Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my previous post.)

I’ve got the layout now, and this is very similar to Starcross in that a complete layout of the ship is really needed before puzzle-solving can begin in earnest.

Just like Starcross, Derelict is set in a rotating cylinder with artificial gravity (given the same author made a Rimworld game the same year, this is not a shock). The directions are up, down, forward, aft, spinward, and antispinward. There’s a central shaft that links to multiple layers of the cylinder, and when inside the cylinder, travel “wraps around” going spinward or antispinward.

Although smaller than this; in two of the layers only two GO SPINWARD or GO ANTISPINWARD actions are enough to loop, and in the middle layer, only three steps are needed.

I’ve divided the central shaft into four layers…

…and I’ll give the map in four parts. My coloring is arbitrary and most rooms have a unique color combo that I’m sure is important (they also all have the mysterious glass booth). In the landing bay, the floor is red and the walls are green; all combos are unique.

That’s everything for the start. Note on the map I have a corner marked; I’m using that to indicate where all the droids are (there are droids #1 through #6). I also have north mapped to forward, south mapped to aft, east mapped to spinward, and west mapped to counterspinward.

(As simple as the above looks, it took me a little while to figure out because I didn’t have an item and the loop going down at the Central Shaft was counterintuitive. Dropping the magnetic boots gets you stuck in zero gravity, and of course dropping your suit or oxygen are similarly fatal. I eventually found out that the sign at the start of the game which tells you DROP TREASURE HERE is takeable so I used it for mapping purposes.)

Moving on to the next floor, the one I’m calling “Technical”:

Past the starting floor all names of rooms are given in cryptograms. I suppose this is meant to represent an alien language but if it’s just a cryptogram, doesn’t it mean they use English? If I keep the thought process going I’d imagine we’re looking at a human ship that’s been tossed back in time, but in all honesty this is almost certainly meant like “Hollywood English” in a movie set in a non-English country; we’re just supposed to get the feeling of translating an alien language without having to do it.

The yellow sign says IZWRZGRLM, or RADIATION. I have a feeling I’m going to need the “metallic suit” that’s in the storage room on the same level, although just passing through isn’t fatal. Also noteworthy is a CUTTING TORCH with a TANK (with a cryptogram on it that says WELDING GAS) as well as a transmitter with a ruby crystal in it (my first treasure) and a chart with more cryptograms.

(That’s BLACK, BROWN, RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, PURPLE, GRAY, and WHITE.)

Going up to the next floor…

…let’s just ignore the two bathrooms (is this really an alien ship?) and note the locked cabinet in the sick bay…

…a “library” next to a “rec room” where there’s some playing cards (aliens?!), some jeweled gaming pieces (treasure number 2), a platinum globe (treasure 3), a projector that needs power…

…and in the XZKGRZMH XZYRM (CAPTAINS CABIN) there’s a log book giving an encoded safe combination.

Using the crypto-translated chart from the communications room, that comes out to be

BLACK/PURPLE – BLACK/YELLOW – BLACK/PURPLE

or maybe just PURPLE-YELLOW-PURPLE if we’re ignoring the initial #.

(I should also highlight, referring back to the screenshot, one of the major annoyances of the game. Aardvark games always have had a tendency to give no response at all to particular commands, and this is true for many of the things you want to look at or read. In this case, READing a log book shows nothing, and you have to LOOK!)

Moving to the top:

The safe is right there (HVXFIRGB, or SECURITY) but it needs power; an oven has cooking gas, and a lab has a “large machine” which needs power as well.

Finally the very top is the control deck, where a CRT indicates there is no power, and there are three colored buttons.

That’s POWER, TRACTOR BEAM, AND BAY DOORS. Rather like Dog Star Adventure, it’s clear the beam and doors need to be operated before we get out. Pressing either one indicates there is no power, so that must be the right press?

The exit down gets cut off, and the droid (and I assume all the other droids) wake up.

Other than running out of oxygen (the oxygen is really tight but I don’t know yet if we get a refill) there hasn’t been any hazards in the game yet. The ship is waiting for us! This might end up being a “preparation puzzle”, one of my favorite kinds, where we have to pre-create a safe route before lighting things up. It’s too bad the Aardvark parser makes everything three times harder to deal with.