Dear Debugger,

This is a text based adventure game for children.  The target
audience is children between 7-12.  As far as I know this is
the only text based adventure game for that age group (there
must be some but...).

Most serious adventure game players will find this game
trivial--even laughable.  Still, It appears to be very hard
for children.

This version, 0.91, has been through one round of debug and is 
pretty bug free from an adult point of view.  Children, however,
seem to get stumped on the darndest things.  I am looking for 
information on how children react to this game.  What do they find
easy?  What is hard?  What is confusing? 

Please tell me what you think:
     Tom Reynolds Compuserve 72320,2243
                  Prodigy    CWNG58A
                  Phone: (213)257-5279
I will acknowledge all the children who help debug the game in the
second screen. Please send your childs age.

Notes for Debuggers:

Some typical goals of an adult adventure game are non-goals
in this game.  For example, guessing the proper syntax of a
puzzle is part of the fun in an adult game.  In this game it
is not a design goal to force child to figure out how to
phrase the solution.  In fact, the goal is to allow any
written expression of the solution to work and only poor
brain work on the writer's part or  limitations in the
programming shell used prevent this goal's realization.

If the text says TELEVISION SET then TV, SET and Television
should work.  Otherwise this game will get frustrating to
children very quickly.  Fortunately, for nouns, this
situation is easy to fix.  I would like to know what synonyms
your children use for the nouns in this game that don't work.
I intend to include every synonym possible in the final game.

Another example is the puzzles.  In an adult adventure game
the puzzles are all different and solved through unique
reasoning.  In this game puzzles repeat.  Once a child can
get a key, open a lock, discover and get an egg, the same
process should work over and over again. Although an adult
will soon get bored with finding eggs in the same way,
children typically do not.  They even seem to forget, from
one room to another, what the proper syntax.  I would like to
know all the command syntax that your child tries to use to
do something in this game that should work but don't.
Although fixing these problems are more difficult than simple
noun synonyms I will do what I can for the final game.

Finally there are the descriptions. Where the typical game is
verbose this is straight forward.  Where the typical game is
complicated or obscure, this game is simple and obvious. The
target is third or fourth grade reading skills.

Playing this game is supposed to be easy.  I would like to know
about the ease of the game.  How experienced are the players?
How long did it take them to get a hang for moving around?
How long did it take them to get the hang of Examining
things?  How quickly did they begin to collect eggs?  How did
they deal with Bink?.  When did they solve Bink?

