Zork

     This wasn't my first time interacting with a text-based adventure game.  My interactive fiction class already had a few for me to try out.  But i will admit this is the first time I tried.  I did not get very far though.  In my screencast of Zork I clearly hit a wall that my mind couldn't get over.  I think what helps for me in pieces of interactive fiction are visuals, set choices, or a mix of both.  Dropping someone like me in a fictional world and given no direction to get started just ends with me getting lost (very quickly I might add).

     Games like MNOG have visuals to go by, and they help the player start exploring without directly telling them where to go.  It's the player's curiosity that leads the way.  I'm considering doing five minute screencasts of this and posting them weekly, or filming multiple parts and releasing two or three parts at a time.  Hopefully I can find some way to stitch the videos together, if not I'll just label the videos in parts.

     Set choices are also a great part for me at least to use interactive fiction.  Many works found on inklewriter have this aspect.  Mostly with no visual element to go off of, they give players choices on what to do. There is a set story, one that the player needs to pay attention to.  Text-based adventure games seem to just have a start and a finish, and it takes work to get there, but they feel like a puzzle more than a story.