Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my previous post.)

This time around I’ve stopped at a good progress point to give an update rather than getting stopped by the game, so that’s a good sign.

Via the Museum of Computer Adventure Games.

The character of this game is very different from both Colossal Adventure and Adventure Quest. I might even declare it easier than both of them but I know things can always ramp up. For an outside observer not used to adventure games they might seem enormously similar; even the graphics are being rendered from the same set (notice the forest hasn’t changed over three games).

In Adventure Quest the very first biome after the start was a desert with a sandworm puzzle where a player will generally map it out first while being harassed by the sand worm, and only later reach the insight that it was being attracted to the sound of your movement (so stopping would reduce the danger); this represents a “large-scale” puzzle over many rooms. The swimming sections involving keeping track of your breath had me breaking out the paint program (well, vector software) in order to count steps. I had to think holistically about the entire route and plan my object placements accordingly.

Colossal Adventure (really just Crowther/Woods Adventure for most of it) requires complex mapping and dealing with puzzles and solutions that are far apart from each other; especially in the Level 9 incarnation which had a 4-item inventory limit, this ends up making for a large-scale logistics puzzle as you have to coordinate your travels carefully.

Dungeon Adventure is (so far) more compact. It has (again, so far) many more single-room puzzles than Adventure Quest, and gives items and the things they solve not far apart. Even with things a little bit spread out the games seems more focused on small “riddles” more than large-scale coordination. (I described Adventure Quest as approaching the feeling of a time travel game where you keep track of space rather than time.) It also has everything (yet again, so far) packed in, and nothing even resembling a maze or the wild interconnections of Colossal Adventure.

I am of course hedging with “so far” because all this could go awry at any moment. It wouldn’t even be a bad spot of design; perhaps the authors wanted to “bottleneck” with an easier section at the start before things get complicated. Clearly, from the comments on the inventory limit (where they changed it due to popular demand) they were thinking about user feedback; maybe they wanted people to actually enjoy their games a bit before they start bringing out the brain-breakers.

Or maybe the light timers are really tight. I have “finished” the outside section and there’s a sunset going while this is happening, and once darkness hits you’re likely to be eaten by a ghoul. The area is so small it isn’t hard to optimize in such a way that you go in the cave before the sun sets, but maybe the light source you can make (which I’ll get to later) will burn out in the underground section unless you handle things optimally.

With the outdoors, last time, I had a puzzling scene with Rakshasa.

As Andrew Plotkin pointed out in the comments, in conjunction with the “flames of your soul” reference this might have to do with the classic science fiction novel Lord of Light (1967), by Zelanzy.

Art by Jack Kirby, coloring by Englert for a later poster printing. This art was made for a theoretical Lord of Light movie that never happened, but the script ended up getting re-purposed by the CIA in order to rescue US citizens stuck at the Canadian Embassy in Iran. There was a movie about this that won the Best Picture Oscar.

However, the Rakshasa, being from Hindu mythology, entered popular culture through all sorts of vectors. One appeared in the 70s TV show Kolchak: The Night Stalker and that specific episode (where Kolchak used a crossbow) was confirmed by Gary Gygax as the inspiration for D&D’s Rakasha monster type, which requires holy bolts to defeat. On top of that the manual for Dungeon Adventure claims D&D inspriation:

Dungeon Adventure is based around the D&D magic system as modified and used by the Cambridge University Wargames society in the mid 70s. All items and architectural features can be made under this system (or equivalent ones including extensions for demon-produced items), and if you are a D&D player you might like to work out how this can be done.

Still, the “soul” treatment feels very Lord-of-Light-ish, but maybe thinking about the D&D reference in the pencil and paper campaign led to the other one?

The reason the scene was puzzling is I couldn’t get it to trigger again. I ended up trying out the BBC Micro 1982 version (text-only) because I remember from Adventure Quest the RNG working slightly differently. While it wasn’t quite that, what I found is just making a beeline to have the Rakshasa scene first before anything always works.

Saying YES does seem to be a literal RNG die, and you will die if you get 1 to 3 and live if you get 4 to 6. (There is a way to tweak this which I’ll talk about later.) I still don’t know what effect this has.

I theorized the scene might give me a free resurrection, but trying it out failed. The manual mentions anyway how resurrection can work:

Resurrection is possible, and uses a machine which is initially situated very close to where you start the game. By default it only works while you remain close to this machine, and you must register your body pattern for it to work at all.

The “machine” is that button that scans your body inside the case that you can carry around. (Now that I know pieces of this are taken from a D&D campaign, was the Mordenkainen’s magnificent mansion spell in 1st edition? That gives an extradimensional building you can tote around just like this game.)

I had incidentally (in the effort to make my move count as low as possible) tried to nab the driftwood and case before having the Rakasha scene, and while they don’t appear if you make the side trip, clearly something is trying to happen.

This also looks like a scene from Lord of Light. The Atari version of this game seems to be buggier than its predecessors.

With that resolved, what about the other puzzles! Two of them were solved by the same object, specifically, a poppy seed pod that makes loud noises when you drop it. I had kept playing with the BBC version for a bit and noticed the bird on the nest is described as having “large ears”. The same description is in the graphical version but somehow my brain didn’t zero in on the hint in that setting. (This may have been a circumstance that I’ve mentioned before where playing the same section in two different ways — even if there’s no change in text at all — can have my brain approach it “fresh”, like I had a second person helping cooperatively over my shoulder giving advice.)

I also tried the noise out on the siren; while it didn’t get her upset, it made my protagonist deaf long enough to approach.

Heading further north (at the moment) is death because one of the six branches of the tree grabs you; I’ll return to this later.

The mirror left behind is described in the graphical version as “very valuable”, “enchanted”, and “reflects things”. In the BBC version, instead of just “reflects things”, it says

This mirror reflects more than it should

(I don’t remember this much difference in the previous games! I guess they were running out of room on the disk by game number 3?)

This takes care of the sleep spell in the forest (the one which kicked off the story, and the one you can run into later and land elsewhere). This time the BBC version is much clearer about what’s going on. Atari first for contrast:

Now BBC Micro:

Your foot breaks a twig: SNAP! A masked man leaps up and flees
You are in a clump of bushes on the edge of the forest
An assortment of coins is here
A magic wand is here
A dice rests on the ground

So the masked man is omitted in the graphical version. I admit I might be worrying the twig was a puzzle somehow in the Atari version. (And yes, I started thinking maybe I should just swap over to text, but given I’ve been showing off the graphics of the other two games I want to take this to the end. Plus: sometimes having less text can be helpful, because it reduces obsessing over details that are there just for color. One thing I can say is that I have found zero Tolkien references in the original ’82 version except for a Minas Tirith reference in the manual.)

The coins are just “valuable”, the wand is described as having “Z-runes” — I haven’t used it yet, so I don’t know what means — and the dice are described as being weighted. Yes, if you take them over to the Rakasha now you can use them to cheat that die roll so it’s no longer RNG. I was able to test this in the BBC version only. Still no detail on what the result is.

It’s a 6! YOU WIN! The Rakshasa envelop you briefly before leaving

Now, back to that tree with the branches. You can throw things and the tree will grab them. However, the tree is very specifically described as having six branches, so:

Say YES to the Dryad: she will give you a “valuable” carving and make the tree drop all the stuff it is holding. (One thing I should point out that Level 9 has been doing that not many companies have — this puzzle does not care which objects you throw, only that there are six of them. The berry I threw at the giant at my last post can be any item at all. The mere presence of a object sometimes solves things in Level 9 games, without reference to what that object is.)

That’s everything (?) outdoors. There’s nothing going on with the giant tower, although the BBC version includes a reference to it as a “ruined tower” in another description. I think it’s either for decoration or going to be the last place visited in the game. Colossal Adventure had a plot twist once you gathered all the treasures; this might be going for something similar where we still have to defeat some Ancient Evil for the real ending. Still, maybe not, especially because the game lets you flat-out leave whenever you want. Back at the sleep-trap the exit to the east has a “referee” announce that going that way will end the game, and you are welcome to do so and take whatever points (and treasures) you have gathered. The world is not described as ending because of this.

A hollow voice intones: “This is your referee speaking. If you continue on this road you will return safe to civilisation and the game will end Are you sure that you want to?”

Going indoors, my incomplete map so far:

The flame that’s near the trap-treasure room can be used to light the driftwood. The miner’s lamp may be a fake-out (it counts as a treasure, still) or it may be a wick and fuel get found later and the driftwood will run out before we have time to finish our treasure-gathering.

This is an “explore an direction you want” hub, although SW gives the message “archers only” and SE gives the message “not authorised”. Both of those are taken care of by nearby items. For the archers, going west leads to a pillared hall with two rooms. One has a metal cube (that sticks to metal); I haven’t used it yet. The other has a corpse with a bow and an orange collar described as magical.

Holding the bow allows bypassing the “archer” barrier and to some steps with skeletons that kill you. (I have the solution to this, but we’ll come back later.)

East from the hub leads, straightforwardly, to stables and a haystack. The word “needle” is recognized but any type of SEARCH HAYSTACK is for naught, unless you happen to be holding the cube. (There’s been multiple “passive” solutions where the player just needs to be holding an item. This makes the larger inventory kind of interesting since you can luck out into things. I think part of the reason authors of this time were very tight about inventory is to avoid this situation, but the Austin brothers seem to be fine with being more player-friendly with this game.)

Northwest of the hub is a “black room” with an octopus figurine (described as enchanted — this seems to be true of any item that has a magic use so people won’t be waving their coins everywhere). Northeast is a room too dark to see anything, unless you happen to be holding the octopus (passive solution again) in which case you’ll find a staff of bone and a yellow collar.

The yellow collar works on the SE “not authorised” exit. This gives two branches, one leading to some carnivorous jellies I haven’t dealt with yet…

…and a door with three stones. If you PUSH or ROTATE each of the three stones the door will open, as “no stone is left unturned”.

This is part of what I mean about this game being more about “riddles” than the other two games.

This is followed by a room with an exit blocked by a boulder, but the boulder is on moss, and seems to be another proverb reference (“a rolling stone gathers no moss”).

PUSH BOULDER takes care of the issue, leading to a dead end that has a sword in some stones. The sword is marked with a dragon and if you try to drop it the sword talks to you, saying you really should be using it for dragon-slaying instead first.

Finally… if you’ve been watching the items and thinking about the obstacles out there, you might have thought that the bone staff would have something to do with the skeletons, and you’d be right.

Shake the staff after you enter and the skeletons will scutter off and the dwarf will offer to lead you to a treasure. There’s plenty of juicy exits but this seemed like enough info-dump to deposit on everyone at the moment.

Here’s my item list so far:

packing case (the portable house)
axe (use on the tree to summon the Dryad)
ripe berry (tastes bad when you try to eat it, no apparent effect)
resinous driftwood, serving as a torch
a carving (from the Dryad)
metal cube (magnet, used to get needle)
jeweled needle
coins
magical mirror (reflected the sleep spell)
octopus figurine (lit the dark room)
a jade egg (treasure from the nest)
magic wand (unused)
weighted dice (can cheat at soul game)
poppy seed pod (noises, twice)
bone staff (controlling the skeletons)
short bow (hold to get by “archer” exit)
yellow collar (other restricted exit)
orange collar (unused)
sword (magical, wants to slay dragons)

The only obvious obstacles I haven’t resolved yet are the carnivorous jellies I already showed off, and one exit back at the hub; there’s a demon if you go north and you die. This might just be a trap, as there’s a pride of lions over the door (“pride cometh before a fall”, given the two other proverbs). The “red pedestal” in the room is also unused, though.