Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my last post.)

The essential vibe that Uncle Harry’s Will had that felt “original” wasn’t necessarily the car aspect as much as deciphering a riddle while applying it to a large landscape. Many adventures have had cryptic instructions as part of their gameplay, but they usually don’t involve what might happen in a realistic “puzzle hunt” where there’s an enormous amount of extra space, and you have to apply the riddles/poems/clues in a way that whittles down the possibilities. The MIT Puzzle Hunt — the in-person component, at least — has an entire college campus as fair game, but only a small percentage is used.

I’ve hit this moment in Whembly Castle, and I’m not sure yet how to decipher the clues. While the game doesn’t start you with a poem there are some hidden within the castle itself.

Cover of one of the Dynacomp catalogs, from Jason Scott.

But first: last time I had stopped right before getting down to the bottom of a ladder under a manhole. At the very bottom is a compass, which can be used at the foggy lake.

YOU ARE IN A SMALL CHAMBER AT THE END OF A TUNNEL. THERE IS A LADDER FASTENED TO THE SIDE OF THE WALL. A LARGE SHAFT RISES ABOVE YOU. A TUNNEL LEADS WEST.

YOU SEE HERE, A SMALL COMPASS

Going west from here leads to darkness. It may simply be a red herring or it may be the tunnel gets entered via the opposite direction later. I don’t have any obvious light sources; while I have a can of gasoline, there’s no method of lighting it. The rusty key, the iron bar, and the oars aren’t helpful; I’ve got the deck of cards, but my character isn’t Gambit.

YOU ARE IN AN EAST-WEST TUNNEL THE TUNNEL SLOPES UPWARD TO THE EAST.

NOW WHAT? >W

IT IS PITCH BLACK HERE. TO CONTINUE WITHOUT LIGHT COULD BE DANGEROUS.

Leaving this be for the moment, I went to take the compass to the lake and got hit horribly by the boat bug again: while in the boat, the game claims you can’t go west (even though you should be able to). Rob suggested dropping the oars but I found it made no difference. I went as far as restarting my game altogether in case I had some corruption. Being able to go WEST ended up just working sometimes at random. I can’t guarantee this isn’t an emulator bug.

Here’s what my playing setup looks like. North Star is being played as an emulator inside an emulator, which works better than you might expect, but there’s still the open possibility of some obscure command being performed wrong.

Finally breaking out into the lake, though, the game uses a grid of rooms:

The Castle is marked by a berm that you can row around.

YOU ARE ON THE LAKE AT THE NW CORNER OF THE CASTLE. A 5 FOOT BERM RUN EAST AND SOUTH HERE. A HUGE TOWER RISES INTO THE FOG HERE.

YOU ARE IN THE BOAT.

NOW WHAT? >S

YOU ARE ON THE LAKE NEAR THE BERM BY THE WEST WALL.

YOU ARE IN THE BOAT.

Hopping out of the boat causes the boat to float away (I think this is meant to be a one-way trip). The south side of the berm has a drawbridge (not openable from the outside) and on the southwest side there’s a tower with vines that indicates you can climb.

YOU ARE ON THE BERM AT THE BASE OF THE SW TOWER.

THERE IS A THICK VINE GROWING UP THE SIDE OF THE SW TOWER. IT LOOKS LIKE YOU COULD CLIMB IT IF YOU ARE CAREFULL.

I had quite a lot of frustration here as CLIMB VINE simply told me YOU’RE UNABLE TO DO THAT with no explanation why. I finally realized this was not a “your command is not being parsed properly” scenario but rather “something is preventing the action but we’re not going to tell you what it is because transparency in error messages is for weaklings”. I tried dropping everything and the climbing finally worked:

YOU ARE HALF WAY UP THE TOWER. THE VINE HERE IS THINNER AND SEEMS TO BE A BIT LOOSE. BETTER HURRY UP.

NOW WHAT? >CLIMB VINE

YOU SCRAMBLE UP THE VINE. NEAR THE TOP THE VINE IS THINNER. YOU CAN FEEL IT BEGIN TO COME AWAY FROM THE TOWER WALL. AS YOU GRAB THE EDGE OF THE PARAPET, THE VINE TEARS AWAY AND FALLS TO THE GROUND. YOU PULL YOURSELF OVER THE TOP.

YOU ARE ON THE TOP OF THE TOWER. THERE IS A HATCH HERE.

(On a repeat test, I was able to climb holding one item. I don’t know what the limit is.)

Going through this lands the player on the second floor of the castle, so let me give the map of that first:

It’s hard to know what to focus on; there’s a lot of places that are clearly just functional but it may be we are supposed to do something vital in a nondescript room just because one of the clues (which I promise I’ll show off soon) signals it.

YOU ARE IN AN EMPTY STOREROOM. THERE ARE DOORS NORTH AND WEST.

NOW WHAT? >N

YOU ARE AT THE JUNCTION OF THE WEST AND SOUTH HALLWAYS. THERE ARE DOORS SOUTH AND WEST.

The northwest corner has a ornate bedroom with a button next to a mirror.

YOU ARE IN A VERY ORNATE BEDROOM. THIS IS THE MASTER BEDROOM. THERE IS A FOURPOSTER BED AND AND LARGE DRESSER HERE. ON THE NORTH WALL IS A FULL-LENGTH MIRROR. THERE ARE DOORS NORTH AND EAST.

NOW WHAT? >EXAMINE MIRROR

THERE IS A BUTTON ON THE EDGE OF THE MIRROR.

(PUSH isn’t normally recognized as a verb; it seems the game has PUSH BUTTON hardcoded as a thing that works.)

Going in you can find a tower with a brass key, but also a corpse and some warning about blocking the entrance. The mirror once closed can’t be opened the other way.

YOU FORGOT TO BLOCK THE DOOR WITH SOMETHING! YOU SLOWLY STARVE TO DEATH! TOO BAD!

WELL, YOU MANAGED TO GET YOURSELF KILLED! BETTER LUCK WITH YOUR NEXT TRY. HOPE YOU REMEMBERED TO SAVE THE GAME BEFORE TRYING SOMETHING NEW!

The random leather boot can be used to invoke the command BLOCK MIRROR after opening it, allowing the player to grab the key safely.

A similar “trap room” can be invoked by visiting the first floor…

…finding the power room and pulling the switch (which does not need extra gas to run, although I assume we’ll still need to fill it up later)…

NOW WHAT? >N

YOU ARE AT THE JUNCTION OF THE EAST AND NORTH HALLWAYS. THERE ARE DOORS NORTH AND EAST.

NOW WHAT? >N

YOU ARE IN THE POWER ROOM. THERE IS A LARGE GASOLINE GENERATOR HERE. AT ONE END IS A SMALL GAS TANK. ON THE SOUTH WALL IS A SWITCH. THERE IS AN EXIT SOUTH.

NOW WHAT? >PULL SWITCH

THE GENERATOR STARTS WITH A ROAR!

…then going back to the second floor (southeast corner) with an “office” that has a button that can be pushed.

THE DOOR SLIDES CLOSED BEHIND YOU

YOU ARE IN A SMALL ROOM. THERE IS A TABLE AND CHAIR HERE. SEATED AT THE TABLE IS A SKELETON. SCRATCHED IN THE SURFACE OF THE TABLE IS THE FOLLOWING: LAST WILL OF SILAS FRUMP. GOT LOCKED IN THIS ROOM. HOPE THE PERSON THAT FINDS ME THINKS TO BLOCK THE DOOR WITH A CHAIR. I AM STARVING. I WILL LEAVE A CLUE I DISCOVERED. DIG 1800 GOLDPIECES………

You can block again, this time with a chair, but there’s no item as far as I can tell? This means there’s something essential in the text but it’s a fairly vague clue.

Other clues include a note randomly in one of the side rooms…

THE NOTE READS:
GOOD LUCK FRIEND, WITH YOUR ONGOING SEARCH FOR MY GOLD. LEAVE NOT A STONE UNTURNED DURING YOUR WANDERINGS AND IN TIME YOU SHALL FIND MANY NEW CLUES. SOME OF THEM WILL GUIDE YOU STRAIGHT, SOME NOT. ROAM EACH HALL, SEARCH IN ALL PLACES. SOME THINGS WILL VERY LIKELY PASS UNNOTICED, EVEN IF YOU LOOK AT THEM!

…and a secret inscription off the northeast corner, this time found by pulling a hook.

YOU ARE IN A SMALL ROOM IN THE NE TOWER. THERE IS A BRONZE TABLET FASTENED TO THE WALL HERE. IT READS:
I HAVE HIDDEN IT WELL.
TO FIND MY GOLD WILL
BE DIFFICULT. THE KEY
CLUE SHALL BE NAMED.
YOU SHALL SEE FOR YOURSELF
THE GOLD IF THE SCRATCHES
PLACED ON THIS TABLET
ARE READ AND MADE NOTE
OF. SIR JOHN WHEMBLY

The southwest tower similarly has a clue but is not blocked off:

YOU ARE IN A SMALL ROOM IN THE SW TOWER. THERE IS METAL PLAQUE FASTENED TO THE WALL HERE. THE PLAQUE READS:
“PUT FIVE TOGETHER. SHE KNOWS WAYS.”
STAIRS LEAD DOWN.

The “five together” might be referring to letters that are scattered randomly through rooms on the first floor. Samples:

YOU ARE IN THE STEWARDS OFFICE. THERE IS A DESK HERE. ON THE WALL IS PAINTED THE LETTER “I”. THERE ARE DOORS NORTH,EAST AND SW.

YOU ARE AT THE SOUTH END OF THE “GREAT HALL”. A LONG, HIGH ROOM USED FOR EATING. THERE IS A LONG TABLE DOWN THE CENTER OF THE ROOM. ON THE WEST WALL IS A MASSIVE FIREPLACE. ON THE SOUTH WALL IS PAINTED THE LETTER “L”. THERE IS A DOOR EAST.

Put all together, there are the letters, I, L, C, E, and A. They anagram to ALICE. This is clearly referring to a picture found at the note I mentioned earlier (the one that mentions “SOME THINGS WILL VERY LIKELY PASS UNNOTICED”).

YOU ARE IN THE STUDY. THERE IS A DESK AGAINST THE EAST WALL. ON THE SOUTH WALL IS A PAINTING OF A YOUNG GIRL HOLDING A RABBIT. THE RABBIT IS WEARING A WRISTWATCH. THERE ARE DOORS NORTH AND SOUTH.

YOU SEE HERE, A NOTE

I haven’t gotten any significance out of this room otherwise and I suspect I’m missing a parser command. Doing EXAMINE or MOVE give me nothing on any noun other than the note (MOVE isn’t even recognized as a verb).

There’s still other new items lying around to play with (a sword, a rope, a horseshoe, a crank, a silver key in addition to the brass one I mentioned earlier) and there’s one more straightforward concrete puzzle: how to open the drawbridge. With a key (I’m not sure which one, they work passively!) you can get at the drawbridge controls, but I can’t get them to work.

YOU ARE IN THE DRAWBRIDGE EQUIPMENT ROOM. THERE IS A LARGE WINDLASS HERE WITH ROPES LEADING TO THE TOP OF THE DRAWBRIDGE. IN ONE CORNER IS A LARGE PULLY WITH WIRES LEADING DOWN TO THE PORTCULLIS. THERE IS A SQUARE HOLE IN THE PULLY WHEEL. ON THE FLOOR HERE ARE SOME SMALL HOLES LOOKING INTO A PASSAGE BELOW.

TURN WINDLASS is recognized but it is described as rusty. The crank is suggestive but I have not been able to get the parser to recognize any use of it. Other than bespoke commands (which includes turning the windlass) the only ones I have are CUT, DIG, CLIMB, READ, OPEN, LIGHT, UNLOCK, TIE, JUMP, EXAMINE, ENTER, and CHOP — not suggestive for fixing anything, and I’m pretty sure TIE is meant solely for tying the boat at the docks.

I will take speculation at this point on anything (although my one reader, hello Rob, who has solved it already — please hold off on hints for now).

From Daves Old Computers, a very early Dynacomp disk for the Altair.