Hunt The Wumpus - Gameplay

Gameplay

• Objects -
  • Wumpus - a beast that eats anyone that enters its room.
  • Agent - the player that traverses the world in search of gold and while trying to kill the wumpus.
  • Bats (not available in all versions) - creatures that instantly carry the agent to a different room.
  • Pits - bottomless pit that will trap anyone who enters the room except for the wumpus.
• Actions - There are six possible actions:
  • A simple move Forward.
  • A simple Turn Left by 90°.
  • A simple Turn Right by 90°.
  • The action Grab can be used to pick up gold when in the same room as gold.
  • The action Shoot can be used to fire an arrow in a straight line in the current direction the agent is facing. The arrow continues until it hits and kills the wumpus or hits a wall.
  • The action Climb can be used to climb out of the cave but only when in the initial start position.
• Senses - There are five senses, each only gives one bit of information:
  • In the square containing the wumpus and in the directly (not diagonal) adjacent squares, the agent will perceive a Stench.
  • In the squares directly adjacent to the bats, the agent will perceive the Bats
  • In the squares directly adjacent to a pit, the agent will perceive a Breeze.
  • In the square where gold is, the agent will perceive a Glitter.
  • When the agent walks into a wall, the agent will perceive a Bump.
  • When the wumpus is killed, it emits a Scream that can be perceived anywhere in the cave.

The original text-based version of Hunt the Wumpus uses a command line text interface. A player of the game enters commands to move through the rooms or to shoot "crooked arrows" along a tunnel into one of the adjoining rooms. There are twenty rooms, each connecting to three others, arranged like the vertices of a dodecahedron or the faces of an icosahedron (which are identical in layout). Hazards include bottomless pits, super bats (which drop the player in a random location, a feature duplicated in later, commercially published adventure games, such as Zork I, Valley of the Minotaur, and Adventure), and the Wumpus itself. The Wumpus is described as having sucker feet (to escape the bottomless pits) and being too heavy for a super bat to lift. When the player has deduced from hints which chamber the Wumpus is in without entering the chamber, he fires an arrow into the Wumpus's chamber to kill it. The player wins the game if he kills the Wumpus. However, firing the arrow into the wrong chamber startles the Wumpus, which may cause it to move to an adjacent room. The player loses if he or she is in the same room as the Wumpus (which then eats him or her) or a bottomless pit.