In my last blog post I talked about a game I was working on, titled Temple. I've been working on condensing the story into an in-game introduction with varying levels of success, and thought that at this point I'd like to share it with you guys.

You play as Jack McCardigan (note the reference to my previous failed game), a professional treasure hunter. A lot of words have been thrown around about the job being cursed, but Jack doesn't believe a word of it. He's had nothing but success for his entire career, and considers his profession very rewarding - excitement, danger, women, and most importantly, money are all his. But when a swarm of black-hooded men swarm him and carry him off somewhere, he has no choice but to rethink.

Jack is knocked out, and wakes up in a huge room filled with people, all in black hoods which obscure their faces. Sitting next to him are two men he recognizes as rivals. Together they are the three best treasure hunters the world over. The men are told that they have been taken to the headquarters of a group known as the Treasure Hunter's Guild, a group of people working together to do exactly what they do. They've been selected to help retrieve three of the best-guarded treasures the world has to offer. Each has a target suited to his own skills - Jack's skills of careful observation and quick reflexes, Craig's experience with magical artifacts and combating the undead, and Kramer's skills as a powerful warrior.

The rules of the "game" are simple: The first to return with his artifact gets the cash value of all the artifacts put together. The second becomes a member of the guild, working with them on whatever plan it is that requires these artifacts. The last person to return will be put to death. The guild will be watching the three men, and will activate a detonator implanted into the back of each's skull if they attempt to leave the area they are told to search.

I'm currently working on an out-of-hellmoo project, an interactive fiction game. Interactive fiction, or text adventure games, is the genre that inspired MUDs and MOOs like the hellmoo you are all playing today - in a sense, I'm working backward.
My first work of interactive fiction was a god-awful thing called "Grounded", in which you play as ten-year-old Billy McCardigan, who has been grounded to his room. I'm mentioning this because it leads directly in to what I've decided to do with my latest game - Grounded never made it out of beta. I had fully intended on fixing the various errors and oversights that had come from the beta testing, but I knew the entire game was beyond repair when the same complaint kept coming up - "I couldn't figure out how to win." This wasn't a problem that stemmed from, say, puzzles that were too hard, or bugs that prevented the game from working properly, but rather the game didn't have a point. It was like this by design, it wasn't about winning, but rather, seeing what you can and can't do. This was a terrible road to take, especially for my first work, because in a world like that, if you don't completely implement everything in every possible way, you've got a game that not only has no point, but doesn't even provide an interesting environment to play around in - there's no reason to play.
Temple is going to be my attempt to rectify this. In what I hope will be my first work of interactive fiction to make it PAST the beta stage, you have a clear goal from the very begining - go into the temple, get the treasure contained within it's deepest chamber, and get out with it. It's simple, it's cliche'd, and it's going to be awesome.