Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Dr. Jonathan Partington returns, completing a trilogy of work he made in 1982.

Via PcwWiki.

Avon is part of the whole series of games from Cambridge mainframes, including

Acheton (1978)
Brand X / Philosopher’s Quest (1979)
Quondam (1980)
Hezarin (1981)
Hamil (1982)
Murdac (1982)

with Hamil and Murdac being Partington’s (he was also one of the trio of authors on Acheton). I’ve gotten used to their particular quirks and rules, such as the possibility of a softlock if you do things in the wrong order. Frankly, within the confines of accepting the Phoenix norms, Murdac is one of the best classic treasure-hunt adventures I’ve played, so I was looking forward to Avon.

Avon has its own atmosphere due to being heavily drawn from Shakespeare. The setup is “you’ve fallen into a Shakespeare-based world, now get out”.

One day, after watching (or perhaps reading) too many Shakespeare plays, you find yourself wandering around a wondrously enchanted land. Here they use a richer language than is usual and you come across scenes which may remind you of certain Shakespearean plays.

How you are going to return successfully to the present day is something that you will have to find out for yourself but it may be worthwhile to keep any valuables you come across.

The general effect is not that of typical fantasy (that is, not like Hamil or Murdac). I wouldn’t call it “surrealism” as much as “tilted realism” where characters and objects and plot blur and swap places; it almost feels like one of the Andrew Schultz wordplay-based games or the Shake a Tower section of Nord and Bert Couldn’t Make Head or Tail of It. Consider the opening room:

You are standing on a flat plain. From here it seems that all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances to the north, south, east and west.

The text gives the appearance that the players of the world are also the same thing as the exits.

The introductory help incidentally claims

An exhaustive knowledge of the Shakespearean canon is not necessary, as in most cases just the problems rather than the solutions are pinched from Shakespeare.

but given I’ve already used Shakespeare knowledge to aid in one puzzle (as I’ll get to), this might not entirely be the truth.

Speaking of Phoenix mainframe norms, immediately to the north of the starting room the game pulls out a similar “pick your item” trick to Brand X / Philosopher’s Quest.

The Three Witches of Macbeth, via an 1836 engraving by Busse.

You are on a wild heath. So foul and fair a day you have not seen. A path leads off to the south, there is a forest path to the northwest, and a chilly wind blows down a path to the northeast.

What are these so wither’d and wild in their attire? They should be women but their beards forbid thee to interpret that they are so.
The witches are prepared to give you one of the following objects:
An eye of newt.
A toe of frog.
A wool of bat.
A tongue of dog.
Which object will you take?

I think the right pick here is eye of newt. This is because not long after the start of the game, the world goes dark

It is growing dark… too dark to see with the naked eye.

but if you have the eye of newt, it provides light (“Fortunately the newt’s eye provides a dull illumination.”) Philosopher’s Quest had a trick where you could get two items but I don’t see any such loophole here. I may be missing something, though; for one thing, Philosopher’s Quest had an alternate way to get one item as long as you didn’t pick it! So I’ll keep with getting the eye but will remain suspicious in case a situation really seems like it could use some frog toe.

Just to the west of the starting stage is a calendar turned to January 6, and just off of that is one of the coolest gimmicks of the game.

> w
You are in the market place. To the east there seems to be some kind of stage, and there are dwellings to the northwest (large), west (medium-sized) and southwest (small).
There is a calendar here, which gives the date as January 6th.
> sw
You are in a cell, which clearly belongs to some holy man, as you can tell from the religious decoration of the room. The only way out is by a door to the northeast.
There is a phial here, containing a potion of mandragora.
> get mandragora
OK.
> drink mandragora
You drink the potion. Presently through all your being there runs a cold and drowsy humour and your eyes’ windows fall like death. In this borrow’d likeness of shrunk death you continue and then awake much later as from a pleasant sleep to see…

That’s the potion intended to cause Juliet to have the appearance of dying, but really go to sleep for two days. Here, it affects quite a few more than two days, because if you go back and look at the calendar, it has now changed to March 15th.

That means that at the start of the game, the season is winter, but you can change it to spring. (This is the puzzle I mentioned where knowing the reference helped understand it.) This causes some of the rooms to be different. For example, there’s an ice floe that you can pass over during winter to get to a large section of rooms to the north, but by spring, that ice floe has melted.

Or you can have more subtle interactions, like with Richard III:

> s
You encounter a kingly figure, sadly rather hunchbacked. He mutters that it now is the winter of his discontent, and hobbles off. You are in a field. The ground is in tip-top condition, should anybody ever wish to fight a battle here. You can retreat northwards.

This meeting does not occur if you arrive at the field in spring. However, what you can do in spring is get yourself stabbed:

As you enter the building, you realise with a shudder that it is now the Ides of March. There are cries of “Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!” and you are stabbed by several men in togas. With a cry of “Hate, you brute?” you give a reproachful look at the nearest of your assailants and expire.

Karl Theodor von Piloty, 1865, The Murder of Julius Ceasar.

I have no idea what this building is like in winter, because if I try to approach in winter I get chased (and killed) by a bear. Of course the bear only shows up in winter because it is from The Winter’s Tale.

A savage clamor!
Well may I get aboard! This is the chase.
I am gone forever!

He exits, pursued by a bear.

(That’s from the actual play, not the game.)

One last general observation about the game is that this seems to have “scripted scenes” far more than most Phoenix games except maybe Hezarin. I’m reminded of the ICL game Quest which randomly has you pick between Basil Wolstegnome and Maria Gnomesick at a Gnome of the Year show; here, you are asked, King Lear style, to decide which daughter gets a kingdom:

You are in a gorgeous palace. A King here is arguing with his courtiers as to the best way to divide up his kingdom. As you arrive, they decide to ask your advice, Heaven knows why.
“To which of my daughters, Regan, Goneril and Cordelia, shall I leave the largest share of my kingdom?” demands the king.

I have yet to resolve this issue; I went with Cordelia and the king was displeased:

“Mend your speech a little, lest you may mar your fortunes.” says the king, who evidently disagrees with your decision. “Hence, and avoid my sight! Vassal! Miscreant!”

In fact, I have yet to resolve much in the way of puzzles at all, and I even still have a few question marks on my map, so I’ll report back next time with a full accounting of all environs. I will say (based on the back cover of the commercial version of the game referring to “three dates”, see image at the top of this post) it is likely that we’ll have at least one more season to warp to and cause all the rooms to change, meaning this game could be very long and deep indeed.