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I WANNA GO HOME Club
I WANNA GO HOME Club or simply IWGH is an early Louigi Verona project, initially intended as playful commentary on the challenges of office work. With time the project grew into a sophisticated online text adventure, with puzzles, quests, an inventory of items, companion creatures and much more.
Gameplay
The purpose of the game is to uncover the many secret locations and functionality the site offers.
The game works similar to many other online text adventures, but with some original elements. It utilizes the address bar as a way to travel between rooms. While often the game will actually display the path the player can take in the form of links, in many cases the player has to guess what the next room is by using associative thinking. For instance, if the player is at a page, located at the address ending in “page=room1”, it might be prudent to try out “page=room2”.
The purpose of the game is to visit as many rooms as possible, collect as many items as possible, and also complete a number of quests, presented in the game. One of them is the collection of items called Orbs which give the player special abilities.
IWGH also features a number of companions that interact with the player, and even follow her on her adventures.
Early in the game, the player can transform the website title from “I WANNA GO HOME Club” to “I WANNA GO HIKING Club”. The title itself serves as a menu, with the letter “I” leading to “Inventory” and the letter “H” leading to “History”. The latter shows which rooms the player has already visited. Different room types are denoted by different colors.
Chat room and the Spell System
IWGH has a chat room. It allows the visitors to post by choosing a predefined set of characters, optionally adding a predefined mood the character is speaking in.
The chat room is not meant to be an actual chat room, but rather an online magic fighting game. By using certain phrases, said by certain characters and in certain moods, visitors are able to affect other chat room characters, transform them, shut them up, make them do strange things, etc.
There is a whole spell system, with spells and counter-spells that allow people who know the system well engage in a sophisticated battle of magic.
IWGH features an additional secret endpoint to the chat room, which gives access to additional sets of characters and moods.
Players can learn the spells by finding the Gandalf Magic Book.
Example of a spell as described in the Gandalf Magic Book:
Kidnap spell
-To cast the Kidnap Spell use Evil Sorcerer to say 'Kidnap!' while chuckling to himself.
-To rescue the Naked girl use Indiana Jones to utter 'That belongs in the museum!' when climbing a mountain. Additionally, the magic will reflect back at Evil Sorcerer and turn him into an Elephant (Elephant Spell)
-The Elephant Spell will wear off with time - sometimes really fast, sometimes it'll take a while.