Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

I’ve finished (previous post here), and the game ended relatively strong, although there’s a “plot bug” of sorts (like The Deadly Game, one that can interfere with game-solving); I was not expecting a minimally-described game to even have such an issue.

Via Spectrum Computing.

Last time I had Zorgians that refused to interact with me, and my weapons (knife / revolver) did not seem to work, so I thought perhaps everyone was dead. This is not the case. Rather, the parser was doing something rather unusual behind the scenes.

This isn’t a two-letter parser, three-letter parser, four-letter parser, or a six-letter parser; that’s where all words get cut off at a certain point and that’s what gets used to check against a data list. You can type just one letter and have it fill the rest of a word:

F

FILL
YOU CAN’T F

I was misunderstanding what was going on when forming my verb list, and missed the fact that FIRE does in fact get recognized. You have to go past FI and type at least FIR so the word becomes FIRE. This lets you FIRE REVOLVER. (It’s still confusing not specifying a target, and the one place you can use the knife requires you specify a target rather than just saying USE KNIFE or the like; more on that in a moment.

You can’t pick up the COAL at all and it is irrelevant for the lantern. You can SEARCH it to find a BOX which contains a FLARE. (Just to recap, that gets added to the REVOLVER, FLINT & STEEL, the LANTERN, a RUBY RING, and a KNIFE.)

The Zorgian out on the deck next to the lifeboat doesn’t give anything up other than a BODY showing in the room, and in fact you don’t have to kill it at all. The revolver is limited to six shots so this turns out to be useful.

Zorgians marked with stars, the “SAILOR” is marked with a triangle.

After that, I kept running in circles, still unable to light the lantern. I finally went back to the SAILOR which was not marked as a Zorgian, and by default I would think they were just a human that managed to survive, but they refused any kind of conversation / trading or other interaction. I finally gave up and tried death:

The only time the knife works, saving another bullet.

This leaves behind a JEMMY (crowbar) and a BOTTLE OF OIL, which is what is needed for the lantern. I guess/hope that was a Zorgian?

The oil finally allows the lantern to be lit, opening up the bottom part of the ship.

Things kick off with using the revolver again (opening passages to the east and west)…

…although the passage farther to the west is blocked by a CRESTED ZORGIAN where the revolver does not work.

Going to the right instead is a chest with a WIRE; just as a reminder, here’s the instruction I ran across last time for making things explody:

TO MAKE A BOMB YOU NEED A WIRE AND SOME DYNAMITE AND A FLINT. TO DESTROY AN ENTIRE SHIP IT MUST BE PLACED IN THE POWDER ROOM.

I had the flint already from trading a fish with the cat, so I just needed the dynamite. The dynamite turns out to be right at the chest although I didn’t find it until later; you’re supposed to EXAMINE CHEST to find an extra secret button.

The WIRE is revealed by just opening the chest, so it seems like it’s examined implicitly, but I’d call this puzzle fair.

Further east is another Zorgian (BAM!) guarding a locker, which is “jammed” and requires the crowbar from the sailor (who I totally swear was a fish-man, honest). It has clothing, and searching the clothing reveals a paper with a code on it.

The code is 1864.

From here I was stuck (even having made the dynamite) although it was clear I just needed to get by the Crested Zorgian somehow. The FLARE from earlier is the key:

I don’t normally think of a flare as a weapon, but I guess if you visualize this as a double-sized fishman this scene makes sense.

This opens a passage with more Zorgians and a combination lock along the way (just use the code from the locker).

Finally at the end of the line is the POWDER ROOM with yet another Zorgian. (If you have tried to kill every Zorgian plus the sailor with the revolver, by this point you are out of ammo. Whoops! You can either avoid killing the one at the rowboat or kill the sailor with the knife to give you enough leeway.) With the three items held (FLINT, WIRE, DYNAMITE) I was able to MAKE BOMB, then LIGHT BOMB.

Escape is pretty straightforward, and you can go to the boat that was at the cat if you want rather than at the Zorgian.

However, there’s a major plot issue: if you try to LAUNCH early, you are told you are lacking oars and the game ends (this is true with either lifeboat). However, if you blow up the ship, somehow you win anyway, even though you still lack oars? There’s no oars in the game.

You could technically “patch” this plot hole by saying the explosion attracts another ship which rescues you, but there’s no such item in the text. I decided to just go for it on the rowboat even lacking oars just to see what would happen, but I could easily see someone be stuck here at the end due to the plot hole, flailing while trying to MAKE OARS out of something. (Maybe holding the KNIFE while at the CHEST, or something like that.)

I’m also not clear why blowing up the ship saves the world to begin with. I would surmise (again filling in the blanks) the Zorgians are trying to figure out how to operate the vessel, and then once they do the Army of the Deep will flood the shores.

Even with the glitches (game-wise and plot-wise) this didn’t come off as terrible; I did like Leopard Lord marginally more but I hadn’t gotten stuck on the verb list in that game. I’d say normally this is a promising second effort from the author and I’d be looking forward to the other games in the series (3 exist, 2 are mentioned in ads and may not exist) but according to Exemptus things go downhill from here. We’ll find out, I suppose, although I’m punting the rest of the series for a future time.

Coming up: The Quill, source of 800+ text adventures and one of the most important game-creation tools of the 1980s.