Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

I’ve made progress, but it hasn’t felt like great progress insofar as it’s been puzzles I remember from Zork mainframe (or in one very special case, when I last played Zork II back in the 1980s). I’m stuck on what seem to be all the “new” puzzles.

Here is an update on both.

Part of the Zork 2 manual. From the Infocom Documentation Project.

First, a few comments on the Wizard

The Wizard of Frobozz is like the thief from Zork I (and mainframe); he can appear anywhere to antagonize you.

A huge and terrible wizard appears before you, as large as the largest tree! He looks down on you as you would look upon a gnat!
The Wizard draws forth his wand and waves it in your direction. It begins to glow with a faint blue glow.
The Wizard, in a deep and resonant voice, speaks the word “Float!” He then vanishes, cackling gleefully.
Slowly, you and all your belongings rise into the air, stopping after about five feet.

There’s a large variety of spells, large enough I’m not sure I’ve seen them all. In addition to Float as shown above, there’s Fence, Freeze, Filch, Float, Fear, Ferment, Feeble, Fantasize, and Fireproof.

Most of the ones above are self-apparent — Filch steals an item, for instance — but I’m not sure what Fantasize does, and Fireproof actually helps the player. (I think? I’ll bring it up again when I talk about the dragon.)

The Wizard draws forth his wand and waves it in your direction. It begins to glow with a faint blue glow.
The Wizard, in a deep and resonant voice, speaks the word “Freeze!” He then vanishes, cackling gleefully.
Your limbs suddenly feel like they have turned to stone. You can’t move a muscle.

I can understand why the Wizard is here — the thief was such a strong aspect of the first game it would have felt wrong to have some sort of replacement — but I find the thief stronger in a ludic sense. You can engage the thief in combat any time you like; there’s a constant sense of danger but it’s a consistent danger. Sometimes when the thief appears he does nothing, but there’s still the feeling like he’s scouting you. The wizard also sometimes does nothing — usually via a misfired spell — and it comes off as comedic.

To put it more directly, if the wizard fouls up my game, usually I just restore a recent save, because I know I’ll likely get through on a second encounter; I never contemplated doing the same for the thief.

I still anticipate the possibility of an interesting showdown, especially based on the scene from dying:

>jump
This was not a very safe place to try jumping.
Geronimo…

**** You have died ****

Now, let’s take a look here… Well, you probably deserve another chance. I can’t quite fix you up completely, but you can’t have everything.

Room of Red Mist
You are inside a huge crystalline sphere filled with thin red mist. The mist becomes blue to the west.
You strain to look out through the mist…
You see a small room with a sign on the wall, but it is too blurry to read.

>w
Room of Blue Mist
You are inside a huge crystalline sphere filled with thin blue mist. The mist becomes white to the west.
You strain to look out through the mist…
You look out into a large, dreary room with a great door and a huge table. There is an odd glow to the mist.

I have found a blue sphere in the game; it starts in the “large, dreary” room as described above and so the death scene is seeing from the other side.

>w
Room of White Mist
You are inside a huge crystalline sphere filled with thin white mist. The mist becomes black to the west.
You strain to look out through the mist…
A strange blurry room is barely visible.

>w
You follow a corridor of black mist into a black walled spherical room. As you enter, a huge and horrible face materializes out of the mist.

“What brings you here to trouble my imprisonment, wanderer?” it asks. Hearing no immediate answer, it studies you for a moment.
“Perhaps you may be of some use to me in gaining my freedom from this place. Return to your foolish quest! I shall not destroy you this time. Mayhap you will repay this favor in kind someday.” The face vanishes and the mist begins to swirl. When it clears you are returned to the world of life.

I honestly don’t remember what’s going to happen, but I suspect that I’m going to find a black sphere sometime and release whatever is inside — and the only thing around with a power level to match would be the Wizard of Frobozz himself.

The first puzzle I solved

Southeast of the Carousel I wrote about last time is a riddle room

Riddle Room
This is a room which is bare on all sides. There is an exit down in the
northwest corner of the room. To the east is a great open door made of stone.
Above the stone, the following words are written: “No man shall pass this door
without solving this riddle:

What is tall as a house,
round as a cup,
and all the king’s horses
can’t draw it up?”

I remember this puzzle quite distinctly from mainframe Zork — even the time and place I solved it — because I wrote about the riddle, and the room that followed it in detail.

Circular Room
This is a damp circular room, whose walls are made of brick and mortar. The roof of this room is not visible, but there appear to be some etchings on the walls. There is a passageway to the west.
There is a wooden bucket here, 3 feet in diameter and 3 feet high.

I won’t go into detail again here, although this time I needed to pour water in via a teapot; I used the bottle from Zork I last time. It felt like an echo of an alternate past.

>POUR WATER
There is now a puddle in the bottom of the wooden bucket.
The bucket rises and comes to a stop.

This is followed by a robot you can command via ROBOT, GO EAST and the like (there’s fortunately a paper that gives exact parser directions) and I used to turn off the Carousel. (I don’t remember much from when I played this 30+ years ago but I do know it took me a long time to turn off the Carousel.) Also nearby:

Tea Room
This is a small room containing a large oblong table, no doubt set for afternoon tea. It is clear from the objects on the table that the users were indeed mad. In the eastern corner of the room is a small hole (no more than four inches high). There are passageways leading away to the west and the northwest.
There is a large oblong table here.
Sitting on the large oblong table is:
A cake frosted with red letters
A cake frosted with orange letters
A cake frosted with blue letters
A cake frosted with green letters

Eating the green cake lets you shrink and get into a “pool room” and find a flask with poison gas (no idea what to do with it yet) and some candy (which I’ve bring up again later). Eating the blue cake lets you grow big again.

The second puzzle I solved

On the opposite corner of the map from the riddle room I found the Bank of Zork.

Again, I wrote about this one in detail, but rather much less fondly than the well puzzle. The big difference between the mainframe and commercial versions is an extra paper added as a hint.

The paper is barely readable. You can only make out “… valuables are completely safe … advanced magic technology … impossible to take valuables from the depository … either teller’s … Many customers faint … teller pops in … seems to walk through … walls …”

It still suffers roughly the same problem as the original.

> N
Safety Depository
This is a large rectangular room. The east and west walls were used for storing safety deposit boxes, but all have been carefully removed by evil persons. To the east, west, and south of the room are large doorways. The northern “wall” of the room is a shimmering curtain of light. In the center of the room is a large stone cube, about 10 feet on a side. Engraved on the side of the cube is some lettering.

> ENTER CURTAIN
You feel somewhat disoriented as you pass through…

Small Room
This is a small, bare room with no distinguishing features. There are no exits from this room.

Namely, that while the curtain is a clearly prompted item and “ENTER CURTAIN” is a logical player command (and if the player just tries to go NORTH, the response “There is a curtain of light there.” nudges in the right direction) there is no equivalent help trying to go back the other way around.

>S
You can’t go that way.

This is absolutely the standard response on any invalid direction; one the player most likely has seen many times by this point. In order to get back out, you need to ENTER SOUTH WALL. I realize the idea was to enforce the player really “solving” the puzzle, but I’m still unclear as to the functional difference of walking into a wall intentionally versus accidentally.

Jason Scott commented (back in 2011 when I wrote about this) that he had footage of Dave Lebling apologizing for the Bank puzzle.

Okay, at least there was an improvement attempt. Apology accepted.

The third puzzle I solved

I don’t want to write about it yet. It needs its own post. (For those familiar with the game: it’s the Oddly-angled Room area.)

Things I am stuck on

Having cleared out the puzzles I could do (basically by already knowing the answers) has led me to 135 out of 400 points and total stuckness.

Southwest of the Carousel is a room I can’t open.

Guarded Room
This room is cobwebby and musty, but tracks in the dust show that it has seen visitors recently. At the south end of the room is a stained and battered (but very strong-looking) door. To the north, a corridor exits. Imbedded in the door is a nasty-looking lizard head, with sharp teeth and beady eyes. The lizard is sniffing at you.

> give candy to lizard
The guardian greedily wolfs down the candy, including the package. (It seemed to enjoy the grasshoppers particularly.) It then becomes quiet and its eyes close. (Lizards are known to sleep a long time while digesting their meals.)

Northwest of the Carousel is an Ice Room I can’t get past. An equivalent room in Zork mainframe was solved via a torch which doesn’t exist in this game. (I’ve tried making a torch, but no luck.)

Ice Room
This is a large hall of ancient lava, since worn smooth by the movement of a glacier. A large passage exits to the east and an upward lava tube is at the top of a jumble of fallen rocks.
A mass of ice fills the western half of the room.

Close to both the Ice Room and Bank is a dragon.

> n
Dragon Room
A huge red dragon is lying here, blocking the entrance to a tunnel leading north. Smoke curls from his nostrils and out between his teeth.
Your sword has begun to glow very brightly.

> attack dragon with sword
Dragon hide is tough as steel, but you have succeeded in annoying him a bit. He looks at you as if deciding whether or not to eat you.
The dragon continues to watch you carefully.

> attack dragon with sword
You’ve made him rather angry. You had better be very careful now.
The dragon continues to watch you carefully.

> attack dragon with sword
That captured his interest. He stares at you balefully.
The dragon tires of this game. With an almost bored yawn, he opens his mouth and incinerates you in a blast of white-hot dragon fire.

**** You have died ****

Having FIREPROOF active (via the Wizard) makes one immune to the dragon here. It still doesn’t help in getting by, though.

East of the Carousel is a garden with a unicorn.

North End of Garden
This is the northern end of a formal garden. Hedges hide the cavern walls, and if you don’t look up, the illusion is of a cloudy day outside. The light comes from a large growth of glowing mosses on the roof of the cave. A break in the hedge is almost overgrown to the north. A carefully manicured path leads south. In the center of a rosebed is a small open structure, painted white. It appears to be a gazebo.
There is a beautiful unicorn eating roses here. Around his neck is a red satin ribbon on which is strung a tiny key.

The unicorn bounds away if I try to approach. I suspect the key goes to the lizard room.

South of the Carousel is a menhir.

Menhir Room
This is a large room which was evidently used once as a quarry. Many large limestone chunks lie helter-skelter around the room. Some are rough-hewn and unworked, others smooth and well-finished. One side of the room appears to have been used to quarry building blocks, the other to produce menhirs (standing stones). Obvious passages lead north and south.
One particularly large menhir, at least twenty feet tall and eight feet thick, is leaning against the wall blocking a dark opening leading southwest. On this side of the menhir is carved an ornate letter “F”.

I managed to get an explosion off (using a brick with a string that happens to have been in mainframe Zork) but the game just says:

The explosion appears to have had no effect on the menhir.
The room is cluttered with debris from an explosion. The walls seem ready to collapse.

You can do an explosion in any room in the game. I haven’t found it useful, even on the ice wall. (Rather colorfully, the room really does collapse after a few turns and you can no longer enter — it’s like using the bomb in Spelunker where you can cause permanent change to the geography of the map.)

I don’t otherwise have a lot to work with.

lamp, sword, brick, string, teapot, grue repellent, matchbook, letter opener, newspaper, mat, blue sphere, violin, pearl necklace, bills, portrait, cakes, club, steel box, flask

I suspect I’m stuck on something simple that will break a couple puzzles open once I figure it out, but Infocom itself advertised Zork II as “Advanced Level”, so I may just be overly hopeful.