Undefined Cardinality of Gameplay

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In some games, despite the existence of spatial relationships, it is unclear exactly what the degrees of freedom are available to the player. This is quite often seen in text-based adventures where the player types in commands that indicate the direction he wishes the character to travel. However, if the locations traveled to are mapped out, it is unclear if the character is traveling in any direction at all or if the commands typed in are being used as references and not real indicators. For example, a player may type exit and discover that he seems to be moving upwards. Immediately after that, typing down may not take the player to the same location.

Undefined cardinalities of gameplay also occur when it is not clear how many axis of freedom of movement exist and whether or not they are actually orthogonal. For example, a game that uses north/south and east/west may not be 3-dimensional if use of up or down is mapped onto one of the other dimensions.



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