Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my previous post.)

Just to recap from last time, here was the state of my map, with special rooms marked.

I also had access to a candle, a box of matches, a bottle of spirits, some food, a map (all used) as well as a book of ghost stories, a tray of drinks, a packet of crisps, a bar of soap, a knife, a uniform, a rope with hook, pots, a painting, some electrodes, and some tomatoes (all unused). I was facing a wolf by a coffin, a monster in a secret passage, a room getting locked with a princess, a lift that wasn’t moving, and a room blocked by a ghost (supposedly afraid of uniforms, but nothing I could do with uniform was triggering it!)

I went through my usual verb list with the catch this is generally a two-letter parser.

CL(IMB)
SW(IM)
RE(AD)
LI(GHT)
RU(B)
PR(AY)
PU(LL)
US(E)
EX(AMINE)
IN(SERT)
LE(AVE)
HI(T)
SH(OOT)
KI(LL)

HIT, SHOOT, and KILL all have a response about not being so violent, which suggests they don’t work at all. (It also explains when I tried KISS PRINCESS — it was required in Pillage Village, remember — that the response was “you’re not cruel.” It wasn’t trying to be progressive about kissing consent, the game thought that I was typing KILL PRINCESS.)

After multiple fruitless attempts and managing the uniform/ghost combo I started working on the monster instead. GIVE isn’t a verb but DROP is (drop is how I gave the spirits to the drunk) so I went through a variety of items just to test things out.

“But they’re Monster Munch! You don’t like them?”

I tried HELP out just in case this was the sort of game help is a required verb and the game informed me:

I suppose you could try praying!!

So I tried PRAY:

That didn’t seem to help!!
Maybe you didn’t try hard enough!!

Alas, PRAY HARDER gets no different reaction (I doubt the parser even looked at the second word, to be honest). I eventually hit upon dropping the electodes…

…which sort of makes sense if you squint, but not really.

Past the monster are two rooms.

With the antique my score was now safely 2 out of 7, and I thought it would become 3 out of 7 shortly with the keys. They do work in the princess room (USE KEYS)…

…but the princess refuses to move. This was the moment in Pillage Village where KISS was required. Princess, are you sure you want to hang out in the dungeon…?

The princess refuses.

With me befuddled, I tried more attempts at the ghost.

Maybe you’d prefer some Crispy Bacon Frazzles? I can’t eat them myself, there’s no EAT command.

The rest of my time was spent frustrated. I tried USE KEYS at the man the stocks and the tomatoes, no dice. I tried every verb on my list on the lift, again no dice. (“USE LIFT”: “You’re trying to confuse me!”) I am nearly guaranteed now to check either the walkthrough or at least the source code, but I wanted to report in on my progress here first. The main issue isn’t it doesn’t feel like I’m “stuck on a puzzle” as much as fighting against the system; I’m guessing at least once I’ve done the right thing, just expressed in the wrong way.

The wolf really doesn’t like crisps.

(Also, people picked up on last time there’s a certain other game from 1981 Lucas is “borrowing” from that is not by him, but I want to save getting into that for my final post.)