Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my previous posts.)

Just to recap from last time, I had a WELCOME MAT, TUNING FORK, VIOLIN, CASE, CORKSCREW, and CRACKERS. There was a mousetrap with cheese that would snap upon taking the cheese (I’ll be solving that one, but I’ll save discussing it for later). The beast was where I first focused my efforts.

With the case/box thing resolved, after some testing I realized somehow my attempts at playing the violin were while the game assumed it was in the case (I think if you’re holding both of them at once?) When the violin is out you can successfully PLAY VIOLIN and it does a tune, albeit not necessarily a great one:

Whoops! Fortunately I had the TUNING FORK, and after some fiddling I found TUNE VIOLIN worked while holding the fork. Then playing the violin is more succesful.

You can now refer to the beast as a CAT.

Just past the cat are some eyeglasses. With the eyeglasses worn you don’t have the “dim light” message anymore when pulling up the map with the M key, although the exact system is still a little cryptic:

What appears to be the case is that there’s no real “automap” as far as keeping track of where you’ve been. Rather, the game automatically shows a region near where you are standing, plus some of the area south, with the result you might see a good chunk of map or very little.

This suggests a secret room — see the isolated 1 by 1 spot — but my attempts at HIT WALL and SMASH WALL were for naught. At least WALL is a recognized word. CLIMB WALL gets the response SO IT’S COME TO THAT, HAS IT?

The eyeglasses have an unfortunate side effect. Previously, if you run into a wall, the game just says “OUCH!” but no adverse effects happen. With the eyeglasses on, your eyes start to swim and go blind.

Moving on from there, the hall turns and briefly stops by a niche with a wine bottle…

‘STRAWTOWN CELLARS 1982’
‘WE SHALL SELL NO WINE BEFORE MONDAY’

…with the route eventually stopped by a “wine snob”.

Trying to kill the man is fatal.

You can UNCORK BOTTLE (with the corkscrew) and try to pour it but the result is wine on the floor.

Given the emphasis on politeness, I thought maybe I needed to open with some sort of conversational word via SAY before I could offer CRACKERS or CHEESE or WINE (I don’t have the cheese yet, but I will in a moment). No luck. I even tried YELLing the words given the mention of the man being somewhat deaf, but I got no helpful response there either.

WHAT SHALL I DO? YELL PLEASE

OK – PLEASE
THANK YOU

(That’s the parser responding, not the man, since this happens elsewhere too.)

I did find in the process of this that SAY WELCOME teleports you back to the location of the welcome mat. I don’t know if this is for a puzzle or just meant to be a way to make travel faster. The welcome mat can be moved so I’d expect somewhere you could toss the mat under a door to teleport in, but I haven’t seen any circumstance like that yet.

While being frustrated at the wine snob, I figured out the cheese in the trap, via the process of dropping every item in my inventory.

With this done I could get the cheese safely. After process of elimination I found that either the welcome mat alone or the violin case alone both work; the violin case seems the clear better choice given the teleportation property of the mat.

I will take any suggestions at all. I’m also happy to hear from people who have beaten or otherwise hacked the game (use ROT13 if this is the case, though).