
Text-only video game shows how genre can be beautiful, innovative and complex - ndarilek
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/01/hadean_lands_the_text_only_video_game_shows_how_the_genre_can_be_beautiful.single.html
======
jameshart
On the subject of IF, programming language geeks should all check out Inform 7
- Graham Nelson's programming tool for creating text-based games that run on
the Infocom Z-machine (and other related formats). There are a large number of
truly astonishing things about the language, compiler and development
environment. For example:

\- the text editor supports elastic tabstops

\- its documentation is embedded right into the development environment,
beautifully complete and well written, and filled with great little examples

\- compilation error messages are delightfuly detailed, specific, and useful.
But if the same error is repeated, the compiler usually tells you "again, this
doesn't make sense" rather than hitting you with a wall of repetition.

\- many of the language's tools are for creating new language syntaxes for you
to write your program with, rather than for the player to use in the game. You
can create your own nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions to use in your
descriptions of the world.

\- Its relationships system is very powerful, and includes first-class support
for performing operations on the graphs defined by relationships. For example,
rooms are related by adjacency, and you can enquire what room is 'the next
step via the adjacency relation' from one room towards another to have
characters navigate towards a goal - but equally you can create our own
relationships and perform similar operations on those.

\- in spite of the syntactic restrictions of trying to 'read like English', it
surfaces surprisingly rich functional and generics syntaxes; there's a real,
grown-up programming language in there.

It is definitely worth a weekend play, if you're looking for a completely
different kind of language for a change.

~~~
Karunamon
To give an example of the language. Let's say you want a room where the player
is eaten by a grue if they linger too long:

    
    
        A room has a number called grue counter. The grue counter of a room is usually 0.
        A room can be grue infested. A room is usually not grue infested.
    
        Every turn while the player is in a grue infested room:
            Increase the grue counter of the location by one.
    
        The dungeon is a room. "You stand in a basic medieval dungeon." The dungeon is grue infested.
    
        The first time the player enters the dungeon:
            try looking;
            say "It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."
        
        Grue lunch is a scene. Grue lunch begins when the grue counter of the dungeon is greater than 10.
        When grue lunch begins:
            	say "A large, smelly, foul tempered creature resembling a cross between a troll and an orc lumbers out from one of the open passageways. It sniffs the air, catches your scent, and looses a mighty roar! Before you are able to do anything else, it quickly lunges forward, chomping down on your head with a sickening [bold type]*crunch*"	;
    	end the story saying "You have been eaten by a grue."
    

This is the actual syntax, and it is surprisingly readable. Getting used to
what the parser wants you to say can be tricky sometimes - just because the
language is english like doesn't mean you can write your code in completely
free-form english, but it's damn close!

Once you've gotten your head around a few of the foibles, it's a lot less like
writing a program and a lot more like just writing a book. In any case, agreed
heartily with parent, it's a lot of fun to play around with!

~~~
JabavuAdams
Wow! I was trying to create something like this for knowledge representation,
last week. Ended up reading some of the CLIPS manual, then deciding to roll my
own, as usual.

Wow. Programming is so faddish! I know this, but it's still surprising. What
other problems that we're struggling with have been basically solved, in some
currently unpopular corner?

~~~
pjc50
_Programming is so faddish!_

Yes, sadly; and this is because programming languages, like spoken languages,
live and die by their community. And it's harder to cross-pollinate
programming languages since all changes must be backwards-compatible with
existing source text. Language interop is usually terrible. You can't easily
bring just a _bit_ of Inform into an application.

This is very slowly improving with the popularity of compile-to-llvm, compile-
to-CLR, and compile-to-JS as intermediate targets.

The other factor in faddishness is ahistoricity; the most energetic and
community-orientated people are young, but interested in building their own
new wheels while overthrowing the old wheel order.

~~~
JabavuAdams
> The other factor in faddishness is ahistoricity; the most energetic and
> community-orientated people are young, but interested in building their own
> new wheels while overthrowing the old wheel order.

It's easier to write code for a small system than to read code for a large
system.

------
sjackso
Oh cool, he finally finished it! Hadean Lands was kickstarted five years ago
[1], receiving $31337. (Read that number carefully; this article rounds to
$30k and completely misses the fun.) At the time, it was astonishing to many
people that a piece of interactive fiction could pull in five figures of
crowdfunding.

Andrew Plotkin has been releasing really excellent games for years; Spider and
Web was my introduction to interactive fiction. (Talk about getting thrown in
the deep end of the genre...)

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-
inter...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-interactive-
fiction-for-the-iphone)

EDIT: The game's author has, for some years, been posting Hadean Lands design
and progress notes at the Gameshelf blog:
[http://gameshelf.jmac.org/author/author6b0d4/](http://gameshelf.jmac.org/author/author6b0d4/)

~~~
Kronopath
Spider and Web is a work of genius. But I'll warn you: if you have any
interest at all in playing it, stop reading about it. Go in knowing as little
as possible, and just work your way through. You'll do fine.

You can even play it for free online, so you have no excuse:
[http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/tangle/](http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/tangle/)

I just impulsively picked up the Hadean Lands bundle after reading this
article too. I look forward to playing it.

~~~
zaroth
I spent far too long just reading along with this walkthrough
([http://www.allthingsjacq.com/intfic_clubfloyd_20080904.html](http://www.allthingsjacq.com/intfic_clubfloyd_20080904.html))
this game would drive me insane ;-)

~~~
Kronopath
But then you're denying yourself the experience! It's not so bad, really.

~~~
Kronopath
...besides, that transcript totally skips over the most climactic scene in the
game. It's a travesty, really. Don't bother with it.

------
tdicola
Folks interested in interactive fiction (aka text adventures, but that name
implies something a little different these days) should definitely check out
the annual interactive fiction contest:
[http://www.ifcomp.org/](http://www.ifcomp.org/) The winners are always top
notch games, and the format is perfect as most games are built to be completed
in an hour or two and have a full hint/walkthrough to help you if you get
stuck. Modern IF games rely much less on tricks and traps like the classic
Infocom games of days past, so they're much more friendly and entertaining to
play.

One of my favorite authors is Ryan Veeder, his games remind me of Infocom's
classics but aren't nearly as frustrating to play:
[http://www.rcveeder.net/blog/interactive-
fiction/](http://www.rcveeder.net/blog/interactive-fiction/) Check out Taco
Fiction for a great example (and IF comp winner!).

~~~
mklim
Aaron Reed and Emily Short are also both worth checking out also, two of my
favorites. Blue Lacuna and Sand-dancer are my favorites from Reed
([http://aaronareed.net/](http://aaronareed.net/)), and honestly everything
from Short ([https://emshort.wordpress.com/my-
work/](https://emshort.wordpress.com/my-work/)) is good, but Alabaster and
Galatea are both particularly striking.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Anyone interested in this topic should definitely be following Emily Short's
blog. She gives good coverage to the field as a whole, not just her own games.

------
lubujackson
Since the article can't be bothered to link to the game:
[http://hadeanlands.com/](http://hadeanlands.com/)

------
hackuser
For those interested in more: Interactive fiction (IF) is one kind in a larger
genre, e-lit, or electronic literature. I've recently started exploring it.
Here are some links, but a warning that much in the descriptions, reviews,
etc. is written for technical experts -- in the humanities. (If you want to
complain, first look at your own documentation. Now you know how end-users
feel. ;) )

* Beginners overview of e-lit at ELO (see below) [[http://directory.eliterature.org/node/3706](http://directory.eliterature.org/node/3706)]: Overview, includes links to more, a decent starting point but a bit technical.

* Electronic Literature Collection by ELO [[http://collection.eliterature.org/](http://collection.eliterature.org/)]: Collections of leading e-lit works, AFAICT. A pretty good place to start reading. The works themselves are less technical than the descriptions, reviews, etc. of them.

* Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) [[http://eliterature.org/](http://eliterature.org/)]: The most comprehensive resource, but maybe not the best starting place. They also have a large database of e-lit, [[http://directory.eliterature.org/](http://directory.eliterature.org/)]

* Electronic Literature Knowledge Base (ELMCIP) [[http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase](http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase)]: "cross-referenced, contextualized information about authors, creative works, critical writing, and practices."

* Electronic Poetry Center [[http://epc.buffalo.edu/](http://epc.buffalo.edu/)]: Community center with very broad collection, also curated collection(s?), author info, links, festival info.

------
wuliwong
I will definitely check this out. I recently played A Dark Room
([http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/](http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/))
on ios. It was really great. The game was also really beautiful and just text.
I have been wanting to create a game for some time and playing a Dark Room
makes me feel that it is possible as my expertise is in algorithms and web
development but I know nothing about animation. I'm excited to try out Hadean
Lands.

------
NateG
I cut my teeth on games like Zork when I was a kid and never looked back. Text
based games have always captured my interest and I often tell my friends that
there is no better graphics engine than your imagination. Many of the games I
made in my spare time were text based in nature like old school professional
wrestling sims, adventures games, etc and there is a surprisingly high number
of people in the world who still enjoy them (young and old) as is evidenced by
this article and my latest game (shameless plug in 3, 2, 1: Pit of War [1]). I
don't believe I've ever spent money on a mobile game because its awesome 3D
graphics, but I have spent money on a mostly text based game with an awesome
story, or something like Gemini Rue with its retro style graphics and
intriguing story and will happily do so again. Story is key for these types of
games and I believe they leave a much longer lasting impression, at least for
me anyway. My game that I mentioned above is more of a strategy pvp arena
fighting game so there isn't the story element there yet (it is planned for
2015), however, I often get emails from my players telling me how much they
enjoy the fact it is text based and they're happy to support continued
development. Don't be afraid to try this genre out if you are small team or
just one person. You won't get fawned over by the press but you'll have the
ability to create a rich, fun and detailed world and with some creatively
placed still images and an engaging story or game mechanics many people out
there will pay you for your efforts if that is one of your goals. Be attentive
to your player base, be good to them and they will reward you in spades for
keeping one of their favorite genres alive that the mainstream have all but
called dead and buried many times over.

[1] [http://www.pitofwar.com](http://www.pitofwar.com)

------
jqgatsby
I still remember the riddle on the cliff in Beyond Zork: My tines be long, My
tines be short, My tines end ere my first report. What am I?

I got stuck on the game because I couldn't answer it. Spent months and then
years thinking about it. Then one day the answer came to me, but by then we
didn't have a Commodore 64 anymore.

Then in the 90s they rereleased the games as part of Return To Zork. I eagerly
raced back to the cliff to proudly intone my answer! A portal was revealed,
and I ran inside to claim my reward...and was promptly killed by a giant slug.

Good times! Btw, I'm sure many people on this list could reply with the answer
to this riddle. I would invite you _not_ to, to give others an opportunity to
noodle on it if they wish.

------
nsxwolf
I always preferred the less pretentious sounding term "text adventure".

~~~
zem
while i like the term "text adventure" simply because that's what i grew up
with, the broader term "interactive fiction" has genuinely provided room for
people to experiment with the genre. it's not just a matter of "same thing,
different label slapped on it"; if i say "design a text adventure" and "design
a work of interactive fiction" the latter immediately suggests a lot more
possibilities.

~~~
Karunamon
The Inform 7 docs go into this a little bit - a "text adventure" has aspects
commonly associated with a game.. a player, a score, a win and lose condition,
puzzles to solve, and so forth.

A work of "interactive fiction" need not necessarily be a game with the usual
things that go along with that.

~~~
Chathamization
Haldean Lands sounds like it has players and puzzles. And most of the
graphical adventure games I’ve played haven’t had scoring systems.

~~~
Karunamon
Again, emphasis on "need not necessarily". Text adventures are a subset of
interactive fiction.

------
vacri
The excerpt of gameplay suggests that it suffers from the same problem as the
original text games: having to figure out the exact syntax the designer wants
to hear. In the 'recall the brass tarnish ritual', there are five steps, but
only three are performed, one of which doesn't match up with the relevant step
('Speak a word of essential nature' => 'say the sealing word').

I'm happy for other people to enjoy this kind of game, but the above is why
they're not my cup of tea.

~~~
mquander
As it happens, the author of the article just inexplicably cut out the
transcript of doing the middle two steps, which are indeed necessary for the
player to perform the ritual.

It's possible that it would still be too fiddly for you, but modern parser-
based text adventures have gotten a lot better since the Infocom days in this
way. Probably the biggest reason is that games like Hadean Lands have dozens
of beta testers play through it doing whatever their heart desires and
providing feedback on puzzles and potential parser holes prior to an official
release.

~~~
vacri
That's good to know - it's not the fiddliness (though done poorly, it would
irritate), it's knowing what you want to do and then having to figure out how
to get the program to understand it. Thanks for the info.

------
coldtea
"Shows"? Infocom and co have proven that 3 decades ago...

~~~
freehunter
30 years ago, they _were_ beautiful and innovative. So were Atari games and
14.4k modems. Today they're archaic, on par with rolling a hoop with a stick
that was popular 100 years ago. There's a reason text adventures don't break
the top charts on the App Store. The point of the article is that this doesn't
_have_ to be that way, that text adventures can still be relevant.

If they weren't popular 30 years ago, this article wouldn't be talking about
them becoming more modern, so really you're just rewording the entire point of
the article.

~~~
coldtea
They weren't "beautiful and innovative" 30 years ago in your sense that they
were "modern" then and "archaic" now.

30 years ago they were also "archaic" in technological capability sense.

People played those games well into the era of Amiga and Atari level graphics,
and played them for what they were, not because there weren't graphical games
available in abundance.

~~~
tptacek
During the Amiga and Atari age, graphical games were possible, but expensive
(in time, talent, determination) to create. Text adventures were not. Even
though platforms at the time could execute graphical games, the developer
overhead in creating them wasn't even close to equivalent.

As graphical games got easier to produce, that gap shrank, and text adventures
did get less and less vital.

------
erikb
I had a long and favorable look at IF/text adventures and have to say, nope
it's not that big a thing some people make it. Yes, focussing on content
instead of big explosions is what increases depth and the kind of beauty I
also like. But the IF world is wrong that it must be pure text. A game like
Dwarf Fortress for example can tell a lot of its story without text. You see
your dwarfs moving towards the goblins, nobody needs to explicitly write it
down for you and prompt you for an interaction. Shadow Run Returns is a X-Com
like tactics game, but it also has a lot of text adventure influence with all
its heavy dialogue with different choices etc. And by adding these other
elements together with text based story and depth, you get something more deep
and more efficient.

Text is not a game. It's a feature. Depth is not a game. It's a feature. A
puzzle or labyrinth is not a game. It's a feature. Make games by smartly
combining (multiple!) features!

~~~
dfan
No one in the IF world would claim that games "must be pure text".

~~~
erikb
Not literally, yes. But would you consider Shadowrun Returns or Faster Than
Light a success for the IF world? I think most IF world people don't. And
that's why I conclude that they have a very specific definition of what counts
as IF and what doesn't. We could discuss about the details what exactly is
part of IF and what isn't. But that's not the point anyway. The point is, that
IF people can be proud because text heavy games are quite successful, but
maybe they shouldn't think so purist.

------
syllogism
I happened to play Violet earlier today --- I hadn't played a text adventure
since I was a kid. This was really good.

[http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fi...](http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif-
archive%2Fgames%2Fzcode%2FViolet.zblorb)

------
mgkimsal
In case you haven't seen it, check out the GET LAMP documentary:
[http://www.getlamp.com](http://www.getlamp.com)

~~~
petercooper
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhbcDzbGSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhbcDzbGSU)

------
dfabulich
If you enjoy this type of game, you might enjoy attending an interactive
fiction meetup. At meetups, we play IF games, talk about them, and meet with
other IF authors. Andrew Plotkin (author of Hadean Lands) regularly appears at
the Boston meetup.

* [http://pr-if.org/](http://pr-if.org/) Boston

* [http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction/](http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction/) Bay Area

* [http://www.meetup.com/Oxford-and-London-Interactive-Fiction-...](http://www.meetup.com/Oxford-and-London-Interactive-Fiction-Group/) Oxford and London

~~~
robotkilla
Any in Chicago? These games got me into programming when i was pretty young
(scott adams style games that is - maybe I have IF entangled with text
adventure?). Would love to meet up with some people who are into this stuff
still - i've been playing around with some concepts recently for my own text
adventure games.

------
nsxwolf
Because of this article I discovered "Mind Forever Voyaging" which I started
playing on my lunch break. I'm pretty floored that a text adventure like this
was around in 1985.

------
leeoniya
was expecting an article about ADOM :)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Domains_of_Mystery](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Domains_of_Mystery)

~~~
guard-of-terra
And I was expecting an article about Dungeon Crawl. Blows everything else out
of the water for many years now.

Also playable by ssh.

~~~
elwin
DCSS is a remarkable open source project. The game's design is focused and
coherent, avoiding "feature creep". Yet the devs are open to community
suggestions and stay on good terms with the players. I can't think of any
other project that so well harnesses the creativity of random internet people.

------
hamitron
I played MUDs for many years. I miss those days.

~~~
blakeja
Glad to see someone post this. I laughed when I saw this article and some of
the comments here. I laugh at most games which think they are "complex" or
"challenging", whatever. Go play a MUD, one of the hard ones, get back to me.

~~~
tunesmith
MUDs were ridiculously fun. In college I was starting an LPMud of my own and
somehow stumbled into using lex/yacc to alter the room and dialogue
descriptions depending on point of view. For instance, a character would leave
town to visit a cursed place, and then when they came back to town, they'd
find it completely abandoned and threatening. But meanwhile, the other players
in the town would experience the character speaking in with bizarrely altered
words and speech patterns since the character was possessed. (I did this by
taking the Swedish Chef filter and altering it.) But then the university
admins found it and deleted it. Argh.

I had a friend whose character figured out how to put on a hockey mask, take
out a chainsaw, and then hack off your limbs and give your limbs back to you -
this was by coding from within the game, sort of.

~~~
d357r0y3r
They still are pretty fun. There's something about graphical RPGs that just
gets old. Like, after a few generations of increasingly mindblowing worlds,
you become desensitized to it.

MU _s are to games with graphics as books are to movies. In a modern game, you
're limited to whatever art the designers put into the game. In a MU_, you can
create whatever persona you would like. It's also a small enough community to
where you can have a major impact on the worlds you play in, if you so desire.

------
zem
one thing the review didn't mention was just how beautifully atmospheric the
game was. the writing is spare, but very evocative; from a purely science
fiction/fantasy point of view this is a great experience even before you take
the puzzles into account.

------
aepearson
Man, I used to LOVE Zork (all of them)...I still have my hand-drawn maps of
every single area. Took me months to make them.

~~~
robotkilla
I used to play Pirate Adventure all the time when i was like 8 or 9 - that
game got me into programming in the first place.

~~~
aepearson
Same here (but with Zork)... Zork lead to Hypercard... Hypercard lead to a
career as a programmer. Pretty cool when you think about it.

------
tunesmith
FWIW, the article links to another article about Emily Short and Versu that
isn't quite true anymore. They apparently worked out an agreement with Linden
Labs, and Blood and Laurels is now available on the App Store for $2.99 - I
bought it last night but haven't had a chance to play it yet.

------
sehugg
I think the genre is due for a revival. Another to look at is inkle's _80
Days_. It has some simple illustrations, but is mostly a choose-your-own-
adventure style interaction with focus on conversation. Very well done.

~~~
dfan
Heck, the revival has already happened (at least compared to a decade ago).
There was a long article in the New York Times the other month about Twine,
for example.

------
apricot
Always upvote Andrew Plotkin.

------
johnchristopher
I am a bit surprised text-only video games or interactive fictions don't bring
back the narratology vs ludology debate from ~10 years ago.

