Re:What is ZIL anyway?
by chipotle_coyote on Friday April 19, 2019 @08:08PM
(#19704038)
Particularly with newer games, this is absolutely true. There are a fair number of recent interactive fiction games that are leaning pretty heavily on the "fiction" part and, contra to the poster you're replying to, aren't necessarily focused on stumping you with puzzles. That's not to say that there aren't puzzle elements in almost all IF games, but increasingly, the language matters -- and sometimes it's woven into what puzzles there are.
Re:What is ZIL anyway?
by bayesian_horse on Saturday April 20, 2019 @05:31AM
(#19705589)
When IF focuses on prose, and doesn't contain puzzles, it's harder to actually call it a game.
The one benefit of text games over other types of games is that you can essentially implement whatever world you want, without a trillion Dollar budget for graphics and sounds effects. A holo-deck powered by imagination.
Speaking of games in holo-decks... The killer-app for AI-powered IF may be erotic fiction.
I don't follow the IF world closely (though I often want to set aside the time to get into it), but surely they are also heavily focused on the prose too?
If you treat the text as just an interface to get to the underlying formal game mechanics, then sure, IF is just simple puzzles because there's no hand-eye coordination going on.
But if you treat the text as a fundamental part of the experience, then the puzzles are only a small piece.
By analogy, films are the world's shittiest games because — even though the graphics are nice – the gameplay is obviously pretty meager. The player doesn't get to make any choices at all! But with a film, the graphics are the point.