Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

This continues the story, more or less, from Rainbow Adventure (1982). I knew I had this particular set of games looming, and since the results of IFComp 2025 were announced a few weeks ago it seemed like the appropriate moment to start.

Congrats to Ben Jackson who wrote the IFComp 2025 winner, Detritus, which received the highest voting average of any game entered in any of the years of the competition (as far back as data exists).

To recap from that post about Rainbow Adventure, text adventure creation competitions have long been a feature of the computing world (the previously mentioned IFComp has now run every year starting in 1995); the very first one came from publishing company Falsoft for their platform of choice, the Tandy Color Computer. While there had been plenty of adventures for TRS-80 (with Scott Adams leading the charge) there were less out for Tandy’s color machine (with less text resolution). Scott Adams hadn’t made it yet to CoCo, so when Lawrence C. Falk of Falsoft went to play an adventure game on his own system after seeing one on others, he didn’t have any choices.

I had just finished reading Byte’s Adventure issue of December, 1981, and seen one of Scott Adams’ famous Adventures on an Apple computer at my not-too-friendly local computer store. Just the day before I had discovered how to get by the snake in the Colossal Cave. But I wanted to play an Adventure on my CoCo.

The gaping hole led him to writing his own, but it was a private game, not a published one.

When Falk started publishing the Rainbow, there were some adventure submissions, and it led him wanting to have an entire book of them: hence, a contest. There were thirteen winners declared (that were printed in a compilation book); results were announced in the January 1983 edition of the Rainbow. As confirmed by L. Curtis Boyle, the Rainbow’s cover month matched the publication month, so January is correct (no shift back by a month); it does mean also that likely all the Falsoft contest games were written in 1982, even ones that don’t have a date listed in their comments.

Scott Adams and Infocom did finally make it to Tandy CoCo, but not until later in 1983 (Release 30 of Zork I was compiled in March). So at this point in time, the adventure universe was still very small for this system, and the book added a substantial new library.

Based on the magazine copy this seems to have been an honest to goodness contest and not just a situation where they published everything that was sent: “We’ve painstakingly whittled down the numbers to settle on a baker’s dozen.” (This may have been exaggerated.) Other than the two winners (one text game and one graphical game, which landed in that January 1983 issue of Rainbow on top of being in the book) the entries were not sorted but instead listed by alphabetical order.

GREGORY CLARK of Syracuse, New York, for Sir Randolf of the Moors
DON DUNLAP of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, for The Polynesian Adventure
CHRIS HARLAND of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, for The Deed of the York
ROBERT W. MANGUM. II of Titusville, Florida, for Horror House
JORGE MIR of New Berlin, Wisconsin, for Dreamer
JORGE MIR of New Berlin, Wisconsin, for Oneroom
JUSTIN PAOLA of Berkeley. California, for Search for the Ruby Chalice
GREGORY RICKETTS of Columbus, Ohio, for Dungeon Adventure
JEAN ROSEBOROUGH of New Berlin, Wisconsin, for Door
STEVE SHERRARD of Normal, Illinois, for Dungeon Adventure
SCOTT SLOMIANY of Downer’s Grove, Illinois, for Dr. Avaloe
RICK TOWNSEND of Bettendorf, Iowa, for Escape from Sparta
CHRIS WILKINSON of Larchmont, New York, for Lighthouse Adventure

The order is different in the book, and I’m starting with the first one in the book, Polynesian Adventure. The winners are in the middle, so again, no “ranking” logic. I’m not playing fully in sequence because some games group well together, but the start of the book seemed as logical a place to begin as any.

Each game includes a brief biography; here’s Don Dunlap’s:

Don Dunlap has been a professional programmer for 17 years. He is president of his employer-based computer club with nearly 350 members. He teaches BASIC, and also serves as a volunteer computer consultant and speaker for area schools, libraries, and civic groups.

This presents a puzzle if all 17 years were from Ohio (which may not be a correct assumption). The first computer science department in Ohio didn’t even start until 1969, with Bowling Green. My guess would be he worked for Nationwide Insurance and commuted to Columbus; although I don’t know what their computing was like, insurance companies did get on the programming bandwagon early. (If he moved or even just changed companies, there are other options out of Ohio in 1983, the most prominent being Compuserve.)

Color seems to be a major feature of the game so I didn’t switch to black-and-white this time. All that really happens is that colors switch randomly every few turns.

Our goal is to go over to a boat and find treasures, bringing them back to the Polynesian House at the start. I have found zero treasures, and you’ll see why in a moment.

Gameplay starts in a small set of rooms (seen above) where the goal simply seems to be to get in your car (a Trans Am) and drive over to where you’ll find the boat. The car is lacking in gas.

To the west is a discount store with an empty gas can (you can just grab it) and to the east is a gas station (FILL CAN works) but then try as I might I can’t put the two things together. Nor does DRIVE CAR work (I assume because of the gas). There’s a GLOVE COMPARTMENT with a BOARDING PASS for the boat, but in this area that’s as far as I’ve gotten. FILL CAR while at the car holding a filled gas can just gets the response YOU’RE MISSING SOMETHING.

I did my usual verb list…

Incredibly small, and I’ll go into SMELL and PICK in a moment.

…to which I can add DRIVE, but not REFUEL or SIPHON; I suspect FILL really is the right verb, but what could I be missing given the absolutely minimalist constraints? There’s no descriptions. The discount store is just YOU ARE IN DISCOUNT STORE with nothing else implied.

From here I might be tempted to hit the source code already, but I made some progress in a bizarre way. While testing my verb list, and reaching SMELL, I had a strange response about being stung by a bee and being sent back to the boat. This wasn’t replicable either. (Maybe some bug put me in proximity of the “flowers”?) I also had a weird reaction with PICK, which usually says I DON’T UNDERSTAND (verb known, but doesn’t make sense in the room) but I was able to (while in the car) get it to give me a response about not being allowed to pick the flowers, and I got sent back to the same boat.

Love, exciting and new / Come aboard, we’re expecting you

I hoped this would open up the main part of the game so I could play (with the caveat that maybe return is impossible) but alas, this only opens up another small four-room area.

I took some stabs in the dark, like GO TABLE in the dining room or GO CABIN in the cabin area, but no dice.

Again, by now I’d normally be plunging into source code, but the weird glitch has me interested enough to try stabbing at the problem a while longer. If anyone wants to take a shot themselves, you can download the game here and then use XRoar Online (link in the upper right) to run the file.