IFComp 2020 continues apace; I’ve played some interesting games, but I’m going to save any words for close to the end. (Although, look: this one is really good.)
In the meantime, the Project continues, and for this game, the Quest for Earliest Britventure.
Brian Howarth is famous for his “Mysterious Adventures” series of 11 games, starting with The Golden Baton. He originally coded the first several directly for TRS-80, but later converted all of them to the Scott Adams database format*. If you look them up today, those are the main versions that pop up, but I’ve been playing both the original TRS-80 version and the BBC Micro version** from a year later (after Howarth had switched to Scott Adams format), and I can say they are significantly different. I’ve had puzzles I could solve in one version and not the other, up to the point I started just having both versions loaded at the same time.
I’m happy to describe my gameplay so far, but first! — how does Mysterious Adventure No 1 stack up against our three-way tie, in terms of release day? Just as a reminder, we’ve had Planet of Death, The City of Alzan, and Atom Adventure all come out in July 1981, with the first two even being advertised in the same issue of the same magazine. As the picture above indicates, The Golden Baton was first advertised in May, meaning it almost certainly came earlier (by magazine lag time, March or April of 1981). You can see lots more advertising here as collected by Gareth Pitchford.
I would now normally throw confetti and declare this the winner for Earliest Britventure*** — I had, in fact, planned for a while to finish my Quest here — but Gareth found a wildly-obscure-but-fascinating 1980 game which blows all the rest out of the water (I’ll be getting to that one soon). Disclaimer: to a genuine extent, this sort of chronological jockeying is for fun. A few months, in the tangled thread of influences, is not significant enough to wring hands over, especially given the variety of presentations and platforms (the 1980 game we haven’t got to yet is for yet another computer platform). Also, as I discussed with Atlantean Odyssey the second or third to arrive at an idea can be much more influential than the first. That’s certainly the case here — Howarth’s work is still “famous” (as far as text adventures can be), the series starting with Planet of Death casts a shadow over the Spectrum computer world, and while the City of Alzan game itself didn’t influence much the source code was part of a family tree of borrowing and development. Atom Adventure is just a blip on history but it’s essentially a proto-version of the colossal Xanadu Adventure from 1982.
…
The intro of the BBC version is rather long, and reminded me of Tower of Fear, so I have done another dramatic reading. Enjoy. (If it doesn’t show in your browser, you can find it here.)
Dark clouds drift ominously across the rising moon, you cringe as the night silence is suddenly shattered by the fearsome howl of some fell creature deep within the forest.
Weary from travelling, unable to force yourself onward, you sink to the ground and lean back against the bole of a huge, gnarled old tree. As your aching limbs slowly relax, you silently curse the road that led you to this evil place.
The noble cause that initially motivated you to undertake this deadly mission seems to pale into insignificance against the perils that you have, up until now, survived.
Your mission is to recover the legendary Golden Baton, a priceless artifact that has been worshipped by your race for countless generations.
The Baton was stolen from the palace of King Ferrenuil, ruler of your homeland. Many learned counsellors strongly believe that the Golden Baton holds within it a kind of life-force that maintains an equilibrium between the forces of good and evil.
For many centuries, your homelands have suffered no wars, no droughts or famine.
King Ferrenuil fears for the future of his people as the influence of the Baton has been taken from his lands.
Ever since the Baton was stolen, brave warriors and hardy knights were sent far and wide through the world in search of this artifact… none ever returned.
So it was that you started out on your journey, travelling through strange, hostile lands until finally you reached this territory of Evil magic whose name is never spoken. An almost tangible feeling of malice pervades the atmosphere and weariness descends upon the traveller like a pall of death.
You draw your robe around yourself to ward off the icy chill of night and sink into a troubled sleep, mortally afraid of what the coming days may cast upon you…
Summary: There’s a Golden Baton. Find it.
In all seriousness: I’m trying — and somewhat failing — to see from the perspective of the writer. To my readers, is there anyone who likes this kind of lore dump? It would be better if there was some relation to the game, but I reckon a 90% chance everything above is fluff. When I’m amidst the actual-gameplay portion of an adventure, I’ll happily go along with odd textual constructions, but when having to treat a block of text as just text, it’s hard for me to remain unruffled with phrases like “this territory of Evil magic whose name is never spoken”.
…
Art from The Tate’s collection of minimalist work. (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unreported.)
On the left, Sol LeWitt’s Two Open Modular Cubes/Half-Off from 1972. On the right, Carl Andre’s Equivalent VIII from 1966.
Both are from the minimalist “school”, both in the same museum collection, and they were only made 6 years apart. Yet, there are significant differences in form; the LeWitt piece plays with shadow, while the Andre piece is nearly shadow-free. Andre’s cinder blocks are an arrangement of found materials, while LeWitt’s piece is a constructed sculpture. While both involve “geometric single or repeated forms”, even in that zone the single-offset-repeat of the cube feels much different than the many-block-repeat on the right.
The point here is while we tie the works together with the word “minimalist”, there are still shades of difference within that meaning; we could make sub-schools within sub-schools and still not fully encompass the potential areas of minimalist technique.
This is relevant for The Golden Baton; I’ve used “minimalist” quite a bit to describe this sort of game …
..but also this sort of game.
They’re the same game, by the same person, but the BBC Micro version (the second shot) is sort of an ultra-minimalism, describing locations by one or two words. The TRS-80 version includes a bit more, and the effect on playing is significant.
A few more comparisons just to make the point; I think I can get away with not labeling which is which:
I AM BY A HUGE OLD TREE WITH GNARLED BRANCHES.
I’m by a Tree
I AM IN A CLEARING IN THE FOREST, THERE IS AN OLD HUT HERE WITH THE WINDOWS BOARDED UP.
I’m in a clearing by a Cabin
I AM NOW INSIDE THE HUT, THE FLOORBOARDS ARE ROTTEN AND THERE IS A HOLE IN THE FLOOR.
THINGS I CAN SEE ARE:-
AN OLD BARREL – AN OIL SODDEN RAG –
I’m in a Cabin with hole in floor
Things I can see: Barrel – Oil Sodden Rag –
To reiterate, this did have genuine gameplay effect. In the first room you find a sword hidden in the leaves, and just south there are some brambles.
I AM IN A TANGLE OF BRIARS, I FEEL LIKE A PINCUSHION! THE BRIARS ARE SO THICK I CAN HARDLY SEE ANYTHING.
I’m in a tangle of PRICKLY briars
You can CHOP BRAMBLES which reveals a hidden rope. I found it this easier to realize in the super-minimalist version of the game.
The sword can then be used to kill a wolf…
The BBC version just says I’m by a Path and there’s no north direction specified; you need to GO PATH.
… and past the wolf to the north is a castle. You can swim in the moat.
I AM STOOD AT THE PORTCULLIS, I DONT THINK I CAN OPEN IT.
I’m at a Portcullis
I was stumped in the BBC version, but the slight extra text in the TRS-80 version (and the clarification I wasn’t still swimming) led me to try THROW ROPE.
THE ROPE HAS CAUGHT ON SOMETHING! I THINK ITS SECURE!
I should note this confusion wasn’t just mine; Dale Dobson at Gaming After 40 got stuck here (he played a Scott-Adams-format-with-graphics version), and complained at length about this puzzle being too hard to solve.
Past this inside the castle is a armored figured. In the TRS-80 edition of the game the figure stops you so you can go no farther.
In the BBC version, you can just walk on by. Past the figure I’ve found a lamp that lets me get in a dark cave at the cabin/hut I clipped earlier.
I haven’t been able to solve the armored figure puzzle, so I can’t yet get the lamp in the TRS-80 version! It still helps to know the progression — I know not to fuss with the dark hole assuming I’ll find something to get by the figure — but I’m going to stick with the TRS-80 as my “primary” game for now with the BBC game as a supplement.
(*) Mr. Howarth reverse-engineered the Scott Adams format on his own, and later helped make official ports of those games.
(**) I chose the BBC Micro in honor of the work of Anthony who recently ported the BASIC versions of Pirate Adventure and Adventureland with some fascinating write-ups. Also, for more IFComp reading, he picked apart and ported the C64 game that Nick Montfort entered.
(***) I’m incidentally excluding ports of Crowther/Woods Adventure from all this. I’m also not discussing Level 9’s Fantasy from 1981 because the game is currently lost, although it’s on my Top 3 of Games I’d Really Like To Try — it’s not only historically important from the angle of the company it came from (sort of the Infocom of the UK, although I’d split the title with Magnetic Scrolls) but in being the odd sub-genre of open-world-with-dynamic-characters as seen in other games like The Hobbit.
Allow me first a side trip to a 1980 Med Systems game by William F. Denham, Jr.
In The Human Adventure, you fly a miniaturized ship inside a body attempting to destroy cancer cells. It’s a strategy game in form, rather than a puzzle-based adventure; you have to keep track of your energy and use a LASER and occasionally need to electrify the ship’s hull. I’ve recorded some gameplay below:
I’ll be referring back to this video in a moment.
…
In Microworld, the main obstacle I overcame was nearly identical to that of Timequest which I just wrote about. You can GO LOCATION as a direction.
I had done LOOK COMPUTER only to be told I saw nothing of interest, and there are many other places where an object can’t be interacted with or approached. This computer is where the colored IC chips go; there are 8 of them, and once you insert all of them, pushing the button causes something good to happen (as you’ll see later).
This also resolves the COIL problem I had last time.
Other than the yellow chip shown above, I was missing three more, and I had a massive headache in the endgame.
THE MISSING BLUE CHIP
I mentioned the blue chip which was described as “LOST” and clearly ended up at a lost and found.
While I could LOOK CLERK (who “looks at you expectantly”) I otherwise had no method of interaction. Elsewhere, there was a paper I never even bothered to mention was a possible inventory item, because it seemed like an offhand joke.
You can SHOW PAPER (not DROP or anything else) and it gets confused for some other form. A “check form” I guess? Which is, as far as I know, not how lost and found places work. If you lose your wallet in a store, why would you have a check slip? Wouldn’t that be for a coat-check counter or the like? Am I missing something here?
THE MISSING BLACK CHIP
I’m saving this one for my conclusion.
THE MISSING ORANGE CHIP
Guess-the-noun returns, always an unwelcome guest.
I assumed, after the frustration above, the NPC could not be referred to (and there are lots of places with characters where you can’t refer to them, so this was not unreasonable!) I was wrong: you can use the noun RECEPTIONIST.
Elsewhere there is a sign that says YOUR LOSS IN MY GAIN so the key word here is LOSS.
This leads to the last missing chip, which I returned to the computer.
The computer gave me a tuning fork; given the lack of other puzzles to work on, I knew exactly where it went; I used it to shatter the glass box. This gave me a diskette, which I swiftly took to the RS-232 port and to the outside.
THE ENDGAME
You may notice the voice-activated device connected to the computer. I had sufficient hunch to realize I needed to say something to win the game, and I also had sufficient hunch that the floating binary I found earlier would be important
but I was horribly stuck. The binary doesn’t translate to anything in ASCII.
One room has something of a hint.
Aha, EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code)! I assume this gets covered in the 12-page book; I, fortunately, knew about this as an outdated alternative to ASCII. So all I needed to do was pull up an EBCDIC table and…
…find nothing. It spells nothing. Argh!
The trick here is that you are seeing the binary digits backward. Flip all the digits, AND use EBCDIC, and the word SYNTAX pops out. (This makes it a second-order puzzle which I’ve ranted about before, but I don’t have the energy this time; I’m just glad to be done.)
So, the electrons are cheering for me, but what did I do exactly? Does the disk accomplish anything in particular? We voluntarily went in, and getting out came long before getting the disk, so this wasn’t an “escape”. The game doesn’t indicate what’s actually on the disk other than congratulations. I guess we’re supposed to use our imagination.
…
I’m going to take an unusual curve and evaluate Microworld as an educational game: how effective is it at teaching the topic it intends to teach?
Referring back to The Human Adventure (watch the video loop again if you need), notice it has
a.) details within the game itself that clarify what various parts of the body do
b.) a clear map so you can see their inter-relation
c.) gameplay which is directly relevant to the activity at hand, as the player is a foreign body fending off attacks from white blood cells
d.) although not in the video, there’s an “exploration mode” which removes the combat and just allows getting a feel for the layout of the body
Compare with Microworld:
a.) a lot of the detail is deferred to the 12-page booklet, and many of the rooms are filled with jokes
b.) the map is an utter mess even if you draw it out
c.) the majority of the gameplay only has incidental relation to the parts being referred to; even the EBCDIC puzzle doesn’t make a lot of sense in “reality” context
d.) there’s random spots that can trap and kill the player, and a maze that is easy to get lost in, so “free exploration” is discouraged
Mind you, I think Microworld is a better game; Human Adventure is playable but gets dull fairly quickly. However, as a forerunner of adventure-game-education I do feel obligated to point out the flaws in this respect. I’m honestly quite glad for the odd bits of humor, but they were hard to detangle from what was being learned.
c.) is an especially interesting aspect; I think where adventure games and education have the most potential to merge. Microworld nearly managed a perfect shot with one of its puzzles, the one I’ve been saving:
THE MISSING BLACK CHIP (for real this time)
One of the items is a “lonely clock pulse” where it’s possible to WAVE PULSE.
I knew that solving the puzzle was simply a matter of finding the right location. I did it by just random testing everywhere on the map, but it would be possible to solve the puzzle by knowing about microelectronics. Take a look at the upper portion of the map; I’ll spoil the puzzle after.
The flip-flop will reset on a clock pulse!
In an adventure-game sense this isn’t the strongest puzzle; I’d nominate surfing the electromagnetic waves for that, but that’s a pun built on the word “wave” which could actively confuse a student trying to understand at the real-electronics level. By contrast, the flip-flop puzzles requires an act that matches with what the piece of circuitry actually does; puzzle-solving and learning are conjoined rather than lateral.
While the author of Microworld, Arti Haroutunian, went on to a game career after (most recently working on the Disney Infinity games) this was his only adventure game. It also seems to be his only educational game, with the notable exception of doing engineering for The Miracle Piano.
The Miracle Piano (for both computers and consoles) hooked up a real piano and asked the user to play music. Getting through a song meant hitting enough notes correct to make it to the next level. When The Mexican Runner did Miracle Piano for NESMania (playing every US NES title on his Twitch stream) Miracle Piano took the longest, at 91 hours and 16 minutes. (Might and Magic was close behind at 87 hours.) While he knew music, he did not know how to play piano; there was no way to win other than to learn how to play piano.
Of course, Miracle Piano is barely a game, but this is the extreme-congruence form of learning via software. How close should the activity and the intended learning really be? Microworld, if it was seriously intended as educational (it may not have been) is a little too far off. We will eventually hit some more educational adventures, but not for a while, so I have time to think about where the optimal balance lies.
BONUS READING: For more detail on The Human Adventure, Will Moczarski included it in his Med Systems marathon. There are lots of strategy games from this era that have not been written about, but alas, the closest we currently have to a Strategy Addict is Kurisu over at This Map is Completed who is chronoblogging through Japanese tactical RPGs. Jimmy Maher also has some very substantial posts on landmarks in strategy games. Speaking of educational games, Maher also has an excellent post on the Dr. Brain series.
The 26th running of “An annual celebration of new, text-driven digital games and stories from independent creators.”
104 games.
You can find them all here.
I have taken wildly-out-of-context clips from each of the descriptions and made a 104-line list, sorted at random.
a mysterious tunnel leading from the cavern
either Cinderella or Prince Charming
an international society of elite occult investigators
an arbitrary task of questionable value
Snapping Turtle was killed in action in the war while saving Silver Bear’s life
a non-profit organization with the purpose of improving everyday life
The Knot, where all mana connects
The world is scary enough without help from the supernatural.
a position in our architecture department.
imitation on demand
The revolution
You and your dog.
the perfect miniature world of The Land Down Under
your IT internship
the season finale
the disastrous sidewalk chalk tournament
solving the riddles of the Tomb of Ilfane won’t be easy,
fantasia on Kipling’s “Just So Stories”
trust as if it all depends on the gods
slay the monsters
dancing on the beach
an aid for mediation
Isaac receives a mysterious letter
peaceful multispecies space station
hopefully disturbing
100 years of years of peace and harmony
the entire public transportation system seems to have it out for you
consuming carelessly
shave your chest hair.
pirate captain cobbles together a ship and crew
The Forever Cat stalks through this universe
sentient swords and yokai warriors
What secrets do you contain?
Evil, sealed away for Aeons
Follow user StaircaseHaven14 on a Neopets-esque site called Ruffians
an evil duke
dive into the neon sea
writhing in pain
a demonic spy in the Cold War between Heaven and Hell
Summon demons, bake cookies
Nero Brashov, vampire and failed businessman, has revenge on his mind.
looking for a way home
cursed hyper-awareness
mostly word puzzles
dangerous monsters, extremely competitive bodybuilders, and hyperinflation
a mysterious briefcase
a missing woman
Faltering light sources. Fear.
a playful adventure of peculiar proportions
If only he would let you see his face.
a hero & a villain start planning their battles over coffee
the kettle dies with dignity
a vast, trackless desert with no food or water
the gnarls of her brain
Fallen London and Flatland
the wine and canapés
If only you hadn’t been too drunk to remember
alone on the open road
and loot what we find!
important episode
the summer of 1920
the Order of the Fiery Doom
unraveling the universe
investigate the cause of the Darkness
when you’re running, you need to stop eventually
all the weekends that will have passed
It’s pretty much going to be all his friends
Save OkayCo from the Flame-Lame Fey and Ed Spray-Spread!
Get ready, young space cadet
the suspects are clamoring to be accused.
thieves have failed to steal it
all that matters
Hooves and bells approach. The school bus is late.
popstar idol!
Maybe it’s time to change careers.
the embryonic state of something more important
Use stealth to navigate his apartment as well as his arguments
an antique store proprietor trying to make ends meet
the end of everything
all is not happy in Happyland.
Piscespunk
life is about enjoying the journey
running out of options
you may not distinguish dreams from reality
search for congee on this rainy night
love story where not much seems to happen
body-swapping
no way to find him other than a series of obtuse riddles
a kingdom in peril, an evil queen to be defeated, puzzles to be solved and YOU are the only hope
purveyor of artifacts, seeker of treasure
the old man had died with no family
You embark to find that voice
Who murdered Jenny Lee?
the cognitive leap forward
the underground tomb of the Pharaoh Haputet
Southern Gothic horror
a place of fun for the whole family
combining a dystopian sci-fi short story with an escape game
Were you ever told you can be anything?
a different story, far worse than unpleasant.
a game within a game within a game
fight a monster using a crowbar, listen to the radio, find secrets
a thinly-veiled attempt to teach comma rules
your family and your heritage
An optioisolator, one of the locations you can visit in Microworld. They transmit information using light. From an eBay auction.
Before I explain what puzzles I’ve solved and have yet to solve, let me give the general layout of the map.
You start, having being turned into an electron, passing through “primary windings”, a “secondary transformer”, a “rectifier”, a “regulator”, before landing on the “ground plane”, possibly passing through a main memory maze on the way.
At the ground plane you can branch in multiple directions including a “casette audio processor”, a “data bus”, a “keyboard matrix”, and “video RAM”.
There’s also a snack bar and the MICROWORLD DISCO which I’ll bring up again later.
Video RAM leads you to a “CIO chip” connected to a “disk controller”, “disk select latch”, “printer controller”, and most oddly, an “RS-232 board”.
The RS-232 seemingly leads to the “outside” but also a bunch of error rooms where you can lose the game. A sampling:
As the last clip indicates, the same direction can do alternate things.
Described in a topological sense, the connections make sense, but as I was forming my map, it was a jumbled mass. I guess this is the “educational” part of the game (although I’m going to wait until my final post before I judge the educational qualities or lack thereof of Microworld).
I’m still not certain what the objective is. The opening room states “an interesting object is in one of the corners” and my original thought that this was just referring to the calculator is incorrect; you can GO CORNER.
You are in the west corner of the blue room in front of an ATARI. A disk drive and a voice input device are connected to it.
The disk drive is empty.
The oddly bugged glass cube I mentioned last time (and was unable to open) does contain a disk, so my best guess the final objective is to escape the computer with the diskette and then use it on the computer. (I did manage to escape once, kind of, out of the RS-232 board, although no disk was at hand.)
The other objective related element has to be the assorted “IC chips” through the game. I’ve found a grey chip, a green chip, a white chip, and a red chip (separate from the odd buggy message describing a red chip in inventory when holding the glass cube — I have gathered you’re not supposed to be able to pick up the cube at all). Look at any of the chips and you get the message “all you need is a socket”, which alas, is something I don’t have; I’m also not certain how many chips there are. I did find a blue chip (although haven’t been able to hang on to) and one of the funky out-of-place errors indicated a black chip. This strikes me as a gather-the-Foobles-to-open-a-final-door sort of setup, so even though I’m not clear on where they go, I’m getting the general feel of plot advancement upon finding each new chip.
The most important thing I did was on accident.
You are in the transformer core. A couple of electrons are wandering around aimlessly. They seem to be mumbling something, but you can’t hear a word.
In the room above (in the opening area) I tried to LISTEN just out of curiosity, and hit the parser’s limit of only understanding the first four letters of each word. LIST gives what seems to be the full list of verbs.
This command doesn’t work in the TRS-80 version of the game, but it helped me crack some puzzles open in both a positive-space (what verbs are there) and a negative-space (what verbs aren’t there) sense.
For a positive-space example, there’s a snack bar with a CONTACT-COLA machine. No change is at hand, but KICKing a vending machine worked on another Med Systems game, hence:
I also, while thinking of the highly unusual verb ARRANGE, suddenly realized a place I could use it.
In a negative-space sense, notice there’s no GIVE command. I was able to sip the contact-cola but that seemed unsatisfying; there was a characteroid with its tongue out, and I realized perhaps the game just means for me to DROP the cola.
This yields an ID card reading “PRINTER MAINTENANCE”, allowing you to sneak into a new area and get the red IC card.
The DROP-instead-of-GIVE also led me to realize the *crystal* radio would be helpful in a room I’ve already mentioned:
STUFF I’M STUCK ON
In a way, the whole map is fair game. The problem with having artful and/or goofy text in an adventure game is it is hard to tell what is a clue and what is just atmosphere.
However, I’ve gotten past some “electromagnetic waves” using a surfboard, only to find a coil I can’t do anything with.
I found the blue chip, but when moving around after the game says it becomes LOST. There is a nearby lost and found, but I haven’t found any recognized syntax, other than LOOK CLERK (“the clerk looks at you expectantly.”)
One part of the maze traps you in a “well”; I don’t know if this is a trap or a puzzle.
Finally, there’s the glass cube I’ve already mentioned with a diskette inside. If you try to smash it persistently enough the whole thing is destroyed (including the disk).
I easily could just be missing some room exits, so I defintely don’t want any hints.
Let’s start with the smooth dulcet tones of William Shatner.
This educational film (originally recorded 1976, revised 1980) about the still-fresh-and-mysterious world of microprocessors has, as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing to do with the game Microworld (1981, by Arti Haroutunian, published by Med Systems, same folks as Asylum) but sometimes I have to just share things.
…
Amidst my review period for games to add to my list, there’s been the occasional reject for non-adventure status, like Dungeon of Htam from 1980:
YOU DISTURBED A MONSTER IN THIS CHAMBER
AND HE SPEAKS
HALT I AM LUM
YOU MAY NOT PASS THRU UNTIL YOU ANSWER THIS MATH QUESTION
WHAT IS
4 x 1 = ?
Other than that, Nellan is Thirsty has been “an adventure for children” but not really an “educational game”.
With those caveats out the way (and the note I’m not done with 1981, although I’ve poked at most of what’s ahead) Microworld seems to be the first adventure game specifically designed as educational.
From 80 Micro, October 1981.
I do not have the “12 page booklet containing a glossary and explanations of the electronics inside the TRS-80”, so I’ll just have to wing it.
I’ve seen the line about “the object of this adventure is part of the mystery you are to solve” elsewhere, including in the game I just played, Timequest. It was truly odd in that one given treasure collection was the obvious goal; here, it might possibly be as well, since I’ve found one item already (a crystal radio) with asterisks around it.
The original version was for TRS-80 but I played the Atari port (by the same author) instead; I’ll compare with the TRS-80 version when I’m done. This is in reverse of what Will Moczarski did when writing about the game; I figure it’ll give a different perspective.
I’m not sure who the game is targeted at. A 1982 review claims it is for an “intelligent child” or an “adventure gaming beginner” but it is designed too annoyingly for either one.
The above exchange is somewhat typical for educational games, which randomly have to toss in trivia questions (What year was Texas admitted to the Union?)
(You have to DROP CALCULATOR to move on.)
I haven’t run across much in the way of puzzles; gameplay so far has mostly been wrestling with a gigantic map where almost none of the directions make sense.
In progress. I’ve marked rooms where I’ve checked every exit; did I mention the game only occasionally mentions which exits go from a particular room so testing all of them is required?
I have run across a great many puns and strange in-jokes, and that’s honestly been the thing keeping me going so far. Some samples:
There is, as you might expect, a maze. The maze has more than five rooms and you have an inventory limit of five items, so there’s some “move one of the items to somewhere else mid-mapping and hope you don’t get confused” aspect to the whole process; the sort of thing you’d give beginners only as a cruel joke.
Also, the only reward has been a “column address room” where nothing seems to happen.
The items have been truly odd: a spinnifax, a crystal radio, a “lonely” clock pulse, a glass cube that looks like a “red IC chip” when you’re holding it (??), a surfboard, a refrigerator (???), and a “dielectric coin” which says “Go PLUS on display error.”
Regarding the last item, that’s a hint for a particular puzzle.
This is the “display error” — the only way out is GO PLUS. This incidentally suggests to me the glass cube/red IC chip thing might not be a bug but a puzzle.
I suspect more META will happen before the game is through. I’m just happy this game is something other than a generic manor or fantasy cave.
My key sticking point was missing one of the game’s invisible norms.
From the Museum of Computer Adventure Games.
Navigation in Scott Adams-inspired games is often not just by compass directions, but by “GO LOCATION”.
I’M STANDING ON A DIRT ROAD. VISIBLE ITEMS:
MARBLE BUILDING. STREAM.
SOME OBVIOUS EXITS ARE: WEST
For the room above, while you can just type WEST, GO BUILDING and GO STREAM are also possible. The game uses this relatively extensively, and it seemed like the norm was that whenever a location was enterable, it would always be mentioned as a separate object (as opposed to implied by the location line).
This was a false assumption.
I AM STANDING OUTSIDE OF A MOUNTAIN. VISIBLE ITEMS:
STRANGE MACHINE.
SOME OBVIOUS EXITS ARE: SOUTH EAST.
By the description above it looks like east and south are the only exits (if you try to GO MACHINE the game gives the explicit syntax GET ON). However, you can GO MOUNTAIN.
I suspect the author didn’t even think this was really a “puzzle”; one of the items you find up the mountain is a book. The book hints that TURN ON and TURN OFF are syntax for the flashlight and that spinning the brass ring (the one in inventory from the start of the game) could make something interesting happen. If you haven’t found the book, you’re almost guaranteed to run across the flashlight and try to use it. Why would you put a parser hint for the flashlight in the book if you didn’t expect it to be read first?
Invisible norms still haunt pretty much every videogame genre, but to stick with adventure games, consider the norm where the main player has items in their inventory that go unmentioned until INVENTORY is typed. I think most modern authors would not consider that aspect a puzzle, yet it is something players could clearly get stuck on.
I found the remainder of the game fairly satisfying, so if you’re interested, now is the time to veer away before I spoil the rest of the game.
…
The mountain also had a jade buddha treasure and a glove.
This was enough the make the rest of the game go smoothly. The glove I immediately knew was used to pick up the diseased raccoon, which I fed to the lion blocking the cave. This led me to a waterfall (hiding some coins) and a slab.
The SPIN RING worked at a the slab to teleport. Then I was frozen instantly, but already had a coat for that problem.
I ran across the only live human in the game. For time travel in 1235, most games would visit some European area. (I’m not sure how aware people in 1981 were of the word “eskimo” being offensive.)
The spear (from the screen above) was sufficient to kill the angry mole I was stuck on last time. Additionally, the ring/slab combination also worked in the future to get me to a computer room.
This led to a few more treasures, and victory.
So: was this really a time travel game?
Genuinely, I wonder what the author was thinking: as I’ve already mentioned, the compartmentalization of time zones made for a good structural organization, but in the end I was dealing more with teleportation than time travel. The far-future computer device uses a reel of tape; one of the treasures is some TECHNICAL MANUALS and the only other gizmo is one that turns sand into a copper bar (Which is sort of impressive but not something I’d time travel for).
The cover (from my last post) suggests some sort of wild trip to the far future, with an odd creature in the center, and this game had none of that. Maybe this was somehow a well-planned enough time travel trip that the protagonist knew not to meddle with areas containing people (paradoxes, etc.) I did enjoy myself, but it was curious to play in a genre that lacked nearly all the elements of said genre.
Timequest is also known as Time Quest, via the printed disk label and the opening title screen, and the title is given on a followup screen as Timequest Adventure. I’m honestly beyond being surprised when this sort of thing happens, although no game can match the pure naming chaos that was Dragon Quest Adventure. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Timequest shares a publisher in common: The Programmer’s Guild.
From the Museum of Computer Adventure Games.
The author of Timequest, William Demas, is better-known for doing the majority of work on Scott Adams Adventure #12 (it was a scenario like Pyramid of Doom where Adams just did some editing) and two “talking games” (Forbidden Planet and Forbidden City) for the TRS-80 published by Fantastic Software.
Timequest, on the other hand, has fallen down a memory hole of sorts; CASA is light on information, Mobygames has wrong information, and its existence doesn’t get mentioned at all in this interview with the author. There are no hints or a walkthrough anywhere, and nobody I can find has played it on video.
This is nearly identical to Journey Through Time in the premise: go through time, nab treasures, 12 in this case. However, the time periods don’t really have any theming; it’s more like you’re using a general teleportation device rather than visiting Nero or printing yourself a brand-new Gutenburg Bible.
Rather unusually, the game does not start with “home base” in the “present” of 1981.
Yes, 1886. I suppose a time traveler’s home base can be any-time and any-where. You can PUSH LEVER to go to 2930 or PULL LEVER to go to 1235. There are no other time periods (at least as far as I’ve gotten).
The “where” is somewhat important, though — there is some sense that you are fixed in location as you travel in time. The machine starts in a basement, but you can drag it outside (PULL MACHINE). If you travel forward in time while outside, you end up outside a mountain.
If you travel forward in time while inside, you end up inside the (fortunately hollow) mountain.
Traveling to the past while the machine is outside is fatal; your machine falls into a swamp. If the machine is in the basement, you get taken next to the swamp instead.
So (as of yet?) there are two 2930 locations, one 1886 location and one 1235 location.
My map so far, but certainly not complete, given I’ve only seen 3 treasures out of 12.
Even though the game doesn’t fully use the “fun” aspects of time travel (historical events and/or setting up paradoxes) the map still gets naturally broken up in sectors, which gives it a crisp and modern feel.
Besides figuring out the time machine itself, the puzzles so far have been straightforward; I found a key in a sandbox and used it to unlock a room that is supposed to hold treasures. The same room had a snorkel which I used to get a fish and gold trident from a river; I also found a flashlight lying around which led me to get a gold chain and shovel. The shovel then let me dig to an underground area in 2930.
I’m stuck on
1.) the underground area, which has a reel of tape, some silver coins, and an angry mole; while I can get in, the angry mole kills me if I try to get out.
2.) 1235 has a cave guarded by a lion.
3.) 1235 also has a swamp which you sink in and die if you try to go in (this may just be a trap)
4.) 2930 has a dead raccoon that is diseased and you die if you try to pick it up (the game implies you need gloves).
So far, I have yet to use a BRASS RING (that you start the game with), a FISH, a FROG, a FUR COAT, and some SAND. The two treasures I’ve gotten which may or may not be of use are a GOLD TRIDENT and a GOLD CHAIN. It is of course possible that the KEY, SNORKEL, and SHOVEL somehow get reused, but otherwise, that’s all I have to work with. (The snorkel doesn’t work on the swamp; you can’t kill either the mole or the lion with the trident.)
The game has me interested enough I haven’t resorted to hacking at the game file itself yet. If you want to try it out, this link will let you play online (it’ll delay, then give an error, then you need to type TYME2 and hit ENTER).
Frog is another William Demas game. This is the first I’ve ever seen an in-game ad for something sold by an entirely different publisher.
This was a small game; the Dutch of course slowed me down, but the text was generally simple and repetitive, and I only had to look things up on words like “traangasgranaat” (tear gas grenade).
(Just to keep the eyes on the prize in what follows: the goal is to get at a treasure. The treasure turns out to be hiding in the Church of St. Steven in Nijmegen.)
Where I really had trouble was getting in the same frame of thinking as the protagonist: make progress by any means necessary, including violent property damage. The tear gas should have been my first clue, and I later found a weapons shop selling a “thermischelans geweer raket” (“thermal bazooka”, I think?) but as Nijmegen is described as a “real city” my first tendency was to play in those terms. This stymies most early progress; while it is possible to get most of the starting map without solving any puzzles…
Reminder note: there are no compass directions, you move by typing GA (“go”) followed by the name of an adjacent location; for example, GA GROTE MARKT, “go great market”.
…one early thing you need to make much progress is to smash the parking meter in the first location and grab the money (>FORCEER PARKEERMETER — I don’t think “FORCE” is a verb I’ve ever seen in an English game, would it be easier to find playing in Dutch?) The money from within lets you visit the nearby Fotozaak (photography shop) to get some binoculars and the Shoenwinkel (shoe shop) to get some boots (that must have been a lot of change).
The other open place is a “tower” (you need a “latch” from nearby before you can go in) which has a basement with the hint “look in the distance”.
Climbing the tower lets you get up to a room you can use your binoculars and see the message “DRINK MEER BIER” which is a key phrase. Use it back in the basement to find a secret room and get yourself some dynamite.
You can use the dynamite to explode a building at a quay and get some gin, which seems a fair tradeoff for the property damage; the gin can be used to bribe your way into a new location with a crowbar. You can then use the crowbar to move a rock to get some keys, which let you break into the church (making sure you throw your tear gas grenade first).
Inside the church there is a “duck shaped” opening; you can use boots to reach high enough and use a duck from the park which opens a safe, finally yielding the treasure.
You’re rich, you managed to get the gold, are you very smart or very bad? (I’m not sure on the last two sentences, but it’s something like “now, go waste your money”.)
This was really odd and random to play; unlike Dracula which had layers of narrative, this was intended as a random path of adventurer destruction, where destroying an entire building to get some gin is a perfectly acceptable exchange. At least the game was self-aware about it.
…
Some quotes from here indicate that Wim Couwenberg himself made the original C64 port, and it is identical to the PET version, so there’s no need to go on a grand crusade to find the original (…unlike Dracula Avontuur, where I’m still curious). He doesn’t know who D.N.T is.
He also mentions his brother Jan made the story, so I’ll toss him in my credits. (I really am curious what the writing process for the story was like, since it comes off as a string of random puzzles.)
I apologize I couldn’t do any deep exploration of language learning this time around; most of the parts were all-or-nothing scenarios, where either I easily sussed out what was going on and what the right action is, or I had no idea and even when I did have an idea I didn’t know how to communicate it (for example, blowing up the dynamite is given by the walkthrough as BLAAS OP, “blow up”).
One last item of importance: while perhaps this game isn’t a candidate, the Hans Courbois predecessors (which I still have yet to find, but I’m working on it) might be vying for the title of “first graphical adventure where information is conveyed in the graphics” along with Mystery House; you have to, of course, have a loose definition of “graphics” which allows character graphics, but it’s still a noteworthy convergence, and one I don’t believe any texts in English on adventure game history have previously noted.
I’ve lost track of all time and space lately, so I had to remind myself by checking: it was one year ago that I tackled and wrote about Dracula Avontuur, a very early text adventure in Dutch, without knowing any Dutch.
Nijmegen Avontuur is also very early; originally for the Commodore PET, but later ported for the Commodore 64, and that’s the copy that still exists. I’ve seen both 1980 and 1981 dates, and it potentially could be earlier than Dracula. There’s so little information it’s not worth it to fret over which came first.
Landscape with a View of the Valkhof, Nijmegen. Painted by Aelbert Cuyp around 1655-1660. The palace shown was originally built by Charlemagne.
Nijmegen Avontuur translates to Nijmegen Adventure, Nijmegen being a 2000-year old city in the Netherlands, close to the border with Germany.
De bedoeling is een SCHAT te vinden die ergens in Nijmegen verogen ligt.
The goal is to find a TREASURE somewhere in Nijmegen.
The opening screen gives some terse instructions and the quest above, and then some character-based graphics.
I’m guessing D.N.T. refers to the maker of the C64 port.
It most likely looked something like that in the original, given the reference to the “layout” of Hans Courbois being used.
Translations: JE HEBT = YOU HAVE
ER LIGT = THERE LIES
WAT MOET IK DOEN? = WHAT SHOULD I DO?
The room description seems to eschew compass directions and lets you go to places instead.
PLEIN ’44. JE KAN NAAR DE BLOEMERSTR.
DE GROTE MARKT HET PARK
EN NAAR DE MOLENSTRAAT
ER STAAT EEN PARKEERMETER.
PLEIN ’44. YOU CAN GO TO THE BLOEMERSTRAAT, THE GREAT MARKET, THE PARK, AND TO THE MOLENSTRAAT.
THERE IS A PARKING METER.
“Plein ’44” is the center of Nijmegen, the “city square”. The “Bloemerstraat” and “Molenstraat” are place names, and here we hit my first question for my Dutch-speaking friends — are they recognizable ones?
Given the text seems to be more minimal than Dracula, it may end up I have more trouble with culture/place than language on this one.
Locations marked on a Google map. There are two parks nearby so I don’t know which one the game means.
No, this game doesn’t have anything to do with Infocom. It does have to do with the virtues of text vs. graphics. I particularly like the quote from Softalk in the ad above about prose “far more graphic than any depiction yet achieved by an adventure with graphics.”
The Cranston Manor Adventure by Larry Ledden was published by Artworx; On-Line Systems (the future Sierra) licensed it to keep the Hi-Res Adventures series going, the one started with Mystery House, Wizard and the Princess, and Mission: Asteroid.
On-Line changed the credits to be Harold DeWitz and Ken Williams (according to Mr. Ledden, he was a newbie and didn’t think to get a credits condition on his contract) but I’m leaving Larry’s name on.
Via Mobygames.
The objective is still “find the treasures”, sixteen of them. Text from the packaging, including the typo:
It seems that old man Cranston was not exactly your run-of-the-mill type millionare. Exactly how he made his fortune is unknown (it appears he wasn’t a man known for either scruples or morals). Before his untimely death, he had amassed an uncalculated fortune in jewels, gold and various other rare and expensive items. Cranston was aware of the fact he was dying. He had lived a life of excessive luxury, pleasure and sin, and knew that soon he would end up “paying the piper”! Being a greedy and covetous old man, he figured that if he couldn’t take it with him, no one would take it when he was gone. He hid his treasure throughout the mansion and property encompassing it.
The game shifts the action to “Coarsegold” (where On-Line Systems was located), abandoned due to Cranton’s plotting somehow. I haven’t quite worked out how this happened in either this version or the original. You may remember the hologram of Cranston directing his army of tin soldiers; were those terrorizing the town somehow? In this version, the treasures are explicitly stolen from Coarsegold, and finding and returning the treasures to Coarsegold somehow will return the town to livability. I get the impression there’s still missing backstory, but the even stronger impression nobody thought too seriously about the logic behind it.
The “droid” idea from the original is dropped (it was, admittedly, a little weird). The game simplifies the map; here is, for example, the opening town:
The original “outdoor section” took me about one hour to map; the new one took roughly five minutes. All the mazes have been removed, nearly all paths have been straightened. (There’s an odd bit where going west “jumps” the player over a room; it being just a bug is quite plausible. Remember, the last On-Line game we looked at left the asteroid-hits-the-Earth timer running even after winning the game so the Earth can be simultaneously saved and destroyed.)
Both an inventory limit and the need to rest at intervals have been dropped. There isn’t even, as far as I could find, a limit to the lantern light.
This all sounds great, and I suppose is; but the end result really felt more flavorless than the main game. Example:
You may remember from my original posts that the revelation of the armor in all the rooms being spooky and atmospheric. Here the armor is more obvious (and it’s much clearer it’s the same armor following you around everywhere) but it comes off as nearly goofy. The armor also stops you from getting items other than treasures, which is I suppose would be fine, except there are two exceptions (cheese and a cage) which it does let you take in order to capture a mouse, and use as the same way as before (dropping the mouse scares away the armor). I could see someone getting stumped here because they assumed they couldn’t get the items.
The library, which has a secret passage that opens with the word EMASES in both versions, now has the word placed in a book in the library, where it is the only book there. Now, the original wasn’t stealthy either, but the word was in the observatory; having it be right on the shelf that gets opened seemed a bit too on-the-nose, turning an easy puzzle into a near-trivial one.
Relatedly, the previous game’s “organ room” had the organ not actually do anything, and you could just enter the fireplace; this version has PLAY ORGAN open the fireplace. (While simpler, I’ll admit this was more satisfying to do than just realizing I could walk in the fireplace.)
The tin soldiers show up underground again, but this time there’s no way at all to kill them. The game includes the dagger, but the dagger doesn’t do anything, so all you can do is run away.
The computer room is still there, and this time the puzzle that requires busting the computer by throwing some water on it works (more on this in a second). However, there’s no scene of the tin soldiers charging themselves up; this room doesn’t connect with anything in the game other than the sphere being another treasure.
The pink bull is still in, except this time the time stasis field doesn’t hit right away. You have to turn off your lantern, and THEN a time stasis field hits (without even a meta-narrator, just some wizard does it…?) and then you have to walk by in the darkness. I imagine the idea was to enforce having the lantern on/off puzzle be solved, but it turned what was sort-of-fair-but-nonsense (you can just avoid second visits to the bull room in the original game) into complete nonsesnse (it’s not clear how the player character would even know about the stasis field while in total darkness).
The absolute worst change involves an item. In the original, you get a “cauldron” that you fill with water; it is used for both destroying a computer (as already mentioned) and priming a pump. I could not find the cauldron in the On-Line Systems version. I was very stumped and had to check a walkthrough. In the new version, the cauldron is now a “pot” and it is not mentioned in the room description.
I am somewhat supportive of the items-in-picture-not-in-text system pioneered starting with Mystery House — I didn’t run into guess-the-noun or be-unaware-an-object-even-exists with Wizard and the Princess so it’s possible to be clear, even with a janky art style — but I had no notion at all of a pot in the picture. It’s that partially-visible black thing on the stove, I guess. Also, when the armor is on the screen it entirely covers the pot.
I mentioned being stumped by the raft on the fountain due to a failure in visualization. Unfortunately, I can’t tell for certain how I’d react with this game, but I think I’d make it through; the raft is depicted as very tiny, so at least visually it does fit inside the fountain.
To summarize the changes:
1.) no inventory limit
2.) no lamp timer
3.) simplified map
4.) water container hard to find
5.) suits of armor more obvious
6.) tin soldiers can no longer be killed, removal of visible connection with computer room
7.) computer room puzzle now works as originally planned
8.) pink bull puzzle now enforces turning off the lantern
9.) EMASES is right where it gets used
10.) the organ is used to open a secret passage
There are a few more points, and summed up I think they mostly average out to neutral (except possibly the pink bull puzzle pushing slightly to negative). Yet, as I already implied, I liked the original text-only version better. Why?
While I have nothing against graphics, even bizarre looking ones, the text — despite it being erratic at times, and often just functional — somehow painted the world more vividly. Let me pick a direct example.
I’m standing in a long room with tall stained glass windows on the west wall. Hard looking wood pews line each side. There are exits to the north and east. Standing in one corner is a large black suit of armor.
Again, the text is almost completely pure function here, but my imagination paints the chapel much more strongly than the Apple II image does.
I wouldn’t welcome a text version of Wizard and the Princess; that game seems designed for its slightly odd characters and locations; I’m perfectly fine with Cranston Manor being reverted to all-text. I don’t know if it’s the sense of loss of setting that makes the difference (the “hard looking wood pews” being gone) or just the loss of part of my imagination, the “brain as graphics engine” as mentioned in the Infocom ad. When Ahab at Data Driven Gamer played both games and had the same reaction: “And as with Sierra’s previous graphical adventures, the graphics are really not very good, and came at the expense of verbosity, and while the writing in The Cranston Manor Adventure wasn’t exactly mind-blowing, it still wasn’t a good trade to lose it.”
One last oddity — and it would take some experiments in hacking the game to be sure — is I’m not sure if all the “positive” improvements even helped. Both the sleeping and lamp time were frustrating to cope with, but they added a rhythm to the game and added tension to explorations underground. Even though I skipped killing the tin soldiers in the original game, the existence of the possibility of doing so added an edge; I was making a strategic choice, one I sometimes questioned.
I also can’t really defend the convoluted map of the original that strongly, but still, I spent time in the opening abandoned town, whereas in the graphical version it was essentially a footnote. Spending time made the sense of abandonment more tangible. There clearly would be a better way to handle the same situation (with a shorter opening and more vivid text, perhaps some character dialogue) but it’s interesting that just dropping the flawed gameplay element ended up hurting the game when it wasn’t replaced by some element that conveyed the same effect.
It’s easy to whale on early adventure games (why is there another maze, why do I have to worry about lamp life, etc.) but sometimes, those flawed and now-outdated elements were still used with purpose.
Renga in Blue 