(Continued from my previous post.)
First off, some corrections to statements in my last post: two of the Colour Genie games (from the “Colour Quest” series published by Gumboot) are by Dave Doohan, not Leduc. Leduc is listed on game 4 (Camelot) as a co-author (I’m guessing as authoring the “engine”), and while I don’t have a copy of game 5 (Shipwreck) to test and check credits, I now know what the box art of a republished version looks like, and I’m using the word “republished” very loosely.
From the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History. I know this is also Colour Quest 5 from the August 1984 issue of the Colour Genie Auckland District User Groups newsletter.
Game 6 (Fishing Quest) goes back to Leduc but seems to be a remake of Ocean Hunt. So in total he has 6 games, not counting one remake and at least one (probably two) co-authorship credits.
West goes to the garden and north goes to the shop.
I otherwise haven’t seen any differences up to the point where the boat ends up in the ocean.
As promised last time, I whipped out the verb list and tested everything out. Fortunately, the game was pretty good about giving feedback if a word is not in its vocabulary (it explicitly says ‘”WORD” is not in my vocabulary’).
It’s a four letter parser, so the difference between SCREW and SCREAM was unclear, but otherwise the list was unambiguous. I found with TALK on the merchant that he says to drop all treasures at the shop (there’s only two we’re looking for, remember). While noodling around with START I realized it worked on the boat while holding the keys (even if you’re not standing on the boat! I guess there’s a remote keyfob, from, er, 1982).
It turns out you don’t have to worry about the boat floating away, you just need to specify you want to move it somewhere. Unfortunately, that always seems to be hell in adventure games, and here is no different. I finally checked the walkthrough to realize that HEAD DIRECTION works, and later got (what I think is a more reasonable) STEER DIRECTION. The thing that makes this even more bizarre is that it does NOT work in the directions north or south.
“I am not quite sure what you mean” is the same message it gives for a complete whiff of a command that is not understood, but all that’s really going on is you can’t steer north or south! The general layout is:
island – ocean – wharf
So if you want to buy the reel after the boat floats away (since getting the money causes the event to happen), just start the boat and steer east. You can then BUY REEL without getting killed by the shopkeeper, and take it back out to the ocean to THROW REEL.
The MESSAGE has “a drawing of a man entering blue flames”, and I only found it after I got through the relevant section of the game, so buying the reel is technically optional! (I think. I’m not quite done yet with the game.)
Regarding jumping in the ocean with the sharks, and drowning if I tried to SWIM DOWN: I had missed an item on the boat. Back inside where there’s a bed, I had found I could GO BED and find items on shelves, but confusingly, you can LOOK BED twice to find two more items (that you don’t see actually going on the bed, because early 80s adventure logic).
The purple pill makes you feel GASSY and allows you to swim underwater (the pill does eventually run out, but it takes a while). The flashlight is the standard LIGHT/UNLIGHT kind and I’m guessing it also eventually runs out (but again, pretty generous on the timing).
from here you can swim along some “ocean floor” rooms and it took me a while to understand I was in a maze; I’m used to underwater ocean rooms being more of a grid like The Palms, although to be fair that game had some confusing exits as well). You can map it with the standard “drop items” technique that dates all the way back to Crowther Adventure.
Just like The Palms, there’s a crashed boat, but in this case something about it doesn’t make sense (and I had to use the walkthrough again).
The inside has a harpoon gun and a telescope. LOOK TELESCOPE just says you see your eye; I tried taking the gun over to the sharks and shooting them but the game didn’t understand what I wanted.
Trying to GO STAIRS kills you in a hilarious and confusing way.
What I was not understanding is that the inside of the liner is not underwater. You can’t swim to the hole, you have to actually tie the rope to the harpoon, and then fire it in the hole and climb the rope. I simply followed the walkthrough steps in bafflement, and then had to stare at what happened for a while before I realized what the game was meaning. (I haven’t needed the walkthrough on anything else, but I also haven’t finished the game yet.) I suppose the weird stairs message might have been a clue but generally this game is styled around a tenuous grasp of reality anyway (which is fine story-genre-wise, but it makes puzzles harder to solve!)
We will get back to “crystal does’nt cause explosions” later.
The fact there is only a message suggests the harpoon thing might have been optional anyway; I don’t know. But let’s move on to the island! STEER WEST while out in the ocean:
Note the 4737 you can see with the telescope. I think this use was being hinted at by the note at the shopkeeper, when it referred to looking at an island closely. I have not applied the 4737 clue yet.
Everyone loves the self-insert. If you LOOK LEDUC:
He’s writing the next Epic just for you!
The woman is a little more trouble. She blocks the way in the cave, and “looks hungry”.
There are two food options. One — the more obvious one — I’m fairly sure is wrong. You can GIVE SALT and she’ll say “Fish and Chips!” and disappear.
Alternatively, you can give the candy bar. She “turns green and dies in agony.”
Considering you could eat the same bar and it was delicious, I assume she’s meant to be some sort of demon. Except maybe a British demon because of the Fish and Chips reference? This feels like some sort of inside-Nottingham joke I’m missing (remember all three Epic games were made in 1982 before being published in 1983, so likely were treated more like a “private” games by the author, just like with Campbell’s Fairytale).
I think the candy bar is right because you need the salt shaker later.
Going inside the cave, there is a “mouth”, which looks like it ought to be just a geographic feature…
…but is just an actual mouth. I don’t know if this is simply a gag like the quid/squid or something that gets used later.
Going north instead, there’s a room with a green, red, and blue stone; the stones can’t be taken. There’s an arch, and if you go in the arch, the room “feels wrong” although you can take the metal rod there seemingly without hurting anything.
TOUCHing the stones is the answer (thank you verb list!) as they’ll glow either green or red as you touch them, suggesting a combination lock. I eventually got into a “sacrifice and altar room”.
The next bit is hard to find, but the two solutions with the woman suggested (in a structural-solving sense) either the chocolate bar or the salt were still important. The salt turns out to be needed:
You can then GO FLAME; hinted at by the bottle in the ocean, although I want to re-emphasize I did this prior to getting the hint. The “sacrifice” thing seemed suggestive to me!
The diamonds are a regular treasure that you can deposit at the store right away; the crystal rod is not. I have no idea what to do with it. The message underground said something about it not being explosive but I haven’t been able to translate that into action.
Just to recap my items: fishing reel, shark repellent, crystal rod, telescope, metal rod (from the “bad” arch exit), keys, flowers, blanket, harpoon gun, squid, and some various messages. I suspect I just need to do the right thing with the crystal rod but I haven’t chanced upon it yet. We may get a win in a single puzzle, or it might still be a couple. Either way, I don’t think there’s too much farther to go.
One of the more amusing tape covers from Gumboot. That’s “Jet Set Billy”, not “Jet Set Willy”. Legally distinct! From the Centre for Computing History.
Renga in Blue 
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