CALICO Journal, Volume 4 Number 2 69
A Foreign-Language Adventure Game: Progress Report on an
Application of AI to Language Instruction
Gerald Culley, George Mulford, & John Milbury-Steen
ABSTRACT: As an exercise for the language learner, a computerized adventure game
has much to offer. Commercial examples in English exhibit impressive language-
handling abilities as well as intriguing plots. Our list of the features such a program
would have, if modified for instructional purposes, is followed by a description of our
work to date on such a project.
KEYWORDS: adventure game, natural-language understanding, CALL, foreign-
language teaching, Prolog, ICAI
Text Adventure Games
It was in 1982 that we first began to think about the potential of the text
adventure for instruction. The University of Delaware was conducting a
summer institute about he use of the computer for foreign language instruction,
one portion of which was devoted to reviewing what microcomputer foreign-
language CAI existed at that time. There was little enough software that we had
decided to include a French-language version of Mystery House a text adventure
game. Our review panel, a group of secondary-school French teachers, gave the
program mixed notices. Its limited vocabulary and even more limited syntax
made it less than desirable for instruction, but no one could deny how much
sheer fascination it provided. That experience just planted the seeds.
The germination period turned out to be about two years. In the interval,
we worked on other projects, thought about the limitations of games like Mystery
House, and pondered how to transcend them. In 1984 we submitted a proposal
to the University of Delaware's Office of Computer-Based Instruction for
development of an adventure game for teaching foreign languages.
An adventure game, for those unfamiliar with the genre, is a program
which simulates a small universe and puts the player inside it. The program first

CALICO Journal, Volume 4 Number 2 70
describes the scene; then the player types in a sentence; then the program
describes what has happened in the world as a result of doing what the player
asked, or why what was asked is impossible. For example:
Program: You are in a field. Several sheep are grazing here. Beyond the
field is an orchard. A small stream runs between the field and
the orchard. In the distance is a farmhouse. It is a lovely day.
You are very hungry.
Player: You cross the field. You are on the bank of the stream. It looks
too deed to wade.
Engaging in a dialogue like this one has several clear benefits for the
language learner:
1. The student must understand what he reads in order to decide what to
do next. He must understand all of it, because some fact of possible usefulness to
him may be hidden in the most innocent description.
2. There are several courses of action which might motivate production of
an apparently unlimited choice of utterances: Build a fire. Kill a sheep,
3. If the command is successful, the imaginary world is changed. As in a
real foreign-language environment, asking for the salt gets you the salt.
4. The student is nevertheless not without resources: as in the real world
(again), he can probably assemble the elements of what he needs to say by
choosing them from the Previous context.
5. The attention of the student (and of the designer of the program) is
focused on meaning and purpose, not on the surface forms of the language. The
fact that there is a barrier between the player and the orchard is important; it is
much less important that the student may have given the word "orchard" the
wrong gender of case ending.
The player, in short, has the illusion of communicating with the game, and
the communication is goal-oriented: the player wants to understand and be
understood in order to achieve rational goals. This is close enough to the
wellsprings of language that any teacher should see its value. The
communication in a good adventure game is a fair mimic of free conversation,
although in fact the conversation is very structured, as we shall see; only the
limitations on the player's grammar and vocabulary imposed by the realities (or
mimetic conventions, if you like) of the game world enable a real, practical
program to hold up its end of the conversation. The commercial programs which
perform this feat, and indeed do it within the tiny memories of modest home