Hacker News Reader

You're right, there are only two more "narrative" examples accessible via the French version of the site. I used the term because the turn-based structure and focus on messages, prompts, and dialogues felt suited to narrative or text-driven games, but maybe that’s not the best label. Happy to rethink it!

View on HN

"ZZT-like" would be the adjective/genre descriptor I'd use for this. It's a slowly forgotten genre these years (unlike "Rogue-like" and "Rogue-lite" you see being thrown around everywhere), but a classic genre of the early PC nonetheless.

https://museumofzzt.com/

I didn’t know about ZZT, but that makes a lot of sense now that I’ve looked into it. The format, simplicity, and screen-by-screen feel do seem closely related. Thanks for the reference. That museum is a great find!

I recall Anna Anthropy's book on ZZT doing a great job of capturing the feel of the early PC ZZT scene and some of its AOL/CompuServe/Prodigy communities in the early 90s. Might serve as other bits of inspiration, if you like short history books: https://www.amazon.com/Boss-Fight-Books-Anna-Anthropy/dp/194...

Was just curious if I was missing something that facilitated "narrative games" more than other engines.

It's a cool project. I like that your examples use ASCII maps. So simple to prototype. No need to break out a map editor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com