Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(My previous posts on this game are needed for context.)

I’m hovering near the ending, but I think it will be better for me to finish before I give all the discoveries. I wanted here to focus on something I found relatively late — so late I suspect I might only have one or two puzzles to go — and it ended up being a uniquely horrendous parser moment that’s worth close attention.

Title screen from the Commodore 64 version of the game.

This goes back to the above-ground part of the game around the mansion. I had by then discovered a few secrets inside, but I had already discarded the shed outside as being a mere container of objects and not of secrets. This is for good reason:

The only thing that seemed somewhat suspicious, the FLOOR BOARDS, did not even exist as a noun.

Here’s the issue: while the game does not let you refer to BOARDS or FLOOR BOARDS (following the exact spelling of the game), it does let you refer to FLOORBOARDS.

The “nothing under” is already pretty deceptive but at least the noun her is acknowledged (note this problem wouldn’t have occurred had it been a five-letter parser rather than a six-letter parser!) But wait, there’s more! … if you try to LIFT FLOORBOARDS the game simply says

YOU CAN’T DO THAT.

which the game normally does anyway for any other use of the verb! However, if you happen to also be holding the crowbar from underground, the game passively uses the crowbar and you can get inside (using either LIFT or PRY).

To recap, this is spectacularly bad in multiple layers:

a.) first off, the noun conveyed in the text is not the same spelling as what the parser is required

b.) even if you have the right spelling, the verb LOOK UNDER acts as if it doesn’t hide anything

c.) even if you have the right action, if you aren’t holding the crowbar you get a deceptive message

I’ve seen instances of each of these three (noun mismatch, deceptive response to a descriptive action, deceptive response to an action the game doesn’t consider valid) but I’m failing to remember a case where I had all three at once.

I needed a walkthrough. If this was one of a restricted number of rooms I might have persisted a bit longer with at least my noun troubles, but keep in mind this is one location of many, and in many cases room description elements are just there for color.

The only thing that saves the moment slightly is the roaring sound. That’s supposed to indicate that this is very close a lava flow river that is below. Heading north leads to…

YOU ARE NOW IN A TREMENDOUS UNDERGROUND CHAMBER THROUGH WHICH A RAGING LAVA RIVER FLOWS. THE RIVER ORIGINATES FROM A LARGE CRACK IN THE EASTERN WALL OF THE CHAMBER ANO DISAPPEARS INTO A LARGE ABYSS IN THE FLOOR TO THE WEST. TO THE NORTH, A RICKETY WOODEN FOOTBRIDGE SPANS THE LAVA RIVER ABOUT 10′ ABOVE ITS SURFACE. STEAM RISES FROM THE RIVER ANO FILLS THE CHAMBER. A PATH LEADS SOUTH.

…which is vivid but wasn’t quite worth it.

Past the bridge is a maze. At least stalling on the “floor boards” puzzle gave me enough time I already had this printout from another puzzle by the time I arrived at the maze.

Likely my finale in my next post!