Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

I needed a lightener after my last game. Fortunately, the next Scott Adams in my list is one I’ve beaten before.

I first encountered this game browsing a list of Scott Adams games, trying each one in sequence. Since all I knew was the name, with no context, I didn’t even know what genre I was supposed to be in. I only found out about the plot until halfway through the game:

The letter is hidden in the shoe; you remove the heel to find it.

Scott Adams has had done interesting things with implied plot in both Secret Mission and The Count. This circumstance isn’t exactly the same, but it certainly falls in the same ballpark of handling the necessary minimalism of the TRS-80 by giving the PC knowledge that the player doesn’t have. If a player doesn’t look at their inventory closely enough, they might miss the instructions hidden in the shoe (even though the player character “James” likely put them there in the first place!)

In any case, this should (hopefully) go quickly. I remember most of this game, and it contains one of my favorite adventure game puzzles of all time.