CIRCA:Text Adventure (Computer Game Genre)

From CIRCA

Defining Characteristics and Comparison to Literary Fiction

Text adventures are a type of computer game that makes use of descriptive commands (verbs such as 'look,' 'go north,' 'open door') which when entered on a command line produce algorithmic responses that affect changes in the progress of a virtual fictional scenario. The genre has also been termed interactive fiction, underscoring its relation to literary fiction as exemplified by the novelform. However, not all fictions with which one can interact are computer games, least text adventures.

Several features of text adventures are shared with other forms,

Branching

Interactive fictions

improvisation, alternate choices and outcomes)

prompt the computer to update the user with a textual or graphical description of the actions those verbs stand for being performed in the context of an ongoing story .

the results of those actions in an imaginative scenario or story that progresses according to. 

Context Points

Will Crowther's