Elements of Interactive Fiction

This index is focused on the widely known elements of an interactive fiction game or story. Please feel free to add or edit the index.

Player Character

A term taken from roleplaying games, the player character could equally be called the protagonist. The player character is the entity directly controlled by the commands given by the player.

Switching Player Characters

While the majority of games use a single player character, many change which character is controlled by the player over the course of the game (Fine Tuned, No Time To Squeal), give players the option to choose which character to play at the start of the game (Heroes), or even allow the player to change which character is controlled dynamically (Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning against the Parrot Creatures of Venus, Earth and Sky III: Luminous Horizon). Other games include elements of ambiguity about who the player character actually is (Spider & Web, Bellclap).

Everyman

Early interactive fiction pieces typically featured a single nondescript player character, whose lack of strong distinguishing features took the focus away from character and onto surroundings, while letting the player imagine themelves as the player character. Although this trend persists into many modern games, an increasing number of games make strong efforts to describe and develop a strong player character.

World as Reflection

The voice of the game is often implicitly assumed to be the narrative of the player character, whether the game is written in the first person or not. Because of this, characterisation of the PC is often achieved through the tone of writing used in descriptions.

Conflicting Knowledge and Motivations

The structure of IF encourages the player to identify with the protagonist, arguably more so than in other media because of the control the player exerts over the protagonist (as well as the frequent use of the second person). This creates both opportunities and conflicts. Some theorists believe that it is unfair to the player if the protagonist has more knowledge about his situation; amnesia is often employed to level the playing-field. Other authors employ conflicts and confusions of motivation and knowledge as literary devices.

Puzzles

Mazes

A maze is a network of locations, often very similar in appearance and without any function except to form the maze. To solve this sort of puzzle, the player character has to get from one point to another within the maze. Standard mazes, with static two-dimensional maps, can be simply solved by mapping. This can be made more difficult by moving rooms about, making them indistinguishable, dynamically generating the maze, introducing secret doors and so on. Often, this means that the maze can only be solved by another puzzle - such as finding a combination of directions one has to go, or pulling a lever that opens up a secret door. Arguably, this means that the maze is no longer a genuine maze puzzle - it just looks like one. Many players and theorists are strongly opposed to the use of maze puzzles, considering the device tedious and overused.

One-use Key

A one-use key is a very basic and common sort of puzzle: one where the solution is to use a specific object in conjunction with another specific object. The first object then serves no other use in the game; a common example of this puzzle is a key that will only unlock one door (which itself has only one key).

Guess the Verb

This refers to a puzzle where even when what has to be done is known, the correct command needs to be found in order to perform the action. The unknown element is generally the verb, hence the name, but this is not necessarily the case.

Sometimes working out the correct syntax can intentionally be the puzzle itself, as in Lucian Smith's The Edifice, Carl Muckenhoupt's The Gostak or Nick Montfort's Ad Verbum, but usually it arises accidentally because the author has included insufficient synonyms - a deeply frustrating experience for any player.

One parody of this sort of puzzle was the Leonard Richardson game Guess the Verb!, in which sub-games were solved by the use of unlikely verbs, which were supplied at the start of each sub-game.