Big Deal, Oh! (TALP)

Hello, and welcome to my entry for TALP 2026: Big Deal, Oh!

ABOUT ADVENTURON

It's a parser game written in Adventuron, a programming language built by Chris Ainsley specifically for that. Adventuron is simpler than Inform 7, which I usually write in, and while it's not as powerful, you can build something parser style right out of the gate, and it's very intuitive. It also includes things like graphics, hyperlinks, text color, and keywords more easily. This sort of thing was more difficult back when Inform 7 was created, and it's neat to have a language that addresses what are the new basics. Adventuron's more dedicated to classic text adventures then the story side of interactive fiction, so it suits my style, but all the same time I don't want there to be no story. 

I wasn't planning to participate in 2026, even though I enjoyed participating in 2025, because I wanted to at least have something that matched up somewhat with the theme. I didn't see myself doing this with archeology, but then, the game title hit me, and then I got the name of the first room. Things dripped in from there.

ABOUT BDO

BDO uses a simplified parser where you need to X or EXAMINE things in the game world so your character knows more about them. For instance, if a rock is hiding a key, you may know there's a key there if you use a walkthrough, but you will need to X ROCK before you TAKE KEY. Where BDO diverges from a standard text adventure is that it has you guess certain verbs or word pairs to gain points. BDO chooses to tally points with SCORE, or a number in the upper right corner, which many classic adventures did, although the practice is less common now. In some cases it does get in the way of a story, and the writers find that showing and not telling how far you are along works better. They have a good point. Some games I enjoy a lot rightfully ignore this, and no score is now the default for Inform 7.

BDO risks breaking one of the rules of Graham Nelson's Adventurer's Bill of Rights, which is that players should not have to guess verbs. Every point in BDO is a verb to guess, so in this respect, it's not a mainstream introduction to text adventures. But these are all intended to be clued by location or item names. I'd like to say more, but it might spoil things. The hope is that early dialogue and things you find will clue you as to what this is.

In other respects, though, I wanted to keep BDO standard. BDO also uses the four main directions (NORTH, SOUTH, EAST and WEST, or their abbreviations N S E W) and has an up-down passage to open. There are twenty rooms total, and the map is symmetrical. Because TALP is about introducing people to text adventures, and also because I want experienced players to have an intuitive feel for the map, I wanted to do this. (It made my own testing efforts easy, too!) Observant players may note the PNG map provided on this page is not symmetrical. I had a choice between keeping the map symmetrical or moving the underground room away from its room above and expanding the map.

BDO also doesn't heavily use some of the other standard verbs including TAKE, DROP, PUSH and PULL. Implicit taking is a fancy name for "don't make the player TAKE something they revealed," and it's a bit of a convention that the parser shouldn't make players do too-obvious things, or that TAKE will say something like "the item is just out of reach. You need a ladder." to indicate a puzzle. There is also implicit DROP. Inventory management was a problem in early puzzle games, but modern text adventures make an effort to streamline inventory and either destroy items once they're done or have a mechanism to say "This item's not useful any more."

Small spoiler as a reward for reading this far. There will be an item to DROP. But you can't quite DROP it! (I'm still not quite sure how well I cued that puzzle!)

BDO also offers a 17-step tutorial at the beginning, as requested by the comp. It's optional. On the one hand, it's on rails, and it gets you started, but on the other hand, well ... it's on rails, and it gives you a few spoilers. It also has you attempt one puzzle before you are ready, so you are exposed to the THINK command which tracks what you've done. It goes through basic meta-commands (commands where you-the-player get information that you-the-character doesn't need) like ABOUT and VERBS and then basic commands usually supported by text adventures such as X ME and I, which is short for INVENTORY.

I've tried to provide a reasonably robust hint system if you want it, with the command THINK (mentioned above) and HINT, which gives progressive hints. Many classic text adventures did not do this, partially because they didn't have a lot of competition, so you could waste a bit more time on one game. Also, they may not have had the memory space. Adventuron allows this, with a CYCLE/PRINT/PRINT/PRINT construction.

BDO also features the option to color important text, so the phrase guessing is not too tricky It already colors text for regular commands and options. And a lot of green text is presented as links. These are generally to the competition, or to people who have helped me push this game through on a relatively short deadline, which is my fault. Colored text is the sort of feature that seems trivial now, but it wasn't in the days of Infocom. But it seems a new programming language should offer an easy way to produce it.

BDO also has 10 points bonus points scattered around. These are not highlighted in the comp version as I didn't have the time, but a list will be there post release, with better hinting. You keep bonus points across replay. There's also a small author's cut if you replay, about the graphics for each room, but since it's the TALP competition time, I hope you find time to visit all the other games first. I know both as a participant and a judge, I've really enjoyed the variety that games give, and those prospectives they give to say, well, it really helps to know THIS about parser games, something the other games didn't cover, because they focused on something else.

TECHNICAL STUFF

To start/stop a transcript, type TSTART and TSTOP. The source code repository is here. You can report an issue there or in the comments.