Adventure Games for Learning English
 

Hi All,

Are you aware of any small, short and most importantly free adventures games that could be used in an English Learning environment.

I'm thinking of something like text based, choose your fate - escape from the jungle / cannibals etc

Or short flash adventures that employ vocabulary that would be useful to a language teacher.

Any suggestions on where to look or what's available in the public domain would be great.

Cheers

Hm. Your request reminds me of Tropic of Capricorn.
I hope it's the kind you search for.

What level of English are you thinking about?
How old are the students?

What levels of English are you thinking about?
 

Hi,

Aged fourteen and above is the general age group we're talking about. As for the level of English - from beginner to advanced.

The majority of English language software generally consists of rather dull VB style forms: Fill in the blanks, Odd one out, matching exercises etc

A short humorous adventure game with an emphasis on language rather than graphics; including some interesting descriptions would be a boon.

Ideally it wouldn't use infinitive sawn-off commands like "get pen" or "eat food". A Multiple choice menu such as the following would be preferable:

Should you................

(a) Accept the dwarf's invitation for a drink at his local tavern
(b) Politely refuse his request and continue searching for your kidnapped hamster
(c) Compliment the dwarf on his shiny axe

Any further suggestions would be most appreciated.

I've actually written something like that here. The language is reasonably advanced (at least for a non-native English speaker), with a lot of colloquialisms, but check it out and see if it works for you.

My thoughts went to Interactive Fiction (aka text adventures). Except for the commands in infinitive, they fit pretty good.

One game that came to mind was A Bear's Night Out, about which its author writes:

But I suspect 14 year olds may think they are too old for a game about a teddy bear. Maybe a superhero game is better? Or maybe Conan Kill Everything? (That one uses pretty easy English, and it's funny.)

(To play these games, you'll need an interpreter program, or "terp". If you're using a Mac I suggest Spatterlight. On Windows, you can try Gargoyle or Windows Frotz.)

It's not ready yet, but my application, www.CircumReality.com might be useful 12+ months from now. Like text interactive-fiction, it uses narration and NPC conversations. Unlike text IF, it also uses text-to-speech to speak the narration and conversation, as well as employing graphics.

You can try it out now, but it's (a) still too slow, (b) doesn't have good enough TTS, and (c) has very little content. If you're really ambitious you can write your own content.