Vancian is so named because of the Dying Earth series of novels by Jack Vance, where wizards memorize spells and then forget them as they are cast. Cornucopia uses casting directly from a spellbook with the same sort of disappearance effect (except for the case of levitating at the tower, as I showed off in my last post; that seems to be to allow the player to take that route multiple times without penalty).
Testing various inventory items with save-and-load. Notice the green gem, the one found hiding in a throne, being “evil” but not “magic” — how does that work?
Having such a system isn’t a guarantee D&D was involved (after all, maybe the author went right to the source!) but there’s a critter that I’m fairly sure is D&D-only.
Water Weird as drawn for the 1977 AD&D Monster Manual by David Sutherland.
Back at the kitchen (adjacent to the giant rat, which we’ll also reckon with in a moment) I was testing out GET ALL everywhere and found death.
You are in what appears to be the old kitchen. There is a flight of stone stairs leading up and doorways in the east and west walls. In the northwest corner a spring enters the kitchen and pours into a large granite basin. The water level in the basin is kept constant by a drain hidden from view.
>GET ALL
granite basin : As you approach the basin with the spring water in it a strange form rears up and grabs you, obviously some form of water weird. The strange form pulls you into the basin and you are drowned. From your sitting position you can see through a glass screen into a room that looks strangely familiar. On either side of you are further skeletons, they have a somewhat glum look on their skulls just as you do. You are dead and have become yet another trophy for the long departed owners of this place.
Fortunately, there’s a weirdly specific spell from the spellbook that immediately came to mind.
>OPEN BOOK
Opening the spell book reveals :- detect magic spell; dispel magic spell; purify water spell; dispel illusion spell; detect illusion spell; levitate self spell; detect evil spell.
>CAST PURIFY WATER
The spring water is now quite pure and the water weird has been killed.
With this done, I was able to get the empty green bottle filled with water (mind you, it isn’t FILL BOTTLE or FILL BOTTLE WITH WATER, but the oddly phrased PUT WATER IN BOTTLE). This technically provides a solution for getting thirsty while going east from the dried brook, but I have yet to work out anything to do with the grate (the only thing you can find there).
The culvert ends here in a blank wall and the water disappears down a grating set in the floor. The culvert extends away to the west along a narrow ledge. The grating is of a fine mesh, such as to catch most things that would be brought along by the current of water, if there was any.
>OPEN GRATING
The grating can’t be opened or closed.
Adjacent to the water weird is a giant rat. The giant rat succumbs to simply stabbing quite a few times (with a combat scene just like Goblin Towers, or Zork) but something about this feels wrong.
>KILL RAT WITH RUSTY SWORD
A quick stroke gets the giant rat in the side and blood starts to trickle down one of its legs.
You dodge but the giant rat still manages to nip you.
>KILL RAT WITH RUSTY SWORD
A quick stroke gets the giant rat in the side and blood starts to trickle down one of its legs.
You dodge but the giant rat still manages to nip you.
>KILL RAT WITH RUSTY SWORD
With a deft side step you stab your sword into its heart. The giant rat slumps down dead.
This leaves behind merely a giant rat corpse, which you can pick up (it is heavy and have to drop everything other than the lamp), but I haven’t found any use for it.
My last piece of “progress” wasn’t really progress in a sense: I was able to get by the troll.
The troll, remember, ate any swords I tried to use to attack it.
You are in part of a trolls lair, all manner of stuff is strewn around, including parts of its previous meals. To the west is a low tunnel and to the south what looks to be a tiny cavern. A huge and hairy troll stands here blocking your way.
I was testing out various options when I tried SMASH TROLL.
The troll breaks into a million pieces and is destroyed.
>S
You are in a small cavern which looks like it was the sleeping chamber for the troll. The only exit leads to the north. Lying discarded here in one corner is the King’s crown.
SMASH works on everything in the game, destroying the object. Important treasures? Smashable. Statue standing on a pedestal with hidden gold necklace? Smashable. Giant full sized dragon made from rock? Definitely smashable. Although you still die if you try to go south due to dragon flame. It appears that the troll stopping the player is dependent on the “troll object” being present while the dragon flame is hard-coded for going south from the dragon.
>SMASH GRATING
The grating breaks into a million pieces and is destroyed.
While you can smash the grating that “can’t be open or closed”, it doesn’t allow leading to any new areas, so that seems to be wrong. Smashing the tree still results in the player dying if they try to climb the tree.
You are at the centre of the Royal Gardens, there is a tree here in full bloom, the blooms are pink. The perfume from the blooms is very heady. The base of the tree is circled by some kind of goo, within this goo there appear to be many jewels.
>SMASH TREE
The tree breaks into a million pieces and is destroyed.
>U
You get up into the low branches, it seems the tree is somewhat sentient and resents this. The tree shakes you from its branches and you fall into the goo at its base, which is extremely corrosive. From your sitting position you can see through a glass screen into a room that looks strangely familiar. On either side of you are further skeletons, they have a somewhat glum look on their skulls just as you do. You are dead and have become yet another trophy for the long departed owners of this place.
This presents an unusual dilemma: what if SMASH is the legitimate and only method of solving some puzzle in the game, in an intended way? (Surely the troll isn’t.) Would I be able to tell? Will doing things the “right way” nonetheless feel like cheating? If nothing else, I now know it’s just a treasure past the troll and not some long branching path.
I’d like to close out by listing out all the obstacles I’m stuck on and theorize about solutions. The evil tree seems like a good place to start.
A 1st edition D&D treant, art by David A. Trampier.
And yes, the tree is detected via spell as evil:
>CAST DETECT EVIL ON TREE
Surprisingly for something so marvellous the tree seems to have an evil awareness.
You can die by a.) climbing and being dunked in the goo, which dissolves you b.) trying to get one of the gems in the goo, which dissolves you, c.) falling unconscious from the tree’s perfume, and falling into the goo, which dissolves you.
If you try to set it on fire with the torch the tree “shies away” from the torch and “no matter what you do you just cannot set fire to it”. The goo itself is not flammable. I do suspect fire is involved in a solution still somehow, just in needs to get conveyed to the tree in a more forceful way (and before you ask, THROW TORCH AT TREE just gets the response “Dropped”).
Next up is the stone dragon at the cave. Going inside, I mentioned three buttons and two levers.
>ENTER OPENING
You are in a small spherical shaped room inside the dragon’s head. In front of you are two round windows which look out into the cavern you have just come from. Just under the windows is a small desk with a chair beside it. The desk has three buttons which are coloured red, brown and amber, the desk also has two levers coloured black and blue. It is quite warm in here, the heat seems to be coming from below.
>PUSH RED BUTTON
There is a click and then a low wheezing noise.
>PUSH AMBER BUTTON
There is a click and then a whooshing noise.
The brown button causes a click no matter what sequence I try to do things in, and the levers just pull (or push) and then move back to the center with no apparent reaction. I’ve tried quite a few variations followed by testing going south past the fire (in the hope something happened silently) but no luck with that either. I suspect I’m just missing the right permutation of moves, though; I don’t have much to work with other than brute force testing.
Other than those two spots I’m stuck on small things, or what might not even be puzzles:
The statue facing west only yielded the necklace; I don’t know if there’s some other secret involving the statue moving.
There’s a small alcove seen when entering the fungus elevator; that might simply be the elevator entrance that can reached from the throne area, though, and not really a puzzle.
The area with the gold card can only be left (at the moment) via using up the card at a door. The gold card does seem to be a treasure so I must be missing something. Also, what does the “that will do nicely” message mean?
The card is solid gold with an ebony edging and writing on one side in a bold gothic script which reads ‘Admit one only’. On the other side in almost microscopic letters it says ‘that will do nicely’, the meaning of which seems quite obscure.
There’s a “compost heap” at the garden I haven’t been able to do anything with.
I still have a fountain at the garden to deal with. There’s pirahna protecting some gold coins, and there’s a “water jet” at the fountain in the garden still awaiting an item. I suspect I will know the item when I see it (and it will help with the fish problem may influence the empty brook).
There is a lovely carved stone fountain here, it is quite a rude design. The jet of water is so large it could easily support a small object if placed exactly right. The pool at the base of the fountain has many gold coins that have been tossed into it. There are what appear to be goldfish swimming about in it.
>PUT BOOK ON JET
It would just fall off the jet of water, so there’s no point.
I get the uncanny feeling this is one of those kind of games where there’s “wrong” ways to solve things and you can easily put the game in an impossible state with a wrong solution. Maybe I can get the giant rat to follow me over to the tree and distract it? Or make friends with the troll?
I’ve done, as promised, some serious mapping, and can share the layout and the initial obstacles. But first, a look at the verb list:
This is quite a wide coverage for this era and feels more aligned with Infocom than a Commodore PET game (as this originally started as). While Goblin Towers had very little change between the two versions, I highly suspect Cornucopia had serious additions to at least the text; not only are there a fair number of lengthy room descriptions, it more “fun” messages than usual while messing around with verbs the game understands, mirroring Zork’s multiple “jump” responses for instance:
>JUMP
Well done.
>JUMP
That is really childish!
>JUMP
I suppose you want a medal for that.
>JUMP
Wheeeeeeeee
SMELL and LISTEN are also notable (and do, in fact, get used, sometimes for pure environment); PRAY is good to keep in mind given the theological theme, and PLUCK is the most unusual of all the verbs (although it seems to just be a synonym for “TAKE”).
Now, a grand tour of the map, where I’ll start with a meta-map. (This is arranged by connectivity between regions, where each region is a set of rooms.)
The player starts at the cottage which I showed the map of last time; let’s take the route entering the giant fungus first. You step in an “elevator” and there’s a small alcove briefly visible (I have not been able to interact with it yet) before landing at:
You are on the edge of a small brook, which has long since dried up. A path follows along the course of the brook to the east and west. Across on the other side of the brook you can see lush rolling countryside.
The west is a “solid gold” card with “Admit one only” on one side and “that will do nicely” on the other; I assume it is a treasure, but we’re about to consume it in a moment.
To the east there’s a culvert that leads up until a grate:
The culvert ends here in a blank wall and the water disappears down a grating set in the floor. The culvert extends away to the west along a narrow ledge. The grating is of a fine mesh, such as to catch most things that would be brought along by the current of water, if there was any.
Heading down the culvert has an unfortunate side effect: the player starts getting thirsty. The “green bottle” the player starts with seems to be empty, but even with a fountain later the command FILL BOTTLE doesn’t seem to be understood, so I’m not sure what’s going on. I suspect visiting here first is out-of-order of how it is supposed to be.
Heading north from the landing point of the dried brook is a “countryside” where “you are walking through some green countryside, but don’t seem to be getting anywhere.” Dropping an item (like the SWORD) causes it to “disappear from view” but from mucking about I decided every direction except back south to the dried brook simply loops the player. I became highly suspicious:
>CAST DISPEL ILLUSION
As the illusion fades you find that… You are in a large well lit cavern. The roof soars away so as to seem almost as high as the sky. You are near the west wall of the cavern and can see an exit carved into the very rock. To the south you can make out the small brook you crossed earlier. A sword which is quite rusty but in a useable condition.
(The sword is the item that was dropped earlier, which had previously disappeared.)
This has the side effect that I likely don’t need to keep hunting for possible illusions elsewhere, although it may be that this entire route is wrong and the illusion should be ignored in favor of getting through the grate somehow.
Removing the illusion allows going west, whereupon the player is trapped and can’t even go back east.
You are in a lit chamber about twenty feet square. The dust is very thick on the floor. The chamber is partitioned-off half way across with a transparent crystal wall. Behind the wall you can see several chairs, all but one of them has a skeleton sitting in it. A sign above the skeletons reads ‘TROPHY ROOM’. On the north side there is a closed door and beside it, at about waist height, there is a small slot. There is an inscription on the door which reads as follows:- AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
However, the gold card can be put in the slot:
>PUT CARD IN SLOT
From deep within the walls you hear a whirring sound and a voice says ‘That will do nicely’ and at the same time a door slides open, the gold card is drawn into the slot and disappears.
>N
You are in a hall orientated north to south. It is about sixty feet long by some twenty feet wide. On either side of the hall is a row of doric columns, carved from solid marble. These support a high arched ceiling. The south end of the hall leads nowhere but the other looks to open out into a large chamber. The walls are decorated with countless heraldic shields, depicting the magnificent lineage of the former owners of this place.
This jumps to an area on the meta-map I called Throne/Kitchen…
…but let’s wait on visiting there and go an entirely different route, levitating up the tower. I’ve already shown off the troll at the very bottom. I still haven’t gotten anywhere with that route, so let’s step out of the tower into a series of passages.
There’s not anything to see here — it’s just a 4 by 3 grid — and if this was Infocom I’d be highly suspicious of some geographical-placement puzzle afoot, chasing or evading some creature. As things currently stand the only extra item of interest is a statue.
You are at a junction of an east-west passage with a north-south one. At the centre of the junction a large stone statue stands on a pedestal, the statue is facing the west.
>GET ALL
pedestal : You can’t take a pedestal.
statue : You can’t take a statue.
As I mentioned in my last post, the GET ALL trick is extremely handy for parsing what’s useful here; I might normally have just tried to examine the statue but not the pedestal, missing a treasure in the process.
>EXAMINE PEDESTAL
You notice that there is a slight gap between the heel of one of the statues legs and the pedestal, in this gap a small gold necklace has been concealed.
The gold necklace, according to the spell, is not magic, so likely not used in a puzzle otherwise.
The west-facing statue is highly suggestive that we might be turning the statue around (like Hollywood Hijinx or Whembly Castle), but attempting to do so just gets a joke from the parser:
>EXAMINE STATUE
The statue stands on a low pedestal in the middle of the junction, the statue faces west and has a somewhat expectant look upon its face. One of its arms also points in this direction, as if directing someone.
>TURN STATUE
Hmm, zo zis is very interesting, do you get zese urges very often hmm!
So keep an eye on that I guess? Actually going to the west leads to a room with many colored tiles…
You are in a room which is wider at the east end than at the west end, its length is greater than its width even at its widest point. Strangely there is a powerful draught blowing from this end of the room towards the smaller end, it is probably something to do with the rooms shape. The floor is covered in gaily coloured tiles; red, green blue and yellow ones. The walls are coloured to match and the whole makes your eyes fairly boggle.
…where just trying to walk across is failure.
You cross the floor not caring which you tread on, and stepping on a tile of each colour at least once. You suddenly realise that you are back at the position you started from, although the transition back to the wide end of the room came unnoticed by you.
You can instead WALK ON RED TILES (or YELLOW, BLUE, or GREEN) in order to get to a room. There’s one for each color. The red tiles lead to an armory with a rune sword, the yellow tiles lead to a gallery with a painting, the blue tiles lead to an empty room, and the green tiles lead to a “gadget room”.
You are in a small rectangular room, it is quite unremarkable having no special features at all, even the exit to the east is plain. In the centre of the room is a large stone casket the top of which has been forced open and fallen to the floor where it has shattered. The stone casket contains:- user manual; emerald rod.
The manual is enigmatic:
This is not so much a manual more a diatribe on the brilliance of the inventor of a device which enables one to transport oneself virtually anywhere. This device is apparently box-shaped with a selection of dials and buttons on its upper surface. Reading between the lines it seems there was at least one prototype which was limited in its transport abilities using only a series of buttons for control.
So that’s fun to look forward to! (I also don’t know what the emerald rod does yet either.)
Hopping back to the passages, going east leads to the Throne / Kitchen area, the same area reachable via using the gold card.
The throne has another secret item (a green gem). To the east there’s another elevator, this time one that goes up and lands the player in the fungus forest. Going up there’s an odd pair of lavoratories where there’s a snake that sticks its head out; the player can attack it with a sword and make it disappear, leaving them free to grab a sapphire rod.
Heading down leads to a kitchen instead.
You are in what appears to be the old kitchen. There is a flight of stone stairs leading up and doorways in the east and west walls. In the northwest corner a spring enters the kitchen and pours into a large granite basin. The water level in the basin is kept constant by a drain hidden from view.
>E
You are in what was the kitchen’s grain store, all that is left is a pile of rotted cereals. The exit is to the north. There is a giant rat here gorging itself on the grain.
I have not managed to do anything with the rat yet; there’s a plain sack just lying about heading the other direction.
From the throne room you can also head straight north (passing by a torch on the way which can be picked up) and find a garden.
Resolving the slightly maze-like aspect, there’s a compost heap to the west (haven’t found a use yet) and a whistle to the east. To the far north there’s a fountain with deadly fish.
You are in a part of the formal Royal Rose gardens. Nearby you can hear the tinkle of water from a fountain.
>N
There is a lovely carved stone fountain here, it is quite a rude design. The jet of water is so large it could easily support a small object if placed exactly right. The pool at the base of the fountain has many gold coins that have been tossed into it. There are what appear to be goldfish swimming about in it.
>EXAMINE GOLDFISH
On a closer examination the goldfish are in fact piranha.
(I have not found anything that properly goes onto the jet of water yet.)
Finally in the middle there’s a tree that has some deadly goo. Or if you hang around it is deadly. Or climb the tree it is deadly.
You are at the centre of the Royal Gardens, there is a tree here in full bloom, the blooms are pink. The perfume from the blooms is very heady. The base of the tree is circled by some kind of goo, within this goo there appear to be many jewels.
Heading back to the throne area, there’s a different exit down that leads to some “cells”.
Some have various things scratched in them (see the map) and there’s also some magazines where you can play Spot the Typo.
You are in a room with three exits. There is an extremely unwholesome smell here. The walls seem to have many deep and long scratches in them. There is a large pile of discarded magazines here.
>GET ALL
pile of magazines : Taken.
>READ MAGAZINES
The pile of magazines contains the following – Torturers Weekly, 101 Ways to Torture an Elf, Inflicting Pain Monthly, Bone Choppers Annual, Computnig Toady and Torture for Fun and Profit.
I’m sure something elaborate might happen here (maybe after we “ring for service”?) but it’s a pretty empty area so far. Heading down even further goes to a cavern with a stone dragon.
You are at the north end of a large and apparently very old cavern. A narrow tunnel leads away to the north. High overhead a forest of stalactites, some of them huge. To the south you can see a large and unusually shaped rock formation.
>S
You are at the south end of a large cavern. To the south the cavern narrows down to a small passage. Crouching and facing the narrow passage is a large rock formation which looks exactly like a dragon.
You can climb in the dragon and find some buttons and levers and I’m sure the controls are just lovely, but I hit this point right at the end of my last session and I knew my post was already going to get rather long, so I decided it was a good point to stop. Still, let me show what happens if you try to just ignore the dragon:
As you approach the narrow passage a huge gout of flame shoots from the Dragon’s mouth incinerating you. From your sitting position you can see through a glass screen into a room that looks strangely familiar. On either side of you are further skeletons, they have a somewhat glum look on their skulls just as you do. You are dead and have become yet another trophy for the long departed owners of this place.
You incidentally still are playing from here except you are now in the skeleton room, but dead. I do wonder if this has an Acheton-like scenario where dying is required, but it may just be meant here as a bit of worldbuilding as we fall victim to the long departed owners.
Despite the conglomeration of events feeling randomly put together, I still feel like there’s some coherence; not quite the full lore of Zork, but at least enough of a consistent mood I started to feel like I was in a “real environment” rather than just a series of puzzles. I have yet to try seriously solving anything though, so who knows what wonders / terrors / bad comma splices will eventually unfold.
The first moment I was absolutely gleeful in Cornucopia was when I opened a spell-book in the starting area.
>OPEN BOOK
Opening the spell book reveals :- detect magic spell; dispel magic spell; purify water spell; dispel illusion spell; detect illusion spell; levitate self spell; detect evil spell.
This is what you start with! This game is going to take a while. I have the rest of January blocked out.
I recently played Brian Cotton’s game Goblin Towers, which was his second published after Catacombs by Supersoft, and it was quite simple, to the extent it may have been written first. (Read those two posts if you would like the historical background on the Cotton games.) Cornucopia returns to a more complex world, and in fact is allegedly Cotton’s most complicated game, trying to go for a full Zork experience (or I guess Enchanter, except Enchanter wasn’t out yet when this game was released!) Remember, it was clear from Goblin Towers that Cotton was thinking of Zork, not Crowther/Woods or Scott Adams as most other writers were.
There’s reference in Cornucopia to Goblin Towers right at the start, which makes me think it is in the same universe. Before showing off what I mean, I should mention that this game (like Catacombs) was lost until the Classic Quests version for DOS showed up; also just like Catacombs, this game was originally broken and unable to be finished. However, Cornucopia has a fix! If you want to play, use the Fixed Game link here which makes the game completable.
Having commited a heinous crime against the Gods (spitting on the steps of the temple, I think), you are summoned before them. This is an extremely rare occurrence, as most offenders are summarily executed with a lightning bolt! As you cower before the Gods, half blinded by their splendour, they reveal why they have spared you – temporarily. They have a small task for you to perform: ‘Find the Cornucopia and bring it here’ they boom.
While we have a designated collect-the-treasures spot, just like Cotton’s other two games, there’s a secondary objective now of getting a specific Cornucopia for the Gods. I like the “spitting on the steps of the temple, I think” — it’s as if our main character has committed so many crimes against the Gods the narrator isn’t sure which one is considered the heinous one. Either that, or the narrator is like a storyteller making things up on the fly that never entirely filled in that detail.
You are outside a small cottage, a doorway leads into it although there doesn’t seem to be a door. The cottage is surrounded by a forest made up of huge and grotesque growths of fungi, a damp dismal mist shrouds the ground making everything quite indistinct. The outlines of a path leading south can just be made out.
Just like Goblin Towers, we start outside a cottage, and from the cottage there is a forest and a tower. Assuming it is the same forest, it is now a different maze and overgrown with fungus (see how Adventure Quest has the “degenerate forest” following the normal one of the first game).
Going in the cottage:
You are inside a small cottage, little better than a hovel really, the only exit is to the north. There is a huge wooden table in the middle of the room, it appears to be extremely old and is obviously well used. Sitting on the wooden table is :- spell book; rusty sword; battery lamp; small note; green bottle.
A couple subtleties here with how items work: you can examine items, but they won’t always give more descriptions. However, the “lying on the ground” descriptions are a little more complete than the one given in the list here.
A battered battery lamp is here with what appears to be an everlasting battery in it.
The sword has both an ground description (“quite rusty but in a usable condition”) and an EXAMINE description.
This sword is in very poor condition and has obviously been used by a hacker, by the state of the blade, it is rusty and pitted. A sword which is a disgrace to its owner.
The other important detail is that not only does GET ALL work, but it seems to give away every referrable item in the room. That makes it easy to tell what should be zeroed in on in each description (some games try to prevent this, but given the allegedly difficulty here I’ll take any advantage I can get).
>GET ALL
wooden table : The wooden table is beyond your strength to lift.
spell book : Taken.
rusty sword : Taken.
battery lamp : Taken.
small note : Taken.
green bottle : Taken.
The table can incidentally both be looked under and broken, so there’s a fair amount of physical simulation going on. For the last items: The green bottle, cryptically, contains nothing. The small note reads “leave treasure here”. The spellbook has a description of the outside, and must be opened to be read:
>READ BOOK
The spell book is large with thick padded covers. The covers have runic designs around the edges and particularly ornate bits in the corners, the whole is decorated with small gemstones and gold leaf. It must be worth a fortune.
It contains, as I already showed off, spells; here’s the details on each one:
detect magic spell (CAST DETECT MAGIC ON OBJECT, tell you if an item is magic)
dispel magic spell (CAST DISPEL MAGIC ON OBJECT, remove magical abilities of object)
purify water spell (CAST PURIFY WATER, will cleanse nearest body of water)
dispel illusion spell (CAST DISPEL ILLUSION, will remove any illusion close by)
detect illusion spell (CAST DETECT ILLUSION, will inform the player of any illusions close by)
levitate self spell (CAST LEVITATE SELF, rise vertically)
detect evil spell (CAST DETECT EVIL ON OBJECT, determine if an object is “based in evil”)
Now, the big catch here is that the spells disappear when used, at least sometimes. I’m not clear the conditions, for example, using CAST LEVITATE SELF when in the starting hut:
You rise into the air and hover around for a while before slowly dropping back down again, quite good fun in fact.
The spell is now missing from the spellbook. However, there’s a part I’ll show off shortly where levitate self helps solve a puzzle, and the spell remains! Maybe there’s a “if it is useful, you hang on to it” rule? It makes the DETECT ILLUSION spell a bit dicier to use (since the whole point is a binary yes or no, and if you already know yes why not go straight to dispel?) However, I’m early enough in the game I might be misunderstanding what’s going on; it may also be possible to find a way to replenish spells or even add new spells.
In the forest there are two ways to exit (unless some random maze room has an illusion that needs dispelling or whatnot — I haven’t gone through and tested it everywhere yet since saving and loading will be needed). The first is a large fungus just to the south of the cottage:
You find yourself in a strange forest of giant fungus growths, they create an eerie feeling. No particular direction seems to suggest itself to you here. There is a particularly huge specimen here, with what appears a dark opening in it.
>ENTER FUNGUS
As you enter the fungus you get a weird sinking feeling You are in a circular room, above and below you it is dark. You have a weird feeling of falling.
The inside is described as an “Elevator down” in the short room description, and there’s a “sensation of falling” until arriving at a countryside.
>WAIT
Time passes……
You are on the edge of a small brook, which has long since dried up. A path follows along the course of the brook to the east and west. Across on the other side of the brook you can see lush rolling countryside.
>W
You are at what was once the source of the brook but is now just a tangle of broken boulders. The only way out from here is to the east. There is a small slim oblong piece of card here.
>EXAMINE CARD
The card is solid gold with an ebony edging and writing on one side in a bold gothic script which reads ‘Admit one only’. On the other side in almost microscopic letters it says ‘that will do nicely’, the meaning of which seems quite obscure.
There’s a wide open space I have yet to fully explore, so I’ll get back to y’all soon on that. The same is true for the other route out, which involves finding the tower in the forest. You can’t climb due to a lack of “handholds”, but the levitate spell works.
>CAST LEVITATE SELF
You rise up and up and up, the top of the tower seemingly getting no closer. The power of the spell seems to be wavering but still you are rising and just as the spell runs out of steam you find yourself… You are in a small room at the top of a tall tower. In the centre of the room, which is circular, there is a staircase leading down into darkness. The room is lit with the light that comes through a single window. Through this window you have a somewhat dismal view over a large area which is covered with huge fungus growths. This view is only broken by the sight of a somewhat delapidated cottage. Against the wall opposite the window is a large wardrobe, this was apparently at one time used as some sort of a bedroom.
The wardrobe has a Fabergé egg (our first treasure).
Again, the map spreads out quite extensively, and just a clipping to show what I’m dealing with:
I’ll get into the details next time, although let me draw attention to the troll at the bottom of the stair (if you just keep going down the stair after levitating into the tower you’ll find him).
You are at the bottom of spiral staircase which has opened out onto a small landing. It is very dark here and with the state it is in, it has been used as a toilet by some large animal, it smells abominable. To the east is a low tunnel.
>E
You are in part of a trolls lair, all manner of stuff is strewn around, including parts of its previous meals. To the west is a low tunnel and to the south what looks to be a tiny cavern. A huge and hairy troll stands here blocking your way.
>KILL TROLL WITH SWORD
The troll being a rather dull creature just grabs the rusty sword from you and without further ado eats it.
This reminds me quite a bit of the Zork I troll that eats things that you toss at him (although you can wield a weapon without it, too, being eaten). My guess is I need to find some kind of poison or sleep drug and it will do its work.
For now, quite a bit of mapping to do. This feels like the most “dense” game I’ve played for All the Adventures since Dungeon Quest.
I managed to finish the game, with some help from Rob digging through source code in the comments. I was in fact very close to the end, but it required a leap of absurdity to get through.
Back side of the packaging, from videogamegeek.
Specifically, on one of my runs I had found a POMME (apple). It was nowhere remarkable or specific, it was just another item in a room.
If you have a load of inventory you try to fence with the apple contained within, it gets no offer.
This is meant to be a pun. The apple is in fact an Apple, that is, an Apple Computer, the secret computer we are looking for! I was threw off by both the fact it was not very secret, but also the level of removal from the language; I think if I was holding an APPLE the pun might of occurred to me, but since I was mentally translating it, I only visualized it as a real apple, maybe for use in some specific event later where someone can be bribed with food.
Now, the problem is — as the instructions specify — we are supposed to then make a getaway with a vehicle. The VOLER (steal) verb comes into play again. Rob wasn’t sure where, but he knew that it was possible to steal some keys. I wasn’t seeing any scenes at either the bar or the restaurant until I realized it was possible to ASSEOIR (sit). You get offered a menu and then can order, and then have an encounter where you can try to steal.
You are told you need to order a dish so as to not raise suspicion.
In the scene above, we’ve been caught, and the manager searches Larcin and confiscates all the stolen items.
There’s a similar scene at the bar; I wasn’t able to steal anything resembling a car key in either one.
What actually worked was stealing at the register! Maybe there’s valet service such that the car keys get stored there?
You fortunately don’t need to say specifically you’re going for TROUSSEAU (keychain) but this was still quite random as the VOLER verb usually gives a “don’t understand” message.
I did have to go through the process twice. The first time through, I took the keys down to the parking lot and went trying to unlock doors none of them would open. Trying to steal again at the register led to failure, but if I ended the burglarizing session, and then went back to the register to try again on a fresh day, I was able to get another keychain. The second one worked.
Thus ends a very odd game that straddled between feeling like a strategy game and an adventure game. I would say it counts as an adventure: the chain is a puzzle which requires the magnet to solve, the moment-to-moment action felt more like roleplaying than the “big picture” style gaming that strategy normally involves, and realizing the odd pun with the apple is not something that’d be part of any strategy game. It’s still essentially a very minimal adventure game with strategy game dressing.
I’d like to end with another source that Rob found, of an interview done with the Louis-Philippe Hébert and the young authors of Logidisque’s first game (Têtards, or tadpoles). Roughly 1:19 is when Hébert starts speaking.
I’ll quote part:
Il ya un choc culturel parce que on découvre tout à coup un nouveau médium. Un nouveau médium donc une nouvelle possibilité, de créer de nouveaux objets … ça nous pousse que dans nos dans nos traditions, parce que évidemment la plupart d’entre nous avons une formation littéraire ou cinématographique …
There’s a cultural shock because we’ve suddenly discovered a new medium. A new medium, and therefore a new possibility, to create new objects … that pushes us in our traditions, because obviously most of us have a literary or cinematographic background …
We’ve only had a few people for All the Adventures (like Robert Lafore) who styled themselves in this period as “writers” or “artists”; Hébert here is recognizing that the leap over mediums is difficult to make, and he claims that young people in particular have a certain “banalité de demain”, that is, banality of tomorrow, where they have an easier time dealing with the new medium that seems to be “the future” as they were born into it.
Coming up: a large and very difficult puzzle-fest with an elaborate magic system. Back to roots!
Two quick corrections from my previous post before I move on with the game.
First off, it turns out you can’t just type (for example) RESTAURANT to jump from the third floor to the first floor and go all the way to the relevant room, at least in normal circumstances. I swear I had it happen once, but it may have been a glitch or me misunderstanding some text in the French. The right way to travel between floors is to hop in L’ASCENSEUR (the elevator) with the command ASC and then it will give you a choice of floors. Pressing a number will go to the relevant floor, then pressing “9” will step off. There’s still some extra movement conditions (like if you’re sneaking in a room, you have to use SORtir to get out first before you go somewhere else on the same floor) but that essentially covers everything.
Secondly, as more than one person has pointed out, “voler” (which can be typed as VOL) is described on the commands screenshot as taking a noun, so the meaning shifts from “fly” to “steal”. I was still baffled for a bit after because it seems like it doesn’t work for stealing items (it doesn’t work as a synonym for “take”).
I finally did find that at the roof of the hotel, there is a PISCENE (pool) with a locker room, and if you go in the locker room you can VOL the lockers and take money directly. For all the other thefts you make, you’re grabbing items to trade with a fence (which I’ll show off in a moment).
The overall structural design is that the night you go sneaking, you have fifty turns; after the fifty turns are over, you TERMINER, which finishes the session. After this, a fence comes and visits your room, and offers money for each of the items you’ve stolen that are considered “valuable”. You then pay off your bill and have a new bill to keep staying at the hotel.
The third item there is what FUMER (smoke) can be used on, although the game just tells you that you can’t because it’s very illegal. Given how much loot we’re swiping, it seems odd our main character has an issue with breaking the law.
Since the stealth happens at night, it is by default dark, and if you try to start stealing things without remedying this fact you’ll have a chance of simply tripping in the dark and giving yourself away in that fashion. Fortunately, room 001 seems to always have a LAMPE.
Although taking it doesn’t automatically work. Here, we hear noises and hide in a corner but it turns out to be a false alarm.
Once the lamp is safely taken (just random), the dark is no longer a problem. Now we normally can have free reign of the hotel: we can use the PASSE from our room to unlock any locked door, and the lamp will keep us from stumbling in the dark. Mind you, we still might randomly have an attempt at swiping an object fail:
Here, we wake the person by trying to pick up the brooch, and escape via having the reflexes of a cat.
There’s one other obstacle that can come up, which is a chain across the door.
The MAGNET I mentioned in my last post works; you can TIRer (pull) the chain and you get congratulated for being clever. I was originally puzzled because the use of the object is passive (that is, the magnet is used automatically if you’re holding it) so I didn’t realize the magnet was being used there. I was visualizing security so shoddy I could just yank the chain by hand and it’d break.
So this game technically had one puzzle (two if you count the light). You might also count the “square key” I’ve found, which I have yet to be able to use, and the fact I have no idea where the computer is. I’ve checked every single room; an excerpt:
Note these are randomized each game, and even randomized within a game; I had a save state where I went back to a room I had visited in a prior iteration and found a second object that wasn’t there before. I think that’s supposed to represent guests moving things around. I do suspect I might be missing something involving the various guests, but I have yet to get any commands to work when I see one.
Note that shot above shows the outside of one of the two penthouse suites (601, 602) but both of them were empty!
The only even vaguely suspicion room was one with a DISQUE, which I am assuming is of the computer variety. (The fence describes it as a DISQUE DE GRANDE VALEUR — that is, of high value — but only offers $10 for it. That wouldn’t buy even half a French-translated Sierra game.)
Perhaps if I’m lucky enough to run across DOCTEUR O’BRIEN in my travels there’s some action that works (maybe he’s toting around a device that unlocks a secret door?) Keep in mind (based on the interview from 1984) the author said sometimes he couldn’t beat the game, so it is quite possible I just rolled a bad seed and have to replay to see certain conditions.
On top of that I’m not sure what the square key is for. It could go to a vehicle; studying the instructions, after you swipe the computer you’re supposed to make a getaway in a car.
Or maybe something is supposed to happen only in later burglar jaunts? I’ve only tried out the first two, maybe there’s some developments when you hit number five. The game loop really just has you visiting each and every room so it’s not easy to check if something small has changed.
The source is in BASIC but has resisted my very light prodding to see if I can find any enlightenment; I might need to resort to fierce prodding instead.
The center of gravity of Canada’s computing history has always been Ontario. A group at the University of Toronto in 1945 started a committee and took a tour of the United states in 1946, visiting essentially every major computer. Planning started in 1948 on what would be dubbed the UTEC, with a functioning version assembled in 1951. The full-scale version ended up not being built, because it turned out to cost essentially the same to buy a Ferranti Mark I from Britain, but the UTEC was still essentially Canada’s first general-purpose computer.
IBM’s presence in Toronto dates all the way back to the 1920s, and hence when they started in electronic computing it became their major center of research.
1968 photo taken by George Dunbar of Leslie Mezei, showing computer art made at the University of Toronto on an IBM 7094. Source.
One of the (many) candidates for “world’s first personal computer” was the MCM/70, first shown in May 1973 at the Fifth International APL Users’ Conference in Toronto.
In 1969, a census of existing digital computers and process controllers found the majority (1045 out of 2037) being in Ontario. However, in second place there was Quebec, at 485.
Sperry Canada, for instance, started there in 1950 (the geographical positioning being somewhat motivated by military considerations, as Quebec had closer proximity to the by-plane Greenland route over to the USSR). Concerns with French-speaking separatists led the Canadian government to have an interest in developing the Quebec economy; thus while Circuit Design Corporation put a research group in Toronto, they put their manufacturing in Quebec City aided by funding from the Canadian government.
Our unity is not secure if people in some extensive regions have to put up with opportunities and standards well below those of other Canadians…
Jean Marchand, Canadian politician
It is still true an idle listing of Canadian computing accomplishments has the word “Ontario” appear a disproportionate number of times. While what has been argued to be the first videogame came out of Toronto (Bertie the Brain, 1950)…
Photo by Bernard Hoffman for LIFE Magazine.
…and while Peter Jennings (also Toronto) made what is arguably the first commercial Canadian game (MicroChess, which did well enough that it helped fund the making of VisiCalc) and the first Canadian game company we know of is not from Toronto but still Ontario (Speakeasy Software, 1978)…
By early 1978, we had four titles ready for the Apple II — “Bulls and Bears”, “Warlords”, “Microtrivia” and “Kidstuff”. Trying to fit them into 16k and make them worth buying was certainly a challenge. This was before floppy disks! The only means of reproduction was audio tape. I found a company in Ottawa that produced educational audio tapes for doctors and talked them into replicating our tapes. The only problem was that only 50% of them worked and we didn’t know which 50% they were! So our 8 and 10 year old kids would load them one at a time on our home machine and pick out the good ones. Talk about cheesy technology.
…Quebec did eventually have their own accomplishments in videogaming. For us, starting specifically with the company Logidisque, founded by Louis-Philippe Hébert.
Louis-Philippe Hébert was an author with a strong interest in computers and the intersection between the two; he did a thesis while at the University of the Montreal in the 60s entitled
Application de principes mathématiques à la lecture et l’écriture de textes
that is,
Application of Mathematical Principles to the Reading and Writing of Texts.
While writer in residence at the University of Ottawa from 1977-1978 he got a Apple II and learned to program, making his own word processor. He got to meet with Steve Wozniak himself a year later while visiting California, who asked:
How come a smart guy like you writes in French?
The same year he formed a group dedicated to computers, and two years after that he registered the trademark for Logidisque. They published their first games in 1982, and they appear to be the first original games from Quebec.
I should emphasize regarding the term original games. Hugo Labrande has identified companies that sold translations, most notably Computerre, some which came before Logidisque, so they’re not quite the first company from Quebec to sell games, just “original” games.
It makes sense given Louis-Philippe Hébert’s long interest in electronic text (and rugged continuing use of French despite ribbing by the Woz) that’d his company would release the first original French-Canadian adventure game, Arsène Larcin by Éric Primeau.
From boardgamegeek.
The author Primeau joins the ranks of many, many teenaged adventure authors: he was 17. A friend of his knew someone who worked in a company located close to Logidisque; both Primeau and his unnamed friend got invited by Hébert for a visit in May of 1982. While there Hébert showed off the trading simulation game Caraïbes; Primeau was invited to try making a port, which he finished in a month.
To follow up, Primeau pitched a text adventure game. He had seen Scott Adams on a friend’s TRS-80 (specifically, Mission Impossible) and was influenced to try his own game, which he worked on starting in June, finished in time to be published nearly the same time as Logidisque (and Quebec’s) first game, Têtards. As French games were just getting started it not only is Quebec’s first adventure but one of the first adventures worldwide to appear in French. It was sold as a “roman interactif”, or interactive novel, reflecting Hébert’s literary bent (this was before Infocom started using “interactive fiction”!)
As the name suggests this is a spin-off of Arsène Lupin, the gentleman-burglar created by the French author Maurice Leblanc in the early 20th century. I’m not going to go into lore, as there doesn’t seem to be any specific references in this game; just as an aside, note that the original author had Lupin face off against an “unlicensed” version of Sherlock Holmes (Herlock Sholmes) and while most his thefts were of “realistic” artifacts some of his stories involved fantasy items like the Fountain of Youth.
You, as, Arsène Lupin Larcin, have arrived at the Hotel Majestyk, and your task is to find a secret computer.
Unlike Mad Martha where you picked a name to separate yourself from the avatar, here you are picking what name to sign in with, which would no doubt be a pseudonym. So this doesn’t quite remove the player from the avatar in the same way; a player can choose to still pretend they are Larcin but sign in with their real name.
You start in your room, 303.
“OBJETS DE VALEUR VISIBLES: RIEN DE PARTICULAR…” is simply “visible valuable objects: nothing special”. The two money values represent the amount in your pocket (starting at $0) and the bill to pay for the hotel room (at $300).
Inside 303 there is a “GARDE-ROBE SECRET” (secret wardrobe). Entering the wardrobe you can find a PASSE (pass-key).
Movement is incidentally quite irregular compared to a regular adventure game. While the above was the result of using ENTRER (enter) and getting out again is a matter of using SORTIR (leave) once you leave the hotel room there are no compass directions. You are instead able to consult a map and type the name of the place you want to go.
While I’ve seen modern games go this route and it isn’t that dissimilar from, say, the “big map” view of a Lucasarts-style game where you just click on your destination instead of type it…
Return to Monkey Island map, via Mobygames.
…what is quite irregular is that you also travel between floors this way. For example, you can go straight to the restaurant on the ground floor by typing RESTAURANT.
There’s otherwise not a lot of direction as to which rooms to start poking around in; the main catch is that this is an adventure-roguelike. The location of the computer is randomly generated each game, and the various characters move around in random ways. In the interview I linked earlier, even Primeau himself admitted he couldn’t always beat the game.
Même moi qui ai conçu ce jeu, je ne suis jamais assuré de trouver l’ordinateur: je sais comment gagner, mais je ne suis pas certain d’y parvenir.
Even I, the designer of the game, am never sure of finding the computer; I know how to win, but I’m never certain I’ll succeed.
So this might get a bit fussy! There does seem to be things resembling “puzzles” (I have, for example, found a magnet, although I’m not sure what it’s for) but this might possibly fall on the side of a strategy game. (Even given the Scott Adams inspiration, this is understandable, given the author’s previous immediate job was porting the strategy game Caraïbes. The irregular movement concept likely comes from there; it is a game set in the Caribbean where you type the word of the place you want to go when you are at a port, kind of like the later game Pirates!)
A random room I’ve broken into. I’m pretty sure the “television” and “magnet” are placed at random and would be elsewhere on a different playthrough.
This means the game might be absolutely horrible to beat; while there’s nothing as confusing as Madness and the Minotaur there could be a situation with a puzzle where the only reason you can’t solve it is that the random number generator failed to go your way! There is one advantage I do have: the author was nice enough to put full command lists.
Ignoring the “location movement verbs” which are really just nouns, the game has a parser which clips the first three letters of each word, getting:
VER (verrouiller = lock)
TIR (tirer = pull)
PLO (plongée = dive)
SOR (sortir = leave)
PRE (prendre = take)
DEP (deposer = drop)
DEV (déverrouiler = unlock)
ASS (asseoir = sit)
LEV (lever = stand)
ECO (écouter = listen)
VOL (voler = fly)
ENT (entrer = enter)
NAG (nager = swim)
FUM (fumer = smoke)
BOI (boire = drink)
JOU (jouer = play)
What’s FLY there for? Are we escaping by helicopter? And it looks like you can’t be a cool French gentleman-burglar without some kind of cigarette.
I’ll try a stab at visiting every room (using the power of saving my game to not waste time) and report in next time what encounters I have.
(Thanks to Ethan Johnson and QuarterPast for help scrounging images, and Hugo Labrande for doing a great deal of research on this topic before I arrived. I also found John Vardalas’s book The Computer Revolution in Canada quite helpful.)
We’ve seen Chris Evans once before, with the two-pack Mines of Saturn/Return to Earth, originally published by Evans himself under Saturnsoft, but later picked up for distribution by Mikro-Gen.
Mad Martha ended up being incidentally important to Mikro-Gen’s history. Briefly: Mikro-Gen went to the ZX Microfair in August of 1983, being placed next to a small company known as a Crash Micro Games Action (of Crash magazine). The two struck up a relationship and Crash received a copy of Mad Martha and gave it a good review (it “prove[s] how much fun a BASIC written adventure can be”). Crash had enough reach that the company Mikro-Gen ended up being one of the well-known British companies through the 80s.
Via Spectrum Computing.
I mentioned the Crash story before, but what I didn’t mention — because I didn’t play the game yet — was how inexplicable the Crash story was. That’s because this game is very bad, and I’ll pull out another review made when the game was published just to show I’m not talking from future-perspective. (And yes, art is subjective, etc., but I tend to be pretty good at figuring out where the boundaries are of “this works as long as you accept norms A, B, and C” but even going up to the Greek alphabet won’t save this game.)
I will grant the game does one very solid thing at the start. While the intro text starts with “you, as Henry Littlefellow” it then asks for your name (for example: “Jason”), and consistently addresses you by that name, clearly establishing Henry Littlefellow as someone different. This is similar to how Softporn Adventure made sure the “puppet” was entirely different from “you”; the “puppet” has a somewhat sleazy objective so it helps to be separated a step.
(In addition to our name, the game asks to pick a difficulty level, 1 to 3 — I’ll come back to this later.)
Henry — that is, the avatar, not us — is wanting to go on a night on the town, and do so by stealing his wife’s cash and sneaking out. His final goal is to turn his 50£ into 100£; however, his alert wife is waiting with an axe and will do Henry in at any mis-step.
Waking up the baby? Axed to death. Tripping over a cat? Axed to death? Wandering out to the bar to spend all his wife’s money on beer and then amble home? Still axed to death, but this time with feeling.
Each location in the game has graphics; first the graphical view is shown, then a text description.
The parser is extraordinarily slow. To be fair, all the Brit-games for ZX Spectrum have been slow, but this one is spectacularly slow, as in the machine needs to be cranked to 7x or 8x times speed to even have a reasonable response time. The author’s previous games didn’t have this problem, so I don’t know what happened; the only other comparable game I can think of is the unoptimized version of Basements and Beasties.
That might be acceptable if the parser was good; it is not.
> examine bed
You examine the china utensil!
Inside it’s rim is a small key
Yes, examine just ignores whatever noun you put and chooses one for you. In general, the parser only accepts the right command it is fishing for and no others.
After “open door”.
Through door 1.
I eventually stopped trying to interact with things, here I was still flailing.
Through door 2 is the room with the baby, and once you enter the baby starts crying.
You can “give dummy to baby” in order to calm him down, then grab an old lamp from the floor and pop over to door 3.
The cabinet has some OIL that you can use to FILL LAMP, and then as long as you’ve picked up the matchbox you can LIGHT LAMP. This is needed because the room beyond the door is dark and you’ll trip over the cat and die (via axe) without light. The rest of the map, incidentally, also requires you to hold the lamp lest the same fate be suffered (including in, say, a bar or a casino).
The matches are used passively, you just go direct to LIGHT LAMP while holding them.
Past the door is a “lounge”, and examining the couch will examine the family portrait instead (of course) revealing a safe. With the key from earlier in hand you can open the safe…
…and then get dropped into a mini-game.
Here’s where difficulty comes into play: it determines our number of lives which apply through this game and the mini-game immediately following this one.
Here, we move slowly back and forth and pound bills slowly appear on the ground while the cat wanders around trying to trip us underfoot. Number keys move up and down, Henry moves either left or right automatically. and if Henry has hit the far side of the scrolling screen, he turns around the other direction.
Picking up a bill creates a dot on the ground and you can trip over the dots and lose a life; the cat also is death. Strategy-wise, I found it best to start by just moving up and down quite a bit while the bills started piling on the ground, and then once the screen was dense enough to find a horizontal stretch with lots of money and let Henry just go (he might trip over a cat on the way, but that’s only one life).
Immediately after this game comes Frogger.
It took me exceedingly long to get through here; one thing I was doing wrong at the start was pounding the keys (5 through 8, 5 is left, 8 is right) rather than just holding, which registers the movement a little better but does make it difficult to stop.
The traffic moves left to right, and the key rather confusingly moves constantly to the right but wraps around from the right side of the screen to the left. You have to push “down” on the key to pick it up, and the time is very tight to both grab the key and make it back — you basically can’t spend any time at all adjusting and have to jump into traffic right away. I did one step left, and then held down; this let me get down about two-thirds of the way, and then I had to let the key go for a moment to avoid jumping under a car, then pressed it to resume. Then I had to immediately turn back direction and pray as the timer is such you can only win with two or three seconds to go at most.
Note how the game is here referring to Henry, while in the parser it refers to you.
With the keys in hand you finally get to wander outside.
Other than a jail (if you wander into it, game over) and your house (which you have to voluntarily enter back into, but Martha is waiting, game over) there’s a casino, bar, and cinema.
The card is just laying around outside; you’ll need it for the casino.
The bar must be visited first. A drunk will ask you to buy him a drink; do so, and he’ll give you a movie ticket.
With the ticket you can get into the movie theater… .
…where there is a tie lying around. You should wear the tie, because the club requires a tie in the dress code to get in.
Once in, you need to play one more mini-game to win: bet on the Wheel of Fortune. You can distribute 1 pound at a time on multiple numbers, or put them all on the same number, or do some mix; after you do so, the wheel spins around. The number of spins it makes gets the odds that a winner receives back.
Having picked five numbers, and the Wheel mid-spin.
At this point the game was tiring me so I just used save states. Fortunately, if you save, spin, and see the wheel hits a particular number, reloading and betting on that specific number will not change that behavior. That makes it easy to win to the end, and be rewarded with text-character graphics dancing ladies.
That’s it. Everything’s over. Hitting a button resets the game. Given Henry’s wife is still waiting with an axe I expect his night of pleasure to be cut short off-screen.
This sounds almost amusing just narrated out, but the incredibly finicky parser hid some extremely basic puzzles and some amazingly painful mini-games.
Dismal and painful to play. It was well known back in 1983, as Mikro-gen spent a bit on publicity. You were meant to get into the tongue-in-cheek mood of the game, but it is so bad that you’d rather get a dental drilling.
— Exemptus, from Computer Adventure Solution Archive
Slow, terrible puzzles and some god-awful arcade sequences.
— Gunness, also from Computer Adventure Solution Archive
Computer & Video Games did a October 1983 review (not too far off from when the Mikro-Gen version came out) and it was a full page as scathing as I’d ever seen from that era.
The review goes into technical issues with the game itself and calls it “user hostile”.
I tried doing useful things with the potty, but was not rewarded. I tried opening the window without success. I opened the door, and found myself in a corridor, from where I entered a bathroom, complete with “throne” and toilet roll. Neither of these objects reacted when I tried to use them, nor could I have a bath. I concluded that I was extremely clean and must be in need of a laxative.
A very slow parser where a fair number of the commands are going to get sucked up due to objects just not being implemented ends up being one of the most intensely frustrating experiences 1982/1983 can offer.
There’s probably something interesting to be said regarding the “degenerate hero” genre in Britgames; 1983 games will include Denis Through the Drinking Glass where the husband of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher really just wants to go get a drink. We’ll have to build up to some other games before making any conclusions, I reckon, including — unfortunately — another game from 1983, Mad Martha II.
Via Mobygames. “If you upset the Pope, on your own head be it. I’m not going into the fiery furnace because of your irreverance. And speaking of the Pope — don’t in front of Ian Paisley unless you want a right earful of the Armagh twang.” I’m sure this made sense to Brits of the 80s, but I’ll save researching for another time.
So I fully intended to post about one more short game to finish 2024, and while I found something short, it turned out to be uniquely bad in an unusual way, making for a longer post than expected. It will land here eventually.
In the meantime, let’s look back at 2024! And what I hope is the last full year devoted to games from 1982, as we genuinely are in the final stretch, and you can read that post I just linked to see the remaining games. Only a few on there are ones I expect to be “long”, that is, take more than three posts. (My next “long” one upcoming is Cornucopia, which is allegedly Cotton’s hardest, so more comparable to Catacombs than Goblin Towers.)
If you want to just read everything I posted last year, you can go to my Big List, hit everything in 1982 starting from Crime Stopper up to Espionage Island; also snag the six from 1981 starting from Escape from Colditz, and also two from 1980 (Magical Journey, Bally’s Alley).
If you just want a sampling, I picked some interesting moments. I don’t consider these the “best”; I appreciate all the games I play, even the ones that play poorly.
Let’s start with my most popular new post of 2024, where I go through the newly-unearthed campaign known as Mirkwood Tales and compare Crowther’s D&D experiences directly with his writing of Adventure. I then go on to give some new information on Don Woods leading to the Software Toolworks version of Adventure, the only one that paid the duo royalties.
Schrag was into making games for the challenge of coding, and he made multi-directional look graphics games for the TRS-80. Despite us having other first-person adventures before (like Asylum and The Haunted Palace) this is the closest in feel to a proto-Myst. Includes one absurdly unfair puzzle.
Dragon’s Keep by Rae Lynn MacChesney, Margaret Paul Lowe, Al Lowe, and Michael MacChesney
Dragon’s Keep got the attention of Sierra On-Line; this eventually resulted in Al Lowe being the main developer on Leisure Suit Larry. This was interesting to study as it goes very different against the tide of regular adventure games, and I managed to unearth some new history on a story that’s been told before.
Based on the eventually-revealed-to-be-fiction books of Carlos Castaneda, and the biggest surprise of the year. It manages to leverage its sparse prose as a benefit, on top of a unique setting and some brilliant puzzles.
A randomized clone of an even more obscure game which contains an absolutely bizarre trick which leverages the computer’s “crash error” system as a game mechanic.
A pair of homebrew adventure games made for the Bally Astrocade. As wild a technical achievement as that sounds, with plenty of misadventures just trying to get the games to even work.
The most pleasant thing for me to play all year; Infocom still holds up even to modern standards. I’m particularly happy how I managed to weave in historical details and textual analysis with what people have previously written.
The start of German, Italian, and French adventure gaming respectively, with lots of historical details. I was particularly invested in getting the details of these out to English-speaking audiences; there’s a lot about early European gaming we still don’t know.
One more bonus pick; an elaborately animated game originally for Tandy CoCo with a fascinating historical story attached, and some analysis about what influences game creation.
If you’re a regular reader and want to plug any of the games in particular from last year, feel free.
Transylvania had an unusual amount of care (and available time!) put into the graphics, with Penguin’s cutting-edge software; Critical Mass had dynamic real-time events that felt like one of the necessary steps on the road to King’s Quest and modern point-and-click games.
Q: I think it’s fair to say the Broken Sword games don’t contain quite the same material, but they have a certain character to them that’s rather distinct. Is there a commonality to the character behind your games?
A: Yes. You could call it puerility. In my heart I know my games were being puerile early on.
I theorized last time I was stopped by parser troubles: indeed I was, and after I resolved the issue it was smooth sailing to the end.
The right command here is to
SWITCH SWITCH
I can’t even blame the system. Just one regular synonym (like PULL or FLIP) would have made this better.
With the switch pulled, the only effect was to have the landing light off. However, this gave me a sudden idea: what if this is where the explosive went? I was thinking of there being a “drama time” event where after turning the light back on, a vehicle would try to land and set the explosive off. (Drama time in that there’s no reason why turning a light off and on again would summon a vehicle — it’s just a matter of the event waiting until the player already has things in place.) However, that’s not quite how things worked out, but it got me to a solution anyway.
Since DROP PLAS(TIC EXPLOSIVE) was getting intercepted by a question as to where, I knew I was on the right track. Since the bulb is in the way, the trick is to UNSCREW BULB…
THE BULB POPS OUT AND SMASHES ON THE ROCKY GROUND
..and then DROP PLAS(TIC) / INTO LAND(ING) works. Then you can SWITCH SWITCH (sigh) again:
The tank moves and leaves its original position unguarded. Not the result I was expecting, but I’ll take it. (You can even go east and see the tank sitting there, but it doesn’t see you or do anything.) On to the last portion of the game!
The path leads to a volcano, and then a METAL PLATFORM and a part I expect a lot people got stuck on. I’d experimented enough with the PEN LIGHT (from the guard that we killed with a knife) that I knew SHINE PEN got the response that I could do that, but not yet. Hence, when a moment came up where there seemed to be not much useful to do otherwise, I was ready:
The secret base has a SAFE where the 27/09 message back at the guard hut applies (remember I knew that 2709 was understood by the parser). The only fussy part is the method of entry: the game directly asks if you want to try entering a code, and you type YES, and then only after you type 2709.
That is, you can’t treat what the game says as a rhetoric question.
Opening the safe reveals a BRIEFCASE and PLANS FOR A MASSIVE INVASION; this must be the “secret” we’ve been sent to find.
Just south there’s a colonel, and we can just straightforwardly KILL him, and take his jacket stored nearby. There’s a guard later that then mistakes you for the colonel so you can get by.
This is followed by a helicopter you can use to escape. Just make sure you don’t PULL LEVER which gives the highly deceptive “I CAN’T DO THAT YET” but instead PUSH LEVER.
Making a beeline for the carrier is not healthy, as indicated above. You need to first fly around a little and then some harriers fly by and spot you.
I think you need to also have dumped the colonel’s jacket first before doing this.
Then you can safely land to victory.
Adventure E by an entirely different author!
The game was … fine, I suppose? There’s very little of the complexity allowed by a Scott Adams game (with timing, multiple attributes, etc.) All of the previous games (A through C) required odd leaps of logic that didn’t really happen here; the “hardest” puzzle probably was the use of the plastic explosion which I admit I solved by accidentally trying to cause a different effect, but it still didn’t strike me as unfair.
I do think the system itself really held the games back. With very little possible in the way of custom messages, and I CANT for everything, this is weak parser; a Greg Hassett game from 1980 does a better job in communicating why an action didn’t work. I think the ZX81 system itself (and the fact the original games even worked on ZX80!) can somewhat be blamed; even the most talented of modern authors would have trouble squeezing more out.
And we in the UK were working with so little memory, compared to our peers in the US. One of the first Artic releases was 1K ZX Chess. We crammed a chess playing game into 1K. The reason that UK programmers and technical people got so good was because we were working with 1k, and then maybe 16k. In the US they were working with up to 64k. We had cassettes and they had floppy disks.
On the other other hand, I can tell you once we reach most text adventures being aimed at the ZX Spectrum, we’re not in a land of milk and honey. But at least they were capable of more.
Coming up: Not sure! Brian Cotton was supposed to take longer to beat, so I’ll try to find something small to finish off the year.
This is the last of the Charles Cecil games made with Richard Turner for Artic Computing. (Previously: Inca Curse, Ship of Doom.) Ship of Doom had the kerfuffle calling it a “digital nasty” due to a particular scene; after publishing Ship of Doom, Turner had his talk with a Whsmith manager about how his art was “rubbish” (as Charles Cecil notes, “…we weren’t worried about logos and marketing. We wanted to make games.”)
Espionage Island is the adventure that came after that talk, so the cover isn’t just plain text anymore.
From Mobygames.
The text adventure engine (based off a 1980 Practical Computing article) still hasn’t changed; plenty of I CANT messages for “I understood that verb but I’m not going to do it for whatever reason” and I DONT UNDERSTAND for when the verb is out of range. (The remaining games, E through H, do change things up, but we’ll save discussing that for when we reach 1983.)
We are, straightforwardly, on a reconnaissance mission to an island, looking for a “secret”. I think realistically we might get a camera or something (at the very least there’s a “disguise” not mentioned in inventory) but we otherwise just start sitting in a plane that was “hit by enemy fire”.
You can GET PARACHUTE, WEAR PARACHUTE, and PULL LEVER to be on your way. This leads to MID-AIR whereupon PULL RING will open the parachute, and you land in a DARK BUNDLE, and then get stuck by the parser.
This is one of those things that looks simple from the author’s end that’s still easy to get stuck by: you’re just supposed to DROP PARACHUTE, and now things open up.
Well, we start in a jungle rather than a beach, that’s different.
To the south there’s a “match” in a jungle thicket, and to the west is the crashed fuselage of our plane. There is a branch you can just grab, and a “dark corner”; if you light a match to look more closely, you die.
I’d say something about “ah, this is one of those games” but this is the only unexpected death I’ve come across so far. For example, a bit farther south there’s a guard, and going south farther kills you, but the game certainly gives sufficient forewarning.
Back at the plane, you can TOUCH CORNER or FEEL CORNER and feel a string; pulling the string reveals some BEADS. The beads can go over to another part of the island where there is a NATIVE WOMAN.
The player can SCREAM at the woman and get killed, but it took me major effort to find any other way to interact.
With the knife, you can eliminate the guard.
Past the guard is a “hut” with graffiti on a table that reads “RICK WAS ‘ERE 27/09”. After some testing I found 2709 is recognized as a word so I’m guessing it goes to a keycode combination later.
South farther is a river with a boat. You can head downstream with the boat, but not too far!
I suppose this death didn’t have much warning, but I still thought I was about to go off a waterfall.
If you (properly) take the boat only for a short trip, you can find a rope, then slide down back a “rocky ground” near a “rock face”. I am still suspicious that the rock face hides something but I haven’t had any luck.
A sneak preview ahead in time: there’s a plastic explosive later, but I wasn’t able to get it to blow open a hole here.
So that leaves the player with the knife, a gun swiped from the dead guard, a penlight swiped from the same, some rope, the match that blew things up earlier, and the branch by the crashed ship. To the southeast there’s an ERODED BANK with a gap and dropping the branch will allow crossing:
This leads to a swampy area which serves as a maze.
I actually ran into this area before going through the beads-knife-rope sequence, so I didn’t have much at hand to do mapping, so I started by trying EAST, SOUTH, WEST, NORTH, just in case this was a grid rather than a more randomly-connected area.
This leads to the next area! So I had the solution to the maze right away, although I still spent the time mapping partly just to be sure I didn’t miss something, but mainly so I can share the many arrows with you, the readers. This is proof that just because a map is messy to diagram, it doesn’t mean it is difficult to travel through.
Past the swamp is “marsh land” and then a mining site.
The ROPE seemed the most pertinent item, and I realized after some noodling the game allows you to TIE ROPE, followed by the prompt WHAT TO? You can specify to the rock hiding a shaft, then to the vehicle. Then you can hop on the vehicle and drive it forward in order to pull the rock.
Genuinely satisfying, and I didn’t struggle with the parser here! It helps that everything is just TIE or PUSH.
This opens a tunnel with a PLASTIC EXPLOSIVE (which you saw a preview of already, and I have yet to use). There’s warning sign about danger below and if you ignore the sign you get trapped in a ROCK CELL.
The way forward is to move on, going back outdoors to where there is a LANDING CLEARING and a CONTROL UNIT containing a switch which is set to green.
Unfortunately, my moment of smooth parser interaction was followed by utter pain: no verb I tried was able to interact with the switch.
I tried making my verb list and then applying each and every verb on there, no joy.
Just trying to move on, there’s a tank patrolling. Unfortunately, a tank is rather larger than a guard and neither the knife nor the gun is of use. I might think the plastic explosive could do something but again, no joy with the parser.
I’m unclear if I’m stuck here because of the aforementioned parser issues or if there’s some “legitimate” puzzle I’m missing. But just to summarize, I have
a.) a rock wall that may or may not be hiding something
b.) a switch that doesn’t want to work
c.) a tank I have been unable to get by
d.) and just for completeness sake, going down from the mine leads to a “cell” but I suspect that’s just a trap.
Renga in Blue 