Upon the Spooky House — 2 of 8

Volume 1 - Preamble

[Greetings, fellow appreciator of the dark and black arts of spookmeistering! I, Ben Poisonor (Poisoner), will be your guide throughout your spine-tingling journey of this source code. As author of this source and game, I have provided for you only the most horrifying sights, sounds, and smells in this exploration of the spookiest, most scariest mansion in all text adventure-dom. Now, without further ado, let the dark feast of frights begin!]

Use American dialect. Use serial comma.

[Of course, having said all that, we need to get a few preliminary actions out of the way first. Nothing too long, you understand.]

The story headline is "A Ben Poisonor (Poisoner) Adventure".

[Just a few bits and bobs here and there, to get the game part running smoothly.]

The story genre is "Spooky House Game".

[I can assure you, this is all very important and in no way an attempt to procrastinate on writing the actual game.]

The story creation year is 2020.

[Yes, yes, quite important.]

The story description is "A new text game by the man whose very words are a contagion spreading excitement and entertainment to the masses, Upon Spooky House is a chilling tour-de-force containing only the finest frights, thrills, secrets, and chills. Feel free to scream at any time during the game."

[You see, I need to hype myself up in this description, else the player would have no idea how to react to this very spooky game I am making.]

Performing XYZZY is an action out of world. Understand "xyzzy" or "plover" or "plugh" as performing XYZZY.

[And of course, what would any text adventure be without the overdone XYZZY reference?]

Carry out performing XYZZY:

say "Oh, buzz off." instead.

['Twould nothing but a sham, says I.]

A thing has some text called the smell text. The smell text is usually "Smells okay, I guess".

[I believe all text adventures should strive to engage the senses, be they but text on a screen. I think Ryan Veeder does not like including smells in his games, though, because his own sense of smell is quite poor. I have indulged him by not doing much with it in this game.]

Instead of smelling something, say "[smell text]."

[An experienced author of text adventures will note the workaround for Inform's extremely finicky rules about printing paragraph breaks after outputting some text.]

A thing has some text called the sound text. The sound text is usually "Unearthly quiet, which frightens you half to death". Instead of listening to something, say "[sound text]."

[Hearing, I believe, is the most important sense for horror, for what is horror without the sound of screams? Most things don't really make noise, though, so I used my skills of a writer to make silence much more spooky.]

A thing has some text called handfeel. The handfeel is usually "To describe the feel of this fiendish object would chill you to the bone! Trust me on this". Instead of touching something, say "[handfeel]."

[Touch is also important to horror (see that party game where various foodstuffs are passed off as the body parts of some deceased malcontent). However, objects' "handfeel" (as I have chosen to call it) are highly variable. Because of this, I have chosen a general yet very spooky way to describe any object, just in case I run out of time to write up the handfeel for everything (which, by now, is looking extremely likely).]

Nowheresville is a room.

[This little bit of trickery is necessary for establishing the player character, introduced in the next paragraph.]

Lucille is a woman. The description of Lucille is "You are a desperate yet passionate woman, determined to uncover the mystery of this horrible mansion, and thus, perhaps, discover the secret behind your amnesia."

[Enter our game's heroine, the lovely Lucille. Her name is inspired by Lucy Westenra from Bram Stroker's Dracula. Of course, Lucy sounds too pedestrian to my ears, so I changed it to the more aristocratic (IMHO) Lucille. You will note that this description does not describe much in the way of her physical appearance; I hold with the view that text adventure descriptions should focus on the inner life of a person, mainly because there's less junk you have to implement that way.

Note, too, the amnesia: Normally I would declare it a boring adventure game cliche, but given that I am a genius, I will allow it just this once.]

The sound text of Lucille is "Nothing to hear but the very beating of your heart". The smell text of Lucille is "You can't really smell yourself".

[Can anyone smell themselves?]

The handfeel of Lucille is "You clutch your hands together to compose yourself".

[Lucille used to be clutching her bosom here, but I changed it to something more appropriate. *Children* might be playing this game.]

Understand "Lucy" as Lucille.

[The next paragraph redoes the default parser response when the player tries to interact with something that is not actually there. I find the default "You can't see any such thing" to be unclear and unhelpful in most cases, so I rewrote it so I can be as lazy as possible.]

Rule for printing a parser error when the latest parser error is the can't see any such thing error:

say "That's either unimportant or un-here." instead.

The release number is 2.

[You may recall that this game was first entered in Event One of the Ryan Veeder expo. Well, due to my conduct during Event One, Ryan was given reason to believe that I had mixed up it and Event Three, the big event at the end. Now, I am neither CONFIRMING nor DENYING Ryan's belief in this, but I believe I had been given a mulligan and I intend to take full advantage of it.]

Asking for help is an action out of world. Understand "help" or "hints" or "hint" or "about" as asking for help.

Carry out asking for help:

say "Upon the Spooky House is a typical text adventure, in which you type in actions like GO IN, EXAMINE BENCH, or TOUCH BAT POOP to progress through the game. It is a fairly linear game, and there are no big 'puzzles' as such, so it shouldn't be too hard to get to the end. If you have any issues, you can check the source code (which should be bundled with the game) or you can contact me at ben_poisoner@protonmail.com. Thank you for playing!"

[I just feel like it's a good idea to include this kind of command in every text adventure.]

Release along with an interpreter and the source text.

[And now, after nearly a thousand words of setting things up, it is time for us to get on with it.]