Well, I wasn’t trying to be topical. This happens to be the next in the series of the Softside Adventure of the Month, once again in a game by Peter Kirsch (at least according to the TRS-80 version stored at Ira Goldklang’s site).
Softside, May 1982.
You are the Captain of the Titanic on her maiden voyage. Suddenly a large white object comes into view through the window. Can you avoid the historic collision? If not, can you save the lives of your passengers and crew?
This is most definitely a free-form take on the Titanic, so I’m not going to bother with historical background (I doubt Kirsch did) although I will take the opportunity to link this: What would the odds be of Dua Lipa actually surviving the sinking of the Titanic?, a serious historical examination of this music video:
So let’s dive in!
We’re the captain, and the only one running the vessel. We’re at the wheel and LOOK WINDOW reveals a looming iceberg. Fortunately we can TURN WHEEL:
So, that was a good game, let’s move on to…. oh wait:
(Apparently in Time Zone you can save Caesar from getting stabbed by Brutus and he just slips and dies instead. Oops.)
So, the game now explains you need to try to save as many people as you can and potentially grab some treasures along the way. I made a beeline for a lifeboat and did GO LIFEBOAT:
Great, now that the game is over, we can …
Oh, wait, I should rescue some people? I suppose. I did appreciate the clever schtick here in leaving open the possibility of just running for it. In practical circumstances I expect most players will want to rescue everyone although I could see someone leaving behind one of the more ornery passengers (and there are some!) intentionally.
Incidentally, nobody gets on the lifeboat on their own: on this version of the lifeboat, with a very, very, reduced crew complement and number of passengers, for every single rescue you GET PASSENGER (or whomever) and then GIVE PASSENGER at a lifeboat. There are six lifeboats, and you need to be careful a particular one isn’t full, otherwise it will sink when you add one more.
Orange locations have lifeboats.
I was initially worried about optimization, but this game weirdly has no timer. In fact, you need to wait, as there’s hot soup in one location you need to eat, and in the bottom there’s a key, and the key lets you in a cabin to rescue one of the passengers.
Most of the game involves finding keys in unusual spots and/or getting passengers to move.
For one lady, they are playing music too loud. You need to go downstairs, have a chandelier nearly hit you…
…grab a broken bulb from the chandelier, and use it to cut a wire on a fuse box. This causes the music to get cut off so you can rescue the lady.
If there are no empty seats the response will be “you see nothing special” when you LOOK LIFEBOAT.
One passenger is Chinese and you have to find a Chinese-English dictionary in order to be able to rescue her:
There’s a librarian here you need to rescue too.
The steward is sleeping in his cabin. You need to do the newspaper-under-the-door, poke the keyhole trick to get the key and unlock it. The actual process is PUT NEWSPAPER, SLIDE NEWSPAPER, POKE KEYHOLE, and it took me about eight tries to get the sequence down. Kirsch may have branched into interesting ideas but his parser can still be jank:
One passenger is described as a “naked lady” and has her toe stuck in a drain hole in the tub. You need some margarine from the kitchen to free her.
One woman is too drunk to grab so you need to ask a waiter for COFFEE (the waiter is clearly asking an open-ended question that lets you get any item you want) but surely there’s lots of requests that work for drunkenness? As well as coffee, at least?
The last interesting bit is that there are two possible endings. One you’ve seen already (when you just ditch everyone) but that ending also applies even if you do a complete rescue. You need to send for help to get the alternate ending.
Then once you finally step on a lifeboat after getting everyone else on there will be rescue at the end.
I appreciated that Kirsch was experienced enough to completely mix up his standard operating procedure; here there are a whole bunch of puzzles that can be solved more or less in any order. I didn’t even mention the two treasures, which are purely optional. You can find a diamond ring in a vacuum machine; also, there’s the captain’s own safe at the start where you don’t remember the combination and have to MOVE the safe to find the combination. Not common to have a combo-lock which is your own character’s safe!
I also never quite expected the Titanic to be the setting of more or less a comic romp, like Airplane! on a boat. It’s curious because there are obviously serious moments (you rescue a baby from a crib) but they are flatly given in the same tone as incidents like Mrs. Vanderbilt hiding under a table (“oops, excuse me madame, hiding under the table won’t help”) and bodily picking up the waiter (after he’s dispensed coffee) to toss him into a lifeboat, too.
Renga in Blue 