Guess-the-verb
From IFWiki
"Guess-the-verb" (sometimes abbreviated as GTV) is the name of a particular fault in game design where although the player has correctly guessed what he is meant to do, the game's parser does not understand unless he uses a particular and possibly non-obvious way to phrase the command. For example, if there is a crate to be opened with a crowbar and the only way to open it is to "pry crate with crowbar", other actions like "open crate with crowbar" give a misleading response.
Some games, such as The Edifice (Lucian Smith, 1997, Z-code) and Ad Verbum (Nick Montfort, 2002, Z-code) intentionally include guess-the-verb puzzles to good effect but in contexts where the puzzles are explicitly about language.
Solution
- Plenty of Beta-testing.
- A good thesaurus can also come in handy.
- Play plenty of IF to get a feel for the sort of verbs considered standard - which may not always be the standard library ones.
- When coding synonyms, make them actual synonyms instead of giving responses along the lines of 'Try INSCRIBE rather than WRITE.' It's just polite.
- Include a special verbs list in your Help and/or About menus. If these verbs are going to be used a lot, draw attention to those menus in the banner text.
Game homages
- ADRIFT-O-Rama (Dana Crane as "Mystery"; 2003; ADRIFT 4) features "Guess the Verb Mountain" as the penultimate hole of a novelty miniature golf course.
- Guess the Verb! (Leonard Richardson; 2002; Z-code) uses the phrase as the instruction in a surreal carnival game.
Links
- "You Can't Get Ye Flask", a.k.a. Guess The Verb at TV Tropes Wiki