Day Off Work : The Adventure
text adventure
A short text adventure, made in QBasic in under 1 hour.
source code is included, for the curious.
Comments (12)
Cool, it is not often I get to play retro QBasic text-adventures!
Having the player interact automatically with objects in the area, was an interesting way of getting around having to code a full-blown parser. And leveraging this limitation, by turning the game into a navigational puzzle, was actually pretty clever!
As the game is rather short, and was made in only an hour, commenting on the specifics is perhaps a bit overkill - but I'll do it anyway:
As I read the source, I see that I found all interactions except the "multiple weapons" one, which was a shame, since it made perfect sense within the strange logic of the game. A potential bug: If you walk in an invalid direction in the cave, you keep "finding" new lead.
Using the LCASE$ function on the input string before parsing, can save you a lot of IF "y" OR "Y" style case-checking, especially when making fully featured textadventure parsers (but you probably knew that already). Alternatively, since all your inputs consist of single letters, using INKEY$ instead of INPUT might have made navigating the game a bit smoother.
Even alchemists,
deserve to get a day off.
Dragon hunt is ON!
This was a simple but well written game, surprisingly full of cool little things:
- Interesting map where all the places have a purpose: check
- Fun & unexpected interactions: check
- Multiple endings: check
- Twist victory ending: check
- Alchemy: check
The fact that the game is played by just moving around makes it an accessible and fresh take on interactive fictions. Impressive for a one hour game!
My favorite detail is how drinking water accidentally makes you de-intoxicated!
My speed run: SSWNWENSWS
EDIT: To give at least some criticism, the game could have used a restart option. Otherwise nothing to complain about, the game is small but it does what it does well.
"The dragon flies away intimidated by all these weapons? It better, I brought a hundred!"
Had to restart after that, not going to drown 99 weapons in the swamp…
Usually not a fan of, so called, text adventures, as certain developers clearly take pleasure in designing sadistic puzzles. I'm glad you are not one of them.
Short and sweet, well done for an hour. I reckon you should have opted out of the graphics and audio categories, but oh well.
O 5, G 1, A 1, G 8, O 8, T 8
Hi! We played your game with Danae on this twitch channel, and now the video is available on YouTube. Feel free to check it out :)
First of all, you game cheats! I had TWO weapons. I gave one to the dragon. The game said I gave my only weapon to the dragen and killed me. Not fair!
Also, I didn't want to go on an adventure but the question didn't do anything!
Since the game doesn't have any graphics or sounds, I won't judge those. The gameplay was working okay, as was the implementation of the theme.
I think I've spent more time playing and rating your game now than you spent making it. Not bad for a one hour job!
It was short and simple but it was fun, I like the puzzles.