Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Cover to the manual.

The manual kicks off with Lord Stuart’s diaries.

Curiously, this game gives no year. Based on other factors I’m guessing early 19th century, and it does give the date the body is first found: Wednesday, November 27. I will hence assume 1839 (where that date fell on a Wednesday) which also happen to be when Edgar Allan Poe was publishing.

In the morning, the butler Charles had found the a body charred in the furnace; Elizabeth had already (allegedly) left for Boston when all this occurred.

A search of the house reveals a mysterious “blue scarf” that is beneath Lord Stuart’s night clothes; the body is never identified. By December Lord Stuart starts to hear footsteps and scratching. The family cat, Herman, goes missing.

On December 13, Lord Stuart writes:

1:00 P.M. Today, in the old library, I made quite a find. In the old house plan there are quite a few rooms in the palace that were apparently sealed up when it went through reconstruction 60 years ago after the fire. I remember Edgar, my grandfather, was quite a miser. Perhaps, there is some of the old family wealth hidden in one of the old rooms. After the servants are asleep, I think I will do a little treasure hunting myself tonight.

There’s some other fragments of interest; he knows that his steward Michael has been skimming off his cash; Sybil (the steward’s wife and another playable character) never liked Elizabeth and seemed pleased when she left. The Lordship’s inheritence is going to Elizabeth and his butler (for his long servce); nothing is going to Michael or Sybil.

There’s literal fragments mentioned later in the manual, as “scraps of paper found in the trash bin by the furnace”.

… and my lord I mean to inquire about your maids daily purchase of 30 lbs of raw entrails. It is beyond my comprehension how you … the Butcher

… your Butler Charles has been seen boasting in the pubs that he has newly come into a great sum of money … paying in gold coins and raising quite a riot in the city …

… would like your help and cooperation in this matter. Seven of the townspeople have disappeared in the last month and were last seen in the vicinity …

… saw your wife Elizabeth just recently in the company of …

There’s a letter from Lord Stuart to Elizabeth, which seems to be written close to the start of the game; he mentions how most of the staff has left, how “at night the house seems alive”, that the family cat somehow still is crying at “the North Wing upstairs”, and that

When it is all over I shall send for you and we shall leave this evil house together to start a new life somewhere near London. I count the days until we shall be together again and the curse that seems to have fallen on this house is lifted.

There’s a schedule of the maid, Mary, showing when candles are lit, when breakfast is prepared, when things are cleaned, when candles are snuffed. Curiously, “Search for Herman” (the cat) is explicitly listed at 8 AM.

Courtesy of the head steward, there’s a complete (?) listing of rooms at Stuart Palace. There are a full 12 floors, all the way from a torture chamber at the bottom and “Guard Dining” at top. There’s also a listing of “objects” immediately after.

Based on the voting, Frederick the gardener narrowly won over the butler. People seemed to think the butler did the killing. Given the supernatural elements, it is faintly possible that the player could be unawares that they committed some horrible crime. If you’re actually thinking the butler is the full instigator, when he’s a playable character, that would be unique indeed. I’m not sure how that’d even work game-design wise, since every character starts the same way (outside the Palace, then you go in and start investigating, with no more info than what was given above) and with the same goal (solving the mystery).

In his youth, Frederick was distinguished as a war hero. His knowledge of weapons and arms is extraordinary. He is of moderate physical strength and intelligence. His [sic] of the Palace is fairly limited. He is 44 years old and is missing his left arm.

The stats are

STRENGTH: 112
COURAGE: 118
WISDOM: 16
INTUITION: 25
DEXTERITY: 65
LUCK: 25

RICHES, ARMOR, and WEAPONS all start at zero. If the manual isn’t lying, then our character will have some skill multiplier when they get a weapon.

Dexterity is moderate, not terrible (maybe it would have been higher but, well, left arm; our hero is still clearly athletic). The wisdom and intuition are trash compared to Sybil’s (she gets 101 and 102). The manual hints at hidden passages and the like and I’m guessing we’ll just have to find them ourselves rather than have our character pipe up for us.

We start with a HAMMER. This works as a weapon (if we USE WEAPON it gets wielded, and you’ll see a combat a little bit later). The Lord of the House incidentally starts with a KEY, the Butler has some MATCHES, Michael starts with a BOOK, the Maid has a KNIFE and Sybil has … TUPPERWARE. (Given she has the power of divination, perhaps it’s the best start of all; you need to carry some holy water you find, maybe?)

Let’s concentrate on the first floor. Unfortunately the map is confusing enough I haven’t quite gone through everything yet.

This is designed sort of a hybrid between a typical 3D-map dungeon crawler game and a regular adventure game. Sometimes objects and rooms are repeated, but there are enough unique elements you have to map everything carefully. The only way to proceed is for each spot on the map to look all four directions; that is, press N L E L S L W L (turn and look) as sometimes things are only visible from certain angles. Additionally, you can’t fully trust the graphics you see. This is especially true of the passages and hallways; for whatever curious reason the game has many ways to render a “wall”.

I had to simply shut off the Wizardry portion of my brain which reflexively wanted to map using the distance to walls on-screen. It just isn’t dependable enough to figure out. Rooms are a little more consistent; here’s three views of a leather-working room (notice how all the views show different items).

Sometimes the objects are just scenery (like the table), sometimes they can be interacted with (like the chest).

Some rooms have a “clue”. In one case this was clearly a “note”; in other cases I’m not sure where the clue comes from at all. Hearing things in your head? The Palace whispering its secrets?

THE BUTLER SLEEPS UNTIL 9 AM

CHARLES WAS ONCE AN ACTOR

SOMEONE SAW ELIZABETH IN TOWN

NOTE TO CHARLES: MEET ME TONITE IN–

MAID SHOPPING LIST: ONE NEW UNIFORM

NO DEATH CERTIFICATE FOR VIRGINIA

Virginia is Lord Stuart’s first wife, who allegedly committed suicide 10 years ago. I’m wondering if we’re playing a higher-attenuated character if we’ll get more clues, or maybe some of the clues on different levels will be harder to hear without a higher intuition.

One last thing to mention, although I implied it last time: the game has combat.

The ghoul is text-only. I also ran into some maggots in a hall that did actually display, so it seems to vary based on the enemy.

It is possible to run away, but since I had the hammer with me, I decided to engage.

I managed to score a hit of 126 (I assume 201+ would mean I won) but was slain by a hit back.

Note the “did you learn enough” message here — just like many of the other Crystalware games, this one had a contest with it; $500 for the first to send a correct entry form:

Play the game and explore the mansion until he or she feels they have solved the mystery. It is not necessary to win the game to enter the contest.

The fact it mentions winning the game means there is a way to also win. This matches with Fall of the House of Usher, where you can get information to work out the resolution to the mystery. Incidentally, the House of Usher also has a Virginia and an Elizabeth. I don’t know if this is intended to be sort of a remake, but this does have more characters, so this might have a slightly more complicated plot.