Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

This is one of those unfortunate cases where the developer of a game can’t decide what the name of a game is; the advertising and cassette cover both say Time Traveller, the BBC Micro information screen upon boot-up uses Time Travel Adventure, and the actual title screen says Time Adventure. I’m going to assume the author Peter Smith wanted what was on the title screen (Time Adventure).

Acorn User, November 1982.

This is another Software for All game like Danger Island which was just featured here; Peter Smith’s other 1982 game Hitch-hiker was published by a different company.

Both of those contain the historical background so we can dive right in the game itself, with the open question: does this game borrow specific elements from obscure games just like the other two games did?

The game is mostly new. One of the characters that went from Supersoft Hitchhiker to Peter Smith Hitch-Hiker lands in this game; otherwise everything else seems “original”, following two style points that carry over:

a.) the map is laid out on a grid, without any turning exits, extended-length skips of room connections, or overlapping

b.) the “enemies” are “passive” and block the way, but don’t actively attack while you’re in a room with them

Point a.) turns out to be very important for an innovation this game includes. It isn’t visible from the very start…

…but it is visible as soon as you start moving around.

An automap is very rare at this time. The television show The Adventure Game had one on their high-end computer meant for TV display, not as a product for customers. Nellan is Thirsty had one, likely due to it being designed to teach children. I don’t know where Smith got the inspiration, but it certainly helped he already was using a grid-style, and keep in mind he was also a teacher so may have been thinking pedagogically.

It isn’t quite as lovely as you might think because the map extends past the north-south area available to be displayed, and as soon as you step “off screen” the map reset. If you go back again, the map needs to be redrawn; there is no map memory. It still ends up making navigation faster than normal, even though I had to also make a regular map.

The plot, as shown on an earlier screen, has the player caught in a time warp we need to escape by searching 110 rooms. They start blocked in a castle by a drawbridge, but fortunately there’s a lever nearby so it’s not too hard to bypass.

This opens up to the outside, but you quickly get blocked by a tyrannosaurus rex. In case you were wondering, “time warp” doesn’t seem to mean you get sent to a particular time, but rather things from all times (including you) get sent to the same place.

Here’s my own map of the opening area, with blue marking everything before bypassing the Rex:

The difficult part — not difficult so much in figuring out what to do, but wrangling with the parser — was in a raging fireplace.

Trying to go north.

Elsewhere there’s a bucket and a rusty tap, so it seemed like a natural thing to try to FILL BUCKET. Unfortunately, the game just gives a blank prompt and it isn’t clear the rust needs to be cleared up.

Past the drawbridge is a candle-maker shop with some grease which you can take back to the tap and DROP to take care of the rust problem, but even then the parser is finicky; you need to DROP BUCKET, then FILL BUCKET. However, I had to restart my game the first time around because it wasn’t letting me drop the bucket! (I assume I hit a bug in one of my attempts to fill it that caused it to stick to my inventory.)

With the bucket full of water you can extinguish the fire and get to a new set of rooms.

The object list from here (in addition to bucket & grease) now has a large crossbow (must be called a “bow” in the parser), bottle of whisky, and a bundle of arrows. Before taking out Rex, I should note there’s still a “prickly bush” I haven’t dealt with; I think the game might be fishing for shears, but the object selection starts to get esoteric enough I might be missing something else.

Moving on:

This opens a new area with a “bubbling fountain” next to a “narrow alley” containing a glow worm (hasn’t used yet) and a path to a zoo containing a coin followed by a suntiger. The tiger is the same one from Hitch-hiker; it was defeated in both versions via reading a book of Vogon poetry, but my guess is there’s no bad poetry in this game so it requires a different action.

To the north of the fountain there’s a doorman that appears thirsty, so I dropped the whisky (just like Hitch-hiker, giving is done with DROP).

This opens up the last area I’ve managed to reach so far.

Immediately after is a frog, and despite KISS being on the verb list, KISS FROG doesn’t work.

The room selection tends to the truly random — story-wise I find it best to imagine a bunch of rooms from various time periods got zapped in — like a coal mine with a sack of coal, a Hypermarket with a drinks dispenser (the coin from the zoo path works to get cheese soup)…

…a workshop with a “life boat”, and finally a mad scientist’s workshop with a “lazer beam”. Heading north kills the player, and this is the first time I realized this game even had death.

The inventory limit is stuck at three, and the rooms also have a maximum limit of three, so it’s been irritating to tote things around and test possibilities. I tried shooting the tiger (no luck) and dropping the cheese soup in various places (no reaction). I have the feeling there is only one (1) puzzle available for me to solve right now and whatever comes from that will lead to a chain reaction, but I’m not clear where that puzzle is. I will take suggestions in the comments for anyone who hasn’t played or looked at a walkthrough.