A Neo-Adventure Awaits…

You may be asking yourself, who is this Borri fellow, and what are Neopian Adventures? Well, Borri is the mighty wizard who runs the generator and allows creative Neopians to share their adventures with the rest of the world. Neopian Adventures are stories which allow you to choose your own path, but there are also tests and quizzes for those who want to prove their knowledge on all sorts of topics or find out which flavor of Chia Pop they are. Every user can play as many adventures as they want, but they can only upload one, so it’s best to choose yours wisely. To get a better idea of what exactly a Neopian Adventure is, it may be best to try one out yourself before you continue with this guide. ;)

If you’d like to create a Neopian Adventure yourself, great! Let’s get started!

First, of course, you need an idea. There are many types of adventures, and as long as you stick to the Neo Rules, you can write any type of adventure your little heart desires! Most adventures can be divided into two categories that I’ve already mentioned: stories and quizzes. Depending on which you’re writing, the process will probably be slightly different, simply because of things like how much writing is required, or whether your adventure has wrong answers or not.

Now that you’ve got an idea of what you’d like to do, you should know how exactly an adventure is structured. You’ll be using pages, like in a book, to guide the player through the story. A page has exits, which are described by actions and lead the reader to the next page that continues the adventure according to which action they performed. They’re usually a sort of fork in the road, although you may also use extra pages with only one action to build suspense, or if you just wrote too much for one page. There are also special end pages: dead ends and finish lines. Finish lines are for when the user has successfully saved the day and completed the story, dead ends show the player failed in their mission and the world has gone up in flames. However, dead ends also allow the reader to start again from the beginning, so you can also use in other cases when the user might want to play again.

With so many options, however, it can be hard to structure an adventure. Each page can have up to four exits, and although you could just write a story with only one correct path, that would be boring! However, if you just go at it and write everything as you go, you’ll just end up creating a labyrinth of an adventure and getting lost in it. In order to properly write an adventure, it’s best to plan it out, so grab your good old pencil and a sheet of paper, preferably somewhat large, or fire up your program of choice! It’s time for good old lists, and possibly flowcharts.

Start with the best or correct solution to your adventure, or take an example solution. Rewrite this solution as a series of events about the player, with a special beginning and an end event. An example for this may be:

Start: The player has the day off.

The player goes to the market.

The player buys a pack of magic beans.

The player plants the magic beans, and they grow into a giant beanstalk.

The player climbs the beanstalk.

…

End: The player has saved the day!

The next step is to add decisions to the events. At the market, the user may have the option to buy many different wares, or they might be able to do many different things with the magic beans, or they might decide to stay home instead of climbing the beanstalk. You can add these decisions to your process, along with the choice the user has to make to progress in the story.

Start: The player has the day off.

What does the player decide to do on their day off?

The player goes to the market.

What does the player buy at the market?

The player buys a pack of magic beans.

What does the player do with the beans?

The player plants the magic beans, and they grow into a giant beanstalk.

What does the player do?

The player climbs the beanstalk.

…

End: The player has saved the day!

Now that you’ve got this first solution, it’s time to start drawing your flowchart! If you’ve never heard of flowcharts, they describe events, which decisions they lead to, and the outcome of the event depending on what the user decided. You may be cringing at having to use something so business-y, but believe me, flowcharts will make planning your adventure much easier. You can skip this part and start setting the finishing touches if you only have one solution with all other options leading to dead ends (but again, that would be boring).

To begin, write down your start and end events as well as all of your decisions, making sure to leave space for additional decisions and events. Add a diamond-shaped border to decisions and a circle-shaped border to your start and end events if you’re feeling extra professional, although you’ll only need the chart for your own reference. Connect the decisions and label the connections with the event that leads from one decision to the next. Now you’ve got your basic flowchart!

To this flowchart, you can now easily expand by adding other choices that lead to solutions parallel to your first solution. Maybe instead of buying magic beans, the player buys an apple seedling, or they might cook the magic beans into a stew, possibly even giving them magical powers and allowing them to go on an entirely different adventure!

Once you’re done and there are no more possible adventures for the player to go on, you can start creating your adventure! For each decision, create a new page with each option being an exit that leads to another page. After doing this, it might be good to go back and flesh out your adventure, if you haven’t already. You can also add pictures to further complete your adventure, but they must be from the Neopets image server (images.neopets.com).

The final step is to set the properties for your adventure. Your adventure will need a title, a setting (specifically a far-off land, such as Krawk Island), a category or genre, and a color scheme. For the setting and color scheme, you could be lazy and just take the defaults – Brightvale and a scheme based on which setting you’ve chosen – but try and be creative! If your protagonist is a Faerie Gnorbu, consider having your story set in Faerieland and base the color scheme on the pet’s actual colors (make sure it’s not an eyesore if your main character is a Disco Ixi, though, for instance). However, you can change the properties at any time, so if you’d like you could change them later, as well.

Once you’re happy with everything, the last step is to lock your adventure so that other users can play it. Unfortunately, you cannot edit the pages of your adventure while it is locked, but you can easily unlock it if you want to add a picture or if you came up some new content.

Congratulations! You’ve now finished your Neopian Adventure! Creating your own Neopian Adventure can be quite a long process, but it’s quite rewarding to be able to play through your own interactive story or share it with others. Happy adventuring!