Enter the House of Thirty Gables. But come prepared — for fun! Inside, you will encounter all sorts of weird goings on. Serpents, dragons, wild bears and sulking trolls are just a few of the strange creatures you may run into on your adventure through this House. There are tereasures to be found amid the foreboding surroundings, but it’s going to take some real thought to figure out how to gather them… and stay alive!
Bill Miller did multiple board game conversions for TRS-80 (Backgammon, Chess, Gomoku) and made an Eliza clone (Dr. Chips) but this is his only adventure game. It was published through Instant Software and it’s also their only adventure game (although an ex-employee made The Programmer’s Guild which published quite a few more).
If you’re thinking “haven’t we played a game with this title before?” you might be thinking of Greg Hassett’s House of the Seven Gables. Additionally, if you want to find and download House of Thirty Gables, you have to look for the file marked House of Seven Gables (19xx)(Greg Hassett)[CMD].zip which has been misfiled for a very long time. (It took me an hour of searching and the realization “wait, Greg Hassett didn’t convert anything to machine language until he wrote Enchanted Island” to find it.)
Given the treasure-hunt premise and simple opening (see above) I thought I’d be in for a cozy traditional fantasy jaunt, but in what is becoming a common pattern for this blog, House of Thirty Gables took a hard left early. The closest comparison I can think of is Will ‘O the Wisp, which intentionally depicted the main character as bumbling.
After a few opening rooms where you can grab an ax and an apple comes the first “enemy”.
YOU ARE IN A SMALL DAMP ROOM.
A DAMP CRAWLWAY GOES EAST.
A PASSAGEWAY HEADS NORTH
A DIMLY LIT STAIRCASE LEADS UP.
A SINISTER TROLL SULKS IN THE CORNER.
When I first went through I just walked by the troll with the assumption I’d deal with it later, but eventually out of curiosity I tried KILL TROLL.
KILL THE TROLL WITH WHAT? AX
ONE MIGHTY BLOW FROM YOUR AX HAS KILLED THE POOR INNOCENT TROLL.
If you then LOOK:
A POOR MURDERED TROLL LIES IN THE CORNER.
Shortly after this comes another floor, which includes a dwarf which attacks at random, classic Adventure style:
YOU ARE SUDDENLY CONFRONTED BY AN ANGRY DWARF.
However, if you try to throw the ax:
YOU SEEM TO BE VERY INEPT AT AX THROWING. THE AX BOUNCES OFF THE WALL AND FALLS HARMLESSLY TO THE FLOOR.
Alternately, if you simply try to KILL DWARF and specify with the AX:
THE DWARF IS TOO NIMBLE FOR YOU TO KILL HIM WITH THE AX.
On the same level, there’s a snake guarding an emerald.
YOU ARE IN A LARGE GLOOMY ROOM.
A TUNNEL HEADS WEST.
A TUNNEL HEADS SOUTH.
A LARGE EMERALD RESTS IN THE CORNER.
THE EMERALD IS GUARDED BY A DEADLY GREEN SNAKE.
You’ve got a flute you can play…
THE SNAKE IS MESMERIZED WHEN YOU PLAY THE FLUTE.
…but finishing the puzzle and taking the emerald results in you being chastised for your greed.
YOU HAVE THE EMERALD. HOWEVER, YOUR GREED HAS BEEN VERY COSTLY. YOU HAVE BEEN BITTEN BY THE DEADLY GREEN SNAKE. YOU WILL PERISH IN 10 MOVES UNLESS YOU CAN FIND AN ANTIDOTE.
There are 80 points total. The emerald above yields 10 points, and a ruby from a different part of the map yields another 10 points. All the rest of the points I’ve gotten have come from “gold coins”. Gold coins are spread about mostly at random (kind of like Oldorf’s Revenge) and each one is worth 5 points, so a fair amount of treasure comes from just exploration rather than solving puzzles. The extra gimmick this game has is that the gold can be spent for hints. Continuing the situation above with the poison, if the 10-move limit gets close:
YOU SEEM TO BE HAVING A BIT OF TROUBLE. I WILL GIVE YOU A HINT BUT IT WILL COST YOU A GOLD COIN.
DO YOU WANT THE HINT? YES
THE HINT IS: MAREZEDOATS…
I’m not really sure how to read the hint here; based on other hints I don’t think it’s an anagram or cryptogram. (Relatedly, there’s a stone idol elsewhere with the word TLOLOC on it; trying to SAY TLOLOC doesn’t do anything, so I suspect it may be “encrypted” in the same way.)
Even though hints were a part of original Adventure, this is the first I’ve seen of actual treasure items being used as hint currency. This becomes common later with the Professor Layton games, but that’s much later (the first game came out in 2007), so, good job 1980.
My max score at the moment (not counting getting the emerald which I still die from, or a gold coin from a room where the ceiling crushes me from above) is 45 out of 80, so I know I must be missing a section. I have no idea how, though, because the game is extremely clear as to the exits; they’re always listed as seen in the room descriptions above, each exit on its own line, so there’s no real way for me to have missed something. Except, I must have missed something, right?
Other than the puzzles above I have yet to use a DEAD RAT (where you are continually told “THERE IS A TERRIBLE SMELL” if you tote it around) and I have to reckon with A MAN WITH A FRIENDLY SMILE OFFERING YOU A GOLD COIN where trying to TAKE COIN results in
THE MAN DISAPPEARS IN A PUFF OF SMOKE.
YOU SUDDENLY FEEL LIGHTER.
and your gold coins have vanished and your inventory now has AN I.O.U. FOR 10 GOLD COINS SIGNED BY WORLD POWER SYSTEMS. The I.O.U. is worth 0 points.
The AX at the beginning is entirely a red herring. The TROLL is a red herring. The FLUTE that you can use to charm a snake is a red herring (you get bit with or without using the flute beforehand). The stone IDOL is a red herring. The RAT is a red herring.
House of Thirty Gables is like a con as a text adventure game, and appropriately, one of the most infamous con artists in early computer history makes an appearance.
…
While he had already started his career in crime at least 10 years before, “Colonel David Winthrop” (aka Harry Hunt, aka Jim Anderson) first turned to computers in 1975 when he joined the Southern California Computer Society.
The Southern California Computer Society was formed that very summer as “a group of computer hobbyists and enthusiasts who are determined to build home systems and share their understanding and dreams with a world which has become dependent upon and soon must become familiar with those fascinating and perplexing machines called computers.”
Out of the 184 starting members (179 men, 5 women) 83 had interest in a group purchase; while it was possible to get a reasonably priced Altair 8800 at this time, more powerful computers were still very expensive.
They eventually gathered $7000, which “went to a vendor … who never vended.” This, combined with litigation involving a publisher, led to the SCCS’s dissolution a mere 2 years later.
The $7000, of course, went to the Colonel; around $33,000 in 2019 after inflation. This was a tidy payday, but he was just getting started.
…
On its surface, the advertisement above was a good discount for its time.
The picture is a mock-up; there are no parts inside.
The Colonel had refined the basic scam idea from the SCCS’s “group purchase” — get people to spend money for non-existent hardware, take the money, and run. The extra twist here is that the company is real. He hired four other people to form DataSync; they didn’t know they were part of a scam.
However, this time the police had caught up with him, and he was arrested the month before the advertisement above came out. That wasn’t enough to stop the Colonel, who instructed the receptionist to read, verbatim:
I must inform you that the DataSync Corporation advertisements currently appearing in the magazines are fraudulent and the man responsible is now in jail. We do have every intention of producing a 16K RAM and a low-cost video terminal that are similar electronically and cosmetically, but you have to be aware that the advertisements are false.
Our expected shipping date for the new DataSync DS-16K RAM is approximately July 28th, and the expected shipping date on the DA-100 Terminal is September 15th. Knowing this, would you still like to place an order for superior products from DataSync Corporation?
Most of the people calling in still put in an order.
The Colonel clearly had a knack for persuasion. He pleaded guilty to 3 charges of felony theft and was sentenced to 32 months in prison. After six months he used his knack to wrangle himself a transfer to the minimum-security Chino State Prison, where he then performed a prison break the very next day (February 26, 1978) by just walking away.
…
The Colonel was on the run. In their June 1978 issue, Kilobaud Magazine reprinted a bulletin from the Santa Maria Police Department.
His method of operation has been to move to a town under a new identity, rent a house with an option to buy and to make contacts in his field of endeavor (recently, computer hobbyists). Hunt will generally begin his operation by soliciting backing for product design from private parties. Often he will sell his qualifications so well that it is the victim’s idea to ask Hunt to design a product for him.
Despite this detailed description (with five mugshots!), the Colonel still wasn’t done scamming the computer world, and in 1979 he returned for his biggest score.
…
This time, the Colonel set up base in Tucson, Arizona. In January 1979, the unwitting Perry Pollock signed a contract to make a company called World Power Systems, Incorporated.
Perry Pollock’s job was to provide venture capital and credit. (He was the one with the good credit.)
The scam ran a little different. World Power Systems started like a real company. They bought equipment from suppliers, and they always paid on time. They took orders for merchandise and actually shipped what was promised. At first.
They started to fall behind in shipping; they blamed suppliers and told customers to please be patient. Orders were still being sent, just with a delay.
In the meantime, because they had bought equipment and paid for it on time, they built enough confidence with suppliers to ask for items on loan.
You might see where this is going, but the final phase never quite happened. The ideal scenario for the Colonel, as described in Kilobaud October 1979:
Eventually, everything would come to a head. The creditors would threaten to go to the police and courts for their money; the customers would threaten to go to the Better Business Bureau and the police to get their equipment. At this point Phase IV would be initiated. This would entail cleaning out the bank accounts, shifting the merchandise around from one location to another and leaving a confusing trail as to its exact location — and setting up a fall guy.
However, the heat went on too early, due to the efforts of two computer enthusiasts, Bill Godbout and John Craig (the latter being the former editor of Kilobaud). The Colonel decided to try to take the money and run; carting off allegedly around $250,000 in merchandise (over a million in 2019 dollars after inflation).
He (with his wife) was in the middle of dying his hair when the police found him.
…
So, back to the game.
It turned out I really only had two puzzles left to resolve since last time. The first involved finding an antidote for a snake bite, and as a number of commenters pointed out, the cryptic MAREZEDOATS… hint the game gave was a reference to a song.
If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey,
Sing “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy.”
“Eat ivy” at the end was the key — while not an object in the game, there was a room described as having ivy.
YOU ARE IN A LARGE DAMP ROOM. THE WALLS ARE COMPLETELY COVERED WITH IVY.
A NARROW FOREBODING PASSAGE LEADS WEST.
A GLOOMY PASSAGE LEADS NORTH.
A WIDE MISTY PASSAGE HEADS SOUTH.
EAT IVY
YOU CHOKE DOWN SOME IVY.
YOU SUDDENLY FEEL MUCH STRONGER.
This is the only spot in the game which lets you interact with something in the room description as opposed to being an object on a separate line. This would annoy me more except I’m fairly confident now the intent was for the player to use the hint, as opposed to it being only-for-those-who-give-up.
I say this because of the crushing ceiling scene.
>GET COIN
YOU HAVE THE COIN.
A HEAVY STEEL GRATE SUDDENLY COMES CRASHING DOWN IN FRONT OF THE ONLY EXIT.
Nothing helps here. The ceiling lowers over a series of turns:
YOU HEAR A RUMBLING SOUND AND THE CEILING SUDDENLY LOWERS A FOOT. THE CEILING HEIGHT IS NOW ABOUT 4 FEET.
THE CEILING LOWERS ANOTHER FOOT. CEILING HEIGHT IS NOW ONLY 3 FEET!
YOU SEEM TO BE HAVING A BIT OF TROUBLE. I WILL GIVE YOU A HINT BUT IT WILL COST YOU A GOLD COIN.
DO YOU WANT THE HINT? YES
THE HINT IS: PMPH IS THE WORD.
THE CEILING DROPS AGAIN! CEILING HEIGHT IS NOW ONLY 2 FEET.
If you then SAY PMPH:
YOU SAY “PMPH”.
CHUCKLE, CHUCKLE. MAN ARE YOU GULLIBLE.
THE CEILING DROPS TO WITHIN 1 FOOT OF THE FLOOR! YOU ARE FLAT ON YOUR STOMACH.
The game eventually offers another hint
YOU SEEM TO BE HAVING A BIT OF TROUBLE. I WILL GIVE YOU A HINT BUT IT WILL COST YOU A GOLD COIN.
DO YOU WANT THE HINT? YES
I APPRECIATE YOUR TRUST.
The second “hint” opens the gate so you can escape, but this entire sequence is a red herring; the hints are the only way to escape (if you say NO to the hint you get crushed) and by the end of the scene, the player has gained one gold coin but lost two.
Speaking of being trusting, let’s return to a man with a coin I mentioned last time.
YOU ARE IN A SMALL ROOM WITH YELLOW TILE WALLS.
A TUNNEL HEADS SOUTH.
THERE IS A MAN WITH A FRIENDLY SMILE OFFERING YOU A GOLD COIN.
If you try to take the coin, he takes all your money and leaves you with a WORLD POWER I.O.U. That means the Colonel is here, commemorated in text adventure form. You can “kill” him, but he just poofs away with his money.
The solution is to KISS him. He still poofs away, but leaves the gold coin behind. (If someone has misconceptions about the player avatar’s gender or sexuality, I could see this puzzle being a problem; my main issue was I wasted a lot of time trying to solve the crushing ceiling puzzle instead without spending any coins and assuming this puzzle was the red herring.)
This left me with 60 points and still short. However, the last 20 just come from returning to the surface.
YOUR SCORE IS 80 OUT OF 80.
The owner of Instant Software (who published this game) was Wayne Green. He was also the editor of 80 Microcomputing, a hobbyist publication of the kind that suffered misfortune via the Colonel. While 80 Micro was started too late to join in the “fun”, it really feels like a large chunk of House of Thirty Gables was meant as a sort of catharsis via inside joke.
Renga in Blue 