Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

This is, as the manual notes, the “spine-tingling successor” to the Troll Hole Adventure, the game we played recently for the rare Interact computer from Michigan (and the less-rare-but-still-unusual Hector computer in France). The historical background is over at that link, so I’ll just dive in.

Well, maybe one piece of history. There’s a story in a 1983 edition of the Micro Video newsletter which talks about a Don Stockton of Ft. Lauderdale who modified his Corvette using an Interact computer. “Besides monitoring the car’s basic electrical functions, the Interact uses a ‘simple BASIC program’ to display a series of menus which Don uses to control gear shifting and other operations when driving.” As Don points out, the chunky character screen ends up being an asset for car visbility.

This game is published by Micro Video, rather than the Long Playing Software label I theorized was just an imaginary “subsidiary” which only used the name once.

There’s no treasure: this one’s just an escape from the spooky house, and with a time limit of 240 moves, ending at midnight. The time limit is emphasized enough the game gives warnings at 180, 120, and 60 moves from midnight. Aardvark’s Haunted House we just played had exactly the same trick (running to midnight with a minute per action) but it ended up being a fairly generous limit (only pushed closer to the limit because of the weird bug that forced me to take out treasures one at a time). However, that was just due to the straightforward nature of the actions. Based on Troll Hole and the parts of the game I’ve seen so far, this one will still have a tight map but might have lots of backtracking, so turn optimization may come into play later.

Not until I’ve solved more puzzles, though!

The layout is the typical multi-floor house with rooms like “kitchen” and “library” and “hallway” and etc.

The text is still chunky. Behold.

This is one step in, after doing LOOK ORGAN and finding the PIPE, which can be taken.

The sign is a warning (“DANGER DO NOT PLAY THE ORGAN”) and if you try that right away without taking away the pipe first, this happens:

NICE LITTLE TUNE
LOOSE PIPE FALLS
ON TOP OF ME
I AM DEAD WITH 236 MOVES TILL MIDNIGHT

The fireplace can be entered; there is a BIG KEY (which can be taken) and a CHIMNEY which is too narrow to enter.

Back at the drawing room, the clock is said (via LOOK CLOCK) to HAVE A BIG DOOR. OPEN CLOCK gets the response

DONT HAVE A KEY

but if you grab the big key from the fireplace first, it will open, revealing a second, smaller door.

I’ll talk later about the small key corresponding to the second door, so let’s visit other places, east first:

THERE IS A SEASON made me immediately think of the following “TURN, TURN, TURN”, so I assume something somewhere needs to be TURNed, but nothing I’ve tried the verb on so far (including the book) has had an effect.

(I went with their Ed Sullivan appearance since The Byrds already made an appearance with Deathmaze 5000.)

Further there’s a WINE CELLAR (with nothing) and stairs down lead to a VAMPIRE who is HUNGRY FOR BLOOD. He prevents going up the stairs or entering an ARCH. The Dracula in Aardvark Haunted House technically doesn’t “kill” you, he just softlocks the game if you don’t have the sledgehammer/stick handy since he prevents you from leaving, whereas here the difference is a death scene.

UNSAFE FOR CHILDREN.

Heading back to the drawing room, there’s a dining room to the north with a TABLE, TORCH, and BELL CORD. You can just pick up the torch, the table doesn’t do anything (?? not a safe assumption given this company’s last game) and the BELL CORD makes noise if you pull it.

We’ll come back to the cord later, and also to the room to the east, which has a kitchen with a cupboard that is out of reach.

For now, heading back to the start and going up:

You can’t take the cobwebs, and TURNing them has no effect either.

Here’s my map for now, but I’m sure it is incomplete:

To the south is a bedroom with bed; trying to TURN it gave me the cryptic message.

DONT SEE IT

After experimenting more, it seems like “fixed” objects give this message, but it’s possible the parser is leaking here in such a way I can figure out which objects are important and which are not. That is, trying to TURN COBWEBS gives a message of O.K. while TURN BED has the odd DONT SEE IT which might imply the cobwebs are important but the bed is not.

To the west of the hallway there’s a crystal ball…

…where LOOKing at it shows the small key (THERE IS A SMALL KEY INSIDE). However, you can’t get it (DONT SEE IT). In other circumstances I’d call that message a bug, but the layer of enigma makes it work. Trying to break the ball is unhelpful…

BREAKS INTO TINY PIECES

…so let’s try EAST of the hallway instead, with a bathroom that has a SINK, STOOL, and MIRROR.

The mirror and stool are both portable, and I assume we can fill something with water from the sink later (like Troll Hole). There is nothing behind the mirror, unlike Troll Hole.

The stool can go downstairs and be used to reach the cupboard in the kitchen. There is a match inside the cupboard which I haven’t used yet, so let’s go north of the hallway to a MASTER BEDROOM with a CANOPY BED. LOOKing notes there is something inside, and going in you find a DAGGER.

It’s a structural dagger! Taking the dagger causes the bed to collapse, and if you’re holding the pipe it lets you survive.

In a game design sense it is likely the player will have found the pipe by now, but it’s possible they won’t be holding it on their current loop through the game.

The collapse reveals a new exit, to an attic with “2 mouse holes”, “passage”, “cat”, “witch”, and “skull”, as well as a passage the witch prevents the player from entering.

The mouse holes are described as being across from each other, the cat is described as mean, and the witch is described as ugly. I tried bringing the mirror in just in case the witch’s ugliness was somehow “magical” but no luck.

One more thing! The stool works to get a match from the high cupboard, but it’s also useful with the ringing cord. If you take the dagger over to the cord you can try to CUT it and get a SHORT ROPE.

Trying to TIE ROPE after gets the message it is too short; the game here is broken. If you take the stool from earlier, drop it, and stand on it before cutting the cord, the result is now a ROPE (rather than a SHORT ROPE) evading the problem.

This feels much denser to describe than is typical for a game this size; the style here has not only any object potentially come into play (multiple times) but the possibility of using an item wrong (so while playing I have to keep track of items from the past and not just what I happen to be holding). There is no walkthrough or video available of this game and even Gus Brasil (who defeated Troll Hole before me) hasn’t been able to beat this game. I’ll take any suggestions people have!