How not to Make an Adventure Game With AI
Last Blaugust I tried to make a choose your own adventure game with Twine and ChatGPT. I started with a general idea that the game should be about ascending a wizards tower. First, I prompted ChatGPT to give ideas what challenges the player would face in the tower. Then I started to work on the passages. I prompted the AI to create a specific passage, copied it to Twine and added the required logic.
This was interesting at first, but creating the passages quick became tedious. ChatGPT tends to be wordy and the passages did not fit in one screen. It likes tropes and wanted to end each passage with “Brave adventurer make your choice?” ChatGPT is a language model not a strong AI and the lack of understanding of the context led the resulting passages to feel disjoint. I quickly abandoned the project, but after the AI discussions at current Blaugust, I decided to take another look.
If I am going to continue the project, I will ditch ChatGPT and try to write all the passages myself. It might even be easier than trying to get decent output from the AI. I would like to try writing the passages in Scrivener and building the logic in Twine after all text content is done. Working with text and logic at the same time allowed for quick experimentation, but making a complete game could benefit from a more disciplined approach.
I have wanted to try Scrivener for a long a time, but have not had good use case for it. My blog posts are short and WordPress editor or iA Writer have been enough. A text adventure requires lot of text divided in different and parts and Scrivener feels like good tool work with the structure and passages of the game.
I have loaded the current version of Wizards Tower to itch.io. The game is not in a state I want make public on the platform, but is accessible with password shack-dander-hangout.
Editing the game in Twine
Title screen place holder image
Death screen image