Dev builds a classic text adventure out of Wikipedia entries

Freelance game designer Kevan Davis has published something interesting this month: Wikipedia: The Text Adventure, a browser-based game that pulls assets directly from Wikipedia and presents them to the player in the guise of a vintage text adventure.

It's a fun idea that might get your creative game dev juices flowing, especially once you see how it works: Davis' game generates an in-game "map" of Wikipedia articles (via the Wikipedia API) with geo-coordinates.

That means players can "go east" from San Francisco and eventually get to Chicago or New York, for example, but they can't walk from San Francisco to William Shakespeare or the concept of a museum.

However, they might be able to talk to a museum if they find one on the road, or even put it in their pocket for later; Davis' game includes an inventory and support for "take" and limited "talk to" commands,  as well as commands that let players check attribution for a given entry, log errors, or jump directly into editing it on Wikipedia. 

Curious devs can find Wikipedia: The Text Adventure and more of Davis' work over on his website.