A New Kind Of Game...

Topics: Programming, Video Games

Adventure: noun An unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity.

Those who know me very well know that I have a great passion for video games, programming and storytelling. Therefore, it is no great secret that I've been trying to reconcile these three activities. While it would be pretty obvious to simply make a video game in order to convey a story, anyone who has dabbled in that medium knows it is no easy task; video games are still not quite accepted as a veritable and serious art form, and trying to tell a story while keeping the player interested is no easy task, though it has been done in the past.

The text-based adventure has been of interest to me lately. Most budding programmers with an interest in video games and a pinch of creativity dabbles into this guilty pleasure of generally bad design and simplified game mechanics. Many historically-important games were text-based adventures which are still played today. Other games take advantage of the graphical simplicity to create complicated gameplay.

I remember the first game I created. It was based on a fantasy setting I've been working on since June 2003 (and I just realized that the setting in question along with the multiverse I built around it will be 10 years old in a little over a month holy shit) and consisted mostly of some limited exploration and combat, with a small engine to procedurally generate weapons and armour.

The idea of creating a text-based video game where I could tell my stories was abandoned for a time. However, it has been coming back recently. I wondered how I could make not only a deep game story, but how I could make it accessible to the general public. I would like this engine to be available to many other players, who would be able to create their own stories without too much hassle.

I am still designing this system, which will be an interpreter for various "story" files. The goal is to create an easy-to-use system for people who are not programmers to create their own narrative-based video games. What do you think?

Stay frosty,
Snowman