This continues my series on Marc Leduc starting with Epic Hero 1. At least, unlike the previous game, this game is traditionally hero-like.
Before going into the gameplay: I’ve managed to unearth an autobiographical statement! It comes from the first issue of Chewing Gum (the publication for the Colour Genie group that Leduc ran); the entire issue was written by Leduc himself.
Via Everygamegoing.
He was not British at all but Canadian. He moved in 1979 and to work at a telecommunications company (before founding his own); his wife was from Nottingham and by 1983 they had three kids. (Or he met his wife before moving, it’s unclear.)
He gave lectures on machine programming and was “an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy novels.” He also described how his wife Anji sometimes joked about starting a “Colour Genie Widow Users’ Group” and he intentionally made sure the computer stayed turned off over the weekend.
I don’t have a copy of what the packaging looked like, but Molimerx was fairly consistent during this era, so a sampling:
From both the Centre for Computing History and the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History. The bottom two are Scott Adams games, the hand-written “Golden Baton” is based on a Brian Howarth game.
There might be yet more buried out there, but for now, let’s play–
This time we are a warrior tasked by King Brion to find a jewel that will “nullify” the evil spells of the wizard Sharloebon. The Jewel of Derojhen is hidden within the wizard’s castle itself.
The structure here is fairly novel; rather than starting outside the forest of the Evil Magic Person, we’re in the grounds of King Brion’s castle, and we need to collect ingredients in order to get to the bad-side. I’m reminded (very slightly!) of Temple of Bast, which had some elaborate puzzles at “your house” that needed to be solved before crossing dimensions.
We start in a garden and there’s a frog that jumps away if we try to pick it up.
The frog leaps ….
…. and slips through your fingers!
The frog hops over to the other side of the royal garden.
You are in the east end of the royal gardens.
Objects you can see are: Breathtaking Pond ■ Green Frog ■ Stick of wet blue chalk ■ Tree
Possible exits: WEST
The “wet” blue chalk is just a straightforward item, and the tree has a branch you can grab and turn into a stick. If you try to grab the frog again it will jump back to the west side of the pond (where the game started). We’ll deal with the frog later.
For now, let’s head over and get our briefing, going to the northwest corner of the map at the “sitting room” where King Brion awaits.
To the east is a “Royal Kitchen” with kitchen drawers (containing a knife), an oven, and a monocle. I’ll give away right now that if you try to use the chalk it will break (because of the “wet” part); I came up with HEAT CHALK as a way to use the oven to dry it out.
This is the same “ambiguous control” issue we just saw in Seiko’s Adventure. Rather than specifying a set of micro-actions (open, put chalk inside, close, turn a knob) you just specify the whole result in one go. It can be tough to come up with a verb in this case, although I got lucky because the screenshot above represents my first try.
South from the sitting room is a “Chapel of St. Barendon” where you can PRAY and cause a candle to appear, followed by a holy chalice and some incense.
Pray a fourth time and “Lightning strikes you for being so greedy!” There’s not really a way to know what the limit is until you find it, so it’s essentially an intentional death that’s part of the meta-narrative.
Stepping south again is the last room of the start area, a “wizard’s laboratory” containing a “book” and a “dusty wand”. If you don’t have the monocle you can’t read the book (the text is too small). With the monocle it still is broken up:
It’s faded a bit. You can read :
“Draw pentagr…Chali…Fill with Blo…Frog…Wand wav
Lit Candl…Smo..Incen” The rest is unreadable.
This suggests a ritual:
1.) Draw a pentagram
2.) Fill a chalice with blood (from a frog?)
3.) Wave a wand
4.) Light a candle
5.) Smoke some incense
With the chalk dried out, we at least have step one.
I was still lacking the frog part, so I went ahead and did my verb list…
…and noting I was trying to play nice with the frog, and we’re after blood, I just decided to use one of the killing verbs instead.
What will you do now? ATTACK FROG
Tell me how to do it. (I.E. WITH ROCK)
What will you do now? WITH KNIFE
That was a cold-blooded thing to do!
But it had to be done!
(Other verb observations: CLEAN and WASH are good to remember. If I hadn’t already used PRAY at the altar I would have tried it now.)
I went back to the wizard’s laboratory and tried to do the ritual. After some fussing about I did DRAW PENTAGRAM, GET BLOOD (FILL doesn’t work), WAVE WAND–
Except the game said I couldn’t do that yet. I realized it was a “dusty wand”, so the CLEAN I just saw off the verb list might be useful. Let’s try again!
Curious. Looking back at the book again it didn’t seem like I left anything out (“Draw pentagr…Chali…Fill with Blo…Frog…Wand wav”) but there is a gap between the blood and the frog part, and even though we used the blood of the frog, maybe it there’s an extra frog step?
1.) Draw a pentagram
2.) Fill a chalice with blood from a frog?
2 1/2.) Do thing with frog
3.) Wave a wand
4.) Light a candle
5.) Smoke some incense
I tried to place the frog (and various other acts) but no luck. I also tried wand actions other than just waving and still no luck.
I figured now would be a good time to turn to you, the readers. Any thoughts on what I’m missing? I would say “please only people who are playing along, no help from people who looked at a walkthrough” except there is no walkthrough. (No help from people who have looked at the machine code yet, though!) I’m having fun with this (I’ve always liked “ritual” style puzzles in games) so I’d rather solve it as normally as possible before breaking things open.
Renga in Blue 