Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Not a lot of progress, but I did manage to connect up all the map, and I wanted to — for my benefit as much as yours — lay out all the puzzles I still had left to resolve, and items that have yet to hold a purpose.

The first bit of progress was not really from me but from a commenter, the astute Matt W.:

also, what if you try “meadow” or “remember meadow” in the memory room?

Well, let’s try it:

You are in a small, many-sided room. There is an obvious exit to the northeast. Some roughly carved letters on the south wall say “DEARIE, DO YOU REMEMBER?”
REMEMBER MEADOW

You’re in the center of the grassy meadow.
REMEMBER MEMORY

You’re in the Memory Room.

It’s another XYZZY-style teleport. I don’t know if it is useful for a puzzle or just for convenience. The map really tries hard to have multiple entrances and it does all hook together. My “second” and “third” undergrounds hadn’t connected yet, but this room

This is a lovely little room that looks like some kind of beautiful luminous blue jewel inside. A narrow opening heads off to the northeast, and a smooth path leads upward.

There is a message scrawled on the stones. The walls shine with a lovely irridescent glow.
READ MESSAGE

Some demented person has scrawled on the floor “Bongo, Bongo, Bongo, I Don’t Wanna Let The Gong Go.”

and this room

You are in a neat square room with an odd device in the middle of the floor. It has a big metal container, some copper tubing, and smells like something gone sour.

The only visible exit goes south.

E
You bruise your head painfully on the rock wall.

both link up. Specifically, if you drag the gong to the room with the message, and bring a rubber hammer from next to the cargo room, you can make a new exit.

BOINNNG!! CRASH, rumble, rumble …
When the dust clears you see that the lovely blue wall has crumbled and fallen into a heap of rubble, revealing a room to the west.

Here’s everything linked into one big underground:

I’m unclear if I’m close or not to revealing everything, but the obstacles I haven’t resolved are:

1. Getting dizzy and falling when going down a stair.

You are on a very dangerous path that winds up and down along the sheer stone wall of the abyss.
D

Suddenly you feel light-headed, sick. Your eyes refuse to focus. You begin to cough, and there is a tight feeling in your chest. You fall to the ground …

2. An abyss you may or may not be able to cross. If something does work I suspect magic.

You are at the west end of a gigantic cavern. The towering walls remind you of some sort of gothic cathedral, and your eyes peer vainly upward in an effort to see the ceiling. Faint wisps of mist eddy around you like lost souls. A narrow opening leads southwest, and the cavern stretches out to the east, where a bottomless abyss crosses the floor.

The abyss effectively blocks you from crossing the cavern.

3. A hog on the outside who won’t let you approach; I suspect it may be connected to a spot on the outside that needs to be dug up. The game says you don’t have a shovel, but it may be the hog can do the digging?

You are in a small smelly animal pen. There is a pile of well-chewed corncobs in one corner, and a lot of mud. The only ways out of the pen are to the east and southeast.

A rather hostile pink hog is snorting at you from a corner.
GET HOG

The hog glowers at you out of little close-set eyes and snorts angrily. He doesn’t seem to like the idea.

4. The robot, which I have still to defeat.

A huge, heavily built robot rolls menacingly around the room, sensors blinking, and refuses to let you pass.

5. There’s a “pirate” gnome that will grab treasures if they’re in your inventory or on the floor, and I have yet to find out where they get stashed; if it is like Original Adventure, by finding the stash there will be a new treasure.

There’s a message about “ominous rustling” I assume has to be from the pirate if you have nothing valuable.

There is an ominous rustling sound from the darkness behind you. When you whirl around, someone — or some THING — dodges back into the shadows.

6. Two rooms of buttons I have yet to be able to do anything with. I still haven’t found anything resembling a combination, but I suspect if there’s any “you just missed an exit and a side room” type puzzle left, it’s this one.

There is a large panel in the west wall. It is firmly shut.
Next to the panel are ten buttons labeled 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.

Items I haven’t used are a magazine…

It’s a copy of “Games for the IBM PC,” but unfortunately it’s the special gnomish edition — all in GNULLIAC.

… and … that’s pretty much it. Everything else has served a purpose. Maybe the rubber mallet that rang the gong also does something else, but I doubt it? I burned using a tuna sandwich to placate a mountain lion and technically the lion is optional. That fur muff I speculated about last time was indeed useful for putting down the fragile sphere:

The lovely crystal sphere lands lightly on the fur muff.

Not much more to keep scratching at, so I suspect victory or bust next time. (I’ll also take hints in comments, but ROT13 only please.)

Another Dian Girard book, this one co-written with her husband.