![]() | Chapter 11: Out Of World Actions and Effects | ![]() ![]() |
11.5. Ending The Game |
Play can end in many ways, at the writer's discretion:
end the game in death;
end the game in victory;
end the game saying "You have reached an impasse, a stalemate";
In many situations fatality would be absurd, while the idea of winning overly suggests a game, so many writers only ever use the third style of ending phrase.
What happens next is normally that the player is invited to RESTART, RESTORE (from a saved game), QUIT or UNDO the last command. This can somewhat undercut a tragedy, and Battle of Ridgefield shows another way to go out.
On winning endings, we may also want to let the player read some special bit of additional text; Xerxes demonstrates.
Old-school adventures expected their adventurers to die early and die often. Labyrinth of Ghosts shows how the residue of such past attempts can be preserved into subsequent attempts. Big Sky Country shows how a player can be resurrected by, let us say, some beneficent god, so that a player can even die more than once in the same attempt.
| ![]() Completely replacing the endgame text and stopping the game without giving the player a chance to restart or restore. |
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| ![]() ![]() Offering the player a menu of things to read after winning the game. |
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| ![]() ![]() Remembering the fates of all previous explorers of the labyrinth. |
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| ![]() ![]() ![]() Allowing the player to continue play after a fatal accident, but penalizing him by scattering his possessions around the game map. |
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