Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Medieval Castle marks the last of a trilogy by De Crandell and Joe Peterson, who wrote an “Explore” system for the TRS-80 as a system for their games. They were private rather than distributed, and only placed on the Internet much later. (See: Enchanted Cave, Lost Mine.)

“Medieval Castle” was the final in the “trilogy” of our late-nite teenage adventure creativity. This one forced us to add even more features to the language, and I believe it really became “sophisticated” with this one. Castle is perhaps the most colorful of the adventures, but not as mystical somehow as Enchanted Cave. De and I didn’t make any more games after this one.

This is not the last of the Explore system games — there’s one more based on a raunchy 80s comedy movie — but we’ll get to that game a different time.

Continuing the pattern of “teenaged prodigies who wrote adventures and went on to fame”, this is Joe Peterson from a group shot at the Southwest Research Institute, where he was manager of mission operations, and was in charge of the New Horizons spacecraft that went to Pluto.

Rather than screenshots I’m going to do text clips, but just a reminder what the system looks like, first:

I’m still paranoid the web page this comes from will disappear some day, although there is technically an Android port so the game is preserved. We have the source code of the Explore system proper but not the script for any of the actual games.

Just like the other two games, there’s no given plot. Here you encounter an Enchanted Castle, and are supposed to pass through all the way until you get to the finish. There’s no particular reason we’d go into the castle in the first place, so the plot is just “have an adventure”.

You are standing at the edge of a cliff. Far off in the distance you see a large castle surrounded by a moat and engulfed in an ominous fog. About a mile below you is a winding river. There is a dirt path to the north.
:n

You are at the base of a tree. There seems to be something caught in the top. A dirt path goes south.
:u

You are standing on a branch near the top of the tree.
There is a hang glider here.

Unlike the other two games this was not a one-shot deal. I am in fact stuck early in a way that is uncomfortably reminiscent of the game I just played, The Sands of Egypt. I am concerned becoming “sophisticated” is code for “tried to do some complex puzzles in a parser that doesn’t support it.”

At least the start is simple enough. You can grab the glider mentioned and take it back to the edge of the cliff, and JUMP, landing at a grassy knoll.

You are on a grassy knoll south of a huge castle. Between you and the castle is a moat full of crocodiles. There is a tree at the edge of the moat. A path goes east.

The east a short way leads to a woodcutter’s cabin, which has an axe, and you can take it back to the knoll and CHOP TREE in order to form a path across the crocodile moat.

:chop tree
The tree falls and forms a bridge across the moat.
:n
You are directly outside the castle. There is a large archway to the north, which serves as the main entrance. To the south is the bridge and the moat.
There is a scroll here.

The scroll is the first cryptic part of the game.

:read scroll
It says,
“PHLURF” is the key to this adventure.
:say phlurf
Oops! Your magic is not too accurate.
You will have to find the key for yourself!

Does that mean I’m “pronouncing the word” wrong? Does it only make sense in the right place? Is the thing written on the scroll really a cryptogram that changes to something else? (At the very least, I tried rot1, rot2, rot3, etc. up to rot25 with no joy.) Using it anywhere else after the first time just gets the message that nothing happens.

This opens the map a bit more, but I’m not finding much luck anywhere I prod.

You are in the main hall of the castle. You are greeted by a majestic red carpet, which extends through a low archway to the north. Sunlight reflected off the waters of the moat can be seen through a large archway to the south. You can see an immense room to the east. A spiral staircase twists up out of sight.

First off, on a branch to the east is a cathedral, with a platform having an “imbedded gold ring about the size of a crown” and a hole high on the ceiling that will no doubt later be important. To the north of that is an altar with a ruby I can’t get at.

You are in the Priest’s chamber. There are many sacred objects and prayer books here. There is a curtain to the south.
Imbedded in a quartz slab is a sparkling ruby!
:get ruby
I see no way to pick up the ruby.
:chop ruby
I don’t understand.
:chop slab
I don’t understand.
:rub slab
I don’t understand.
:push slab
I don’t understand.

Going back to the castle entrance and heading north instead, you pass by a statue with a missing ruby eye (clear where the ruby is going after you get it, at least) and then a rusty door I have seen borrowed from many games already.

:n
You are in a low north/south hallway between two arches. There is a small statue resting on a pedestal on the right side of the hall. The statue is missing one of its ruby eyes!
:n
This is a magnificent room with a ceiling twenty feet high. At one end sits a beautiful throne made of solid gold. The red carpet ends at the foot of the throne. There is a doorway to the west. To the south is a low archway.
The steel bar door to the west is so rusty it won’t budge.

However, unlike those games, I haven’t been able to beat the rust. Upstairs there is a “wizard’s laboratory” with a “flask” and a “bottle of liquid” but neither is helpful based on any command I’ve tried (OIL DOOR, POUR LIQUID, THROW FLASK, etc.) I know the bottle is toxic because it kills you if you drink it but past that I’m baffled.

Showing off a little bit of upstairs, but there isn’t much to do yet:

You are in the wizard’s quarters. There is a strange looking pointed hat on a night stand beside an unmade bed. There is a curtain to the west, and the room exits to the north.
There is a chest here.
:s
This must be the wizard’s laboratory, for there are many bottles filled with strange colored liquids and powders.
There is a small tunnel to the south and a curtain to the east.
:w
You are in the weapons room. There are all kinds of swords, daggers, shields, and crossbows resting against the walls.
There is a grate in the floor, but the latch is on the other side. A tunnel goes north.

I’d normally think the latch is a puzzle clearly solvable later once we actually reach the other side, but I’m stumped on all other avenues so maybe you’re supposed to reach the latch somehow. If there’s a way to express this in the parser I haven’t figure it out.

I’d say someone is welcome to peek at a walkthrough if I’m not missing an obvious verb, but this has no walkthroughs on the Internet. So anyone who wants to help will need to play this for themselves, which you can do online by using the link here. I’m hoping this is a momentary hiccup and the gameplay will return to normal after (meaning I’ll finish by my next post) but it may be the authors decided they needed to crank up the difficulty for their finale, or at least crank up the level of obscurity of commands required to interact with the game.

ADD: Managed to figure out the issue (in the comments if you don’t want to wait). Crisis averted, however.