Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

I’ve mapped everything I can get to of 50BC and 1000AD. I’ll give a rundown, but first let me isolate something I call the absurd object sourcing problem.

This is a problem held by some adventure games where you go through complex shenanigans in order to obtain, say, a cup of water, in a world situation where cups of water should normally be plentiful. Or all the items currently in inventory are easily obtainable via a quick stop by a grocery store, but instead our hero needs to swing by rope while wearing a mask made of leaves and superglue in order to pick up a spatula.

This sort of handy improvisation can make sense thematically if the player is “trapped” in a scenario or otherwise has restricted resources; I’ll even grant credit to Crowther/Woods Adventure as starting with some reasonable supplies (like food, light, and water) and any further improv (like reusing the water bottle to hold oil) feels in the spirit of normal exploration.

Time Zone doesn’t have exactly the same problem. The protagonist starts the game at their home which I would assume has easy access to some supplies that show up later (like a rock) but the general rule about not taking technology back in time puts a little bit of a damper on theoretical grab-everything-an-easier-way scenarios.

However, you’re still stealing a mirror from Maid Marian’s house in order to give it to some aborigines in Australia to trade for a boomerang.

Supposedly in 1000 AD. Not only are there fictional characters, but Richard I’s reign didn’t start until the late 1100s. To be fair, there were some bad Sheriffs of Nottinghamshire around this time, like William Brewer, who was so bad that King John got bribed by three different counties to get him moved to other counties.

But let’s start in…

50 BC

I found it helpful, and more manageable, to have all the maps from a particular time zone in one clump, like this:

Order: top is North America, Europe, then Asia. Bottom is South America, Africa, Australia.

There’s Antarctica tossed in up there too, and it’s the easiest one to start with. Behold:

I’m not sweating if I can solve puzzles (although I did manage a few in my explorations). My goal has been to document up to the point of what puzzles are active (and what objects I can obtain) so that I have a holistic view and can fluently jump around testing out puzzle solutions as they come to me. In Antarctica I need warmer clothing to survive. (It is also possible the location is essentially a red herring; just like later Sierra games where you can wander off a ledge by pushing the wrong direction key, not every death indicates a puzzle.)

North America is also cold, dropping you in Alaska, although the obstacle is a polar bear, not the cold:

South America drops you into the Andes where you die by unseen Indians. Africa is a little more expansive, putting you by the Nile:

Heading north on the Nile leads to the death-by-starvation above; you can also try to visit Cleopatra (a guard stops you) and fail to obtain some fruit (you need Egyptian money).

Europe I’ve already given screens from on my last post, but here’s the lion I mentioned last time:

As I also mentioned last time, there’s a dark maze in Europe if you go underground. Will I find a light source or food for the lion first?

Asia for 50 BC I made quite a bit of progress on, and may have even “finished”. You start in a rice paddy by the Yangtze, where there is a long pole and a boat that you can row across.

Across the review is a Buddhist temple with a rock garden and a shovel. You can nab the shovel but also dig in the same spot to find some jade, then take the jade over to a peasant whole will trade for a bag of rice.

You might think the rice might help me avoid starvation in Egypt, but eating it doesn’t work.

The temple also has a statue with an emerald and you will get killed if you try to steal it. I suspect the emerald is a red herring but I have to mark it down to be sure. If it is a red herring then I am done with 50BC Asia, unless there was something different the peasant was willing to trade for and the jade was useful elsewhere. (I don’t know how heavy this game is into you-used-the-wrong-item softlocks but there was one in Wizard and the Princess so I have to account for the possibility.)

The shovel is also useful in 50BC Australia, where there is a buried rhea egg which you can nab with the shovel. After picking up the egg you cannot drop it without it breaking, so there may be some specific order this must be done in.

I thought of taking the egg back to prehistoric times and swapping with one of the pterodactyl eggs, but it doesn’t go that far. Weirdly, you can take it to the stone age without it going poof.

Once all listed out, that doesn’t sound too terrible in terms of size? Things didn’t even take super-long to map, but I did feel bad for the fact that every location has a unique picture and all of them had to be rendered by the artists, led by 18-year old Terry Pierce. According to Jimmy Maher’s correspondence with John Williams who worked on the packaging design, the effort had Terry “almost in tears”.

With information on 50 BC scoped out, I went forward to

1000 AD

Same order to the continents as before:

North America lands you with the Maya, where you find two fishermen but they kill you with spears if you approach.

South America was a little more elaborate, with a visit to the Inca. There’s a pyramid which requires dropping all your items to climb (including the egg if you’re carrying it, and remember it breaks if you drop it)…

…and inside was a tomb with a torch. Trying to carry the torch back down the pyramid is deadly. You can throw the torch instead which puts the torch out. I haven’t experimented past there if that was the right action.

You can also get yourself human-sacrificed, but it is another situation where I’m unclear if it is meant as a dead-end trap or a puzzle.

Europe has a forest with Robin Hood, an empty Maid Marian’s house, and a Sheriff. There is a suspicious back window with bars that I can’t get open, but otherwise both Robin Hood and the Sheriff seem apathetic.

I was able to filch that mirror, as I mentioned earlier, and cart it over to Australia for a boomerang.

Asia this time is near Baghdad. You can find a camel merchant who wants something for trade but is ambiguous for what, exactly.

There’s a palace as well with guards that won’t let you through…

…and a desert where _normally_ you die of starvation/thirst, but for some reason if I take a particular path the death doesn’t trigger and I am able to get up to a suspicious mountain. Keeping King’s Quest V in mind, I tried typing OPEN SESAME on a whim and got the mountain to open.

However, the inside of the mountain is dark and I need a light source to get any further. Unlike King’s Quest V, OPEN SESAME work from inside the mountain so you don’t get trapped.

Finally, 1000AD Africa starts you at the Congo river where you can get killed by a python named Monty or get stuck with several logs by the river. (It understands MAKE RAFT but says I don’t have everything yet — I assume I need some vines or rope?)

There’s my whirlwind tour so far. I’ll probably organize my notes and take a few whacks at what I have so far before moving on (I especially haven’t tried noodling with the torch yet, and the Baghdad cave at the least could use the light).

What I’m still consistent on figuring out is when objects can go back in time, and how useful they’ll be. Rocks, as I mentioned last time, go all the way back to prehistoric times without disappearing. For some reason the long pole used with the boat does as well (even though it is clearly a “crafted” item). I’m just making sure to test when I have a new batch of items to see if any disappear as a I step backwards in time, but given the rhea egg goes back some in time before eventually poofing in the prehistoric era means there may be cases where I am supposed to bring an item back just one step.

Despite all the fussiness of obtaining the above information I’m generally enjoying myself. It’s just raw exploration and I haven’t gotten frustrated trying out any highly improbable item interactions yet. Some adventures play fine until you actively try to start accomplishing things.

HOURS PLAYED: 3.25