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Week 5 – Research for Text Adventure Games

After deciding upon the output format for the realisation of our concept, me and the other group member decided it was appropriate to undertake some research on old school text adventure games and how this could be used to inform our own choices on the project. Games we looked to were old PC games, text adventure games came in to being solely because it was a form of narrative and enteratainment which weren’t particularly intensive for computer and home entertainment systems back in the day. Me and the other group member decided that we have a love for a lot of the components within text adventure games whether it’s the influence from: Puzzle Games, Literature, or even board games like Dungeons and Dragons, they’re all influences we look to in order to create our game.

Text based adventure games have existed for years some of our favourites are: Zork, Planetfall and Amnesia.

Zork

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Zork was one of the defining games of the text adventure genre, it placed players into a fantasy world and gave them a taste of something that didn’t exist prior, this is my personal favourite out of all the text adventure games I’ve played in the past, and plays a huge role in the influences we have looked to in order to create our own game. Another point to mention is how simplistic the graphics are, and how easy this is to replicate for a mobile application, little to none design elements are present, meaning it’s easy to make nowadays with our current technology. To also transfer this and to make it applicable for a mobile or tablet output is relatively easy.

Amnesia

Amnesia is another text adventure game created by Thomas M Disch, this game focused less on a fantasy world and more around an Cyberpunk/Dystopian future. Amnesia was also groundbreaking for the theme’s it played with very early on in gaming. Amnesia toys with the idea of death and suffering with no escape from it, people also call the game a dig at capitalism similar to the film Brazil. Overall I liked amnesia when I played it for the themes it dealt with and how it wasn’t afraid to branch from the norms of gaming back in the day. Also another point to note is how although the world and setting is different, the design elements all remain the same

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Planetfall

Planetfall was yet another influential text based adventure game, in the case of this game it was primarily just a generic sci-fi adventure, with some humour which separates it from other text adventure games. Overall planetfall stands out to me because of it’s humour and slap-stick kind of approach to adventure gaming. the design elements for this game were slightly better than the others, it featured a blue screen and also a pointing mouse, most other text adventure games require solely a keyboard, this is a feature which showed further potential for the genre back in the day, making it stand above the rest.

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Workshop 4 – Antillion Text Adventure Game

During the workshop this week I asked my tutor if I could pair up with another person in order to create the R&D File and the Realisation of the concept for this semester, it was accepted and so me and the other group member began to work on ideas for development and possible Output Formats.

Initial ideas started with a mobile application which could enable users and community moderators to vote up news stories which otherwise wouldn’t get any spotlight on mainstream media. The idea behind this was to be a voice for the people, fitting into the category of  and to highlight potential news either deemed unworthy for mainstream news outlets, or something which has too much of a scare or risk factor for the general public. This idea was great in principal, and during the workshop we already began to think about conceptual art and how a system like this would function, but after realising the intensity behind creating a service like this, and with knowledge on the subject area being minimal, the idea felt impractical despite it being something a lot of people would want.
After those ideas were disbanded, we decided to go back to the drawing board and work on something which could be achieved as a realistic product. The idea that came out was a mobile game, something which could fulfil the need of rewarding entertainment, whilst still having a purpose, this is why we decided on a text adventure based game.

The idea behind choosing a text adventure game wasn’t based solely on our ability to make it, more so whether it fulfilled needs that people had, we decided that whilst the game may be considered only useful for entertainment purposes, that it actually provided more than just that.  After researching text adventure games we found that the users playing them, described what they took away from them and what it offers for potential demographics. We broke down the demographics into 4 groups, these were:
Adventure Game Fans, Nostalgic Adults, Literature Fans and Puzzle Game Fans. These are all appropriate demographics, which we can later explore, the research we found out will be used later in the R&D file but overall I feel as though the progress made today is substantial and a great continuation so far from the initial R&D File proposal.