Normally considered single-player experiences, the text adventure genre has just taken a large step in a collaboratively multiplayer direction. Several members of the Idle Thumbs forum community have designed a special forum-bot that plays text adventures with other members. His name is Ziggy.At the moment, Ziggy is programmed to play Zork, a classic text adventure made by Infocom in the late 70s. In a thread started by Ziggy, players post replies with commands like "go north" or "take letter." Ziggy then replies, performs the commands, and continues the game.
The Ziggy threads allow for commenting as well, giving players the chance to discuss moves before executing them. This makes the whole a great deal more collaborative, although so far it hasn't been helping. The first play-through of Zork resulted in death at the hands of a hungry cyclops, and the second at the hands of a hungry grue. It's clear that after two losses in a row, the adventurers could use a little extra help in their third attempt. Anyone know the way to the Great Underground Empire?
[Via GameSetWatch]
