3. Creating a Vivid Setting
One of the first interactive fiction games, Adventure, explored a real space: Bedquilt Cave in Kentucky. The original author, Will Crowther, loved caving and wanted to re-create the sensation of cave exploration as a text-based game. So, he mapped out a real cave and coded the game, and he threw in some fantasy elements like an annoying dwarf and the magical word XYZZY. Later on, Don Woods expanded the game, giving gaming adventurers hours of play.
Players felt as if they were really crawling through a cave. It didn’t matter if they had never been spelunking; Crowther acted as the player’s eyes and ears. He led them through the subterranean scenery so they could imagine what it was like to crawl through narrow rock ...
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