I've been thinking of combining two things I love, game development and story writing.

So currently I want to work in a project that its main thing is to offer an interactive story telling to the player, the focus is on engaging the character in the story, with choices being important, as depending on the dialogue options the player chooses, the way the story goes will change much, leading to multiple different 'paths'. It's a game that has no 'camera', or a 'being' the player controls, but rather the player chooses what to do by selecting out of possible options that are presented through dialogue interface.

But while I think that the story itself will be interesting enough to keep players wanting to see what will happen next and keep playing, I have some doubts, and because of these doubts I try to think of ways to enhance a game like that, perhaps with features that traditionally belong to other genres.

What kind of activities or other gameplay mechanics could I add to a text adventure game ?

Hmm... I thought of adding puzzle mini-games, when the player's character would have to do things like hacking a terminal for example, but their usage will be limited, as such actions happen just a few times in the game's plot.

Will the whole thing have a combat system? Some of the old text adventure books, like Lone Wolf, had a fairly well developed combat system.

I recently have been pondering too on new mechanics for a text adventure. Some things occured to me that may be useful for you depending on your story and your overall project.

One thing I thought of was the introduction of text art in some points of the game. Something like THIS

It doesn't need to be necessarily interactive, just another tool you could use.

The idea I envisioned had more to do with a simulated chat in which you would talk with different character and solve some sort of puzzle. In this case I would change the background and font colors for each character you are interacting with in different "rooms".

Maybe you could have some king of "mind control" on the player in which no matter what they typed, a predefined text would appear on screen.

I liked a lot the idea of Thaumaturge of the ASCII-exploration, it would definitely be a good surprise to have that somewhere in the game.

Anyways if I think of something else I will gladly share, I think text adventures have so much more to give.

I've been thinking of combining two things I love, game development and story writing.

So currently I want to work in a project that its main thing is to offer an interactive story telling to the player, the focus is on engaging the character in the story, with choices being important, as depending on the dialogue options the player chooses, the way the story goes will change much, leading to multiple different 'paths'. It's a game that has no 'camera', or a 'being' the player controls, but rather the player chooses what to do by selecting out of possible options that are presented through dialogue interface.

Yesterday, I came across a 10 minute video about moral choices in video games. Because your primary focus is on the game's story and choices, I think it'll be helpful to you.

[media]https:

As far as gameplay suggestions go, you might be interested in a game called Sanctuary RPG for inspiration. Determine which parts of your story are the most interesting, and try to turn those moments into interactive gameplay. Whatever they might be, build the minigames around your story (a game called Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors does this). I'm not sure what genre you're writing (science fiction, fantasy, steampunk, etc.) or what your story is about, so I wouldn't be able to provide any specific recommendations for minigames.

Good luck!

On Rye