If I press a button and the player performs an action, that is the way Nintendo often tries to design games for example with Mario. Some games let the player press a button and either a symbol will appear or an inventory will appear which the player can interact with. I call this inventory gameplay, its a different type of game, Cave Story involves more inventory then Mario for example. Any sort of abstract symbol instead of literal gameplay would be a type of inventory gameplay. For your game to be more live action like mario, there would be no symbols and the character would perform different animations to represent the different inputs from the player.