#Adventuron

[manonamora-if]

Lysidice and the Minotaur

You are Lysidice, a young Athenian maiden prisoner of the Labyrinth. Though you are under the protection of the Minotaur, you know your luck is bound to run out. And when he shows up... So you will need to escape the maze, if you want (him) to survive...

Lysidice and the Minotaur is an interactive parser, created for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam and is meant for beginner players, since it includes, a tutorial, a hint system, and a full walkthrough (also downloadable. 

As a parser, it is considered merciful (or polite, if I broke something). You will never reach a losing state. You can also find instructions on how to play a parser on the game page.

Mentions or depictions of: fights (swords), injuries and wounds (blood), mental illness, harm to animals (minimal). Please be aware when starting the game.

PLAY GAME | RATE GAME | REVIEW GAME

[loressa]

I used to write a bunch for MUDs, and a few years ago, I decided I wanted to try making my own game. I started as a writer/QA/project management for my first few game jams because I was struggling to create something fully on my own.

This hybrid “help as needed” role let me get hands on experience and showed me a deeper look behind the scenes of how games are made, without being overwhelmed by all the setup needed to get my hands in the mess – I had previously been daunted by the basics of just setting up engines and SDKs and CLIs and virtual environments and all that stuff.

This was the result from the first game where I did design/heavy writing focus and no code: https://misc-mike.itch.io/bookworm

We had envisioned something impressive with the player changing the story, but as development continued we learned about scoping and timelines: our coder ran out of time, so I focused on finding us public domain images and twisting together a concept of a thing that would work with the functions we had coded. The result is kinda cute.

From there, I tried out making my own games using a range of different engines which focused on text-heavy development:

Twine: webdev (eg CSS, html) for interactive hypertext

Choicescript: uses very basic scripting for interactive cyoa novels

Ren’Py: uses python for visual novels

Quest and QuestJS: for text adventures

Adventuron: designed to teach children how to code via making text adventures

This is not an exhaustive list – https://intfiction.org/ is a great resource for even more options such as TADS.

Read more on my blog because I'm old and still have one and apparently Tumblr has a character limit for posts: https://thoughts.games/2024/09/30/getting-into-game-dev-as-a-writer/

[manonamora-if-reviews]

The Last Mountain, by Dee Cooke

Play the game Read other reviews See other games from Dee

Running down that hill (4/5)

I could not be furthest from the intended audience for this game: I absolutely hate running. I just don't get the appeal or why people would push themselves to exert themselves this way. Anything related to it will give me the hives…

Yet, I found myself engrossed with the story. Your will to finish this gruelling race, hopefully getting a good time too. Your frustration with your running companion, who is unusually lagging behind and whose condition is starting to worry you. And your struggles with the path, not quite as safe as you hoped.

While you are the character advancing the story, I felt it was more about Susan (or your relationship to Susan) that mattered most here. There are hints through most of the game to why your companion doesn't seem like herself -- though her condition is only vaguely mentioned in the ending, it is easy to assume what's what. Depending on your actions, the ending you get is heartwarming, even if a bit bittersweet, or pretty tragic…

The game is pretty short, with three and half room and hinted puzzles, branching into multiple endings (I think I managed to get three by myself?). One branching choice seems to have a random component to which path you'll end up taking (with the correct direction potentially changing with each playthrough).

It was a good well rounded short game!

We love games that make things accessible for newbies! :heart: walkthroughs

[loressa]

Great post. Also some other engines to look at:

Quest and QuestJS if you wanna make text adventures. JS uses JavaScript, so this is a great engine for folks in/looking to get into webdev.

Adventuron. Has its own unique language, but the game engine is designed for children to learn how to code, so it's very user friendly and will teach you object oriented coding building blocks of knowledge which are applicable in many languages.

Choicescript - probably the easiest language for folks looking to make text heavy choose your own adventure stuff. Has a publishing ecosystem with consistent clients, so this is the best one for a writer new to coding who wants to make money.

🎮 HEY I WANNA MAKE A GAME! 🎮

Yeah I getcha. I was once like you. Pure and naive. Great news. I AM STILL PURE AND NAIVE, GAME DEV IS FUN! But where to start?

To start, here are a couple of entry level softwares you can use! source: I just made a game called In Stars and Time and people are asking me how to start making vidy gaems. Now, without further ado:

SOFTWARES AND ENGINES FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO CODE!!!

Ren'py (and also a link to it if you click here do it): THE visual novel software. Comic artists, look no further ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It has great documentation! It has a bunch of plugins and UI stuff and assets for you to buy! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) You can also port your game to a BUNCH of consoles! ✨Cons: None really <3 Some games to look at: Doki Doki Literature Club, Bad End Theater, Butterfly Soup

Twine: Great for text-based games! GREAT FOR WRITERS WHO DONT WANNA DRAW!!!!!!!!! (but you can draw if you want) ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's versatile! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) ✨Cons: You can add pictures, but it's a pain. Some games to look at: The Uncle Who Works For Nintendo, Queers In love At The End of The World, Escape Velocity

Bitsy: Little topdown games! ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's (somewhat) intuitive! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! You can make everything in it, from text to sprites to code! Those games sure are small! ✨Cons: Those games sure are small. This is to make THE simplest game. Barely any animation for your sprites, can barely fit a line of text in there. But honestly, the restrictions are refreshing! Some games to look at: honestly I haven't played that many bitsy games because i am a fake gamer. The picture above is from Under A Star Called Sun though and that looks so pretty

RPGMaker: To make RPGs! LIKE ME!!!!! NOTE: I recommend getting the latest version if you can, but all have their pros and cons. You can get a better idea by looking at this post. ✨Pros: Literally everything you need to make an RPG. Has a tutorial inside the software itself that will teach you the basics. Pretty simple to understand, even if you have no coding experience! Also I made a post helping you out with RPGMaker right here! ✨Cons: Some stuff can be hard to figure out. Also, the latest version is expensive. Get it on sale! Some games to look at: Yume Nikki, Hylics, In Stars and Time (hehe. I made it)

engine.lol: collage worlds! it is relatively new so I don't know much about it, but it seems fascinating. picture is from Garden! NOTE: There's a bunch of smaller engines to find out there. Just yesterday I found out there's an Idle Game Maker made by the Cookie Clicker creator. Isn't life wonderful?

✨more advice under the cut. this is Long ok✨

ENGINES I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT AND THEY SEEM HARD BUT ALSO GIVE IT A TRY I GUESS!!!! :

Unity and Unreal: I don't know anything about those! That looks hard to learn! But indie devs use them! It seems expensive! Follow your dreams though! Don't ask me how!

GameMaker: Wuh I just don't know anything about it either! I just know it's now free if your game is non-commercial (aka, you're not selling it), and Undertale was made on it! It seems good! You probably need some coding experience though!!!

Godot: Man I know even less about this one. Heard good things though!

BUNCHA RANDOM ADVICE!!!!

-Make something small first! Try making simple: a character is in a room, and exits the room. The character can look around, decide to take an item with them, can leave, and maybe the door is locked and you have to find the key. Figuring out how to code something like that, whether it is as a fully text-based game or as an RPGMaker map, should be a good start to figure out how your software of choice works!

-After that, if you have an idea, try first to make the simplest version of that idea. For my timeloop RPG, my simplest version was two rooms: first room you can walk in, second room with the King, where a cutscene automatically plays and the battle starts, you immediately die, and loop back to the first room, with the text from this point on reflecting this change. I think I also added a loop counter. This helped me figure out the most important thing: Can This Game Be Made? After that, the rest is just fun stuff. So if you want to make a dating sim, try and figure out how to add choices, and how to have affection points go up and down depending on your choices! If you want to make a platformer, figure out how to make your character move and jump and how to create a simple level! If you just want to make a kinetic visual novel with no choices, figure out how to add text, and how to add portraits! You'll be surprised at how powerful you'll feel after having figured even those simple things out.

-If you have a programming problem or just get confused, never underestimate the power of asking Google! You most likely won't be the only person asking this question, and you will learn some useful tips! If you are powerful enough, you can even… Ask people??? On forums??? Not me though.

-Yeah I know you probably want to make Your Big Idea RIGHT NOW but please. Make a smaller prototype first. You need to get that experience. Trust me.

-If you are not a womanthing of many skills like me, you might realize you need help. Maybe you need an artist, or a programmer. So! Game jams on itch.io are a great way to get to work and meet other game devs that have different strengths! Or ask around! Maybe your artist friend secretly always wanted to draw for a game. Ask! Collaborate! Have fun!!!

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

[munnar-adventures]

Zipline in Suryanelli - Munnar Adventures

Adventuron Dual Zipline in Suryanelli with Munnar Adventures.

[groggydog]

I'm officially seeking beta testers for my Spring Thing 2023 entry, 'The Familiar' - the making of which I've highlighted a bit on this Tumblr.

ABOUT

You are a witch's crow familiar, headstrong as anything but still young and untested.

What starts as a normal day soon takes a harrowing turn when your pacific caretaker, Valmai, is struck down by a terrible hex of mysterious origin. Now it's up to you, little bird, to cure your caretaker and discover the hex's source.

Are you up for the task?

FEATURES

Beginner-friendly parser commands peppered with choice-based elements

Free to play; formatted for browser, tablet, and mobile

Optional tutorial and in-game task list to keep track of events and goals

More than 30 unique, hand-crafted pixel art scenes

Roughly 1 hour of play time

Cute woodland animals

If you're interested, you can find info below on the IntFiction forums!

[freeindiegame]

Mushroom Hunt by Polyducks

A charming and wonderfully detailed text adventure.

[indieretronews]

[manonamora-if]

After a difficult breakup, and a long night of drinking, you decide to take your life back and put things back in order. Starting with a simple meal. Treat yourself!

Not Another Sad Meal is a parser cooking sim where you can make 1 out of 3 meals, and set yourself back on the right path! 

[ Sad Spice DLC now included ]

Not Another Sad Meal was made for the Recipe Jam, an Interactive Fiction game jam centred around recipes.

The parser is considered merciful (you will not reach a bad end) and uses a limited verb list (available in-game). Interactive elements are highlighted and clickable (for a special action). A mini-walkthrough for each recipe is included in-game and is downloadable.

A rough recipe of the mentioned dishes can be downloaded on the game page.

PLAY GAME | REVIEW GAME | RATE GAME | SOURCE CODE

[kessielrg]

Trying to get comfortable with Adventuron again. Might have the inklings of a new short story in here somewhere...

[seedcomp-if]

Introducing SeedComp!

Forenote: this was posted ahead of the 2022-2023 edition of the Seedcomp! For current information about the competition, see the pinned post.

SeedComp! is a newly created 2-round interactive fiction game jam, focusing on creativity and the growth of ideas, happening over on Itch.io. 

SeedComp! is separated into 2 distinct rounds: Planting and Sprouting. During the Planting Round, you are invited to submit 'seeds' into the competition (text, images, code, etc...). In the Sprouting Round, you get to select one or more seeds and use them as inspiration for your interactive fiction entry for fun, awards, and bragging rights!

You can take part in either round or both. The first round runs from Dec 7th to Jan 7th, the second from Jan 9th to March 1st.  You can sign-up to Round 2 here. 

All indicated deadlines are set to midnight UTC -10/HST time. Don’t worry, they are translated to your local time automatically on Itch.

Signing up to Round 1 Signing up to Round 2

Join our Discord! Official Website

The full list of Rules and Guidelines can be found under the cut.

Round 1 : Planting

During the 1st Round, Planting, you are invited to submit 'seeds' into the competition. These seeds can be absolutely anything, from game introductions, pieces of art, blurbs, design documents, puzzles, poems, characters, I7 extensions, settings, feelies, or even code!

You can submit:

As many 'seeds' as you'd wish.

Unfinished  IF projects, only if you are the author of said entries.

NSFW  seeds as long as content warnings are included.

Other guidelines:

Seeds must be your own creation and licensed under a CC BY-NC licence, CC-BY license or equivalent, or a less restrictive license.

All seeds must be downloadable.

While there is no minimum word count for static text seeds (like blurbs/intros), we encourage you to submit more than just one sentence.

All seeds will be screened by the organisers for trolling/abuse.

If your seed is not selected during this edition of the SeedComp!, you may choose to keep it in the seedbank and make it available for future editions until it is used.

Round 2 : Sprouting

During the 2nd Round, Sprouting, you can sign-up your intent to use Seeds (optional, via this form [TBA]) and submit your entry to Round 2. 

 Discussion of seeds is encouraged in both our Discord and the Community Tab (Itch).

Submission Guidelines:

All entries must be Interactive Fictions.

All entries must be completed games. While there is no requirement in length, a reasonable target is about 15-30 minutes to play.

All entries must be based on at least one seed from Round 1. You may choose to incorporate more  or all seeds if you wish to. 

The entries must follow the licensing type of the most restrictively licensed seed used (indicated on the seed page).

All entries must indicate the seeds used in their submission form.

Seed use is not exclusive to one person, multiple people can sign up for the same seed.  There is no 'dibs'.

You may use your own seed from Round 1.

While you may use only your own seed, this does go against the spirit of SeedComp! and thus your submission won’t be eligible for awards.

Content Warnings must be displayed when submitting the entry.

You can also opt out of receiving awards on your own when submitting. Organisers can submit entries but are not eligible to receive awards. 

We encourage you to provide a downloadable copy of your entry in your game page, for accessibility purpose.

Possible Softwares to create Interactive Fiction:

Twine

Bitsy

Ren'Py

Ink

ChoiceScript

Inform 7

Adventuron

ADRIFT

and many more can be found listed in the IF Wiki.

Playing and Voting for Awards

All Sprouting entries will be made available to play shortly after Round 2 ends. 

Unless opted-out, every entry is eligible for Awards. Awards are titles set by the organisers (such as Best Overall, Best UI, Best Puzzle, etc..). However, every entry can also be nominated for Stickers, which are unique awards submitted by voters for a specific entries (note: all stickers will be screened by the organisers). 

Awards will also be awarded to seeds, such as Most signed-up Seed, or Most Finished Entries for a Seed, etc..

You will be able to vote for Awards and submit Stickers starting March 2nd/3rd until March 31st through this form [LINK TBA]. The results will be released early April.

[jaffre]

been testing out a billion different text adventure game programs to find one im confident with lmao

[manonamora-if-reviews]

Zombie Eye: Campfire Tales by Dee Cooke

IFDB - Game Note: this was a La Petite Mort entry.

Summary: It’s Hallowe’en night and you’ve joined your three friends in the forest to tell scary stories around the campfire. But storytelling turns out to be more complicated than you expected!

A cute and short parser, with the Dee Cooke (tm) graphics and vibes, a sequel to last year's entry, with simple and limited commands. Listen to some spoopy tales around the campfire with your friends, but watch out, some are more dangerous than it seems...

Though it might not be obvious, there is a way to get to a winning state. I had tried a bunch of actions but only reached a bad ending, which was frustrating (it felt like there was no way to "win"). But there is one combination of conditions that will work. Talking to your friends before the story starts is the way...

[interact-if]

Day 2 of the Game Jam Winners Months Featured Author Interviews, continuing with Groggydog!

Groggydog, author of Reclamation.

Corporate Space, the Year 21XX.

You awaken from a month of cryosleep to discover that a missing research vessel has suddenly surfaced in the deep. There are no signs of life. You are now tasked with investigating the nature of the ship’s disappearance and the fate of its crew.

Can you do it before time runs out?

Read more about Reclamation [here]

Reclamation Demo | Dev Blog

Tags: Sci-fi, Parser, Mystery.

[INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT!]

Q1 . Tell us about the story you made for the Jam!

I made “RECLAMATION” – a science-fiction text adventure where you have to investigate the sudden reappearance of a missing research ship in deep space. It used the wonderful Adventuron engine (which gives a classic feel to the game) and is about 25,000 words long, or roughly 90 minutes of play time.

Q2. What was the biggest challenge in creating a game in such a short time span? How did you manage it?

I think the most unique challenge for me was just wrapping my head around the *how* of it all. I had to forcefully slow myself down and take days where I didn’t write or code anything, but just sat down and worked on the outline/structure of the thing. Those days were really beneficial to me, but I felt so much pressure to have it all make sense that it was just constantly in the back of my mind. Along with that, I had to account for difficulty in a way that more pure works of interactive fiction don’t necessarily have to. “Am I making this too hard? Too easy?” were things I asked myself constantly. By most text adventure standards, this was a very easy game. But for interactive fiction, it’s more difficult. Finding that balance in the puzzles and in the pacing was tough but I’m happy with where I landed.

Q3. What was your inspiration for your entry?

I had been thinking about Arthur Clarke’s book Rendezvous with Rama (one of my all-time favorites) a lot before the jam for some reason, and so I knew that I was probably going to set my game on a spaceship if the theme allowed for it. I had a few ideas floating around past that, but nothing concrete. Then, when the theme of “cliffhanger” was announced I mulled it over for a day before settling on the time loop mechanic. It made complete sense in my mind, and I wanted to explore the theme beyond the literal, obvious interpretation. I think I achieved that. A time loop, after all, is just a perpetual cliffhanger! Still, I really, really struggled with it for a while before settling on the implicit puzzle involved with having to do everything in 50 moves or less. It felt so daunting at the start.

Q4. Is this your first time working on a game like this? What do you like (or not like) about working in this format?

This is my first *serious* game in the text adventure format, although I had made a silly little game that doubled as my personal portfolio last fall. I think text adventures provide a unique challenge for interactive fiction, at least in part because of the reputation they have of being quite difficult. I had to be really conscious about how I was presenting information to the player, because I knew that the hardcore text adventure crowd who really like to puzzle things out weren’t going to be playing this game. I needed to find a way to make it both a good game and very approachable for people unfamiliar with the genre. In particular, I can’t just link from one passage to the next: I have to account for players getting lost or missing a key piece of information on the way from point A to point B, adding that time into my mental calculations, and coming up with failsafes. It really just requires you to think so differently, and it’s a fun challenge.

Q5. What is your favorite part about your entry? What have you enjoyed most doing during the Jam?

I love a good tutorial. I don’t know why. I was really gratified when a couple of people pointed out how much they liked mine. As I said earlier, I was really trying to be intentional with the difficulty level of this project, and including a tutorial was a given for me. Turning it into an in-universe event that both taught you the basics of the game and also told you about the characters and spaces felt really nice. More broadly, though, I’m just so happy to be joining the interactive fiction community. This has given me a lot of confidence to continue with other projects.

Q6. What is your advice for sprint projects like this one?

Start smaller than you think you need to. Your project is almost certainly going to balloon out from where you start, and things that seem simple in theory are going to end up being really difficult. It’s way easier to add meat than try to cut it back. To wit: my game only has three “proper” logic puzzles. I knew that any more would take too long, and I was right! I barely got those three figured out in the time I wanted. Three sounds like so few on paper, but I think it ended up being a perfect amount for the game.

Q7. Do you have any other works you’d like to promote?

I’ve just started a Tumblr where you can hear about my upcoming projects and see me analyze my own work and I recently announced my entry for the 2022 Spring Thing festival, Super Mega Tournament Arc! It’ll be my first Twine game, and I’m excited to show it off.

[if-confessions]

Confession(?) I really really want to try making some form of IF but I only have an android tablet (and an old one at that..) and I'm very unlikely to be able to get a pc or laptop (what every coding thing I've found works on) any time soon, and i understand why its that way since it's much easier to code on a full computer than a tablet but im still sad about it :(

Oh that sounds like a pain...

But, while it is easier to code on a computer (especially since some programs need to be downloaded), there are quite a few programs with an online/web presence (Twine, Texture, Moiki, Adventuron, Donjon.fi, Borogove [Inform,. Ink,...], etc... [even VSCode has a web editor]). Here's a list of known IF programs, where you should be able to edit on browser. It is still recommended to save/export the output frequently (as browser-based saves are not the more reliable ones). And you probably will need to go back and forth between the documentation and the program.

So don't despair, anon! It is doable!