Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(You can read all my posts about The Paradise Threat starting here.)

I had left off being baffled by a board (obtained from a pile of lumber) and some quicksand. My issue was half with the parser and half with visualization.

From the Museum of Computer Adventure Games.

To be specific, from the room marked YOU ARE AT THE EAST END OF THE VALLEY typing LOOK gets the message that

TO THE E A PILLAR SITS
IN A MUDDY FIELD,THE VALLEY BENDS S.

My assumption was that I go east to the quicksand, use the board to stabilize the way, then proceed further east on to the pillar. That assumption was wrong.

You need to DROP BOARD to the west; if you then LOOK the game says

THE BOARD FORMS A BRIDGE
TO THE PILLAR.

For this to make any sense to me physically — remember, we’ve been toting this bridge around — I suddenly visualized the “pillar” much different than I originally did; something fairly low. Let me invoke the power of Microsoft Paint to show what I mean:

This jives enough with the text descriptions to work for me, but I still couldn’t get across the board. A “normal” game would just land you on the pillar if you try to go east, but nope, you just go in the quicksand.

Fortunately, I had the power within me to “test every verb I have encountered in the game”, so I was able to stumble upon … CLIMB BOARD? Really?

I guess my visualization should have been such that the pillar would be much taller, so the board is more at an angle, but how would that make any sense anymore given this would indicate a board taller than a person? Incidentally, CLIMB BOARD is also the way to get back; there really is no consistency in this game in how to travel (CLIMB STEPS but just going WEST to go back, in another instance).

I had the suspicious powder and only one real obstacle, getting the key from Eichmann.

What he looked like in Lucifer’s Realm.

I took it back to the room with the secretary and the secretary was gone, but there was still a tray full of food there. Time for some poisoning!

Some more wandering — and finding the Nazi guard I had knocked out by scent had been replaced —

— and I rather delightfully found an unconscious Eichmann. I rummaged through his desk (applying the TINY KEY given to us by Jyym Pearson on the phone) and found a SKELETON KEY; we’d already been warned ahead of time by Abe Lincoln this would go back at the door in the haze.

Taking the key back leads to a trap, but the kind of trap that is easy to avoid as long as you haven’t been discarding your starting inventory items.

I was then in darkness in what appeared to be a maze and dutifully started dropping items and mapping out exits. However, I soon realized the items I dropped were simply disappearing, so this had to be a gimmick rather a maze. Applying all my senses, I tried LISTEN.

This had to be referring either to the gold ring or helmet. With the helmet off, typing LOOK gave the description of a breeze from above, so I tried UP to no avail, and also CLIMB UP (“YOU’LL FALL”), FOLLOW BREEZE (“I DON’T UNDERSTAND”), CLIMB (with no target: “YOU’LL FALL” again), GO TO BREEZE (“I DON’T UNDERSTAND”), JUMP (“IT’S TOO DANGEROUS”), ENTER PASSAGE (“I DON’T UNDERSTAND”), CLIMB PASSAGE (“IT’S TOO DANGEROUS”), JUMP PASSAGE (“IT’S TOO DANGEROUS”) and then UP again for good measure.

After a reset just in case I made a typo on something, I finally found you’ll move farther if you:

LISTEN
DROP HELMET
LOOK
LOOK UP (not just look!)
JUMP (only immediately after doing LOOK UP)

As far as I can tell, if you miss your opportunity to jump, even though you still feel the breeze, you’ve softlocked the game. It’s great to have all this combined with a tricky parser, right? I knew LOOK UP was used previously by Pearson but it still isn’t an absolute standard of mine to test (maybe has only gotten used in 5 games so far from 1972 to 1982)?

The dark figure will run south to a brick wall with a window; there’s guards there that will kill you if you don’t still have on the UNIFORM. (I should incidentally point out I’m maxed out on inventory at this point; you have to take another loop to get here, so I brought the BOARD, PACKET of seeds, and TINY KEY over on an extra trip after intentionally dying in order to teleport to the start. So dying isn’t technically a completely negative thing in this game.)

From here there’s a crevice to the east, and you can use the board to get over (I suspect many players left it behind at the pillar so would need to return for it).

Then comes an ancient door (neither skeleton key nor tiny key work)…

…so you can veer south to find a dragon. The dragon is sleeping and no threat as long as you don’t try to hurt it or CLIMB it. (Why would you try to climb it? You’ll see in a second.) Heading south from the dragon mysterious leads to a “DARK MOIST PLACE” which I believe is just supposed to be literally inside the dragon. I tried dropping the sleeping powder there to make the dragon extra-sleepy but no dice.

Trying to drop the powder here into the mouth doesn’t work either.

Testing out various actions, I noticed DIG mysteriously told me “O.K” rather than denied my action. The last place this happened was somewhere soft enough to plant seeds, so I tried it again (“THE PLANT GROWS UP AND OUT OF SIGHT”) and then typed CLIMB. Oops.

The command defaults to the dragon. I was genuinely confused here for a bit because I thought the dragon was eating me because I made noise climbing up the plant. I finally found the eating to happen again when I tried CLIMB DRAGON and connected the dots.

The plant needs you not have much in the way of inventory, so you have to do the “drop everything, grab one item” shuffle, but it fortunately doesn’t take too long.

Along the passage I found a dead Nazi that did not react to any of my commands other than UNDRESS NAZI (I was told there was a quota of only one naked Nazi in this game). I highly suspect something useful is there but my verb-fu is failing yet again. Just a bit south is a Nazi demon, who is easily dispatched by your sword:

The demon may be ambidextrous, but one more slice kills the demon outright, leaving behind a severed hand. Unfortunately I am unable to pick up with the hand or interact with it in any way, and I’m stuck to the left by another locked door (again non-responsive to my current keystack).

I think the next step here is likely to comb over all the rooms again in case a new latrine has popped up or Jesus has made another call somewhere.

My biggest issue is I’m worried I might have a solution (like the powder does go with the dragon) but I’m fighting with the parser enough that I pass by thinking I’m wrong and waste time. Not my favorite scenario to be in but I’ll plug through. I’ve incidentally finally caught up to Will Moczarski, who (other than the demon) managed to get to this place in a single post.