The Weighing of the Heart. Anubis reads the scales. Osiris presides to the right. From The Met.
So far I have still only opened up one more room (an attic) since last time. The object puzzles are elaborate enough that (in a way) the objects themselves make up the exploration space, not the rooms.
Also as was prophesized, due to this, the game really fell down hard on its parser. This is true even of the very first puzzle I solved immediately after my last post: dealing with the fuses. Specifically, I had a broken fuse, I had some wire from disassembling a hen run, and I could FIX FUSES. I’m don’t 100% visualize what was wrong on the bad fuse but at least the shenanigans are slightly believable.
Where things then fall down hard is putting the fuses back in. INSERT FUSES doesn’t work (SORRY I DON’T KNOW HOW) and PUT FUSES is even worse; the game says OK as if it was successful, and you have to carefully look at the room description to realize the game just parsed PUT as a synonym for DROP.
No, the right action is REPLACE FUSES. Then you can MOVE SWITCH (if you haven’t already) to kick the power on. This allows the saw in the back to work properly. (What happened before, if you don’t remember, is you could swap fuses and still run the saw, but it would cause both fuses to bust. So the game explicitly added a fixing route that was wrong.)
The saw can be used to cut up a pair of post into pieces, but that’s also wrong. You need to get some BOARDS from upstairs (they were LOOSE FLOORBOARDS hiding a PIN)…
Nice repurposing here — the boards would normally just be the thing hiding the “useful object” but they become useful in themselves.
…and cut those instead.
Then you can take the posts and boards together with some screws to make a ladder.
I tried the ladder in every room and always got NOWHERE TO CLIMB TO. It then struck me there might be a secret exit up, and I’m finally trained enough by the school of hard knocks (Nuclear Sub from 1980 plus my recently-played Doomsday Mission) to try LOOK UP.
Upstairs is dark, but you can grab the extension cable from the shed and the lamp from the study to provide some light.
Getting the mirror ends up unfortunate:
IT’S RATHER CUMBERSOME PERHAPS IF I … WHOOPS!
OH DEAR! I COULD DO WITHOUT SEVEN YEARS BAD LUCK!
While there are PIECES OF BROKEN MIRROR, they aren’t super useful and going down the ladder kills you.
If our heart is judged worthy is not mentioned.
This is mostly where I’m now stuck. redhighlander in the comments mentioned the ladder but also a fishing rod, which I haven’t been able to make and I assume is useful later. I did somehow manage to get a key and I think it was a bug. I was able to get a key by … looking at the main switch?
Somehow my screenshot didn’t save, but I looked at the switch and I was told I saw something, and suddenly I had the key. The key I could then use to open the safe to the east.
The blue liquid is poison. Drinking it kills you. I assume it is topical (on either yourself or an appropriate item) but I haven’t been able to rub it.
While I have a saved game past the key-finding bit, so it doesn’t really matter I can’t replicate the behavior (probably, unless I soft-locked in some other way) I’m very stuck parser-wise now. I peeked at the machine code and you can take the SPRAYER in the shed and have the LIQUID inside of it, so I guess then you can spray … the mirror probably? However, all attempts at POUR LIQUID or FILL SPRAYER or the like fail.
I’m 85% certain I’m just stalled on a parser issue but knowing what the issue was doesn’t necessarily help solve it. I also don’t have anything approaching a fishing rod and I could see it possible I softlocked myself out of one.
Any and all help at this point is appreciated. I’ll keep going a while longer but it is faintly possible my journey will end here. The weird appearance of the key makes me especially nervous about more lurking bugs.
Temple of Bast eventually had some sales in the US via Hypersoft. From 80 Micro, April 1986.
Renga in Blue 
“If our heart is judged worthy is not mentioned.”
This part made me wonder if the game requires, in an unclued manner, the player to get themselves killed and thus access the mystical portion suggested by its name via the Egyptian underworld. I suspect that is not the case, but I am curious whether there are (m)any adventure games that work that way, requiring player death not only to unlock game knowledge but with apparent game-ending afterlife being a required part of the game’s narrative trajectory.
Acheton has exactly what you suggest. I can’t think of any other games off-hand that do.
Adam Cadre’s much later Endless Nameless?
aye
not a game I’ve finished! seemed cool what I played
ok, I managed to re-create getting the key
you have to pick up the moth-eaten rug
take it over to the main room with all the power stuff
and drop it
then when you LOOK SWITCH
you will see the key
because ????
figured out that you can BEND PIN
_after_ you do so then you can tie the thread to the pin (not before) and make a “fishing line”
you can also bait the fishing line with spaghetti
This has me wondering if we can somehow poison the spaghetti with the blue liquid and then need to somehow go “fishing” for the *mobster* waiting outside our home.
no guarantees with this parser, but I didn’t have any luck poisoning the spaghetti
Parser issues aside, this game’s puzzle design is enthralling, and your writing on it is top-flight. It’s a pretty direct ancestor to all those escape-the-room games that were big like 20-25 years later even moreso than is typical for puzzlefests.
OPEN VIAL
FILL SPRAYER WITH LIQUID
SPRAY MIRROR
Enjoy!
hm, ok, I tested it this morning and I got
BAD COMMAND FORMAT
just FILL SPRAYER is
I’M SORRY I DON’T UNDERSTAND
did you get this from the source? that suggests it definitely is bugged
oh, it’s a TRS-80 model 3 vs 1 thing
it breaks on model 3
it works on model 1
wow
Glad you figured it out. I was about to send screenshots. I didn’t consider which Model you were using. And yes, I emulated Model 1.
I have had games that stall early unless in model 1 mode. This is the first I have played this deep in where there was some subtle error from being in model 3 rather than model 1
beat the game
part 2 is really quite good
post probably tonight
Looking forward to it!