Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

I have finished the game, and my previous posts are needed for context.

The general theme was room exits being ornery to find. That, and treasure. A lot of treasure.

From Retroarchive.

I did not need to bop open the North Star version of the game after all, although I did hit a

I/O ERROR
BREAK IN 0

for no apparent reason once. My biggest breakthrough sounds kind of silly written out, so let me just give a map first. Yellow rooms are new.

Yes, I was foiled by diagonal directions. I had been testing them tediously nearly everywhere (YOU CANNOT MOVE IN THAT DIRECTION, YOU CANNOT MOVE IN THAT DIRECTION, YOU CANNOT MOVE IN THAT DIRECTION, etc.) but had apparently forgot to check in the West Upstairs Hall, one of the only rooms that has any! They’re technically in the room description, but given the presence of zero diagonals briefly, I hope you understand my issue.

THIS IS THE WEST ENO OF THE UPSTAIRS HALL. THERE ARE EXITS LEADING IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

After finding this I also noticed there’s exits up and down, again technically included in “all directions” more often not counted with that sort of statement.

The diagonal rooms technically speaking don’t yield much other than SILKS (just a treasure) and an IVORY CARVING (which we’ll need later). There’s an amusing music room scene which I think does nothing but might be a Cranston Manor reference.

Mr. Strong had almost certainly played Cranston Manor: it was the most famous of the North Star games, having the Apple II version published by Sierra. (This fact was later advertised, trying for piggyback marketing.)

Leading down goes to inside a (non-working) furnace in the basement with a GOLD EGG. I previously did not know the furnace was enterable; the EGG is just like the vase in Adventure where it breaks upon dropping (and you can’t LEAVE it to somehow indicate “set down more gently” like with the UK game Zodiac). I found the proper item essentially by luck, as I had all my stuff (including treasures, warehouse trips came later) in one room including the sawdust box so setting down the egg became safe by default.

Before going up, I should point to the other yellow spot on the upper floor: at the master bedroom, with the suspicious PORTRAIT, it turned out I was supposed to refer to it as a PICTURE, and TURN PICTURE. Just wonderful, game.

The skeleton now unlocks (with INSERT SKELETON) the door back at the well. It does not lead to a new area at all, but rather directly to the warehouse holding treasures.

Since going up the well takes the player almost directly to the warehouse already, having this extra path was puzzling. There’s a reason but we won’t get to it until nearly the end.

Warping back to that UPSTAIRS HALL and going up leads to a rooftop with an observation tower holding KEYS. The keys unlock the trunk back at the garage I was having trouble with (getting STAMPS, just a treasure; the keys aren’t useful for anything else).

You might notice the weathervane being described as to the west. This baffled me for a long time, and for compactness I’ll give the resolution now: the weathervane is to the east rather than the west. (I did say “exits being ornery to find” was the theme!) I will also confess I did not “solve” this issue but rather found this on the CASA walkthrough; I suspected high bug shenanigans.

Turning the weathervane is strongly clued…

…and that drops you in a secret corner of the hedge maze with a dagger.

With the dagger it’s possible to deal with the mysterious STAB RATS message. The problem is the rats aren’t in the same room as the plaque.

One of the items I had been frustrated by was a SACK which stubbornly refused to be opened or have anything else done with it. The sack turns out to be a passive item; if you’re holding it, you can pick up the rats, will end up inside the sack. This lets the player safely cart the rats over to the plaque and finally STAB RATS.

Typo aficionados may appreciate “SQUEEL FROM THE PAIN”.

I’ll show off the destination in a moment, because there’s another way in, involving something I already tried: swimming at the lake.

(The marked-corner spots are dark, which will be important.)

Note that swimming in the lake ends up hitting one of the few bits of world-model awareness in the game’s coding: getting the flashlight wet will fry it. You need to leave the flashlight behind, and you can then nab the DUBLOONS, a SPYGLASS (a treasure, but also useful for something) and a SWORD (not useful at all, even for stabbing rats).

From the map layout, the dubloons/spyglass area can only be reached via swimming. However, to see in the dark rooms, you need to bring the light, which requires taking the rat passage. (It’s possible to walk in the dark without dying for at least a few steps, so it’s fine to swim in first; this also gives a hint that there is, in fact, a secret passage at the STAR BATS room.)

The important dark room is a self-described “RIDDLE ROOM”. You are requested to drop “SOMETHING THAT IS PURE (OR ALMOST).”

This seemed to me like it had to be a treasure, but which one is “pure”? I got the right item first try but I’m not sure if I got lucky or not: I was thinking about the common advertisements (up to at least the 80s) for Ivory Soap.

Source.

The “OR ALMOST” in particular made me think of the weirdly exact “99 44/100” tagline for the soap.

You can normally just leave through the south, but the EMERALD can’t be taken that way; however, putting it in the opening sends it through an “ELEVATOR” which is clearly the dumbwaiter…

YOU PLACE THE EMERALD IN THE OPENING. THE MECHANISM WHIRRS AND THE STONE IS LIFTED AS IF IT WERE ON AN ELEVATOR.

…so all my struggle with that got resolved by simply using the dumbwaiter from the other side. (That is, the emerald can now be picked up at the Servant’s Quarters.)

That’s all of that section. The next section I was missing is almost entirely on me.

THE GARAGE HAS LONG SINCE BEEN EMPTY BUT THERE IS LAOOER LEADING UP

Almost entirely: there’s an undescribed exit to the west.

sigh The Nemesis returns.

YOU ARE ON A NARROW PATH

>NW

THIS IS WHERE THE WATER FOR THE ESTATE COMES FROM. THE PUMP NO LONGER WORKS BUT THE FLOOR IS WET FROM A SMALL TRICKLE OF WATER SEEPING FROM THE SEAL. NEXT TO THE PIPE IS A HOLE WHICH LEADS INTO DARKNESS. IT LOOKS LARGE ENOUGH TO SQUEEZE THROUGH BUT…

This area is relatively straightforward, except for:

a.) There’s some RUBIES that you need to be holding the SACK again to get.

b.) There’s a “doorless room” with a LAMP; you need to RUB LAMP to get out, which is almost reflex now for me and early 80s games.

c.) There’s a cufflink in a LOST CAVERN where leaving the room gets the message that something seems to be missing (the cufflink). This puzzle is meant to essentially waste your time since there’s nothing you can do (no elevator chutes or whatnot) and it turns out the cufflink teleported back to the WAREHOUSE where it belongs.

I will say there was a sense of atmosphere built up here; even though it wasn’t really a secret area, the fact it came up late in my gameplay gave the section an extra dose of mysticism.

Oh, and d.) I finally get to use the shovel where DIG??? was the response everywhere. At least the description telegraphs the puzzle.

From here I was really stuck and did a bunch of treasure-transfers back to the warehouse. It started getting fairly stuffed.

It doesn’t even all fit on the screen.

One item that seemed like it might be helpful is the GOLD SPYGLASS from the island. I tried GAZE SPYGLASS, LOOK THROUGH SPYGLASS (not a three-word parser but the game might have decided to be cruel here), USE SPYGLASS, etc., always getting the response

GAZE SPYGLASS???

This is a case which shows why bespoke actions at locations are a super-bad idea. The messages imply that all the syntaxes are wrong; even if you have awareness this might not be the case (as I did by this point) you essentially need to try every plausible syntax in every plausible room. The right room makes sense but it’s very easy given the circumstances to mess up.

I can easily see why from the perspective of Dennis Strong there wouldn’t be a problem here: the text does signal the observation tower is a helpful place for the spyglass. However, this is certainly an abductive reasoning moment and there are far too many circumstances where a player won’t find this because of the extra parser hurdle. (Quick definition recap: with deduction, we have fully known rules and circumstances that when together force some kind of conclusion. With abduction, we have circumstances where we have to infer the chain of events, but it’s a probabilistic guess.)

With the sighting from the spyglass, you can now go north from the “BREEZEWAY” which isn’t described as anything other than being a breezeway.

For the start of this final section, I hit a horrid moment where I thought I needed to restart the game.

Going down the hole causes you to break your neck, in a message reminiscent of trying to jump into the well at the start of the game. At the well, I had used a rope to go down (TIE ROPE) and it formed an odd second shortcut to the warehouse (since the bottom of the well had the skeleton-door leading straight to the warehouse). You’re supposed to use the rope here. I went back to the well to get the rope back:

UNTIE ROPE

UNTIE ROPE???

GET ROPE

THERE ISN’T ANY ROPE YOU CAN GET

??? Really? Fortunately, knowing how bad the parser is, I made a few more attempts, and hit upon TAKE ROPE.

Just to be clear, even though get and take are normally treated as synonyms, for the one specific case of getting the rope back, TAKE works and GET does not. Parsers keep finding new ways to disappoint me.

With the rope and hand we can get into the cave:

Just a bit farther is an unsteady subterranean lake.

The choice above (with the dam about to burst) is once again puzzling. I tried the most obvious thing of directions first (outrunning the event, maybe) but the game told me east and west weren’t exits. I kept going and found that NORTH brings you back to the lake but also floods the tunnel, while SOUTH somehow stops the flood.

YOU MANAGE TO SUCCESSFULLY STOP THE WATER FLOW BEFORE IT FILLED THE CAVERN.

Your guess is as good as mine. All these leads to a dead end and a PLATINUM PLATYPUS.

Just to be clear, I’m emphasizing the parts of the game I had trouble, but this isn’t generally intended as difficult (I think the RATS/BAG thing is the hardest, especially with the poison fake-out). When this was simply a game about exploring new areas and scooping up treasures it felt satisfying, and it is even possible some of the friction I suffered helped make the simple moments come across better.

That is, I enjoyed scooping up the platypus even though I still don’t know what was going on with the dam puzzle.

That’s everything, I think? (There are so many treasures I might have missed mentioning one. I’ve covered all the puzzles, at least.) Once you drop the last treasure in the overfilling warehouse the endgame immediately starts.

This is a two-room endgame, just like Crowther/Woods Adventure.

It also has nearly the exact same solution as Adventure, albeit much more fairly clued. Not only do the room descriptions suggest the keg goes to the rubble, but there was a book long back that made the comment to BLAST those pirates.

I do not care about exploration percentage maximum, although it was good to signal how many chunks of map I was missing.

This could have been a fun straightforward exploration game, but it was undercut by technical issues. Here is another case where I wish the author had a modern copy of Inform (or hell, even AGT) because so many of wobbly parts would be resolved.

There was some imagination and attempt and building a world full of shortcuts and niches. One room I skipped mentioning gives an idea:

FROM HERE YOU CAN SEE THE WESTERN PART OF THE ESTATE. YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY A THICK FOREST OF WALNUT AND OAK TREES. TO THE NORTH YOU CAN SEE A SMALL STREAM WINDING THROUGH THE FOREST. TO THE WEST ATOP A SMALL KNOLL IS SHALL BUILDING FROM WHICH A PIPE EXTENDS TO THE HOUSE. YOU CAN BARELY SEE SOMETHING TO THE NORTH BUT YOUR VIEW IS MOSTLY BLOCKED BY SOME LARGE TREES.

Sure, this isn’t artistic at a prose level, but — this indicates the garage-exit I had missed, and also the author really was thinking about the big-picture view of how everything is laid out. The extra area to the north is hinted at here (and can only be seen by the spyglass on the roof — it really would be a good puzzle if the parser didn’t keep screaming at the player). We’ve had authors that haven’t taken nearly that much care and seem to be just laying down one room after another. I hope even if Zodiac Castle turns out to be a worse game somehow the author keeps up his sense of architecture.

Coming up: a game for a computer with only a six-character display.