrangement (e.g. default Twine layout). Then again, people with e-readers seem happy reading things the same way each time with fewer bells and whistles than ever. Presumably because the action’s in their head, not in any area between their eyes and the surface. The only job of the e-reader is to get the words into their head with max smoothness.
I guess that’s why I never respond to a general ‘IF can be fixed if we lean into some graphics’. Some IF can benefit. Sometimes it’s not relevant. I’ve started thinking aligning with visual culture may even be a mistake. IF might always be the absolute smallest fish over there. Some IF. There are too many kinds of IF!
Very impressive. The graphics truly enhance the game and, though simplistic, are crafted with expertise. This sort of effort should be applauded. More projects like this will bring more eyes to IF… and you still managed to stay true to text-based game play. I can easily see why it got popular on Itch.
I’m sure there isn’t as much money in novels as comics, movies, or television, and I get the impression there’s less money in short stories than novels, but thinking about it some, it’s actually kind of baffling that reading of static, text-only fiction is still popular enough that eReader is one of the few tasks where purpose-built devices haven’t been completely displaced by general purpose pocket computers, yet IF is practically unheard of to the general population… In other words, why did the video game kill the text adventure when television didn’t kill the novel?
Maybe TV did kill the novel. I wasn’t around before TV but most people don’t read novels these days, despite a certain amount of effort from educators and librarians to promote it.
In part because the text command stopped being the dominant computer interface decades ago, and the things which cropped up to take advantage of the new interface (mouse, touch, etc.) allow you to tell very similar stories much more efficiently.
In a way it’s less about the medium and more about the friction. At-home console games killed arcade games (in part) because they’re easier to consume. Streaming services killed home libraries of physical media (in part) because they’re easier to consume.
It would be interesting to know what proportion of people read novels in the days before TV, for comparison purposes, but I suspect there’s no sufficiently reliable source of data on it.
That’s quite likely, but graphics aren’t all you did here. You’ve:
delineated the text area clearly
got some tabs
underlined and centered clickable text
chosen a font (size, weight, and style) that evokes retro gaming and makes the small margins legible as a layout
used a pixelated style in the graphics, which does the same
used a square aspect ratio which calls to mind a Game Boy, or an NES game rendered at 8:7 by an emulator
letter-boxed the picture in full-screen mode, preserving the layout instead of allowing large, uncanny margins
presented only relevant text, rather than emulating a terminal printing on fan fold paper.
In other words you’re speaking a comprehensible design language. Modern UI elements are used and laid out in an idiomatic way. Where design elements aren’t modern, you’ve used retro styling to cue the player to visually parse them as retro design language. Even if the top portion of the window had contained something else, like the status information, all of the above would have helped players approach the game.
Change the font, its size, its renderer, run the text all the way across the monitor, don’t letter-box, have zero UI other than a command line, have a transcript trailing away off the top of the screen, and you can’t expect as good a result. Just like if you published a modern novel with the layout of a medieval manuscript, it would look like an incomprehensible wall of text until the reader figured out the design language.
The minute somebody mentions appearance, everybody starts talking about the slippery slope leading to Disco Elysium, and whether graphics detract from a textual game. It’s really not about that. The player just needs to be able to visually parse what you’re putting on the screen, and preferably to identify it as a design language other than “weird tech demo”. Just like you don’t publish your novel looking like some print-on-demand MS Word export.
It’ still early and the current platforms don’t really enable external processing. You really need a platform that allows for API calls or an embedded process to circumvent the traditional turn loop.
I’d give it another year or two and we’ll start seeing cool things.
I miss the text parser graphic adventure games. Quest for Glory (Hero’s Quest), Police Quest 2, Leisure Suit Larry 3… all great text adventure hybrids. I just loved the parser driven action and puzzle solving in those games. Even mundane actions were satisfying because it had bright colours, flashing lights, beeps and boops that tickled my peanut-sized dinosaur brain. A functioning imagination is highly overrated.
Oh wow, I can’t believe I never knew that IF Arcade existed. Thanks!
It seems that most people in this thread have taken “can you make an IF arcade game?” to mean “can you make nontraditional IF that uses twitchy realtime input?” The IF Arcade project largely asked the opposite question, “can you make traditional IF inspired by the concepts of arcade games?” But I’m also interested in a different angle: can you make IF that utilizes central design concepts from arcade games within a still largely traditional IF framework? Repeating mechanics with feedback loops; upgrades and power-ups; a goal of maximizing score or distance into the game; turn-timer or health-based challenges; waves of opponents; boss fights; skill-based mechanics; environmental hazards; etc.
Survival horror might be a good genre to try this in—lots of opportunity to blend arcade mechanics with IF storytelling and worldbuilding.
A movie can tell a short story, a TV season at most a mid-length novel. Even very well done adaptations (such as The Expanse or Game of Thrones up to season 3) are never as rich as their source books. Adapting a 491K word book like Brandon Sanderson’s newest novel is just not feasible (except maybe as long form animation.) And TV is usually not well suited to interior monologues, which is a very important component of many beloved books.
Also, comics have way less money in them than books. The global books market is about 150B USD, the comics market only 16B.
Ooh, I have a hot take: I built my wonky baking simulation for Baker of Shireton in both parser and choice systems and the choice system was easier (although that could be just that since the first one took so much work I knew where the pitfalls were when I started over.)
My thing is, I love the world building of parser, but sometimes I want to offer a complicated command without the player needing to guess the verb. I want actual choices as buttons or links in the room description:
Chemical Analyzer Room
You are in a room with a large and complicated machine that can analyze two chemicals for you. Analyze the two samples in the machine to compare and determine which has the best viability for your fuel mixture.
> GO NORTH
You leave the chemical analyzer and return to your desk.
Yes, I know, Dialog
Buttons or links can do that really well and feels more immersive - instead of typing KNEAD DOUGH, AGAIN, G, G, G in parser, with a choice interface I could have the player see five links to knead the dough and clicking them eliminates them like a bubble-wrap task, simulating and perhaps “gamifying” the physical process and time it takes to put in work. How bad do you want to click that link? How much work will you do to make that choice?"
This is likely hazy flu vaccination side effects talking and a weird Hanon ramble, but I am sure there are people who don’t like that type of gameplay.
I think you are right on many levels, especially the supertyping syndrome of parsers (I’m franticly testing my WIP and retyping the same commands over and over is burning me out). This said, I guess my main problem with choice games is that I rarely have the occasion of thinking about what to do next and end up clicking without even noticing.
90% of the (few) CG I tried were divided in two categories: the first had walls of text that overwhelm me—I just lose interest if I can’t ACT; the second had way too few text and I kept clicking to see something happen (which usually doesn’t tbh).
Probably I’m one of those who prefer typing OPEN CABINET, GET FOLDER, READ IT, BURN IT because it feels more like I’m actually doing anything instead of just… browsing.
I totally agree with Mike on that, but I should add something to the discussion as well. I mean I wanna give a thumbs up to pointing out the one thing that makes Dune really unique, but doing only that seems lame. Dune had such a killer soundtrack. I could mention that. Toto really knocked it out of the park on that one. Oh, but the monologue thing. Yeah, that is super distinctive to the Dune movie. Some people hated it, but I thought it worked well; especially for condensing such a detailed book into a movie runtime. Oh shit, what does my wife want now? I forgot to do the dishes! Fuck.
“condensing such a detailed book” is code for completely ignoring the subtle plot points that weave a complex story together. Those voice weapons were ridiculous.
Denis also punted Part 2 (compressed 5 years into 8 months and removed critical plot points), so we’re never going to get a true accounting of Dune.
The Fremen became better fighters than the Sardaukar because of the combination of Fremen fighting skills, Atreides fighting skills and leadership, and Bene Gesserit fighting skills, the latter of which was forbidden to teach anyone outside of the order.
Not one adaptation of Dune has made this point and it’s literally the foundation of the Fremen overcoming the Emperor and the Harkonens.
There were some aspects of the 1984 movie that were excellent set pieces and Lynch did include things that Denis left out, but overall, only Part 1 truly honors the spirit of Frank’s writing. It’s very disappointing that he got lazy and literally punted Part 2 … because he had carte blanche and the readers no longer mattered.
Similarly I think that’s why many people considered Stephen King’s The Shining to be unfilmable because many scenes are just different characters’ internal monologue while they’re exploring or doing very little filmable action such as browing a scrapbook, including their intrusive thoughts and occasionally external telepathic communication and voices from the Hotel and its spirits. As I read the book I thought the only way to accomplish this would be extensive voice-over. Kubrick did this a bit in the original movie with Hallorann asking Danny if he wants ice cream, and Danny able to hear conversations from afar that would continue their audio with a filter effect after cutting to shots of him. Kubrick chooses lingering quiet shots of face-acting instead of characters talking to themselves in VO, but so much of the plot and details in that book are unspoken thoughts so it’s difficult to make work presentationally in a film.
