Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Two quick corrections from my previous post before I move on with the game.

First off, it turns out you can’t just type (for example) RESTAURANT to jump from the third floor to the first floor and go all the way to the relevant room, at least in normal circumstances. I swear I had it happen once, but it may have been a glitch or me misunderstanding some text in the French. The right way to travel between floors is to hop in L’ASCENSEUR (the elevator) with the command ASC and then it will give you a choice of floors. Pressing a number will go to the relevant floor, then pressing “9” will step off. There’s still some extra movement conditions (like if you’re sneaking in a room, you have to use SORtir to get out first before you go somewhere else on the same floor) but that essentially covers everything.

Secondly, as more than one person has pointed out, “voler” (which can be typed as VOL) is described on the commands screenshot as taking a noun, so the meaning shifts from “fly” to “steal”. I was still baffled for a bit after because it seems like it doesn’t work for stealing items (it doesn’t work as a synonym for “take”).

I finally did find that at the roof of the hotel, there is a PISCENE (pool) with a locker room, and if you go in the locker room you can VOL the lockers and take money directly. For all the other thefts you make, you’re grabbing items to trade with a fence (which I’ll show off in a moment).

The overall structural design is that the night you go sneaking, you have fifty turns; after the fifty turns are over, you TERMINER, which finishes the session. After this, a fence comes and visits your room, and offers money for each of the items you’ve stolen that are considered “valuable”. You then pay off your bill and have a new bill to keep staying at the hotel.

The third item there is what FUMER (smoke) can be used on, although the game just tells you that you can’t because it’s very illegal. Given how much loot we’re swiping, it seems odd our main character has an issue with breaking the law.

Since the stealth happens at night, it is by default dark, and if you try to start stealing things without remedying this fact you’ll have a chance of simply tripping in the dark and giving yourself away in that fashion. Fortunately, room 001 seems to always have a LAMPE.

Although taking it doesn’t automatically work. Here, we hear noises and hide in a corner but it turns out to be a false alarm.

Once the lamp is safely taken (just random), the dark is no longer a problem. Now we normally can have free reign of the hotel: we can use the PASSE from our room to unlock any locked door, and the lamp will keep us from stumbling in the dark. Mind you, we still might randomly have an attempt at swiping an object fail:

Here, we wake the person by trying to pick up the brooch, and escape via having the reflexes of a cat.

There’s one other obstacle that can come up, which is a chain across the door.

The MAGNET I mentioned in my last post works; you can TIRer (pull) the chain and you get congratulated for being clever. I was originally puzzled because the use of the object is passive (that is, the magnet is used automatically if you’re holding it) so I didn’t realize the magnet was being used there. I was visualizing security so shoddy I could just yank the chain by hand and it’d break.

So this game technically had one puzzle (two if you count the light). You might also count the “square key” I’ve found, which I have yet to be able to use, and the fact I have no idea where the computer is. I’ve checked every single room; an excerpt:

201 -> empty
202 -> empty
203 -> empty
204 -> SCULPTURE
205 -> LUSTRE (chandelier)
206 -> empty

301 -> TELEVISION
302 -> AIMANT (magnet)
303 -> OUR ROOM
304 -> empty
305 -> STEREO
306 -> BOUQUIN (book)

Note these are randomized each game, and even randomized within a game; I had a save state where I went back to a room I had visited in a prior iteration and found a second object that wasn’t there before. I think that’s supposed to represent guests moving things around. I do suspect I might be missing something involving the various guests, but I have yet to get any commands to work when I see one.

Note that shot above shows the outside of one of the two penthouse suites (601, 602) but both of them were empty!

The only even vaguely suspicion room was one with a DISQUE, which I am assuming is of the computer variety. (The fence describes it as a DISQUE DE GRANDE VALEUR — that is, of high value — but only offers $10 for it. That wouldn’t buy even half a French-translated Sierra game.)

Perhaps if I’m lucky enough to run across DOCTEUR O’BRIEN in my travels there’s some action that works (maybe he’s toting around a device that unlocks a secret door?) Keep in mind (based on the interview from 1984) the author said sometimes he couldn’t beat the game, so it is quite possible I just rolled a bad seed and have to replay to see certain conditions.

On top of that I’m not sure what the square key is for. It could go to a vehicle; studying the instructions, after you swipe the computer you’re supposed to make a getaway in a car.

Or maybe something is supposed to happen only in later burglar jaunts? I’ve only tried out the first two, maybe there’s some developments when you hit number five. The game loop really just has you visiting each and every room so it’s not easy to check if something small has changed.

The source is in BASIC but has resisted my very light prodding to see if I can find any enlightenment; I might need to resort to fierce prodding instead.