Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

This is a sequel to a game that I covered 6 years ago, so let’s take things fresh–

The People’s Computer Company is an organization important to the history of early computing and adventure games. They were established as a non-profit center where everyone — especially even young children — could come use computers and learn. Given their launch in 1972 was before personal computers (mostly) this was a strong deviation from the norm, and indeed they talked about their mission as one of empowering the people and taking technology from the hands of the government.

Children at the PCC with an Odyssey game console in the May 1973 issue of the newsletter.

They had one of the earliest computer newsletters/magazines that went through multiple names: first simply named after themselves, People’s Computer Company, turning into People’s Computers when it became more magazine-like (1977) and transforming into Recreational Computing by 1979.

A Spanish translation of the classic game Kingdom, found in the Feb. 1979 issue of Recreational Computing.

In their very early years, they printed both Caves and Wumpus, hence their connection with early adventures. July/August 1980 was a particularly important issue as it was “Fantasy Games” themed and included Wizard’s Castle (as recently covered here discussing HOBBIT), an article by Donald Brown on the Eamon series, and a speculative article by Dennis Allison on future fantasy games. It also contains the adventure game Nellan is Thirsty, by the mathematician Dr. Furman H. Smith.

Dr. Smith, as shown in the article.

The article describes a system he calls “The Enchanted House” for writing a “CFS” or “computerized fantasy simulation” intended for children. I won’t go through Nellan is Thirsty again (you can read my previous post here) but to summarize: it has extremely friendly and clear text in terms of what items are needed to get by certain obstacles, and it includes a mini-map (enabled by the game being oriented on a grid). The mini-map in particular is quite unusual for the time and essentially an addition specifically because of the child-oriented nature of the system. In a writeup made much later, Dr. Furman explains the map was the suggestion of a colleague, Craig Wood.

There was a magic map — magic because it had the magic feature of updating itself as we explored; that is, a room appeared on the map if and only if we had visited that room. The program had graphics both for the Tandy Radio Shack and the Zenith/Heath computer — when using computer system X you could comment out the graphics code (all contained in one place) for computer Y.

Furman writes in his 1980 article that drawing a map was “beyond the capabilities of many children who would otherwise be able to enjoy and benefit from the game.” That is, the now-quite-standard innovation came directly from trying to accommodate children.

The same article promised a follow-up which appeared in the July/August 1981 issue of Recreational Computing. I do not have this magazine, although I do know what the cover looks like…

Via Tumblr.

…and I also have the game itself, because Geoff Draper (who did the modern port of Nellan is Thirsty) made a version of the 1981 game, Deliver the Cake. As Draper explains, this was more an attempt at a straight port to DOS, and by inspection it looks like there are minimal changes in order to have the game playable.

You are about to be placed (let’s pretend) in an Enchanted House.

It is always raining in one of the rooms in this house (the Rain Room). You cannot enter the Rain Room without an UMBRELLA, but you have to find the UMBRELLA first.

You should use short messages to tell me what you want to do. Typical messages are: TIPTOE NORTH, GET UMBRELLA, TAKE THE OLD BRASS KEY, UNLOCK THE DOOR, GO EAST, DROP THE MAP, W (‘W’ is the same as ‘GO WEST’ or ‘WEST’)

Your mission is to find the CAKE and deliver it to the Party Room.

When you are in the house, you can type <help> for more information.
You are about to be placed in a room called the Foyer.

Some interesting details with the instructions:

• The “let’s pretend” line is there to emphasize it is not really “you” but rather you are pretending to be in the place.
• An immediate hint is given about the main obstacle. (If the rain wasn’t there, you could immediately win in 4 moves; it’s still a short game.
• The sample commands include “THE” which often is removed. Likely it was considered more natural for beginners, but it also may be given that way to reinforce good grammar.
• The task given is very explicit about an item and destination, rather than speaking generally of treasures, or defeating a particular enemy without specifics.
• Before gameplay starts it announces the player starts in the Foyer (rather than just having the initial room immediately appear).

There’s sometimes language for adults in this direction, especially in the very early articles explaining what an adventure was (“I did not lie down on the cavern floor and go to sleep. I merely turned off my home computer.”) but this is leaning very heavily to make sure the player knows they are “pretending” they are elsewhere, then announcing where that elsewhere will be.

You are in a room called the Foyer. There is a small doorway to the EAST and a large doorway to the NORTH.

The game is even simpler than Nellan, with the entirety of the action in a 3 by 3 grid where the player starts in the lower left. To the east it is dark…

This room is so dark that it is called the Dark Room. You can see light coming from the WEST doorway.
It is too dark to see anything else in here.

…and to the north is the cake of the title.

You are in the Seating Room of an auditorium. You can see the Stage to the NORTH, a doorway to the SOUTH, and a doorway to the EAST. You notice that it is raining in the room to the EAST.
Ah, here is the CAKE which you are to deliver to the Party Room.

The game already mentioned requiring an umbrella to get into the rainy room, but in case you forgot, going east gets the explicit response:

No one can enter the Rain Room without an open UMBRELLA.

This means north is the only option.

You are now on the Stage. The Seating Room is to the SOUTH. There is a door to the EAST.
There is a GLOBE in the center of the room and it is softly glowing.

The door is locked (and rather than leaving it to chance, the text says you need a KEY to get through the locked DOOR) so picking up the globe is the only option. With the globe in hand you can go back to the dark room to find a closed UMBRELLA.

This room is so dark that it is called the Dark Room. You can see light coming from the WEST doorway.
There is a closed UMBRELLA in the corner.

Now you can open the umbrella, but unfortunately you can’t bring the cake through the Rain Room (even with the umbrella) because it will get soggy. So the player will need to remember to come back.

The ceiling of this room really needs fixing. Rain is falling through the ceiling and running through a tiny hole in the floor. There are doorways to the EAST and WEST.

You can close the umbrella while in the room with no ill consequence. East is the Party Room, the end goal of the game.

Welcome to the Party Room. There are doorways to the NORTH and WEST. The east wall has a giant picture of an elephant. The south wall has a small curtain made out of bright green beads.
There is an old gum WRAPPER in this room.

North and the west is a Pantry, and finally, the MAP.

The “magic” aspect doesn’t seem to happen; if you haven’t gone into the southeast corner it still shows on the map. However, you can’t find the map until you’ve already visited almost every room anyway, so it’s just a one-room difference. (I likely would, playing armchair designer, just move the MAP near to right the beginning, with or without the magic part. It seems roughly pointless at the end.)

To get to that office you need to go south of the party room (the “small curtain made out of bright green beads” which violates the condition that the room exit is specified in ALL CAPS). No hint is obtained by moving the beads around:

What do you intend to do now? pull beads
The beads is hard to pull.

What do you intend to do now? move beads
The beads is hard to move.

What do you intend to do now? push beads
The beads is hard to push.

Instead, you just plow ahead with SOUTH.

Crouching low, you push your way through the curtain of beads…
…And find yourself in an old dusty Office!
There is an old brass KEY on the floor.

With the key, you can unlock the locked door from earlier, and take the cake through, bypassing the rain room. After DROP CAKE:

Ok; done.
Y O U W O N ! Congratulations.

I did appreciate the subtle touches for simplicity; this is a game intended genuinely for very young children who would not be able to make a map yet. Furman had it tested on his daughter’s fourth grade class:

It took my daughter’s fourth grade class about twenty minutes to solve this CFS.

Furman was intended to return with a third game, Deposit the Chair, but the magazine was liquidated before it could reach the next year’s issue.

I still think a more compelling story might be possible with the same game-feel though? We’ve already had here the more action-packed Dragon Adventure and in my next post I will return with another children’s game to see a different take on the genre.