Costello (online game)

Costello is an educational MUD — a text-based online role-playing game — designed for teaching English as a foreign or second language.^[1] It is offered online as a free service.^[2] Created in 1995,^[3] it was innovative in its use of the MUD medium for EFL/ESL instruction,^{[citation needed]} and has received positive critical response.^[1]

Costello is intended to function both as an engaging game and a teaching environment,^[2] following the reasoning that players will be more motivated to learn if their skill acquisition aids them in their game-play. To avoid degrading the value of language skills acquired, the game's command parser avoids support for ungrammatical shorthand forms; where a typical MUD might allow a player to examine a hat with the syntax l hat, Costello requires look at the hat. An integrated dictionary provides explication of unfamiliar terms.^[1]

The game may be played through a Web browser using a Java applet^[2] or using a Java client distributed on a CD-ROM with the course textbook.^[4] A non-networked standalone application version of Costello is also included on the CD-ROM.

Costello's tagline is "Quest-Based Learning", reflecting its structuring of learning experiences through quests.^[5] An earlier tagline was "English Through Imagination".^[1]

Costello runs on the MudOS game driver and a version of the Ain Soph Mudlib from Lost Souls, with customizations engineered by former Lost Souls developer Jason "Rand" Hitt and others.

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