Having a few games under my belt, I've always preferred having the exits from a location within the text:
The garden in front of the hotel is quite big. It gently slopes down towards the north from the porch, ending abruptly on the edge of a steep cliff. A white picket fence has been erected a few yards from the edge, preventing careless guests to wander too close to the vertical drop.
A few trees are standing here and there, providing shelter from the sun and a few guests are sitting around tables underneath them enjoying the incredible view over the Mexican Gulf. An old crooked tree stands just on the other side of the fence, leaning dangerously over the edge of the cliff. Its naked branches reaching towards the sky except one which is reaching out horizontally from the gnarled trunk.
Close to the foot of the tree, an old weathered head stone leans slightly to one side.
To the south lies the hotel, looking peaceful in the summer sun.
But that's just me and that's usually how I write my games. That lead to the opposite reaction from this reviewer.
The player complained that the exits were not obvious enough as they were "hidden" in the text. He suggested that I capitalised the directions so it would be easier to distinguish them from the rest of the text.
As for the abbreviation of directions in general. I've been on the adventure scene since the 80's when I laid my hands on my first 48K Spectrum and I can't remember any point when it wasn't accepted that directions were abbreviated.
I know that as an author of games you will never be able to make everyone happy. But I found this quite interesting and thought I'd ask your opinion. So what do you think?
*Edit* I have replaced the example used because someone draw my attention to some faults.
