Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

I’ve finished the game. This continues directly from my previous post.

If the idea of playing another game by the author of early Magnetic Scrolls works appeals to you, I’d certainly recommend trying this. If you don’t want to try the BBC Micro version I’ve got a download here for the TRS-80 version. Just drag and drop the file onto trs80gp and it’ll launch.

I will say the first puzzle might be worth spoiling, but it is mostly smooth past that.

Zoom-in on the wrist bands, shield, and dagger, the three items needed to defeat the demon.

So what I suffered last time turned out to be a colossal piece of disjoint visualization — that is, I was seeing the situation very different from the author, based on text that could be understood multiple ways — combined with my uncertainty about the parser (and the fact an unusual verb is required here). I will say it is a four-word parser and there even is a special data line for prepositions, which is a slight hint of Magnetic Scrolls going on to make one of the better parsers of the British companies.

3010 DATA 9,ON,IN,AT,INTO,OVER,ONTO,ACRO,WITH,TO

I needed to get a key from a fountain. The only description you get upon finding the key is that

THERE’S A KEY THERE!

and the fountain otherwise receives no description. TAKE KEY responds:

I CAN’T REACH IT

This was my first visualization issue. I figured, if the key was in the fountain at “ground level”, it would be easy to grab it, and otherwise SWIM FOUNTAIN and GO FOUNTAIN ought to really work anyway.

I thus thought of it being a fountain with tall layers, where you can see the key on top, but you somehow need to climb the fountain or shake the key loose.

I am fairly certain now, no, this is a regular all-on-the-ground fountain, and the key is floating in the middle and our player doesn’t want to get wet (??) I guess (???). So we just need to extend our reach a little. (I guess this technically could also be consistent with snagging a key up high, but honestly, what I visualized completely excluded such a solution.)

The other important item is a WIRE STAND, and this one does give a description

IT’S A THICK WIRE BENT INTO A STAND

and if you’ve ever fiddled with one of these in real life, this is not the kind of wire you can bend by hand (it even says “thick wire”). Of course I should have tested it, so I wouldn’t call this unfair, just I’m giving the reason I got sidetracked.

Something like this. I’d expect to melt it under heat or something.

If you try BEND STAND, the game says

USE BEND INTO WHAT?

which is prompting for an exact creation. What works — and I did figure this out once I realized what the game was going for — is a HOOK. Then you can GET KEY from the fountain and finally move on with the game.

Incidentally, if the game had said “it’s just out of reach” instead of “I can’t reach that” I probably would have worked this out faster.

Just to prove this game really is designed on the tighter side, here is the entire rest of the map:

The first new room, the altar room, uses the items I’d been gathering up thinking there was going to be some Aphrodite ritual: a statuette and the incense.

There’s no explicit instructions, but the indent plus the burner for incense make their case pretty clear. I also realized quite naturally I should try to GO PRAYER MAT and the game then explicitly mentions you should try out PRAY.

I also needed to light my torch with the flint and steel before this. I don’t know if there were any “dark rooms” being kept track of; I don’t think there’s an inventory limit so I had my lit torch the rest of the game.

The flash of light is the WRIST BANDS appearing. They have “odd glyphs” which you can’t read (yet).

Because of the sequencing here, I could see someone forgetting about this by the time they get the ability to read glyphs.

The next room uses the metal triangle from a few rooms ago, as there’s a triangular space on a dias.

You can climb the stalagmite to get back, so this isn’t a one way trip (for now) but given the mention of something metallic inside, you’ll need to do some destruction later.

The niche has some brown powder with writing indicating to mix with water. Conviently, there’s a stream to the west that serves to do this very task, leaving you with a potion. Drink the potion and now “odd glyphs” are readable:

Go ahead and scoop it up, there’s no inventory limit.

The WRIST BANDS tell you to say APHRODITE at the evil temple? But where is the evil temple? Well, if you go back to the stalagmite room, open the door (not controlled by the keyhole, I was confused at first), and head north, you’ll find a wardrobe. Move the wardrobe to find the temple.

Importantly, the pool has some nasty green liquid which turns out to be acid. The APHRODITE phrase that the bands mentioned opens up a secret stair down, leading to a sacrificial room.

Given the black rock I just scooped up was quite thoroughly described (…unlike the fountain…) I quickly realized it was in the shape of a toe and added it to the idol. This opened up a gold keyhole, but I had no gold key to go with it yet.

Heading back and wandering some more, I found a plank of wood and a platform with a key of ice on it. I scooped up both (the plank and the key, that is, the platform’s too big).

Applying the key to the glass keyhole led to a room with a chasm. I immediately thought to PUT PLANK ON CHASM and it worked.

A weird case where solving a puzzle too fast turned out to be a problem, as you’ll see.

The next room has a stone block which I spent entirely too long fiddling with (it’s the only pure red herring of the game) and a ZOMBIE MOVING TOWARDS YOU. I thought back to all my resources and remembered the holy water back at the font I moved at the beginning. I didn’t have a container at the time but I did now (with the empty jar that used to hold a potion). I scooted back up the stalagmite, grabbed the water, and took it back to the zombie and hurled it:

And now we reach the part of the game I had second-most trouble with after the hook. This is entirely a self-contained riddle. The answer makes sense but I think there’s something unfair to it. However, what I’ll do is withhold giving the answer here, and put my thoughts in the comments instead.

If you get it wrong, THE SHIELD SPIN TOWARDS YOU AND SLICES YOUR HEAD OFF. If you get it right, you have the magic shield and are one step closer to defeating the demon!

From here, two issues remain: finding the dagger, and finding the gold key for the evil temple (which will lead directly to Disrondu). I alternated between noodling with the stone block at the zombie and the stalagmite at the cave, and it occurred to me that I could re-use the jar yet again to pick up the acid from the evil pool.

The metal box has the dagger of truth, but also, this melts your path out. However, that wardrobe from earlier had a POLE in it, so you can bring it over and CLIMB POLE if you want to as a substitute and get back up. The game isn’t softlocked! Classy. (Well, that means the pole is huge, right? Eh, I’m done trying to visualize stuff.)

Now is the part I was stuck third-most after the riddle, but I’m not calling this one unfair at all. Just I kept trying to do things to the STONE BLOCK and never realized I had overlooked trying to LOOK CHASM back one room over. I had to actually look at the map from the Strand Games website to see what was going on.

Climbing up leads to a ledge with the missing gold key. I was then able to bring it back to the evil temple, unlock the last barrier, and make my way down to Disrondu.

There’s been enough lead-up, I don’t need anything more than exclamation marks.

And thus ends our visit to (sort of) the start of Magnetic Scrolls. Other than heavier than normal use of prepositions I didn’t spot anything that would indicate the company’s future; this was much closer to Scott Adams than anyone else.

The most pleasant part in the solving sequence was the triple re-use of the jar; it didn’t originally occur to me to scoop up the acid, but the first re-use applying the holy water immediately gave the idea that I could scoop up any liquid I wanted to. This was essentially a small piece of object transformation, which is one of the key elements I’ve identified in the past as being a way for these super-old games to have puzzles that strike the right balance between simplistic and arbitrary.

Using the word ‘design’ makes it sound like we had a grand plan thought out over many months of agonizing over analyst presentations and consulting focus groups. If we liked it, it was good. There was no pressure to articulate why but usually if it made us laugh it was good. If we thought it was a bit dull, it got cut.

— Rob Steggles speaking about designing for The Pawn

As far as what’s coming next, I’m not sure. I’m slated to write about a game with a very high technical start barrier (think back to that French pocket calculator game in difficulty, although this game’s American) but that might get postponed if I run into too many emulator woes. So there might be a wild card! We’ll see.

Before hopping back from France to England, I should quickly mention I had an update to my last Folibus post; the commenter Gus Brasil pointed out a method of surviving the ending, although you still remain permanently blue. I’ve only added a single paragraph but go check if you’re curious.

Now let’s swim over–

When he was in his teenage years, Rob Steggles placed three advertisements that appear in consecutive months in late 1982.

In the October 1982 Computer Gaming World, he put in ad selling American Trader, a truck driver simulator, for the BBC Micro. No known copies of this game presently exist.

A month later, in Laserbug Magazine, he put up an ad for three pieces of software.

All three games are relevant for today’s story. First, note that American Trader has already dropped in price, suggesting sales were not brisk.

Second, remember the presence of the fairly technical disassembler (“invaluable to the assembly language programmer”) being added to the list.

Third on the list is today’s game, Temple of Disrondu. It includes a mention of a copy existing for TRS-80. We are tasked with killing the evil demon Disrondu, but must first find three magical treasures to do the deed. Of the two versions, the TRS-80 one is the one that has survived to us; I’ll explain the circumstances in a moment.

The third advertisement — December 1982 — was placed in White Dwarf Magazine, a British magazine for tabletop RPG enthusiasts.

This indicates a large collection of manuals and figures. Steggles was well-known to his friends as a talented dungeon master in D&D campaigns, and he apparently dabbled in Traveler as well. Quoting Rob:

Ken [Gordon] and Hugh [Steers] and I were all in the same class together at school together in Woolwich. Ken and Hugh were the computer whizz-kids and I used to tag along and do Dungeons & Dragons scenarios which they and several others would play. We all played Zork too and some of the Scott Adams adventures and loved them. As I remember it, Hugh started designing his first parser on an old TRS-80 and Ken was heavily into the Apple side of things where (I believe) he met Anita Sinclair.

In fact, his DM prowess is why Hugh Steers (with Anita Sinclair and Ken Gordon) tapped Steggles to join their new company Magnetic Scrolls: to be the writer on their first game, which ended up being The Pawn. Quoting Hugh:

Rob did play a fair bit of it. He was very creative and able to adapt dynamically – as you would need to be to make interesting gameplay from random dice throws … D&D gameplay relies heavily on the skill of the person hosting it rather than from the rules.

Hugh additionally comments “that we saw Rob as an author that also had the talent to develop the dynamic type of fiction needed for an interactive story”. Histories of the group of four in the company generally say they played to their talents, with Rob being the non-technical one of the four. I do want to emphasize “non-technical” is a comparative statement, given Mr. Steggles was previously selling an assembly language decompiler. As he mentions in an interview:

Ken and Hugh were the programming geniuses: I knew a bit of 6502 but not enough to go to their level.

The reason we have the TRS-80 version is because Hugh himself rescued a copy off a tape in 2021. I’m guessing this was a personal copy and not one that had been sold. I’m unclear about is if the parser used in this game is based on Hugh’s work — remember the quote from Rob earlier said Hugh’s first parser was for TRS-80.

For the announcement, Hugh commissioned a new work from the artist Gustavo Gorgone depicting the final battle against the demon.

Magnetic Scrolls ended up being a significant force in the 80s British adventure industry, with Rob himself also penning Guild of Thieves and Corruption, but that’s all a story for a different time (or, if you can’t wait, there’s Maher’s account of events). Let’s turn to Rob’s earlier game, made while he still owned 40 TTRPG figures:

The game starts not as you approach the Temple of Disrondu, no equipment in hand (as a sensible adventurer might do) but rather after you’ve already entered. You can go back up to find the cave you entered and a desert, which is an interesting touch (and as far as I can tell, entirely just for color).

I’m stuck early, and this seems to be more the Scott Adams small-spaces style rather than a wide-open barren game. This makes sense as Steggles has called The Count his favorite text adventure and that’s the smallest and tightest of the Adams games.

In the opening room, when you LOOK at the FOUNTAIN, you’ll see a KEY. When you LOOK at the ALCOVE, you’ll see a STATUETTE.

The statuette is reachable but the key is not (“I CAN’T REACH IT”), which is unfortunate because just to the north is a locked door.

The metal triangle looks tantalizing but the description is YOU SEE NOTHING SPECIAL, so I’m not sure whether it is large or small or ornamental or the kind you play in an orchestra.

To the west you can find a FONT with some HOLY WATER; the font can be moved to reveal some FLINT & STEEL.

To the east there’s a storeroom with various supplies: INCENSE, a CLAY POT (with OIL), a WIRE STAND, and a TORCH.

As you might expect, you can light the torch with the flint and steel, and you can burn the incense, but that isn’t helpful anywhere I’ve tried:

OK IT BURNS AWAY

I can’t tell if this is a “kick opening” meant to require some big insight (like the clever-but-cruel puzzle that kicked off Doomsday Mission) or I’m just missing something obvious. I went ahead and made my verb list:

However, nothing I’ve tried on the key has worked; I can’t climb up to it, or throwing anything at it.

I might be doing something wrong with the THROW syntax. Observe that

WHAT SHALL I DO? THROW TORCH
OK-
WHAT AT?
WHAT SHALL I DO? AT KEY
I DONT KNOW THAT VERB

defies the normal Scott Adams syntax. THROW TORCH AT KEY just says YOU CAN’T DO THAT and I don’t know from this parser whether that means “you said that wrong and I’m going to give you a default message” or “that’s a nonsense item to be throwing at a key to try to be knocking it off a fountain”.

Of course, maybe I’m supposed to do something else before getting the key, but I haven’t had luck noodling with the objects in the store room — what’s a metal rack for? — and while I have the statue to Aphrodite and there’s those frescoes, they don’t combine in any way I can find, and PRAY isn’t helpful either.

Now, you might be thinking “oh, this is a Steggles game, and The Pawn, Guild of Thieves, and Corruption were all super hard, what were you expecting?” And possibly, yes, this is an extension of that, although the style is very much a Scott Adams tribute stuck on the 16K of a TRS-80, with minimal text description, so this still feels like a different world than the eventual one obtained by Magnetic Scrolls.

However, given the history, I don’t want to give up on the game too soon. (I know, often when I try to establish that, the game requires an absurd action I’d never, ever, do, but humor me.) So if someone wants to try a hint, please stick to ROT13, please.

In the meantime, the easiest way to play the game is via the BBC Micro port. Yes, the “real” release was lost, but with the TRS-80 code it got back-ported to be playable on the BBC Micro again. I should warn you there are some crashes not present in the TRS-80 version (try to EMPTY POT, for instance) but it otherwise seems to play exactly the same.