From the Haunted Palace manual.
I think my experience of The Haunted Palace is best exemplified by a safe that I found fairly early but had trouble opening. It’s on the west side of the ground floor, as shown here on the map:
I had actually seen mention of the “safe” in the manual already, by the long list of objects catalogued by the steward (including, improbably for the 19th century, Tupperware). There was one and only one safe. Surely the safe would be interesting!
I was unable to get the safe and trying to OPEN SAFE results in WHAT WILL USE TO GET IN OR UNDER THE SAFE ? where the game is technically prompting for a single object. (I’m not sure if I fully understood it was doing that when I first saw the message; some games say a prompt to this effect because they want you to USE the object directly that you want to try out.)
I had to pass by, but in my most recent session I did figure out the safe. I’ll return to it later.
One other big discovery from my last session is I was using secret passages wrong. Specifically, i had the “reveal message” that happened using the hammer and chisel (and clued in the manual!) to open a passage, but got stuck in a wine cellar. It turns out you can just USE WISDOM to spot the secret door, and even though no graphic displays with the message you can move forward anyway and a choice will trigger. This gives the impression the author had a grand mechanic in mind but threw in the towel implementing it more than once.
If you leave and come back, or do something else first, you’ll need to USE WISDOM again.
This particular secret door, incidentally, just leads to a dungeon cell with nothing. Oh well. However, this does mean you can escape the wine cellar area now with this mechanic, but it doesn’t do anything about the non-working stairs. I now suspect the game is incomplete and the stairs may literally never have been implemented.
I suspect this because I made it to the last floor.
Now, I admit to being rather confused getting up to floor 12, being I only went up two flights of stairs from the ground floor to get there, but the way “floors” is divided up in the game seems to get vague and approximate.
I still was in the dark getting up there, but I was getting used to just reading the text anyway.
The chapel to the west seemed kind of important, given one of the “room clues” a message about a casket hidden there, but I tried searching multiple times in every direction and found nothing.
There was another important room I managed to overlook my first time around because a USE WISDOM was needed. You’ll notice a dotted line to the east of the Tower Dungeon. That lets you sneak into a Lavoratory, and then past some spiders…
…into a torch room! The long awaited torches, in basically the last room of the game. Finally some light.
Except … no light. Using the torch didn’t work, even with matches in my inventory. If you’re curious how I got the spider shot, there’s a glitch where if you ATTACK a monster in the dark the room will get lit up. This can admittedly be unnerving in some cases.
I eventually — after some fussing and disbelief — turned to the source code. It’s in straight-up BASIC which I was able to pull up as plaintext. The issue seemed to be here:
2305 IF U(1) = 1 THEN : GOTO 2390
2306 IF U(1) = 3 OR U(1) = 12 THEN : GOTO 2420
2308 IF U(1) = 17 THEN : GOTO 2600
2310 IF U(1) = 17 THEN : GOTO 2600
2312 IF U(1) = 11 THEN : GOTO 2500
This is code that triggers after trying to USE an item. Specifically it checks what types of item it is. 2390 is code for eating. 2500 is the hammer and chisel (or alternately a pick axe). You’ll notice that 2308 and 2310 are duplicates. Since there’s unused code for light sources after, I’m guessing one of them meant to jump to 2700, not 2600, probably with a different number than “17” with the equal sign.
2700 IF DK = 0 THEN :W$ = “BUT ITS NOT EVEN DARK!”: GOSUB 1002: RETURN
2702 W$ = “NOW YOU CAN SEE AGAIN”: POKE – 16304,0: GOSUB 1002: RETURN
However, I’m not quite motivated enough to go through the fix, because — well, I’ve seen all the rooms of the game (or “seen” in some cases), the wine cellar stair was clearly a fake out (there’s not even data for a floor beneath the cellar) and I’ve found all the clues while poking through the source code. I’ve seen in-game all the clues except two, but I’m just going to cut and paste them anyway. Assume, somehow, whatever broke the game is unbroken, and I discovered the incinerated body. (Remember the body that kicked it off, where the gender couldn’t be identified?)
DIAMOND RING IN A HEAP OF ASHES
BLOOD STAINED SCARF
MARRIAGE LICENSE-ED S. & ELIZ. ASHLEY
LETTER TO ELIZABETH FROM ANNE ASHLEY
ELIZABETH’S PICTURE/TO CHARLES-LOVE E.
WOMAN’S MASK AND TAPE
CLUE-BUTLER SLEEPS IN UNTIL 9 A.M.
BOAT TICKET TO BOSTON
UNPOSTED COPY OF EDWARD’S NEW WILL
CLUE-THERE IS A CASKET IN THE CHAPEL
CLUE-TOWN GOSSIP-SOMEONE SAW ELIZABETH
MAID’S SHOPPING LIST-ONE NEW UNIFORM
A NOTE TO CHARLES-MEET ME TONITE IN..
…I CAN’T HIDE THE TRUTH ANYMORE…
CLUE-CHARLES WAS ONCE A FAMOUS ACTOR
CLUE-NO DEATH CERTIFICATE FOR VIRGINIA
SYBIL SAID-HE BETTER NOT LEAVE US OUT
..I CAN HEAR HERMAN’S CRIES EACH NIGHT
IN THE OLD HOUSE PLANS-A SUBCELLAR
KEY #2 MISSING FROM EDWARD’S KEYRING
I’ve seen all of these except “DIAMOND RING IN THE HEAP OF ASHES” (I assume the casket) and the “BOAT TICKET TO BOSTON” which seems like redundant information.
I scoured the source and there doesn’t seem to be a “winning condition” where you leave in “victory”. This seems to be all about the mystery contest, where we need to now identify whodunnit.
I’m going to put my speculation in the comments, and all y’all reading this are welcome to join in. I’ll then make a final summary post sometime next week (unfortunately, unlike Krakit, I haven’t found a published “solution” to confirm ours against).
One last thing, though. The safe. I did open it. There was GUNPOWDER in one of the barrels which I hadn’t tried, and it worked.
I thought maybe it’d have some secret item to unveil the missing casket, but alas: it’s the same key we found outside, under the rock, the one we’ve been toting around the entire game. This feels like a metaphor for the act of playing The Haunted Palace.
In all seriousness, I enjoyed myself in a bizarre way, but more akin to an archaeologist unearthing secrets rather than “playing a game”. But I’ll save talking about that for my conclusion post.
Renga in Blue 
btw, I’ve basically given all the information in prior posts, but if you want to consult the clues in the original manual, you can find it here
https://mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=hauntedpalace-manual
So this is more an “Indiana Jones” role, fixing code in an incredibly ancient source… ;-)
Have I already said that you have my admiration for your patience?
Anything in the source code that suggests the “secret hidden chamber where a demon waits” that’s mentioned in the manual?
nope
the most potentially interesting bit is that there are theoretically three starting items each character can have (they only get one, but it gets picked randomly from three) and Lord Edward can get a MAGIC RING, which I’ve never seen anywhere else
Nothing in the source suggests any way to trigger the ring, though
Certainly no mention of a demon in the main source. There could be the regular “D” demon in a specific place they’re thinking of, but there’s no special text or anything
Here’s the only thing resembling an “ending text”:
5000 TEXT : HOME : VTAB 6: PRINT “YOU HAVE PERISHED IN THE HAUNTED PALACE”: PRINT “BUT DID YOU LEARN ENOUGH TO SOLVE”: PRINT “THE MYSTERY?”: PRINT ” “: PRINT “WELL-BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME!”
I’ll mention next Friday (or whenever) when I do a follow-up post but the source code is actually named GLAMIS CASTLE, which is their other game that uses the same engine! It sounds like they wrote Glamis first, then made Haunted Palace, except Palace got released first? Very strange. (Glamis is currently unpreserved)
You did a great job with this walkthrough post. Thank you for taking the time to document such an obscure game. It was interesting to read about your journey thereabouts.
Thanks!
This reminds me of that Cosmi game, The President is Missing, which suffers much the same problem of never really being able to figure out how things went down.
Anyway, deciphering this on my own seems to lead to contradictory places. One thing is certain, with the possible exception of the gardener and the Lord Stuart, they all conspired to do something. I’m guessing because of the way the game is set up, they conspired to have Elizabeth escape because the Lord Stuart is crazy and burned his first wife to ashes. The other is somehow a more bizarre theory in which Virginia and Elizabeth are the same person, which is supported by some of the evidence but completely blown away by the rest of it.
I think the thing that’s puzzling me the most is where the mask fits in. Who would be pretending to be who?
I will say there’s enough reference in the manual clues to the maid buying an excess of food that she’s the one feeding the demon. She spends an hour just looking for the cat (so in the north hall) so is probably doing that. Unfortunately I don’t know how why she would be doing that or how it connects to anything. I guess if all four of them were conniving this would be part of some plan to steal the money.
The “Charles was once an an actor” clue seems odd. If it’s not just a red herring, the only reason I can think of to include it would be that Charles has impersonated someone else. The “woman’s mask” could mean he’s been pretending to be Elizabeth, maybe the version of Elizabeth seen in town? (I’m not clear what type of “mask” is meant here.) You can kind of squint and imagine a plot where A) Elizabeth is scheduled to leave on a trip, B) someone kills Elizabeth before she goes, and C) that person then _also_ sets up sightings of Elizabeth in town just to sow confusion. (It’s strange and risky, but maybe the idea is that eventually someone will notice that she never made it to Boston, so the killer has to also account for that?)
None of that seems to fit the idea that Charles was having an affair with Elizabeth, unless the idea that he was just stringing her along and eventually killed her and stole her money.
It is one of the most puzzling parts of the whole thing
the diary entries in the manual seem to indicate Charles was completely unaware of any such shenanigans
I’m willing to count the acting as a red herring, but the mask seems like it has to be important in this somehow
just a quick notice that no, I haven’t forgotten about this
going to think about it at least a few more days
Hi, I’ve recently covered the game on my site, cracking all the source code (full of bugs and unimplemented features), and I still don’t know the answer to the mystery, I’m looking forward to your theories about it.
wow, nice writeup!
Where is the beast’s room? I didn’t see anything on the maps.
It was as I feared in that there’s nothing new learned even by finding the room, but I’d still like to see it.
I do still have a follow-up post planned here. You’re right the feeling as if there are multiple plots mashed up doesn’t help at all deciphering things.
The conclusion I’ve been leaning to (I’ll expand in full when I finally make the post) is that this is one of those plots like Deadline which has multiple suspicious things going on but you’re supposed to ignore most of them for what is actually the hard evidence.
The hard evidence is that the beast is in the game. I think we can clearly say the maid is responsible for feeding the Beast, and she’s doing it in the 8-9 hour span where she’s “looking for the cat” on her schedule, and the reason for the Butler waking up at 9 clue is to indicate she’s doing it without the Butler being around.
The unidentified dead body is almost certainly Elizabeth’s, who has been hanging around having an affair with the butler when she’s supposed to be in Boston.
I think it is also clear that the beast had to be the one who originally did the killing. There is no reason the beast would have deposited in the body in the fire, so the maid deposited the body.
My guess is: independently of the maid, Elizabeth and the butler are having an affair and had a plot to run away with the money in the treasure. The maid was doing the summoning of the beast in various parts of the castle (note how the pentagrams have shown up in many places, not just the one at the ending). The maid runs across the treasure entirely on her own and does a summoning there. Elizabeth inadvertently, while sneaking about at night, runs across the beast and gets killed. The maid, coming in for the morning feeding, discovers the body and disposes of it in the fire.
By this theory everything about the dead ex-wife is entirely a red herring. There is no evidence in the game that the ex-wife is still alive, and the lack of a death certificate isn’t really all that strong a piece of evidence. We also know almost guaranteed that Lord Edward is innocent (just on the basis of the manual’s narration being from his personal diary, and the fact he discovers the beast on his own after the death has already happened and is completely shocked)
I like your theory, it combines the Elizabeth-Charles plot with that of The Beast-Mary, of which there is real evidence.
I came to think something similar, only that in my theory Charles would be the beast, a kind of werewolf, cursed for taking the gold from the treasury, and I discarded it for lack of evidence.
In fact, I remember that Edward says he heard Virginia’s voice at the end of his story, and I took it literally, that’s why I thought they were trying to kill him (the detail of his heart disease gives rise to it) by pretending that his previous wife was alive, but perhaps it was just his imagination when he saw himself close to death, and as you say, the matter of the first wife is only to mislead.
About the secret room of the beast, it is in the west wing II of the second floor, after a secret passage to the east of the spice room, which in turn is locked if I remember correctly.
Since you can play as Charles and presumably meet the Beast as Charles (one of my saves I am using him) I think it’d be hard for them to be the same.
Going to ponder on this a little bit longer, but I might end up making my last post tonight.
Good point. I’m looking forward to reading it.
Oh, and about the stairs that don’t work in the wine cellar, I think those stairs were supposed to be the ones that go down from the first floor, and the subcellar of the clue would be the dungeons behind the secret passage. It seems Crystalware lacked playtesters… even just one.
done. Found the beast. I was looking in the dark places! Silly me thinking the game would follow through with the hints it was giving.