Quirky Test (QT) is an entry to the 2025 TALJ/Text Adventure Literacy Jam. It is my first game written in Adventuron. I usually write in Inform 7, but here, Adventuron offered some things Inform didn't quite, including colored text and graphics.

QT offers a tutorial (optional) to start, in tune with the jam's requirement. However, it doesn't follow the jam's suggested story-theme of time travel. It is intentionally surreal, with a point for each magic phrase you figure out.

QT's goal is not just to have a tutorial for basic moves and commands you should know to be comfortable with a parser game, but also to provide interesting brain teasers and an NPC who discusses fairness in games and what to expect from a parser game in terms of the information it gives you and what you can reasonably be expected to type in.

Although of course you can just attack the puzzles and ignore everything he has to say!

Quirky Test has 23 rooms and a total of 23 necessary points to score, but it also has a bunch of secret points you can find if you're clever or diligent.

I hope you find it clever and funny and insightful. I had fun learning Adventuron and putting it together.

QT is meant to be a complete game as-is. However, some changes are already planned for a quick post-comp release, and bugs will crop up, whether technical or ease-of-play. If you have a suggestion to improve it, go here and report an issue! I appreciate this, as I know I have my blind spots.

This GitHub repo also contains the source code, which may not be perfect Adventuron code, but I think it shows what Adventuron can do. So if someone learns something from it, great!

Of course, be warned there are spoilers in the source code. My walkthroughs intentionally do not cover bonus points, because they're meant to be nontrivial, but you can find how to get them there.

Thanks to Garry Francis for administering this jam and Chris Ainsley for past jams and for Adventuron.