So, I had an idea for this text adventure thing for XNA. Ei-Nyung had suggested something … active – like you might be at a dinner-date or something, then the restaurant would get held up, and you’d have to be interrogated by the police or something. I really like the thought of doing “active” things in the context of a text adventure.

I wondered, though, whether it’d be possible to ramp up the player in a really oddball way. I read an article on Portal in the most recent Game Developer, and just being reminded about the game made me think of the really elegant ways they train the player to understand how the game works.

What would a similarly narratively immersive tutorial for a text adventure be?

So, the thought that came to mind would be that perhaps this text adventure would look like a “regular” game – a couple studio title cards, a title screen and short attract mode or something that would then get interrupted by a black screen with terminal-like text. You’d have someone essentially “typing” on the far side of the fake connection, talking to you. Your input, in return, would be through the analog sticks, essentially selecting the way you respond. You could type in stuff like your name, so the other characters could refer to you by name, and maybe if we’re really clever, we could get the Live Vision camera to read the color of the room and comment on it or something.

But basically, the first part of the game is a discussion between you and this person who’s “hacked” your 360. Yeah, yeah – just like every other hacker fantasy out there. But the point is that this is basically just a “conversation” between you and some virtual character that gets you in the mindset that this is how you interact with the world. You get used to “talking” to this person, and ideally, you can get immersed enough in the game that when the game actually shifts out of being simply a “conversation” with this character, the player doesn’t even notice that their in-game avatar is now taking action or moving about in the virtual world.

So, for instance, maybe the end of the conversation with the hacker is their connection getting interrupted under dire circumstances. One of the responses might be something like, “Call Hacker” using a number they gave you before. The game would then describe you grabbing your cell phone, dialing the number, and getting a dead line. If done right, it’d be really interesting to see if you can make that transition – from being *you* to being an avatar in-game – completely transparent.

Dunno, but it sounds like it’s an interesting challenge.