>_ Arklay Games
A tool for writing text adventure games.
The gist
The editor's the whole thing. You draw rooms on a canvas, give them descriptions, drop in items and NPCs, write the rules that turn it into a puzzle. There's a play toggle in the editor itself, so you can watch your game work where you built it.
What you'll work with
- Rooms The places. A kitchen, a forest clearing, the bridge of a derelict ship. You connect them with exits, and exits can be blocked behind a puzzle if you want.
- Items Anything the player can pick up or interact with. Some start in rooms, some in the player's pocket, and some don't exist yet, an action creates them partway through the game.
- NPCs Characters tied to a particular room. A watchman dozing in his chair with a key on his lap, say, who'll part with it if you give him something he wants. They can hold things, they can accept things, and what they'll trade away is up to you.
- Flags The game's memory. Whether the cellar is open. Whether the creature's been dealt with. Small yes-or-no facts that the rest of the world can check against.
- Actions The rules. You write one like: use the sedative on the ration, and the creature eats it and falls asleep. No code, no syntax tree. The sentence plus the conditions under which it should fire.