Wikipedia adventure game is a fun way to learn everything in the world
A new way to explore the online encyclopedia
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Wikipedia has been transformed into a new adventure game by a developer.
Wikipedia: The Text Adventure lets you navigate the world by jumping from entry to entry on the online encyclopedia.
It was created by Kevan Davis, who has also used Wikipedia’s API to write a novel, called Around the World in X Wikipedia Articles.
From the home screen, you can either select one of the several places, landmarks and objects suggested by the game as your starting point, or choose one of your own.
Once you’ve done so, a basic description of it, which has been pulled from Wikipedia, will appear inside a text box, along with directions to a nearby location.
You can, however, choose your own path too, by type compass directions or “go to” followed by the name of a Wikipedia particular article.
You can examine certain details further by typing examine followed by the thing you want more information about, and even “carry” items and talk to people.
If you find something you’d like to read about in more depth, you can open its full Wikipedia article in a new tab, by typing “wiki”, and to share your current location on social media, type “share”.
If you get stuck and need more guidance, type “help”, and more information will pop up.
“Its map is pulled live from the Wikipedia API, and it uses all articles which have specified geo-coordinates,” says Mr Davis. “If two articles share an exact location they get nudged in random directions.
“The way the map is rebuilt on the fly from nearby clusters of articles results in occasional one-way paths in densely-packed areas, and things might get a bit twisty and turny if dozens of articles share a geolocation point.
If you can't find a particular place even though it has an article, then either Wikipedia doesn't know its coordinates (in which case you can help Wikipedia out by adding them), or it's not sharing them with the API.”
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments