Sure, hyperbole, but not by much.
I did beat the game, so make sure you’ve read read my previous posts about Toxic Dumpsite before this one.
The puzzle I was stuck on last time was, weirdly enough, fair. Maybe it needed some design finesse but…
…just as a reminder, I had found a vending machine with a coin underneath. Doing SHAKE MACHINE led to a rattling sound and the “all right” message made me think the rattling was referring to the coin. But no, SHAKE still gets the sound, and as mentioned last time, inserting a coin gets it stuck.
However, it dislodged whatever happened to be stuck by a little nudge, so that SHAKE MACHINE again gets it out.
That’s a key. I then immediately tested it everywhere, find it fit in the keyhole next to the window, and turning the key leads to a click.
This unlocks the “control” room downstairs, but before going down there, I should mention while stumped I also managed to find a shovel. LOOK UNDER worked (without documentation or prompting); what about other prepositions?
And no, SEARCH or any other verb does not find the shovel. It has to be LOOK BEHIND.
There isn’t anything intrinsically unfair about including prepositions in searches, but it has to be documented in some way they’re going to occur, especially because they were almost unused in text adventures at this time. I admit my mental logic probably ran along the way the author wanted — I thought that file cabinet is big, I wonder if anything is behind there — but I can still recognize the game is asking for a command without teaching it exists. Text adventures have the unique attribute of “technically anything in English works” but in practice as commands get rarer and rarer they need to be treated uniquely, like you have a platformer where the Z key does something essential but the game doesn’t bother to mention it and you’re just supposed to hit every key on the keyboard trying.
Moving on, with shovel in hand (and the control room unlocked) I headed downstairs, and found the control room was just a message with a single button.
The button unlocks a second door marked “TRANSPORT”.
Just to the left is a button you can push to activate the cart; then pushing the pedal will lead you deeper in the mine, where you start to have trouble breathing.
Curiously enough, the “trouble breathing” isn’t really a timer as you might expect — it means if you try to go too far deep then you die from lack of oxygen, but otherwise the “trouble breathing” state simply hovers around without consequence. Usually for one of these games when something that indicates the player’s medical condition is getting worse triggers, that’s automatically a timer that needs to be beaten.
Further in there is a purple button that can’t be reached. This will be important shortly.
You can then go in the mine, where the lantern (which I assume has been providing light through the whole transport section) is too faint to see in the darkness. You can still DIG (with that shovel from behind the file cabinet) and get an item that your player takes, then leave safely.
If you try to go deeper into the mine, that’s when the lack of oxygen kicks in:
The hammer is described as lightweight which I assume is intended as a hint it can’t be used to break things (like the Office door upstairs which is still unlocked, and is a red herring at the end).
I was horribly stuck enough here that I decided I had enough and needed to poke at a walkthrough, and here we hit the puzzle of the title.
Allow me a brief side mention of a much more recent game, +=3, by Carl de Marcken and David Baggett. Going by the ifdb description:
This one-puzzle game was Dave Baggett’s response to a discussion (flame war?) in rec.arts.int-fiction and specifically to Russ Bryan’s claim that there could be no puzzles which are logical yet unsolvable.
I remember some discussions from rec.arts.int-fiction (the Usenet group) being indistinguishable from flame wars back in the day, so maybe it was both. Here’s the opening (and only) room.
On the Three Troll Bridge
You are standing on a rickety wooden bridge. A burly Three Troll blocks your passage north, across the bridge.
Something is ticking.
In any case, +=3 was essentially a thought experiment: how could you make a logical unsolvable puzzle? Now, as a one-puzzle game, you may want to skip down a bit farther to avoid my spoiling it (I’ll drop a picture of a floppy disk to mark when it is safe to come back), as I’m about to cut and paste in the walkthrough.
Ready?
This “game” is meant to illustrate the fact that “logical” and “simple” puzzles can be made arbitrarily difficult to solve. In this particular case, the puzzle exploits an assumption that experienced text adventure players will make — that things that aren’t listed in one’s inventory aren’t actually manipulable game objects.
>give shirt to troll
>give shoes to troll
>give socks to troll
>nThe solution is perfectly logical and simple. If you were standing on a bridge with a troll who clearly wanted you to give him something, and you had nothing to give him, what would you do? You’d give him the shirt off your back, of course.
Note that if you say “examine me”, you’ll see that you are in fact a clothed human. (If you’d have been naked, the game certainly would have pointed this out, right?)
Everything explicitly mentioned in this game except the troll is a red herring.
I don’t think the game really illustrates anything about logic and simplicity as much as that it is far too much to expect the player to refer to objects that aren’t listed as there (and why can’t our player have boots, instead of shoes)?
All that preface was technically a hint for the puzzle: how do you press the purple button? All the information needed is in my prior posts (or at least all the information needed according to the game itself).
From the Museum of Computer Adventure Games.
So way back at the chest next to the starting room…
…we can REMOVE NAIL WITH HAMMER.
There is no nail in the description, and even being given a “wooden” chest, there is no reason to assume it uses nails rather than, say, screws. The only feasible way to solve the puzzle seems to be to focus entirely on the hammer and what it might be used for, and given that nothing is breakable, come up with the use of pulling nails instead, and try to guess where a nail might be and take the leap of faith.
Weirdly enough, the game was well coded and there was clearly some creativity poured into this, especially given the lack of historical precedent; it’s just the game design effect was a miss. The author likely saw the Med Systems games like Deathmaze but definitely hadn’t seen the Japanese Mystery House, so this concept of a tight 3D environment was all his, and I appreciated the novel ways of stretching what turned out to be a tiny map. I’m especially curious if the graphical elements are what led the author down the road of including preposition-searches; looking at the file cabinet as a graphic did give me the primal urge to peek behind it in a way I’m fairly certain I would not have experienced with text.
Maybe the other game in the two-pack (Spook House) will go better now that I know the author’s tendencies, but I’m going to take a breather before trying it, and instead go to a game series I know very well: the Phoenix mainframe series, and the ultra-hard British game Avon.
Renga in Blue 
¡Congrats! As I always say, you have a remarkable patience. I’d have broken the PC for a “puzzle” such as removing a nail from the chest that is not mentioned.
As an aside, you tell us in frustration that: “Text adventures have the unique attribute of “technically anything in English works” but in practice as commands get rarer and rarer they need to be treated uniquely,(…)”
In my opinion, the list of admitted verbs should be as short as possible, and specifically avoiding the use of prepositions as possible. You should struggle with the puzzles, not with the exact word or worst, the exact preposition.
I think that what you said of “technically anything in English works” is just a mirage, probably born from the fact that you can actually type anything on the prompt.
Congrats! As I always say, you have a lot of patience.
You tell us in frustration that “technically anything in English works”. I think that’s just a mirage, something probably born in the player because of the fact that you can type anything on the keyboard.
That’s why I think that the list of verbs should be as short as possible, without prepositions when possible. The player should struggle with (fair) puzzles, not with how to tell the game what she want’s to do.
My five cents. ;-)
it could have been worse
you could have needed to pry that nail out of a homicidal wooden door
…in a maze full of doors that link to each other randomly and don’t connect back to the same door. Oh, and before prying the nail out of the door you need to converse with, no hint beforehand, that requires a series of randomized “speak” and “listen” commands. (but you have to type the commands backwards, also with no hint) Once you do that, you need to pry one of five nails out of the door, all identical, you can only pry out one, and only one (randomized, of course) which then works on one of five randomly chosen buttons. (which has a hint, in Russian) Press the wrong button, or the right button with the wrong nail, and all your items disappear 5 turns later. If at any point you reload, all the nails turn into the wrong nails and a nuclear bomb goes off 50 turns later. Oh, and it’s in real time.
I feel like you two are referring to a specific game and I don’t know which one!
I’m just scarred for life by Ferret to see all wooden doors as a source of death and dismay.
Morpheus Kitami’s riff sounds like an effort to carve out a new niche in the Zarfian Cruelty Scale. Someone out there, make this game. And then put it in the garbage, and light the garbage on fire, and then throw that garbage at a wooden door.
The randomized series of speak and listen commands are from Gram Cats. Voltgloss is right that someone should put it in the trash and light it on fire, because that’s not actually the worst part of it. Ng bar cbvag, gurer’f n zvavtnzr jurer lbh unir gb cvpx pbeerpgyl, guerr gvzrf, bar bs 5 pneqf. Bayl, gurer’f ab uvag. Oh, and a bit where the very act of movement itself turns into an unwieldly arcade sequence.
The later Scott Adams games tended to have a similar problem with unfair “assumption” puzzles – I recall at least one involving a kitchen with no real description, where you were supposed to guess that certain objects found typically in a kitchen would be there.
I put my completed map of Avon up some time ago on CASA but I suspect you will prefer a solo flight. One thing I would say is forget the “you don’t need any previous knowledge of Shakespeare” quote that I have seen pinned to this game. Several puzzles are much easier with knowledge of the relevant plays and examples like the policeman’s dog must be nigh on unsolvable without reference. And the recurring three witches’ scenario is reminiscent of a certain antique shop cum cave system in its blind choice.
I think I’ve got the right choice at the witches (given that the effect happens at the very beginning of the game)
and I know what you mean about Shakespeare references, to understand what the potion did it helped to understand the reference it was making
it’s kind of a chonky opening so my first post will likely be tomorrow instead of today
This is one of the few games where SAVE is disabled to prevent brute forcing of solutions. Most of the others which have this conceit are Phoenix games as well of course, like the smoke-filled corridor of pits in Hezarin; only there are several in this game. Some save game positions can still become useless however.
I have never understood the oft quoted opinion that this is one of the easier efforts in the Cambridge canon. I think it is tougher than Murdac, Hamil, Crobe, Quest for the Sangraal and Nidus.
Gird your loins for aa bhgentrbhf cha and pbyq oybbqrq zheqre.
+=3 was kind of what I had in mind with the opening of Crime Stopper–I thought that maybe when there was a desk you were supposed to guess that there was a drawer and that OPEN DRAWER would work. The nail in the chest goes well beyond that though.