Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Since last time, I’ve attempted to raid the temple of Raaka-Tu.

I’ve mostly died in creative ways.

From Figment Fly.

The game does a good job of advertising its traps ahead of time, but still having you fall in them nonetheless. There have been three so far. Here is the first:

If you stop to examine the door you can find the words DO NOT ENTER on it, and the rug is described rather oddly as spanning the entire room, so: not a shocking death? JUMP OVER RUG gets the same result; I suspect it is not possible to get by here at all.

The second trap is even more clever, in that it’s fairly obvious at first…

…in fact, the transcript above is for demonstration purposes, because a statue pointing a bow and arrow at a particular door is a strong enough warning for even me, your humble correspondent who blunders into everything.

If you drop a coin in the slot, the bow-and-arrow turns to face the west door; now the east door is safe but not the west.

The “Triangular Room” has the trap.

Here’s the clever part: notice the “T-Shaped Room” / “Grey Stone Walls” / “Round Room” that repeat shape on the map above. The second Round Room has a gold ring. If you pick up the ring, you get teleported to the first Round Room without any indication it happened. Then if you try to proceed as if nothing changed by going west, north, and east, you walk right into the Triangular Room, and get shot by the arrow that now points at the west door!

You can incidentally make your way past the issue by dropping the gold ring and picking it up again — it teleports you back. This reminds me of the truly awful puzzle from Arnstein’s Haunted House which leveraged a lack of feedback when going in a direction that wasn’t recognized; Arnstein managed to redeem the same idea in a way that makes much more sense.

The third trap involves a vault.

BE WARY THOUGH, NO MATTER WHAT THY CREED, THAT THOU HARNESS AND LIMIT THY POWERFUL GREED.

The door has a nice physicality to it — it closes behind you when you enter, and you have to re-enter to exit. (It also gives a hint as to what the trap is.)

There’s definitely a big danger sign on this one but to find out what’s happening, the lever still needs to be pulled.

I’m reminded of how good interactive fiction comedy is often participatory, not just telling a joke but having the player do an action that’s part of the joke. (A good example would be the opening of Mystery Fun House which coaxes the player into thinking a FIVE DOLLAR BILL is money.) The same idea applies here; there’s enough of a hint as to what’s going on with the traps that after each death I felt like I deserved it.

I haven’t made much more progress, unfortunately. I fought a serpent and won (just using a sword and a randomized battle system) and fought a gargoyle and lost (trying to use the sword again; even with save states I was getting torn apart).

Nepal is one of the places where human sacrifice did historically happen, and in modern times they still have a (controversial) festival where they mass sacrifice animals.

I’ve also found a lamp that says “something is written” on it, but when I try to read it I find the lamp is too covered with tarnish. RUB LAMP gets

THE LAMP GOES OUT. YOU MUST HAVE RUBBED IT THE WRONG WAY!

No hints yet, though (not even ROT13), but I’ll inquire next time if I’m horribly stuck.