Depends how simple parser one is creating. :) The early ones seemed quite simple, mainly just understanding "verb + item", two or at best three words at a time, and quite often saying they don't understand what you are trying to say unless you said specifically what they expected you to say.

And when adventure games moved on from text parsers to point & click interfaces, this became irrelevant...

Maybe one way to demonstrate the relative simplicity of puzzle adventure games would be that you'd set up such "game" without computers. You know, like pen&paper RPG or strategy gaming sessions.

So if the genre was, say, a first-person shooter, I guess you would give everyone nerf guns or laser tag guns and you'd run in some environment shooting at each other, maybe in teams. Someone would maybe need to count the points and decide the terms for victory.

If it was a RPG, I guess the existing pen&paper RPGs give some idea, so apart from you telling the team of merry adventurers what is happening at each place, there'd be the stats and dice rolls and such.

If it was a strategy game, I guess you'd need some kind of table and pieces, along with the rules how things work in the game. Like in chess, how you can move each piece.

If it was a racing game, I guess you'd all go to race on some go-kart track.

If it was an adventure game... basically all it would need was you to describe each location to the player (what is in the room, what is puzzle to be solved etc.), and deciding if the solution the player is offering for the puzzle is valid or not, and what will be the consequences. Like my earlier example of an evil wizard blocking your way, you'd just say the wizard kills the player unless they say they will use a spray deodorant and a match together in order to fry the wizard.


Of all those different examples, the adventure game would be the easiest to set up and run.