Attributes Defined
Grammatical Attributes
first person: The character you control is referred to as "I" instead of "you". A lot of early games are like this, and it's still done occasionally.
past tense: Actions are described as taking place in the past, as if the output is a story being told after the fact.
third person: The player character is referred to as "he", "she", or "it". A real oddity, but not unheard of.
Graphics Attributes
optional character graphics: This game will occasionally use text characters to form pictures rather than words, but only in ways that can be safely ignored. Text-to-speech software may sometimes get confused, but the game will largely be playable all the same.
optional graphics: Contains illustrations, but these can be
either switched off or ignored without affecting gameplay. It may be possible to use text-to-speech software.
relies on character graphics: Although there are no pixel-based images in this game, text characters are composed into images in a way that is crucial to gameplay.
relies on graphics: Pixel-based images are a crucial part of the game. You cannot play this game fully using text-to-speech software. If you are blind, you may still be able to play it with assistance.
contains graphics: The game uses bitmap graphics in some way. (This is the union of "relies on graphics" and "optional graphics".)
Hint Attributes
adaptive hints: This game contains a built-in hint system which is in some way keyed to your progress in the game so that hints for puzzles you haven't encountered are unavailable to you.
hint menu: This game contains a built-in menu of hints for solving it.
room hints: Not common today, but many older games have a hint text specific to each room, available via the "help" command.
Miscellaneous Attributes
dragon: Because you asked for it (and you know who you are): the ability to automatically ignore anything with a dragon in it.
incomplete: This is not a complete implementation of this game. It cannot be won in its current form.
one room: Games in which all the action takes place in a single room.
puzzleless: One of the hot topics on the IF newsgroups in the late 1990's was the potential of IF as a medium beyond the traditional puzzle game. Choose or avoid these games as you will.
realtime elements: Events in the game will occur spontaneously over time, independent of player input.
Non-IF Attributes
borderline IF: It's ambiguous whether this should be considered a text adventure or not. It fits the mold at least in part.
not a text adventure: This game qualifies as "interactive fiction" in some sense, but doesn't follow the text adventure mold of a simulated environment, a natural language parser, and a character that performs actions at your command.
not interactive fiction: Things that aren't in any sense Interactive Fiction, but are included in the Archive anyway for some reason. Example: The various Inform videogames.
Offensive Attributes
graphic violence: Contains descriptions of pain and harm being inflicted and/or the resultant gore.
mild profanity: Doesn't contain anything you couldn't say on the air, but you still might think twice before giving this game to your children if that kind of thing worries you.
scatological content: Typically, bathroom humor. Although it doesn't have to be humorous to qualify.
sexual content: Contains mention of things that you don't want your children to know about until they're older.
strong profanity: Contains words that you would not be allowed to say on network television.
Parser Attributes
CYOA: Stands for "Choose Your Own Adventure", after the series of books that aspired to be IF in printed form. A CYOA game gives the players a menu of choices at each juncture, with the possible choices changing from situation to situation.
full-sentence parser: The parser accepts more than two words at a time. This can be considered the default, and will not be explicitly flagged except when the game in question also has implementations with lesser parsers.
primitive parser: This covers any parser even less sophisticated than a two-word one.
two-word parser: Commands generally can only be entered as a verb and a noun, such as "take sword" or "light lantern".
Player-character Attributes
evil protagonist: Games in which you play a bad guy.
female protagonist: It's unusual. The characters you control in most games are either male or of unspecified gender (which is to say, "male by default").
gender choice: The game allows you to blatantly or subtly choose your gender.
multiple protagonists: Over the course of the game, the player controls more than one character.
nonhuman protagonist: You play the part of a dog or an alien or a piece of cheese or something.
Puzzle Attributes
maze: "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike"... A section of geography consisting of similar rooms with illogical connections, designed to make you lose your way.
maze (guided): A maze that has some mitigating factor, such as a map or some device that always points the right way, so that you don't need to map it out manually.
pseudomaze: Something that bears some resemblance to a maze, but turns out not to be one after all.
rpg elements: Contains elements pertaining to RPG games: spell points, hit points, sword fights, &c.
sliding blocks: A puzzle in which you push tiles around in order to make a particular arrangement. The "15" puzzle is the most common example. It's a gimmick that's been used a lot, and some people object to it quite strongly.
Runtime Attributes
bundled with Mac OS runtime: In addition to platform-independent game data, this file contains the interpreter necessary to use that data under some version of the Macintosh operating system.
bundled with MS-DOS runtime: In addition to platform-independent game data, this file contains the interpreter necessary to use that data under MS-DOS or MS-Windows systems. Nearly all AGT games are distributed this way, as are some TADS games.
bundled with Windows runtime: In addition to platform-independent game data, this file contains the interpreter necessary to use that data under some version of Microsoft Windows (but not MS-DOS).
Sound Attributes
music: Background music plays continuously
while the game is running.
optional sound: This game can make noises, but also has some means of disabling them without physically disconneting the wire to your computer's internal speaker.
sound: This game will attempt to make noises when you play it.
|