It kinda bothers me that a lot of the text based(tm) games today need to be short. But I don’t want (as in: I’m almost incapable to read!) to read a whole bunch of text so it must be broken up in very small pieces.
In a conceptual artistic context like in climbing 208 feet up the ruin wall by Porpentine or Capsule by Paperblurt there are hardly ever more than 6 lines of text and oftentimes less. This is effective: I read all text that is shown. I even can cope with the occasional wall of text if the game eases me into it. The text is also written in a big font.
Inklewriter might be another example: The presentation makes it easy to read the text and to play the game without getting tired too fast.
So we can’t make games with a lot of text? Or is it just a matter of breaking down the text?
Let’s derive from the current situation. I think it’s time for a manifesto*.
A Manifesto of Text Games(tm)?
- Make Text Games
- Text Games are made of chunks
- Chunks should be as short and simple as possible
- Chunks should convey something at first glance
- Hide Chunks and Use paging to create shorter Chunks
So we all know that simplicity and complexity somehow are opposite to each other but I am a strong believer that we can tell big stories and have great interaction if we follow the manifesto rules. Or maybe I’m wrong, who knows?
(tm): meaning games where you have to read words of a language as opposed to something like dwarf fortress
- It’s not really time for a manifesto