i have been looking at narratives in text based games, the game i chose to map out and review was zork as i heard that it was a well known text adventure game. (a text adventure is a game that the main game play is reading though lines of text that describe your environment and any obstetrical in the scene)
first impressions of zork:
when i first started playing zork i got a clear idea of the location i was in and the directions i could go, as i began moving around the first environment it soon became clear to me that the area i was in was not small in size and was littered with secrets.
the first obstetrical the player runs into was the forest, the reason this was a obstetrical is because the similar surrounding makes you lose your path, when i lost my sense of direction i had no choice but to head back the way i had came to regain my bearings,
after this i proceeded to go north until i reached a white building, on examining the building i found that the front was barred shut so i tried going around the back, when i got to the back of the house i found that there was a slightly open window, i entered the window to enter the building and found my self in a kitchen.
in the kitchen i found a bag of food which i ate, after eating the lunch i moved into the adjoining living room where i found the following items a lantern and a sword.
once i had collected both these items i looked around the room until i noticed that the rug on the floor was out of place because it had a budge from a trapdoor underneath.
the fact that the room supplies you with the items required to further your quest makes the room the donor and the helper even though it is not a character as with out this room your character can go no further.
i opened the trap door and after trying to find the right command which was down i proceeded down into the cellar, this is where i came across my second obstetrical the dark (like the forest the dark stops the player by taking away their sense of direction also an enemy is described in the dark) to get rid of the dark i lit the lantern to illuminate my surrounding.
this is where i believe act one ends because we have gone from a safe environment to a environment rumored to have enemies and we also have a weapon to defend our selves.
(this sadly is when the internet crashed)
when i was able to get back on the game again i took another path, his time i when to the tallest tree in the forest and climbed to the top to collect an item first instead of going straight to the house, every path i took after this took me back to the house.
from text adventure i have found that yes a text adventure can have multiple paths and it is rather open world however this is always soothing that is slowly pushing the sorry forward or you will just keep going in loop, this is common in small scale RPG including two of my favorites the original Pokemon red and the final fantasy series up to 12.
