CIRCA:Text Adventure (Computer Game Genre)

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Definition and Summary

Text adventures are a genre of computer game requiring the player to input descriptions of actions (e.g. 'look,' 'go north,' 'open door')on a computer command line by typing, which when entered correctly prompt the computer to return clues or descriptions of advancing events in a virtual fictional narrative. The genre has also been termed interactive fiction, underscoring its relation to literary fiction as pervaded by the traditional novel form. A somewhat misleading term, because not all fictions with which one can interact are computer games, least text adventures. Similarly, not all computer programs in which descriptive commands that affect changes to a virtual scenario are text adventures. Typical features of the genre include:


  • textual descriptions-- of locations and objects and the effect of actions as they are called for by commands, esp. in early text adventures designed for computer systems not capable of displaying graphics, later versions of text adventures often incorporate pictures as well as text.

The

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.


  • second person perspective -- the main actor in the narrative is referred to by the pronoun you, indicating the person playing is responsible for instigating the action of the game through their input.




  • alternate narrative branches


commands consisting of

later include pictures




    • Second-person perspective.



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. Similarly, not all computer programs in which descriptive commands that affect changes to a virtual scenario are text adventures. Text adventures combine have the following typical features:


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 arguements





Will Crowther's

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