> > The thing with AGL games is that the range of options available is made clear to you. Too many interactive fiction games had puzzles that had varied and awkward solutions that in many cases you wouldn't just hit upon by chance.
>
> Well, this is what I don't like about AGL, and why I prefer a text-adventure game.
>
> The puzzles of nearly any AGL game could be made in a text-adventure game also, without too many changes. In AGL it is too easy to just see what you have to do, just look at the choice. In text-adventure game it isn't completely obviously at first, which means you have to figure it out by yourself. Text-adventure game is better.

I'm sensing a mantra, or possibly a catchphrase. We get it, we get it, you believe it to be better.

> Also, did you see the text-adventure game called "AD VERBUM", it has many wordplay puzzles which don't work in AGL. In some places all commands and responses consist of words all starting with a specific letter (so if the letter is "W", then you can't type "get weapon" to get the weapon, because "get" doesn't start with W), in one place all commands have to be one word repeated twice (such as "scan the scan", "hammer the hammer", etc)

So you don't write AD VERBUM in Smash. You leave that for parser-based text games, which is what I believe you mean.

Having read a lot of reviews on SPAG (link below, for those who didn't know about it), one thing that keeps cropping up is "guess-the-word", or "guess the verb". While that might be fine in a game where wordplay is the point, and especially since, if this is the one I'm thinking of, the room lays some constraints on what kinds of words may be used, but I have yet to see a game other than that variety be praised for not recognizing a perfectly reasonable phrase for what you're trying to do. Or, of course, there's the ever-classic "I don't see that here" response to attempting to interact with something that was in the description as being there. Of course, in both these cases, if an AGL game's author didn't play Roget with the library, or implement everything in sight so that it at least has a response, if not an effect, it doesn't matter so much.

So what's left? Well, in any given room, you might have a command or three that are effective right now. Then there may be others that seem ineffective until you try them three times or whatever the author felt like. And then there may be some that require that you do something else first, possibly at a different location. And then there may be the ones that are never effective in terms of moving the game forward. And finally, there might be one that kills you. And you have to sift through these. Not quite so obvious, if the author has provided a number of options.

That said, I believe there's a place for both. I can't really imagine The Gostak as an AGL at the moment, although I suppose it could be done. Similarly, while any AGL could be done as a text adventure (although some would need graphics; The Perils of Akumos comes to mind as one that needs a few, though just a few), ssteps would almost need to be taken to avoid the two complaints I mentioned, if no others.

Nyper"Ye can't get ye flask"old