Counterfeit Monkey and exploration, progression

[Golem]

Yourself recently spoke with me about how Counterfeit Monkey felt relatively closed off compared to the text adventures of yore. He compared it to a visual novel, where a lot of events happen for you to witness, and the options for progressing are limited. In an old text adventure, you might have a wide open area to wander around and mess with stuff at your leisure.

In Counterfeit Monkey, puzzles mimic this limited feel because they involve many fewer verbs than your old school text adventure--you either take something, put it down, or use the letter remover on it. So, not only do you have fewer locales to explore, you have fewer verbs to explore.

[Sky-Fox]

I thought it would be fun to see what Counterfeit Monkey's map looked like on graph paper, so I charted out what I could up until the Bureau.



Admittedly, it does still look a bit cramped, especially compared to . Though that is an especially nice drawing. In regards to Counterfeit Monkey, I don't consider its map size, or its verb count completely to its detriment. I think reduced verb count is an important solution to preventing players from having to guess which words solve which puzzles. It lets you know which few commands work consistently, and allows an imprint to form on the player so they have a better sense of how to communicate with the game. There's a reason LucasArts switched over to the keyword system for their adventure games.

Something I think CM does to help counter this is allow for multiple solutions for most of its puzzles. Not all players think in the same terms, and it's neat to discover new answers on subsequent playthroughs.

[Golem]

Whoa! Nice, I'm glad you shared that. Admittedly, I'm having a little trouble following it--would you be able to provide any labels on locations?

Also, I think part of the point about Zork wasn't just sheer map size, but also how much of the map you can traverse at once. In Counterfeit Monkey, you're often stuck in one place until you solve the puzzle. That way, players don't have to search the entire world for solutions.

[Sky-Fox]

Here's a finished map. I'm no Prince Henry the Navigator, but it should be pretty accurate. Places that look walled off are probably accessible by going sideways (e.g., nw,sw,etc).

[Yourself]

oh yeah i remember saying that

sweet map fox, glad to hear my impression was pretty accurate - if i had played through the whole game i could probably throw the "cutscenes" on there myself

golem pretty much covered what i meant - in older games there were points where if i got stuck i could go do something else or find another place to explore and i didn't feel so much like i was playing through a story as just messing with a world

[Golem]

Here's a puzzle chart, I thought it was pretty neat:
http://emshort.com/counterfeit_monkey/MonkeyPuzzles.pdf