Portugues
The Grumpy Cricket (And Other Enormous Creatures)
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About the game
You have just spent a lovely day with your cousins, and now it is time to go home. It is too far to walk, so you set off to find another way. The trouble is that you are very small. The plants around you are as tall as trees, the trees are as tall as towers, and right next to the only path out of here sits a cricket the size of a basketball court, who is old, tired and extremely grumpy.
From there the trip takes you up swaying stalks, to the top of a tree and into a busy building full of giants, where the signs, labels and announcements are full of jokes, and where a few well-chosen buttons can change everything.
John Goerzen wrote The Grumpy Cricket in 2023 for his three children and dedicated it to them. It is made for young players and for anyone trying a text adventure for the first time: nobody dies, you cannot get stuck for good, and help is always one command away.
Playing it here
Click Play now and the story starts in the player. Type a command after the >
prompt and press Enter. The game is in English and understands short
sentences that start with a verb, such as look, go north or take towel.
If you do not know what to do, type hint: the answer depends on where you
are and on what you have already done.
Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
north, south, east, west, up, down (or n, s, e, w, u, d) |
walk; go up also works |
look (l) |
describe the place again |
examine (x) something |
look closer |
climb, push, rub, enter something |
the actions the trip relies on |
inventory (i) |
list what you are carrying |
hint |
a hint for where you are right now |
help |
how to play |
save / restore |
keep your progress in this browser and load it back |
A few things worth knowing
When you are stuck down low, go up. You are an excellent climber, and the view from above shows where to go next.
Read every label. The fine print on signs and machines is where most of the jokes are hiding.
Try things out. There is no way to lose, so pushing a button just to see what happens is part of the fun.
It is short. One sitting is enough to get home, which makes it a good game to play together with a child, taking turns at the keyboard.
Credits and licence
The Grumpy Cricket (And Other Enormous Creatures) was written by John Goerzen and is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3. This is Release 1, from December 2023. The licence text and the complete source code of this release are linked from this page.