IAN'S QUEST
What exactly is an adventure game?
by Ian Chadwick
Ian Chadwick is a Canadian writer who also plays war games, go, chess and guitar.
YOU ARE IN A LARGE ROOM WITH STRANGE RUNES WRITTEN ALL OVER THE WALLS. THERE IS A JEWELLED AXE ON AN ALTAR. THERE IS A MEAN-LOOKING DWARF HERE. EXITS ARE: NORTH, SOUTH, EAST.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> north
THE DWARF WON'T LET YOU. THE DWARF HITS YOU FOR TWO POINTS.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> south
THE DWARF WON'T LET YOU. THE DWARF HITS YOU FOR ONE POINT.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> east
THE DWARF WON'T LET YOU. THE DWARF HITS YOU FOR ONE POINT.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> kill dwarf
WITH WHAT?
> with axe
YOU DON'T HAVE THE AXE. THE DWARF HITS YOU FOR ONE POINT.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> get axxe
I DON'T SEE ANY "AXXE" HERE. THE DWARF HITS YOU FOR TWO POINTS.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> get axe
YOU NOW HAVE A JEWELLED AXE. THE DWARF HITS YOU FOR TWO POINTS.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> smash dwarf with axe
I DON'T KNOW HOW TO "SMASH" SOMETHING. THE DWARF HITS YOU FOR THREE POINTS.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> kill dwarf with axe
YOU ATTACK THE DWARF. YOU HIT THE DWARF FOR 12 POINTS. THE DWARF HITS YOU FOR 1 POINT. YOU ARE GETTING WEAK.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> get out
I DON'T UNDERSTAND "GET OUT". TRY SAYING IT ANOTHER WAY. THE DWARF HITS YOU FOR 1 POINT.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> exit
DO YOU REALLY WANT TO LEAVE THIS GAME? Y/N
> n
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> kill dwarf with axe
YOU ATTACK THE DWARF WITH THE AXE. YOU HIT THE DWARF FOR SIX POINTS. THE DWARF IS DEAD.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> examine dwarf
I DON'T SEE ANYTHING UNUSUAL ABOUT THE DWARF.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> read walls
YOU CAN'T DO THAT—YET!
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> Read runes
YOU CAN'T DO THAT—YET!
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> push altar
YOU CAN'T DO THAT TO THE ALTAR.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> tilt altar with axe
I DON’T UNDERSTAND "TILT". TRY SAYING IT ANOTHER WAY
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> move altar
THE ALTAR WON'T BUDGE.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> get altar
YOU CAN'T DO THAT TO THE ALTAR.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> inventory
YOU ARE CARRYING THE FOLLOWING:
A BLACK ROCK
A BAG OF SNAKES
A RUSTY DAGGER
A GOLDEN ARROW
AN OLD RUNNING SHOE
A BAG OF MARBLES
LEATHER ARMOR
A JEWELLED AXE
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> examine axe
THE AXE IS VERY OLD. THERE ARE MANY JEWELS ON THE POMMEL. THERE APPEARS TO BE WRITING ON THE BLADE.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> read axe
YOU READ THE MAGIC WORDS. THE AXE GLOWS FOR A MOMENT. THERE IS A SUDDEN FLASH AND A MINOTAUR APPEARS.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> west
YOU CAN'T GO THAT WAY. EXITS ARE: NORTH, SOUTH, EAST.
> north
THE MINOTAUR WON'T LET YOU. THE MINOTAUR HITS YOU FOR FOUR POINTS. YOU ARE GETTING WEAK.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> kill minotaur with axe
YOU ATTACK THE MINOTAUR WITH THE AXE. YOU MISS. THE MINOTAUR MISSES.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
> south
THE MINOTAUR WON'T LET YOU. THE MINOTAUR HITS YOU FOR TWO POINTS. YOU ARE DEAD. YOU SCORED THREE OUT OF A POSSIBLE 1,024 POINTS. WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY AGAIN? Y/N
> argh!
PLEASE ANSWER Y OR N.
> n
GOODBYE AND THANKS FOR PLAYING GARGOYLE'S QUEST IN FUNLAND.
Argh is right. Sound familiar? Sort of like the script for a few thousand adventure games you've played? What exactly is an adventure game? It's almost easier to say what it's not. It's not quite role-playing (although there is some of that in it, especially in games like The Pawn or Alternate Reality). It's not fantasy (in the sense of games like Dungeon Master and Questron, although many adventures have fantasy elements in them). It's not an action game, although some adventures have that too (King's Quest).
Adventures are usually text-based (although Shadowgate and Deja Vu don't require text input). They can have graphics or not (Infocom's successful line of adventures have no graphics at all). They usually follow a particular plot line such as solving a murder (Deadline), finding a bride (King's Quest) or sometimes simply exploring and surviving (Zork, et. al.). Some have no definable plot at all (Alternate Reality, although in this case, the story is supposed to evolve with the character and with subsequent releases of the game). The better adventures have complex story lines with multiple characters who can move throughout the environment like you do and respond in a variety of ways. (Corruption, an otherwise good game, is sadly flawed by its overt sexism and female stereotypes).
Games like Star Trek, Mercenary and Roadwar 2000 are sort-of adventures, but I'd rather leave them outside this discussion. Despite adventure elements within them, they're more science fiction/strategy.
Essentially an adventure is a combination of things. It's an interaction between player and game ("the rules of the game are to try and establish what the rules of the game are..."). There are puzzles to be solved (anything from simply figuring out how to open a locked door to solving a murder mystery), a closed environment to explore (often 3-D), items to be found and used (including, sometimes, canards and red herrings). It almost always has a definable end—reaching the exit, solving the crime, running out of time, dying.
Many adventures work on a scoring system that depends on points for objects discovered and/or used, rooms (or other locations) entered and puzzles solved. Better adventures have time-related events, and the game is paced by these events. The secretary sits in her office painting her nails, and you CAN'T get into her drawer until she leaves, which (you learn from frequent playings) is 10:00. So you can say: > wait until 10:00.
And the game runs itself until that time, or until another event or encounter happens to interrupt the wait.
Encounters with game characters can be as basic and dull as the one parodied before, or very detailed. The characters in Corruption respond to different sorts of questions and actions, giving them realistic, 3-D personalities. In many Infocom games, you can converse with characters about other characters. In Alternate Reality, how you interact with the characters determines how others will interact with you later and what kinds of encounters you'll have as you progress. You can choose to fight, charm, run, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, the lack of a definable goal in AR dulls this otherwise wonderful game.
Puzzles themselves run from the simple to the subtle and complex. They can be a matter of combining the right elements together at the right time (making dynamite in the Lost Gold Mine adventure) or a battle of wits (trying to get past the nurse in Corruption). You have to immerse yourself in the game and try to think like the characters. Descriptions have clues. Situations have clues. Experimentation is often necessary.
Interaction is through a vocabulary parser. Even the "textless" games like Deja Vu have a parser of sorts. They simply limit the number of choices to a series of general-purpose buttons with labels such as "use," which cover everything from drink, fire, swing, throw, etc.
Problem No. 1: small vocabularies. There are some 575,000 words in the English language. The average person has around 5,000 words in his or her working vocabulary. That's not even 1% of what the language has to offer. Professionals, specialists, university graduates, professors and so on average between 15,000 and 20,000 words. Less than 5% of the language, but still three or four times more than most folk.
Most adventures have fewer than 1,500 words. That's like having a conversation with a very young child (or some of the local high-school dropouts). It can be frustrating. My dog is smarter than most adventure parsers. Have you ever spent hours trying to hack out what word the programmer used for a situation? Especially when you know there's something there:
> examine painting
I SEE NOTHING UNUSUAL HERE
> look behind the painting
I SEE NOTHING UNUSUAL HERE
> look under the painting
I SEE NOTHING UNUSUAL HERE
> look below the painting
I DON'T UNDERSTAND "BELOW"
> look underneath the painting
I SEE NOTHING UNUSUAL HERE
> look beneath the painting
THERE IS AN ENVELOPE HERE
Originally, adventures were extremely limited. They responded only to a Tarzan/Jane syntax:
> get axe
> kill dwarf
> eat food
> umgowa bwana
Sentences had to be made up of simple verb/object structures, and if there was any need for more information (such as a choice of weapons), the program would come back and ask for more information:
> kill dragon
WITH WHAT?
> use sword
Must have used theStyle Guide for the Terminally Inadequate. Or maybe that famous textbook, English as She Is Spoke.
Infocom broke with this silliness and gave us sentence (not mere word) parsers that could accept complex sentences, sometimes even multiple commands:
> open the drawer, get the key and unlock the door with it. close the drawer: north
Still, adventures have only moved to the idiot savant level, in terms of conversation. They are extremely unforgiving of mistakes and typos. If I type "get the sworrd," you know what I mean and recognize the mistake. But if I type it into a game, I get back:
I DON'T SEE ANY "SWORRD" HERE
And I usually lose a turn in the process of making the correction. If I'm under attack by a dwarf or some such denizen, I may be hit and killed before I can enter the right thing. If I forget what exits are available, I lose a turn inquiring or attempting to walk through solid walls.
And what about descriptions? I move into a room and see a long list of information. I can't remember it all. I manipulate things the best I can, but I often have to type "look" to reread the description before I can continue. That costs me turns or time. Sure be nice if I could scroll backward a screen or two through the text to reread what was presented earlier.
Descriptions are key elements. If they're well written, you not only get a good image of what's happening (as well as the ambience of the game), but you find clues and objects. I don't find the graphics in most adventures, except the Mindscape series (Deja Vu, etc.) necessary or even interesting. I prefer to depend on the text. I'd trade the disk space a graphic consumes for more complete (and colorful) descriptions any day.
Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of adventure games, I like the challenge, the devious twistings of the logic, the puzzles (and I usually hate the vocabulary). I started playing them in 1978 on my TRS-80 and managed to solved most of the original Scott Adams' adventures sometime between '78 and '85. Since then, I've played at quite a few, but never managed to finish any, despite my best efforts to do so.
Why? Read on.
Problem No. 2: the time factor. Most adventures take a looonggg time to play. Some are huge: hundreds of rooms to explore, dwarves to pummel, treasures to unearth, puzzles to wrestle into solutions. My own house pales in comparison to some of these places. Many require that you work your way through the game umpteen times, each time gaining a bit more of the map, the location of another item, finding a way out of the maze and so on. I simply don't have the time, even with save-game options. Adventures are "desert island" games: things I'd like to take away with me where I could play through them without distraction from the events of daily life.
There's also the problem of continuity. You have to map things out as you go and usually making notes is wise, so you remember why you crossed the bridge or where you found the axe. You have to play adventures with dedication. You can't leave them sit for weeks, then return to them. You'll have forgotten all the bits and pieces and will probably have to start over again.
In terms of value for the dollar, adventures rate high. You'll probably play them ten times longer than a similarly priced action game. Of course, once solved, an adventure is usually never replayed, unless there are alternate endings you can play for. And adventures provide intellectual challenge far above and beyond the paltry offerings in the arcade game line.
Of the lot, I'd say my favorites (in no special order) are:
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Infocom). Bizarre, funny, demanding. Best played after you read the books.
Corruption (Rainbird). Fast-paced, tightly written, lots of deviousness and danger. Listen to both sides of the tape.
Deja Vu (Mindscape). Good interaction, good plot, nice way of handling things.
Alternate Reality (Datasoft). Great idea for a game, but unfinished until the series is completed.
Nope, never finished any of them—but I will. One day. I'm working on it. (I have the rest of my life.) And don't send me any clues or hint books. Hint books are like cheating at solitaire. No one wins; you lose. I'll just keep hacking away at them, saving games as I go along. I just wish there were some shorter adventures around. Games I could finish in one or two evenings.
PS: Datasoft and other companies have an annoying habit of writing long, unavoidable introductions to their games (AR, Mercenary, Global Commander). Please, can't you code something to allow players to stop the introduction, end the corny music and boring graphics, by pressing a key? I hate games where I have to wait several minutes through repetitive silliness before I can even start playing!.