Guess-the-verb: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:54, 1 March 2005

"Guess-the-verb" 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.

Leonard Richardson entered a humorous game into the 2000 IF Competition titled "Guess the Verb!", in which the phrase is used as the instruction in a surreal carnival game.

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 Leonard Richardson entered a humorous game into the 2000 IF Competition titled "Guess the Verb!", in which the phrase is used as the instruction in a surreal carnival game.
-==Pattern Definitions==
-Definition #1: The player knows what to do but not what to type.
-Example 1: The player is supposed to type “kill dragon with sword” but the game don’t understand “hit dragon with sword”
-Example 2: The player is supposed to type “open closet” but the game doesn’t understand “open cabinet”.
-Example 3: The player is supposed to type “hit nail into wall with hammer” but the game doesn’t understand if the player first types “hold nail against wall” and then types “hit nail with hammer”. Or the game doesn’t understand if the player simply types “hit nail with hammer”. Or the game doesn’t understand if the player simply types “put nail in wall” or “attach nail to wall”.
-If a player tries to do something, but can’t because he typed his command wrongly, he might think it’s not possible to do it at all.
 [[Category:Glossary]]
-[[Category:Stagnation Pattern]]