Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my last post.)

From the cover of Games Magazine November 1984, with the Amstrad version of Space Traveller / Visitor from Space, although this particular illustration is meant to go with a different game, Interplanetary Miner. Mind you, I think they’re just pulling from the same stock archive of space pictures for both.

As promised, I went through the Amstrad version of the game, with some places having expanded text. I don’t think any of the text helped me with puzzle-solving, but it did make combing over the map less repetitive since things looked slightly different.

Just west of the start. The original just describes it as a field, without the extra textual hint about digging; if I hadn’t found the treasure already this would be a case where the expanded text was helpful.

No busker (or Beatles reference) in the original.

Outside the warehouse, previously with no mention of dark glass.

There was one genuine change in content (that I’ve seen so far): an ancient manuscript in the warehouse (seen above) which originally just had a box. Like the newspapers and poetry book, it can’t be read without glasses.

I guess you can also count the Oric in the computer shop changing to an Amstrad; would expect that one.

I did reach two new areas, but before describing those, two quick treasure finds, the first being right at the opening with the pebbles. EXAMINE PEBBLES reveal a zirconium nugget.

Additionally, back at the bus stop, if you WAIT at the queue you will eventually be able to get on, and while on the trip there will be a roman coin you can scoop up. (This incidentally takes you to the north part of the map without praying. The other option — adjacent to the bus — is a taxi where you can GO TAXI to do the same thing, but no coin on the way.)

So treasure count wise, that makes five so far: silver bar (dug in the field), zirconium nugget (pebbles), roman coin (bus), gold pen (teacher), and rocket fuel (hut, using key). The rocket key ends up not counting towards the ten treasures (despite it having asterisks) but I’m counting it anyway meaning we’re at 5 out of 11. I’ve got 4 more secured, plus 1 probable location, so I’m close to the end, but close isn’t all the way.

First, let’s go back to the lake by the hut, where I previously did ROW BOAT. Checking each room carefully, I realized SWIM was also a verb that could apply there, and it led me to an entirely new destination.

The landing point is a beach with sunbathers. Back at the store (in the Amstrad game it is described as a “Tesco”) there was a lighter at a store that couldn’t be grabbed because it was by the register and our alien visitor has no Earth money; however, farther away in the same store there’s some suntan lotion and baked beans that are apparently out of the eye of any watchful cashiers. GIVE LOTION to the sunbathers and you’ll get a CAMERA (treasure #6).

Just to the east there is a dead body, just because this is a gonzo adventure and tonal shift is just its thing.

Dying alone and unnamed. Searching reveals nothing. Oddly, unlike the boat trip which is one way, you can just swim back across the lake.

The cliff I’d been looking for! With the parachute (first getting chastised by the parser for trying WEAR PARACHUTE, it just assumes you have it on implicitly) I was able to land safely.

Just to the east is a crab (taking it gets you chomped: death); a few rooms away in a “dark forest” is a “gnome” that is, I quote, “the sort they sell at Woolworth’s”. GET GNOME:

In the middle of a dark forest, putting us back in On the Way to the Interview for a moment.

Between the gnome and crab is a “sandy cove” with a “driftwood” that is hiding a diamond ring (treasure #7).

To get out of the region (without PRAY) there’s a narrow ledge which requires a ROPE. The implication here is that walking through the section takes up two inventory slots already (parachute + rope) so getting the ring + the driftwood requires two separate parachute runs through (maybe the driftwood doesn’t do anything, but I don’t know that yet!) If there’s some way to handle the crab and/or gnome it requires bringing in objects to test one at a time.

Now is a good time to mention the three-item limit is an incredible pain. Either the boat (alone) or the parachute and rope (together) are needed to move from the north to south side of the map, so in a practical sense the inventory limit is either 1 or 2, and so testing any theory about bring an item X to a spot Y requires a lot of shuffling. The size of map really does influence the level of suffering involved with a small inventory limit; a good recent example of this is Mystery House II, where the two-item limit applied in all versions. In the MSX version it was irksome (the entire house was always accessible) but more workable in the versions split into multiple volumes (as they only involved a smaller portion of the house).

Moving past all that, I mentioned I found a second area. Down at the farm there’s a “pigsty” which I thought was merely a dead end, but it is possible to GO IN.

The way to get by the pig is simply to PUSH PIG knocking it over, cow-tipping style.

Past a long tunnel is a mansion. I have yet to use the sword for anything.

This is followed by a fairly dense area where I doubt everything ends up coming into play, but let’s do bullet points:

• a garden with a gate and a “garden snake”
• a “gamekeeper” in a clearing
• some mushrooms in a woods (they don’t seem to be takeable)
• a platinum bar (remember that trolley from the farmer who liked poetry? you need it to pick up the bar)



• a lead casket (you need something to open it; dunno what yet, see inventory limit)
• a woman in a field (trying to KISS this one results in getting slapped, I guess this isn’t Earth Girls are Easy)
• a large monument with a radio transmitter, another treasure

Finally at the end (drumroll) there’s the spaceship! Except I don’t know how to get in. Forgot my remote and the app stopped working, I suppose.

In the end all the puzzles have been straightforward (except PUSH PIG was pretty odd) but the spread out nature of the map makes things hard to test. I still need to check: blowing things up with dynamite (and can the lighter be taken somehow?), dealing with the dog outside the store, taking various objects like the hammer over to the lead casket, seeing if the gamekeeper will take something, nudging at the mushrooms some more, and even more things I’ve lost track of. This is a lot more work than I expected from an Oric type-in.