This might be a smidge above a 5-year-old's vocabulary level, but you should give Inform 7 (http://www.inform7.com/) a look. It's designed for writing text adventures like the Zork series, but unlike almost every other programming language, it uses almost entirely natural English syntax.
The object model
A barrel is a kind of supporter.
The blue barrel is in the garden. The shears are on the blue barrel.
and CLI model
Frowning is an action applying to nothing.
Understand 'frown' as frowning.
and rule-based syntax
Instead of frowning when the Queen is in the garden:
say 'It would be improper to scowl at the Queen.'
After frowning when the player does not carry the shears:
say 'Your inability to do gardening makes you quite grumpy.'
are all easy to understand.
The result is always readable, even to someone unfamiliar with regular scripting languages. The IDE is also full of examples, though they are somewhat verbose.
Comments
This might be a smidge above a 5-year-old's vocabulary level, but you should give Inform 7 (http://www.inform7.com/) a look. It's designed for writing text adventures like the Zork series, but unlike almost every other programming language, it uses almost entirely natural English syntax.
The object model
and CLI model and rule-based syntax are all easy to understand.The result is always readable, even to someone unfamiliar with regular scripting languages. The IDE is also full of examples, though they are somewhat verbose.