Devlog #3: Imagination vs. Visualization

In one of our latest devlogs, we have announced that the episodes of Code 7 that are currently in development will feature non-linear navigation.  You will be able to freely roam the areas and revisit previous locations. That leaves us with new challenges, that we didn't face in the prologue. The prologue only consisted of five rooms, that you had to visit in a fixed order. There was no need to know where exactly the player is.

Now, we'd like the player to freely navigate through the rooms, while the number of locations also increased drastically. This way we're bringing Code 7 more into line with classical text adventures. However, navigation always seemed to be achieved by having the players memorize it by themselves.
Most of the time text adventures were only playable with a sheet of paper and a pen next to the computer. That may have worked well in the past, but player behavior changed a lot over the last twenty years. So we think that the gameplay of text adventures has to change too.

At the same time we don't want to take away the players imagination of how the world around them looks like. So we came up with a map view, that focuses on orientation and information, without being too visually-defining. The surroundings are still only going to be described by the dialogue.

Here's one of our early screen captures:

Would you ever have wished for a map in classical text adventures?

Are you looking forward to roaming around the world of Code 7? Please leave your comments below.