Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

I’ve finished the game, and my previous posts are needed for context.

This is a great echoing chamber. The ceiling is so far above that your flashlight can’t reach it. A broad flight of stairs leads down from here, and there are other rooms to the south.
GO SOUTH
The chamber you are in is lavishly painted with scenes from the ancient Egyptian view of the afterlife. The picture that stands out the most is one of the soul of the deceased being weighted against a feather, in a balance scale. There is a wide doorway to the north of you, and a rather narrower opening on the east.
A large tarnished coin has been dropped on the ground nearby.

The closest comparison game I can think of — despite the light presence of magic, and heavy presence of magic at the ending — is the game Polynesian Adventure. Much of the interest is “touristic”, trying to create a location to just hang around in, with more care taken to scenery than the other Dian Crayne/Girard games. There’s even a modicum of research! If you want a modern comparison, consider how the Assassin’s Creed series now has educational spinoffs.

Most of the locales don’t have obstacles as much as exploration, and the two parts I ended up being (briefly) stalled by in my last push both had to do with trying to force-fit the whole thing into the Crowther/Woods format.

To continue directly from last time, I had gotten past a camel (via feeding it a carrot) and unlocked a door (with a key that was just lying around outside).

The flashlight is now on.
This is the west end of a long sloping corridor. The east end of it leads down into a what looks like a large room. A door in the north wall is open to the bright light of day.

This is a more extensive complex than the previous ones we’ve seen, although it still is relatively linear. The top floor, to start with, is a temple of Maat.

Treasures include a rug from the “18th dynasty”. That would be very valuable indeed as no rugs exist that last back that far (1550 to 1292 BC) as the materials used (like reeds) simply would not persist that long. There’s also a shrine to Maat with an “idol”, another treasure.

This room holds the shrine to the goddess Maat, represented as a winged woman holding a great ostrich plume. The only visible exit from the room is a door that leads out of the east wall.
An idol of the temple goddess, beautifully carved, stands here.

Statue of Maat, by Rama, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0 FR.

It isn’t like the rooms were always event-free, because by now I had triggered the Priests of Set who were appearing every so often like the dwarves of Adventure.

THROW AXE AT PRIEST
You killed the priest! He — or it — sinks to the floor and crumples into a heap of dried skin and rotted cloth. A sudden breath of incense-scented air scatters the dust that is left.

The mechanics are simply that

a.) if they appear, they only attack if you move

b.) if you move, you have a random chance of dying from an attack

c.) you can kill them by using THROW AXE AT PRIEST repeatedly but sometimes it takes many tries

with the end result being that there is no danger at all as long as you pause through the annoyance of dealing with the priest at random points in the game. (The dwarves could sometimes hit you randomly even if you did everything right. This is “unfair” but it also made them have more agency; they’re another exhibit in how some historic game design choices seem outright bad but at least did serve a purpose.)

The upper Maat level is followed by a “treasury” which is a very small maze…

There’s a “star ruby” treasure along the way. The green-marked room will come back later.

…and the next level down includes a “votive altar” next to “an odd ritual object, covered in diamonds.”

This area includes one puzzle, one where I knew what to do almost instantly, but struggled a little with the parser.

This is the west end of a long stone corridor. The end of the corridor is blocked by a large fall of stone from the ceiling. The corridor opens up to the south, where a chasm splits the ground. You can see across the chasm to a short, dark tunnel.

Back at the Nile (right after feeding the crocodile) there was a plank; this is where it gets used. I tried many iterations of THROW PLANK and PUT PLANK ON CHASM (which said something about there not being a switch) with no luck. PUT PLANK OVER CHASM similarly did not work. There really didn’t seem to be any other way through, so I finally hit upon the right preposition.

PUT PLANK IN CHASM
With a little bit of work, and after knocking down quite a bit of rock, you manage to slide the plank across the chasm.

IN chasm? Argh. (Checking the walkthrough from Exemptus which just came up, it looks like ACROSS works too.)

Exploring the area after the chasm:

This includes the “Feather Chamber” I quoted earlier, an “emerald sundial”, a “gold ring”…

You are at the bottom of a small air shaft. You can climb up into the shaft, or you can take a cramped eastward exit.
A small gold ring lies gleaming on the floor nearby.
GO EAST
This corridor is lined with paintings of the great Egyptian god of the dead, Osiris. The pictures show his death at the hands of the jackal-headed god, Set, and his rescue by his wife Isis. A rather cramped exit leads off to the west, and there is a doorway to the north.

…and a semi-aggressive mummy.

This chamber is rather large, but has a low ceiling. A frieze along the east wall shows a hunt scene, with the pharoah riding in his chariot, shooting arrows at some brightly colored birds. There is a doorway in the south wall, and another to the north. There is a lidless sarcophagus standing next to the north door. Inside it is a wrapped mummy, arms crossed across its chest.
GO NORTH
To your horror, the mummy steps awkwardly out of the case, and lurches toward you, linen-wrapped hands outstretched for your neck! Seeing you retreat, the creature returns to its coffin.

sigh I guess there had to be one. I guessed (correctly) I wasn’t able to take the mummy down yet and escaped; one of the passages drops you at the pyramid, so the idea is you’ve walked underground all the way from the secret door in the mountains to the pyramid.

One of the items taken from the mummy area is a “large tarnished coin”. I thought to READ COIN thinking it might give more information.

“Fifty Piasters”

(After you’ve found the coin, the person at the souvenir shop offers to sell you batteries for your flashlight for the same value as the coin. This is straight from Crowther/Woods, where the vending machine can get batteries and add to your turn limit, but in this game the light limit is so generous you don’t need to even think about it.)

Ramses II. “Le musée égyptien (Turin)” by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, CC BY 2.0

The obstacles I had remaining were the door with the seal (“dog, with nine little men”), the statue of Ramses (“blocked by a monumental statue of Rameses The Great”) and the mummy. On a hunch, and hanging out at my treasures anyway, I went through each one and did READ on each one looking for more information. The lyre (from the very small area found south of the pyramid) and the charm (found in an above-ground tomb) led to useful things. Let’s deal with the lyre first:

The inscription says it belongs to the pharoah Rameses II.

I already knew PLAY LYRE worked (but didn’t sooth crocodiles or work to break open seals) but I hadn’t tried it on the statue yet.

There is a thrill of sound from the lyre’s golden strings. You hear a grating sound, and see a large piece of sandstone between the statue’s ankles move aside, showing a path east.
GO EAST
This is a rather narrow crevice, and you’re luck you aren’t any thicker through the waist. Ooof! You can go east from here to a tunnel of some sort, and it’s the obvious way out. A bright patch of sunlight shows an exit out to the west.

Rather than “levels” this area has essentially a “west section” and an “east section”. Looking at the west first:

Again, essentially no obstacles at all, but the scenery was interesting enough to make up for it. The great tour of every important deity continues:

This is the center of the Temple of Isis. It must have been really magnificent when it was in use. Those huge columns are nearly forty feet high and it probably took several hundred men to move them into place. The great statue of the temple deity is south of you, and the temple entrance is north.
GO SOUTH
This is the south end of the Temple of Isis. An immense statue of Isis, nearly 35 feet high, towers over you, wearing her throne-shaped crown, and holding the infant Horus in her arms. The only way out of her dark implacable gaze is to go north.
There is an ancient Roman fibula pin here, made of platinum.

Of the treasures here (Roman pin, bracelet, table of marble, water clock) I was briefly tricked by the last one, as the description flowed in such a way I didn’t realize I was dealing with a separate object in the room.

This is the robing room. Exits lead to the north and south.
There is an ancient wooden clock here, the sort that measures time by dripping water. It must be Roman; it stopped at IV.

There’s one non treasure, some “dry leaves”. I tried the “read” thing again (I was starting to do this out of habit) and despite a tongue-in-cheek response it was helpful anyway.

There is a small bundle of dry leaves on the ground near you.
GET LEAVES
Okay.
READ LEAVES
I might try reading the traditional tea leaves, but these are tana leaves, and there’s nothing written on them.

The game doesn’t otherwise say they’re tana leaves. Tana leaves are an entirely fictional type of leaf that features in The Mummy’s Hand (1940) where it serves as the vehicle for eternal life.

Hence it is pretty clear where these should go back to, but let’s take care of the east side of the map first!

This has an ankh, gold bull, and jade…

You are at the Altar of Apis, a large square room carved out of yellow sandstone. The north wall is carved into gigantic representations of the sacred bull, Apis. There are dark halls leading out of the room to the east, south, and southwest. On the west there is the opening of what looks like a long tunnel.
There is a beautifully carved piece of jade lying here.

…but besides me hinting something about the ankh (it will be important later), there were two things of note. One is that this is where the tomb robber started stalking me (aka this game’s “pirate” with the exact same mechanics, just different room messages).

A tall dark tomb robber, dressed in old rags and carrying a large leather sack, steps out of the darkness, comments “I’ll just take that, thank you,” and grabs up your treasure before you even have a chance to blink!

Note, despite it being essentially a text swap, the robber does not declare where the treasure is going. The pirate Woods put in announced the treasure was going in the maze, but had the pirate’s spot hidden in such a way that someone specifically searching for the pirate treasure would have an easier time finding it. Here (and in essentially all other renditions of the “pirate”) there is no such consideration.

Additionally, there’s an oddness to one of the rooms where I can’t figure out if it is meant as a bug or not.

You are walking through the ancient Tombs of Apis.
DROP JADE
Okay.
SE
You have reached a dead end.
NW
You are in the tombs of Apis.
There is a beautifully carved piece of jade lying here.
SE
You are in the tombs of Apis.

For this room in particular the room description is sometimes “in the tombs of Apis” and sometimes “a dead end”. I thought Dian had briefly succumbed to something that happened in Phantom (derived off the forest in Crowther/Woods), where exits would randomly go to different places, but then I tried dropping an item at the “dead end” and realized it and the other room were the same, just with the room description shifting.

With all that cleared out (except me missing the clock until later) I gathered everything back in base camp and took the leaves over to the mummy. I still wasn’t expecting to get through, yet; the fictional leaves usually have to be concocted into a brew of some sort, but I figured even if I failed to get by the mummy I might learn some useful information. GIVE LEAVES TO MUMMY:

The mummy breathes deeply, and steps out of the coffin. Taking the leaves, it crumbles them to powder and rubs them all over it’s linen-wrapped body. There is a heavy aromatic scent in the air, and a shimmering light. To your amazement, the linen melts away to reveal a handsome young Egyptian man. He smiles, points to the north door, and then vanishes into thin air.

Well. No way that can go wrong. This opens the way to a small area whose only purpose is to dispense some “pale blue pearls”.

This is the “Shrine of the Great Pharoah Userkaf, Justified.” The walls reflect back the beam of your flashlight with the warm golden glow of bronze. The only exit is in the west wall.
A long string of pale blue pearls has been dropped here.

I didn’t remember Userkaf even existed! He was the founder of the fifth dynasty. His pyramid is now so ramshackle, for a time it was called a “heap of stone” by locals.

“Pyramid of Userkaf at Saqqara.” by Don McCrady, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

All that leaves only the mysterious seal with the dog. I also mentioned READ worked on the silver charm; while the silver charm is out in the open, the ankh is buried in the tomb with Isis and Apis and hence there’s a good chance this tomb will be explored last by the player. At the very least it feels like the climax of the game.

READ CHARM
There isn’t any writing on it, but a worn engraving on the back shows a crouching jackal and nine men bound with rope.

This matches the picture of the “dog, with nine little men”. All you need to do is be carrying the charm and you can walk through. (This incidentally makes the spot quite liable to suffering the Parallel Universes Problem where a player might enter without realizing they were even solving a puzzle, get stopped a little way in, and try to come back without realizing the charm was helping them earlier!)

You are at an open doorway. Through it, to the east, you can see a passageway that leads down into silent darkness. To the west there is a staircase leading up to the sunlit desert. There is a large seal impression over the lintel of the door.
EAST
This is a descending passage, partly filled with chips of pale granite and dark flint. It runs roughly east and west.
EAST
You have reached an open doorway. To the west you can see a sloping passage. To the east there is a large antechamber. A design has been carved into the floor in the center of the doorway, and looks as fresh as the day it was made.
EAST
You start forward, but a shimmering figure appears in the doorway and some mysterious force holds you back!

There is a doorway here, with rooms to the east and west. A design has been carved into the floor in the center of the doorway, and looks as fresh as the day it was made.
READ DESIGN
It seems to be a large cross with a loop at the top.

The second door is what requires the ankh. Nothing written on it this time, you’re just supposed to recognize the shape. With the ankh held, you can enter the “last section” of the game (except it might not be last for a particular player, it was just last for me).

This is a fairly large antechamber, filled with an incredible collection of miscellaneous items intended for the use of the dead pharoah. An inscription, written on the wall in gold, says “The Beautiful God, beloved, dazzling of face like the Aten when it shines, The Son of Aten, Akhenaten.” Evidentally you have found the lost tomb of the great heretic king himself!

This is the tomb of Akhenaten, the one who tried to convert Egypt to worshipping only the sun.

Head of Akhenaten, via the Met.

There’s no maze; just the crown and an urn.

While here I had the message:

There is an odd sound echoing through the air. It sounds like a flute. A slow tremor goes through the earth.

I’ll explain that shortly, as I rewound time a bit. I knew I was still short on treasures elsewhere, as I hadn’t found where the tomb robber had taken my things! (I was able on one run to avoid him appearing altogether, but given how closely this matched Adventure it had to be the case that he has his own treasure that only appears after he steals yours.) I went back over the entire map and couldn’t find his stash. I ended up looking at the map of Exemptus; it’s back in the Treasury where I marked the room in green. This yields a “large leather sack here, full of ancient jewelry” along with anything you’re holding. While I was busy doing this I also found the clock I had missed the first time around.

Back to that flute: this has everything from Crowther/Woods, including the cave collapsing when you’re at a certain point; the cave “closes” and the endgame eventually triggers. (Hermit and Phantom don’t copy this!) The thing that collapses is the tomb you’ve been depositing the treasures in; you can have a suboptimal and confusing ending (just, you hear the collapse, game is over) if you’re not inside. If you are inside:

There is a rumbling sound from the tomb entrance, and the room spins around you. You blink, and to your amazement you see a
whole throng of people, dressed in the magnificent robes of ancient Egyptian aristocrats! The tomb has vanished, and you see that you are standing in a palace. The people hail you as their next Pharoah, miraculously sent to them by the gods!

You have solved the secrets of the Pharoah, and found all of the treasures of the Ancient Ones! Certificate number:041122HC
You have conquered Pharoah’s Curse!

Your final score is 191.
To reach a higher rating would be a really neat trick!
Congratulations! You are an Adventure Grandmaster!

This turned out enjoyable for most of my playtime, with the hiccups either technical (parser weirdness, especially with the GIVE issue) or from the engine still slavishly following in the steps of Crowther/Woods. The re-dress of the fanatics and the tomb raider kind of work, and they at least serve to make the puzzle-less sections have the occasional moment of tension, but I found the essence of the game was more in the “tourist” aspect than in the puzzles. To recap, assuming you think to READ at the right moments:

a.) the carrot goes to the camel

b.) the meat goes to the crocodile

c.) the plank goes to a gap in the floor

d.) the key goes to a locked door

e.) the shovel is needed to dig out something buried

f.) the crowbar is used to lift something heavy

g.) the Lyre that says it was from Ramses goes to Ramses

h.) the charm with a picture of 9 men goes to the seal with 9 men

i.) the ankh goes to the ankh-shaped design

j.) the leaves go to the mummy

Excepting j (which is a cultural reference) this is far simpler puzzle scheme than either Hermit or Phantom (and from what I hear, the later games in the series as well); there was clearly a conscious choice here to simplify the puzzle solving and lean into atmosphere. It’s just some elements were a little too stuck in the past.

Isis nursing Horus, from The Met, Ptolemaic period.

We certainly aren’t done with the Craynes; there are three games to go, two which likely had the involvement of Charles. In the meantime, coming up: a return to Britgames; I’ve got a few on the queue, and all of them have background histories I didn’t expect.