I spent a little bit more time playing with Adventuron today and its built-in theming capabilities. Part of my motivation lay in potentially participating in the Treasure Hunt Jam on itch.io. The built-in theme used for Two is the starting point, but I was curious if I could tweak the layout to something other than a red titlebar and red horizontal rule divider. It turned out I very much could once I learned the basics of theme inheritance and that the separator line was even more customizable than I anticipated1.
Getting back to what making a game for the Treasure Hunt Jam is all about:
Treasure hunt is a sub-genre of text-adventure in which the player must collect some objects that are considered treasure objects, and place them in a room that is known to be the treasure room.
Some treasures may not require a puzzle to be solved, but most treasures usually require some kind of challenge or puzzle (or series of puzzles) to be solved in order to be able obtain them.
Though the text adventure form has evolved a long way from the treasure hunt today, it's exactly what classics Colossal Cave Adventure, Adventureland, and Zork I were when they came out. Adventuron's retro aesthetic2 makes it perfect fit for a throwback game jam like this. I have a few ideas for turning the premise on its head, we'll see if that's actually doable given the other constraints of this jam.
Although I think it's more retro to keep it simple.
Particularly with the Two style theme that takes it all the way back to a Scott Adams style text adventure.