This is an abbreviated version of the book Make Your Own Python Text Adventure.

Typically, a text adventure game involves the player exploring and interacting with a world to tell a story. For this tutorial, I wanted the game to take place in a cave with the goal of escaping alive. You can of course use this idea too, but feel free to use your own idea! Almost all parts of this tutorial are interchangeable with your own custom elements. We’re going to start by defining some items and enemies.

Items

Start by creating a new directory called adventuretutorial and create a blank file called __init__.py. This tells the Python compiler that adventuretutorial is a Python package which contains modules. Go ahead and create your first module in this same directory called items.py.

The first class we are going to create is the Item class. When creating a class, consider the attributes that class should have. In general, it will be helpful for items to have a name and description. We can use these to give the player information about the item. Let’s also add a value attribute that will help players to compare items within an economy.

class Item():
    """The base class for all items"""
    def __init__(self, name, description, value):
        self.name = name
        self.description = description
        self.value = value

    def __str__(self):
        return "{}\n=====\n{}\nValue: {}\n".format(self.name, self.description, self.value)

This class has just two methods, but we’re going to see them pop up a lot. The __init__ method is the constructor and it is called whenever a new object is created. The __str__ method is usually a convenience for programmers as it allows us to print an object and see some useful information. Without a __str__ method, calling print() on an object will display something unhelpful like <__main__.Item object at 0x101f7d978>.

While we could create an Item directly, it wouldn’t be very interesting for the player because there is nothing special about it. Instead, we’re going to extend the Item class to define more specific items.

One of my favorite parts of games is finding treasure so let’s go ahead and create a Gold class.

class Gold(Item):
    def __init__(self, amt):
        self.amt = amt
        super().__init__(name="Gold",
                         description="A round coin with {} stamped on the front.".format(str(self.amt)),
                         value=self.amt)

The Gold class is now a subclass of the superclass Item. Another word for a subclass is child class and superclasses may be called parent or base classes.

The constructor here looks a little confusing but let’s break it down. First you’ll notice an additional parameter amt that defines the amount of this gold. Next, we call the superclass constructor using the super().__init__() syntax. The superclass constructor must always be called by a subclass constructor. If the constructors are exactly the same, Python will do it for us. However, if they are different, we have to explicitly call the superclass constructor. Note that this class doesn’t have a __str__ method. If a subclass doesn’t define its own __str__ method, the superclass method will be used in its place. That’s OK for the Gold class because the value is the same as the amount so there’s no reason to print out both attributes.

I mentioned earlier that this game is going to have weapons. We could extend Item again to make some weapons, but weapons all have something in general: damage. Whenever a lot of specific classes are going to share the same concept, it’s usually a good idea to store that shared concept in a superclass. To do this, we will extend Item into a Weapon class with a damage attribute and then extend Weapon to define some specific weapons in the game.

class Weapon(Item):
    def __init__(self, name, description, value, damage):
        self.damage = damage
        super().__init__(name, description, value)

    def __str__(self):
        return "{}\n=====\n{}\nValue: {}\nDamage: {}".format(self.name, self.description, self.value, self.damage)

class Rock(Weapon):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__(name="Rock",
                         description="A fist-sized rock, suitable for bludgeoning.",
                         value=0,
                         damage=5)

class Dagger(Weapon):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__(name="Dagger",
                         description="A small dagger with some rust. Somewhat more dangerous than a rock.",
                         value=10,
                         damage=10)

This should feel very familiar as we are following the same process of creating subclasses to define more specific elements in the game.

Enemies

Now that you’re an expert at extending objects, creating the enemies will be a breeze. Go ahead and create a new module called enemies.py.

Our base class Enemy should include a name, hit points, and damage the enemy does to the player. We’re also going to include a method that allows us to quickly check if the enemy is alive.

class Enemy:
    def __init__(self, name, hp, damage):
        self.name = name
        self.hp = hp
        self.damage = damage

    def is_alive(self):
        return self.hp > 0

Next, create a few subclasses of Enemy to define some specific enemies you want the player to encounter. Here are mine, but feel free to use your own ideas instead.

class GiantSpider(Enemy):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__(name="Giant Spider", hp=10, damage=2)

class Ogre(Enemy):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__(name="Ogre", hp=30, damage=15)

Notice that we don’t have to include is_alive() in the subclasses. This is because subclasses automatically get access to the methods in the superclass.

If you are completely new to programming, some of this may be confusing. My book Make Your Own Python Text Adventure is great for beginners because it does not assume any knowledge of programming concepts.

Click here for part 2