This is a great echoing chamber. The ceiling is so far above that your flashlight can’t reach it. A broad flight of stairs leads down from here, and there are other rooms to the south.
GO SOUTH
The chamber you are in is lavishly painted with scenes from the ancient Egyptian view of the afterlife. The picture that stands out the most is one of the soul of the deceased being weighted against a feather, in a balance scale. There is a wide doorway to the north of you, and a rather narrower opening on the east.
A large tarnished coin has been dropped on the ground nearby.
The closest comparison game I can think of — despite the light presence of magic, and heavy presence of magic at the ending — is the game Polynesian Adventure. Much of the interest is “touristic”, trying to create a location to just hang around in, with more care taken to scenery than the other Dian Crayne/Girard games. There’s even a modicum of research! If you want a modern comparison, consider how the Assassin’s Creed series now has educational spinoffs.
Most of the locales don’t have obstacles as much as exploration, and the two parts I ended up being (briefly) stalled by in my last push both had to do with trying to force-fit the whole thing into the Crowther/Woods format.
To continue directly from last time, I had gotten past a camel (via feeding it a carrot) and unlocked a door (with a key that was just lying around outside).
The flashlight is now on.
This is the west end of a long sloping corridor. The east end of it leads down into a what looks like a large room. A door in the north wall is open to the bright light of day.
This is a more extensive complex than the previous ones we’ve seen, although it still is relatively linear. The top floor, to start with, is a temple of Maat.
Treasures include a rug from the “18th dynasty”. That would be very valuable indeed as no rugs exist that last back that far (1550 to 1292 BC) as the materials used (like reeds) simply would not persist that long. There’s also a shrine to Maat with an “idol”, another treasure.
This room holds the shrine to the goddess Maat, represented as a winged woman holding a great ostrich plume. The only visible exit from the room is a door that leads out of the east wall.
An idol of the temple goddess, beautifully carved, stands here.
It isn’t like the rooms were always event-free, because by now I had triggered the Priests of Set who were appearing every so often like the dwarves of Adventure.
THROW AXE AT PRIEST
You killed the priest! He — or it — sinks to the floor and crumples into a heap of dried skin and rotted cloth. A sudden breath of incense-scented air scatters the dust that is left.
The mechanics are simply that
a.) if they appear, they only attack if you move
b.) if you move, you have a random chance of dying from an attack
c.) you can kill them by using THROW AXE AT PRIEST repeatedly but sometimes it takes many tries
with the end result being that there is no danger at all as long as you pause through the annoyance of dealing with the priest at random points in the game. (The dwarves could sometimes hit you randomly even if you did everything right. This is “unfair” but it also made them have more agency; they’re another exhibit in how some historic game design choices seem outright bad but at least did serve a purpose.)
The upper Maat level is followed by a “treasury” which is a very small maze…
There’s a “star ruby” treasure along the way. The green-marked room will come back later.
…and the next level down includes a “votive altar” next to “an odd ritual object, covered in diamonds.”
This area includes one puzzle, one where I knew what to do almost instantly, but struggled a little with the parser.
This is the west end of a long stone corridor. The end of the corridor is blocked by a large fall of stone from the ceiling. The corridor opens up to the south, where a chasm splits the ground. You can see across the chasm to a short, dark tunnel.
Back at the Nile (right after feeding the crocodile) there was a plank; this is where it gets used. I tried many iterations of THROW PLANK and PUT PLANK ON CHASM (which said something about there not being a switch) with no luck. PUT PLANK OVER CHASM similarly did not work. There really didn’t seem to be any other way through, so I finally hit upon the right preposition.
PUT PLANK IN CHASM
With a little bit of work, and after knocking down quite a bit of rock, you manage to slide the plank across the chasm.
IN chasm? Argh. (Checking the walkthrough from Exemptus which just came up, it looks like ACROSS works too.)
Exploring the area after the chasm:
This includes the “Feather Chamber” I quoted earlier, an “emerald sundial”, a “gold ring”…
You are at the bottom of a small air shaft. You can climb up into the shaft, or you can take a cramped eastward exit.
A small gold ring lies gleaming on the floor nearby.
GO EAST
This corridor is lined with paintings of the great Egyptian god of the dead, Osiris. The pictures show his death at the hands of the jackal-headed god, Set, and his rescue by his wife Isis. A rather cramped exit leads off to the west, and there is a doorway to the north.
…and a semi-aggressive mummy.
This chamber is rather large, but has a low ceiling. A frieze along the east wall shows a hunt scene, with the pharoah riding in his chariot, shooting arrows at some brightly colored birds. There is a doorway in the south wall, and another to the north. There is a lidless sarcophagus standing next to the north door. Inside it is a wrapped mummy, arms crossed across its chest.
GO NORTH
To your horror, the mummy steps awkwardly out of the case, and lurches toward you, linen-wrapped hands outstretched for your neck! Seeing you retreat, the creature returns to its coffin.
sigh I guess there had to be one. I guessed (correctly) I wasn’t able to take the mummy down yet and escaped; one of the passages drops you at the pyramid, so the idea is you’ve walked underground all the way from the secret door in the mountains to the pyramid.
One of the items taken from the mummy area is a “large tarnished coin”. I thought to READ COIN thinking it might give more information.
“Fifty Piasters”
(After you’ve found the coin, the person at the souvenir shop offers to sell you batteries for your flashlight for the same value as the coin. This is straight from Crowther/Woods, where the vending machine can get batteries and add to your turn limit, but in this game the light limit is so generous you don’t need to even think about it.)
The obstacles I had remaining were the door with the seal (“dog, with nine little men”), the statue of Ramses (“blocked by a monumental statue of Rameses The Great”) and the mummy. On a hunch, and hanging out at my treasures anyway, I went through each one and did READ on each one looking for more information. The lyre (from the very small area found south of the pyramid) and the charm (found in an above-ground tomb) led to useful things. Let’s deal with the lyre first:
The inscription says it belongs to the pharoah Rameses II.
I already knew PLAY LYRE worked (but didn’t sooth crocodiles or work to break open seals) but I hadn’t tried it on the statue yet.
There is a thrill of sound from the lyre’s golden strings. You hear a grating sound, and see a large piece of sandstone between the statue’s ankles move aside, showing a path east.
GO EAST
This is a rather narrow crevice, and you’re luck you aren’t any thicker through the waist. Ooof! You can go east from here to a tunnel of some sort, and it’s the obvious way out. A bright patch of sunlight shows an exit out to the west.
Rather than “levels” this area has essentially a “west section” and an “east section”. Looking at the west first:
Again, essentially no obstacles at all, but the scenery was interesting enough to make up for it. The great tour of every important deity continues:
This is the center of the Temple of Isis. It must have been really magnificent when it was in use. Those huge columns are nearly forty feet high and it probably took several hundred men to move them into place. The great statue of the temple deity is south of you, and the temple entrance is north.
GO SOUTH
This is the south end of the Temple of Isis. An immense statue of Isis, nearly 35 feet high, towers over you, wearing her throne-shaped crown, and holding the infant Horus in her arms. The only way out of her dark implacable gaze is to go north.
There is an ancient Roman fibula pin here, made of platinum.
Of the treasures here (Roman pin, bracelet, table of marble, water clock) I was briefly tricked by the last one, as the description flowed in such a way I didn’t realize I was dealing with a separate object in the room.
This is the robing room. Exits lead to the north and south.
There is an ancient wooden clock here, the sort that measures time by dripping water. It must be Roman; it stopped at IV.
There’s one non treasure, some “dry leaves”. I tried the “read” thing again (I was starting to do this out of habit) and despite a tongue-in-cheek response it was helpful anyway.
There is a small bundle of dry leaves on the ground near you.
GET LEAVES
Okay.
READ LEAVES
I might try reading the traditional tea leaves, but these are tana leaves, and there’s nothing written on them.
The game doesn’t otherwise say they’re tana leaves. Tana leaves are an entirely fictional type of leaf that features in The Mummy’s Hand (1940) where it serves as the vehicle for eternal life.
Hence it is pretty clear where these should go back to, but let’s take care of the east side of the map first!
This has an ankh, gold bull, and jade…
You are at the Altar of Apis, a large square room carved out of yellow sandstone. The north wall is carved into gigantic representations of the sacred bull, Apis. There are dark halls leading out of the room to the east, south, and southwest. On the west there is the opening of what looks like a long tunnel.
There is a beautifully carved piece of jade lying here.
…but besides me hinting something about the ankh (it will be important later), there were two things of note. One is that this is where the tomb robber started stalking me (aka this game’s “pirate” with the exact same mechanics, just different room messages).
A tall dark tomb robber, dressed in old rags and carrying a large leather sack, steps out of the darkness, comments “I’ll just take that, thank you,” and grabs up your treasure before you even have a chance to blink!
Note, despite it being essentially a text swap, the robber does not declare where the treasure is going. The pirate Woods put in announced the treasure was going in the maze, but had the pirate’s spot hidden in such a way that someone specifically searching for the pirate treasure would have an easier time finding it. Here (and in essentially all other renditions of the “pirate”) there is no such consideration.
Additionally, there’s an oddness to one of the rooms where I can’t figure out if it is meant as a bug or not.
You are walking through the ancient Tombs of Apis.
DROP JADE
Okay.
SE
You have reached a dead end.
NW
You are in the tombs of Apis.
There is a beautifully carved piece of jade lying here.
SE
You are in the tombs of Apis.
For this room in particular the room description is sometimes “in the tombs of Apis” and sometimes “a dead end”. I thought Dian had briefly succumbed to something that happened in Phantom (derived off the forest in Crowther/Woods), where exits would randomly go to different places, but then I tried dropping an item at the “dead end” and realized it and the other room were the same, just with the room description shifting.
With all that cleared out (except me missing the clock until later) I gathered everything back in base camp and took the leaves over to the mummy. I still wasn’t expecting to get through, yet; the fictional leaves usually have to be concocted into a brew of some sort, but I figured even if I failed to get by the mummy I might learn some useful information. GIVE LEAVES TO MUMMY:
The mummy breathes deeply, and steps out of the coffin. Taking the leaves, it crumbles them to powder and rubs them all over it’s linen-wrapped body. There is a heavy aromatic scent in the air, and a shimmering light. To your amazement, the linen melts away to reveal a handsome young Egyptian man. He smiles, points to the north door, and then vanishes into thin air.
Well. No way that can go wrong. This opens the way to a small area whose only purpose is to dispense some “pale blue pearls”.
This is the “Shrine of the Great Pharoah Userkaf, Justified.” The walls reflect back the beam of your flashlight with the warm golden glow of bronze. The only exit is in the west wall.
A long string of pale blue pearls has been dropped here.
I didn’t remember Userkaf even existed! He was the founder of the fifth dynasty. His pyramid is now so ramshackle, for a time it was called a “heap of stone” by locals.
All that leaves only the mysterious seal with the dog. I also mentioned READ worked on the silver charm; while the silver charm is out in the open, the ankh is buried in the tomb with Isis and Apis and hence there’s a good chance this tomb will be explored last by the player. At the very least it feels like the climax of the game.
READ CHARM
There isn’t any writing on it, but a worn engraving on the back shows a crouching jackal and nine men bound with rope.
This matches the picture of the “dog, with nine little men”. All you need to do is be carrying the charm and you can walk through. (This incidentally makes the spot quite liable to suffering the Parallel Universes Problem where a player might enter without realizing they were even solving a puzzle, get stopped a little way in, and try to come back without realizing the charm was helping them earlier!)
You are at an open doorway. Through it, to the east, you can see a passageway that leads down into silent darkness. To the west there is a staircase leading up to the sunlit desert. There is a large seal impression over the lintel of the door.
EAST
This is a descending passage, partly filled with chips of pale granite and dark flint. It runs roughly east and west.
EAST
You have reached an open doorway. To the west you can see a sloping passage. To the east there is a large antechamber. A design has been carved into the floor in the center of the doorway, and looks as fresh as the day it was made.
EAST
You start forward, but a shimmering figure appears in the doorway and some mysterious force holds you back!
There is a doorway here, with rooms to the east and west. A design has been carved into the floor in the center of the doorway, and looks as fresh as the day it was made.
READ DESIGN
It seems to be a large cross with a loop at the top.
The second door is what requires the ankh. Nothing written on it this time, you’re just supposed to recognize the shape. With the ankh held, you can enter the “last section” of the game (except it might not be last for a particular player, it was just last for me).
This is a fairly large antechamber, filled with an incredible collection of miscellaneous items intended for the use of the dead pharoah. An inscription, written on the wall in gold, says “The Beautiful God, beloved, dazzling of face like the Aten when it shines, The Son of Aten, Akhenaten.” Evidentally you have found the lost tomb of the great heretic king himself!
This is the tomb of Akhenaten, the one who tried to convert Egypt to worshipping only the sun.
There is an odd sound echoing through the air. It sounds like a flute. A slow tremor goes through the earth.
I’ll explain that shortly, as I rewound time a bit. I knew I was still short on treasures elsewhere, as I hadn’t found where the tomb robber had taken my things! (I was able on one run to avoid him appearing altogether, but given how closely this matched Adventure it had to be the case that he has his own treasure that only appears after he steals yours.) I went back over the entire map and couldn’t find his stash. I ended up looking at the map of Exemptus; it’s back in the Treasury where I marked the room in green. This yields a “large leather sack here, full of ancient jewelry” along with anything you’re holding. While I was busy doing this I also found the clock I had missed the first time around.
Back to that flute: this has everything from Crowther/Woods, including the cave collapsing when you’re at a certain point; the cave “closes” and the endgame eventually triggers. (Hermit and Phantom don’t copy this!) The thing that collapses is the tomb you’ve been depositing the treasures in; you can have a suboptimal and confusing ending (just, you hear the collapse, game is over) if you’re not inside. If you are inside:
There is a rumbling sound from the tomb entrance, and the room spins around you. You blink, and to your amazement you see a
whole throng of people, dressed in the magnificent robes of ancient Egyptian aristocrats! The tomb has vanished, and you see that you are standing in a palace. The people hail you as their next Pharoah, miraculously sent to them by the gods!
You have solved the secrets of the Pharoah, and found all of the treasures of the Ancient Ones! Certificate number:041122HC
You have conquered Pharoah’s Curse!
Your final score is 191.
To reach a higher rating would be a really neat trick!
Congratulations! You are an Adventure Grandmaster!
This turned out enjoyable for most of my playtime, with the hiccups either technical (parser weirdness, especially with the GIVE issue) or from the engine still slavishly following in the steps of Crowther/Woods. The re-dress of the fanatics and the tomb raider kind of work, and they at least serve to make the puzzle-less sections have the occasional moment of tension, but I found the essence of the game was more in the “tourist” aspect than in the puzzles. To recap, assuming you think to READ at the right moments:
a.) the carrot goes to the camel
b.) the meat goes to the crocodile
c.) the plank goes to a gap in the floor
d.) the key goes to a locked door
e.) the shovel is needed to dig out something buried
f.) the crowbar is used to lift something heavy
g.) the Lyre that says it was from Ramses goes to Ramses
h.) the charm with a picture of 9 men goes to the seal with 9 men
i.) the ankh goes to the ankh-shaped design
j.) the leaves go to the mummy
Excepting j (which is a cultural reference) this is far simpler puzzle scheme than either Hermit or Phantom (and from what I hear, the later games in the series as well); there was clearly a conscious choice here to simplify the puzzle solving and lean into atmosphere. It’s just some elements were a little too stuck in the past.
Isis nursing Horus, from The Met, Ptolemaic period.
We certainly aren’t done with the Craynes; there are three games to go, two which likely had the involvement of Charles. In the meantime, coming up: a return to Britgames; I’ve got a few on the queue, and all of them have background histories I didn’t expect.
Things didn’t quite go down as expected. When I was mapping the ancient caves, I had apparently accidentally looped to a room I had already reached and thought the area was larger than it really was.
I am now marking rooms with treasures in blue.
The only benefit of entering them (as far as I can tell) is getting a moonstone.
This cave is more like a tall shaft. When you look up, you see stars instead of the sun. Exits lead north and northeast.
There is a beautiful pale moonstone here, as big as your hand.
It’s atmospheric at least?
This cave is almost circular, and the walls are painted with an astounded collection of colorful paintings of animals and birds. A cramped passage leads off to the northeast, and some broader paths go to the northwest, southwest, and south.
I’m still wondering if I’m missing something just because of structural solving reasons. That is, the section was relatively tricky to get to; asking the tour guide to take you to the Sphinx really is the only way in (more on that in a moment) hence entering the caves felt like a dramatic “break in” akin to finding the underground in Hermit. I combed over multiple times for missing exits or possible uses of “magic” and no luck.
Somewhat stumped, I decided at least to work out the orientation of the Sphinx with the rest of the map. It attaches to the desert such that there are one-way exits to the north. If you go directly north from the Sphinx you’ll arrive at the temple (the one where going down led to a lyre and a rockfall); keep going directly north and you’ll end up going by the pyramid, and then the tour guide.
Not sure what to tackle next, I tried various attempts at the hungry crocodile. My best guess was taking some “rotting meat” that was up near the base-camp tomb and feeding it. This seemed to be the wrong approach.
You have reached the bank of the Nile, at a narrow cleft in the surrounding rocks. The Valley of the Kings is north of you, and the river bank stretches off to the east. Across the river you can see the modern buildings of new Luxor. A twenty-foot crocodile is resting lazily on the bank, sunning himself. He looks asleep, but his beady little eyes are open.
FEED CROCODILE
Your offering isn’t acceptable.
GIVE MEAT
It’s not hungry.
Just for fun, given I had an “axe” from the fanatic, I tried KILL CROCODILE and died in an unexpected way.
An Egyptian wildlife official appears from behind a rock, where he was studying the migratory habits of the black ibis, and is so furious that he drowns you in the Nile.
Oh dear, I think … I’m afraid … yep, you’ve gotten yourself killed. I could try to resurrect you. Would you like me to give it a try?
As this is a derived-from-Adventure-source game, of course it includes the same resurrection code. It does seem appropriate for an ancient Egypt game, so I tried yes.
Okay, here goes, but remember that I’m not really up on the reincarnation methods of the ancient Egyptians. I never have used that old spell in The Book of the Dead, but it goes something like “Oh King, live foreve…”
****** Ka-Pow! ******
Wow! That was spectacular. A huge gout of blue smoke, smelling of incense, exploded all over the place. I feel a bit dizzy myself. Take a look around, and you’ll see …
You are at the Visitor’s Center in the Valley of the Kings. A dark-skinned tourguide, wearing a bright red fez and a white linen suit, bows and asks, “Where would you like to go?”
I should point out the “live forever” line doesn’t show up in the actual Egyptian Book of the Dead, but it does show up in a book by that name published by the “Supreme Council of the Order of Rameses” in the early 20th century. Maybe that’s where the fanatics with axes come from.
For more slightly off-canon underworld fun, Grunion Guy (who blogs about text adventures) discovered you can ask the tour guide to take you to HELL.
A dark-skinned tourguide, wearing a bright red fez and a white linen suit, bows and asks, “Where would you like to go?”
HELL
You are standing in the middle of a blazing inferno. Your skin sears, and your hair is begining to burn off. You can see the shapes of other hapless humans around you, and hear their awful shrieks of pain as their flesh eternally cooks in the flames.
GO EAST
This is the shore of a great featureless ocean, an endless sea that stretches out to the ends of eternity.
Exemptus (who has already beaten the game) reports in the comments this is an “Easter egg” and it is possible to escape from Hell, but I’ll work that out some other time. In the meantime I was still trying to make regular progress, and I had still had lurking parts of my map unfinished, so I decided to crunch through.
Specifically, lots of exits that went to “mountains” but I never figured out where the landing points were. I went to the mountains adjacent to the desert (with the assumption they would form some or all of the landing points) and dropped unique objects in every room, plundering even from my already-deposited treasure to have every room uniquely tagged.
I then went to those previously red-marked exits and tried each one, using a saved game in order to make things go faster.
I found that all the red-marked exits went to already-mapped mountain territory. (The hope would be I would find a new set of rooms, but it appears Dian decided not to hide anything this way. I can’t discount the possibility I’ve made a mistake, though; this is a big map.)
I went back and combed over the puzzles I had remaining:
1.) The camel near the base camp, which “spits at you”, and “playfully tries to kick your head off”. He blocks your way east, but you can enter from the other direction, so there doesn’t seem to be any reason to bother. Just like the meat with the crocodile, the carrot seemed to be the most promising, but I got the same responses as before (“it’s not hungry” / “your offering isn’t acceptable”) and that even happened while giving the meat, so this seemed to be barking up the wrong tree.
2.) The door with a seal that has a “dog, with nine little men.” We get stopped with “magic” (a “shimmering figure” and “mysterious force”) and I did test a few items out in case I could WAVE CHARM and get a result but nothing worked. (WAVE gets interpreted as digging by the parser, it’s a little confused.)
3.) The rockfall near the lyre didn’t even like me referring to it as a noun, so likely anything that needed to be done there doesn’t make direct reference (like blowing a horn; and before you ask, playing the lyre does nothing there).
4.) A statue of Ramses I believe I forgot to mention previously, close to the crocodile area, which is blocking a path from a canyon to the east.
You are walking along the base of a sheer cliff. A paved road leads off to the north, and the face of the cliff continues to the east, where it runs against the hills to form a canyon. The east end of the canyon, hardly more than a crevice at this point, is blocked by a monumental statue of Rameses The Great. The only visible exit from this area is back out to the west.
GO EAST
There is no way to get through in that direction.
5.) Any possible other tourist destinations, although I think I may have run the guide dry.
6.) The crocodile from earlier.
I finally looped back to the crocodile, which I will remind you, the game said was not hungry. However, the game also said my offering wasn’t acceptable, and the parser was having the occasional error, so … maybe …?
FEED MEAT TO CROCODILE
The croc snatches the stinking hunk of carrion and waddles off into the river with it, his beady eyes glistening with greed.
You need to use the entire phrase; the two-word command doesn’t work. Usually this sort of moment where you have to contradict a previous parser message to solve a puzzle makes me audibly growl at my computer (see Pillage Village for some of that) but it did seem so appropriate to give the meat to the crocodile it felt worth giving it a few more tries.
Past the crocodile you can walk along the Nile and find a plank (haven’t used yet) and climb up a rockfall which appears to be on the other side of that temple…
A narrow trail leads up to the northwest from here, along the canyon wall. The canyon used to extend north, but now it is blocked by a rockslide. The only other exit goes to the west.
NW
You are on a very dangerous trail, just above the floor of the chasm. A path leads up from here to an awkward clamber, and another trail goes southeast down to the bottom of the chasm.
U
You are inching along an awkward clamber on the wall of a very steep canyon. A steep trail leads up from here, and a dangerous looking trail extends down into the darkness.
…and find yourself in a jungle.
Again, mostly just for the scenery and atmosphere, and dispensing one treasure: a Roman helmet.
You are walking through a humid tropical jungle, surrounded on all sides by waving ferns, tall palms, and clumps of papyrus.
W
You are wandering through the jungle. There is a tumbled mound of rocks here, and next to it a skeleton dressed in the rotted shreds of Roman armor. He was probably trying to mark his path.
A dented, but still impressive, ancient Roman helmet is here.
However, I was again now stuck. It took me a few more beats — mainly because of the sequence I had tested things — to realize while I had tried feeding a carrot to the camel, I did it using the “bad” parser syntax. Heading back with carrot in hand, and using GIVE CARROT TO CAMEL:
The camel takes the carrot as if he’s doing you a great favor. He turns his back on you, kicks a little dirt in your face, and pretends he’s never met you. Typical camel, actually.
E
You are in the desolate Theban Mountains, at a narrow rift. A section of stony cliff has been smoothed off sometime in the past, and a massive door, dark with age, is set into it. The door is held firmly shut by an ancient iron lock.
The key I just have from the outside (it was north of the carrot).
UNLOCK DOOR
The huge door creaks open slowly, its hinges stiff with age. Behind it, to the south, you can see a dark, sloping hallway.
S
It is now pitch dark. If you go on, something may eat you.
TURN ON FLASHLIGHT
The flashlight is now on.
This is the west end of a long sloping corridor. The east end of it leads down into a what looks like a large room. A door in the north wall is open to the bright light of day.
And this seems like a good place to pause for now! It turns out all I was really stuck on was a syntax issue, but that dragged me down for a few hours (at least enough time to get those mountains mapped). I’m hoping I’ll be able to coast to victory next time barring any last moment surprises.
Shabti of Seti I, via The Met. Found in the Valley of the Kings. These would be inscribed with a spell to bring them up in the afterlife in order to do the work for the ruler.
Some background points to get through before diving into the game itself–
First, I’m putting the author name as Dian Girard. I am doing this because on the previous Dian games we’ve covered (Hermit’s Secret, Phantom) there is ad copy that says they are by “Dian Girard”. The games themselves do not give a credit. The article she wrote later (where she is credited with the 1983 games) uses the last name Crayne, but it also says she writes her fiction under Girard, so my assumption is she is including “interactive fiction” under her pseudonym.
Second, quoting her from the aforementioned article:
My own adventure games are built from two basic parts: the driver program and the text files or “script.” The script contains all of the vocabulary words that the driver recognizes, plus the object and place descriptions. There is also a builder program that converts the text in the script to machine-readable tables. Because the games are script-driven. I can build 70 to 80 percent of a new game without ever touching the actual program source code.
The original engine seems to be based on a Charles Crayne port of Adventure, so subsequent uses of the engine keep the same elements. There is always a pirate (in Valley of the Kings, tomb robber) stealing treasure; there are always dwarves throwing axes (in this game, a “slender young man with a rather fanatical gleam in his eye”). There are always “magic words” that jump you around; here, they are given as instructions to the tour guide rather than “real” teleports. Phantom managed to creatively put in a plot despite the constraints; this game doesn’t try as hard, but does manage to build an atmosphere of Egypt that is more linked in reality than other games of this time period.
The Curse of the Pharaoh (1982), for instance, had a pyramid and a mummy, but was mostly freeform (giant clam with a fuse in it, pit with a snake); the cultural touchstones of ancient Egypt imagery without any of the content.
By contrast, in Valley of the Kings, to the west of the start point, near a “souvenir shop”, there’s a tomb of “Thothmes I” made by “the architect Ineni during the Eighteenth Dynasty”. Ineni was a real architect from Ancient Egypt we have biographical information about.
Inspection was made for me, I was the reckoner. Source.
Just inside is the “ushabti room” (see top of this post) where
Display cases hold the collection of ushabti, or “answerer” figures that were found in the tomb.
(Also called “shabti”.) Realistically for a random tomb in the Valley that’s easily accessible, the sarcophagus is no longer there.
This is the sarcophagus room, where the coffin holding the pharoah’s mummy was placed. The only exit is to the northwest.
Someone has left an interesting old silver charm here.
(The charm is a treasure, though!)
To the west of the room with the charm is a room purely there for scenery.
This large chamber was probably used to hold the great king’s hunting equipment. Nothing was found in it, but the paintings on the wall show the pharoah hunting antelope from a chariot. A doorway in the north wall is the only exit from the room.
There’s one other section of the tomb that’s also been cleared out, although someone left a hacksaw (remember that for later).
There are enough small touches that I get the impression the author at least touched an archaeology book at some point, rather than making everything up. This is comparable to Crystal Caves, which had a realistic cave at the upper level (including a park ranger that would follow you around), and you had to solve a puzzle in order to get to the “magic section”.
From TT81, also known as Ineni’s Tomb. By unbekannt, Maler im Alten Ägypten – Eberhard Dziobek: Das Grab des Ineni. Theben Nr. 81, Tafel 13, FAL. Source.
The “magic” in this case is in the tomb of Thothmes I, a piece of paper with the shabtis:
Hmmm. It’s a prayer of some sort — “Lion of the Sun, hear my prayer …” It’s written in Coptic, and looks very old.
I’ll use this at the end of the post. (Also, another small touch: would our previous Egyptian adventures reference “Coptic”?) In the meantime let’s get familiar with the aboveground, starting with a metamap.
This simplifies the overarching map structure into its general areas. You start at the tour guide, you can go south to a “desert” area with a pyramid and temple, north to a “Valley of the Kings” area which has its own downward entrance, go west to the Thothmes tomb (already seen) and the base camp (ditto, from the last post). The mountains interconnect everything and they were enough of an annoyance to mapping, I sometimes just marked an exit in red if it went to mountains. Finally, the Sphinx I was unable to reach by conventional methods (…maybe if I bothered to map the mountains more…) but could only reach via the tour guide.
Near the “Thothmes tomb” is a “parking lot” which has an “iron key” to the north (I haven’t used it yet), a “wilted carrot” within, and the Nile to the south with a “crocodile”.
There is a large asphalt-paved parking lot here. Driveways to the north and east lead out onto a paved road. The banks of the Nile river are south, and mountains rise to the west. There is a large orange carrot here, wilted from the heat.
S
You have reached the bank of the Nile, at a narrow cleft in the surrounding rocks. The Valley of the Kings is north of you, and the river bank stretches off to the east. Across the river you can see the modern buildings of new Luxor. A twenty-foot crocodile is resting lazily on the bank, sunning himself. He looks asleep, but his beady little eyes are open.
The crocodile snaps at me if I try to go east. It is not hungry for carrots.
Going over to the Valley of the Kings next, where you’ll see some of those red-exit-means-mountains spots:
The map has a lot of loop-back-to-the-same-room exits, so many I marked them as stubs rather than with arrow-loops.
You are at the Visitor’s Center in the Valley of the Kings. A dark-skinned tourguide, wearing a bright red fez and a white linen suit, bows and asks, “Where would you like to go?”
N
You are wandering around in the Valley of the Kings.
W
You are wandering around in the Valley of the Kings.
There’s a piece of rare coral here, carved into a fish.
SW
You are wandering around in the Valley of the Kings.
There’s a piece of rare coral here, carved into a fish.
The only important spot (other than the coral) is a “rectangle”. Just as a reminder, the base camp tomb included a “shovel”, a “crowbar”, and a “flashlight”; here both the shovel and flashlight are useful.
You are wandering around in the Valley of the Kings.
S
You are near the center of the bleak Valley of the Kings. An eroded rectangle of sandstone, about three feet long by about 10 inches wide shows above the surface of the sands.
DIG
You dig for several hours, moving what feels like tons of sand. Eventually you uncover a flight of sandstone steps that lead down into the ground — the entrance to a hidden tomb!
D
It is now pitch dark. If you go on, something may eat you.
(If you DIG somewhere random, the game says “Sure, go ahead. It’s not going to accomplish anything.”) Applying the flashlight:
The flashlight is now on.
This is a sunken stairway entrance leading down below the sands of the desert, where it roofs over to become a passage some ten feet high by six feet wide that continues down.
D
You are at an open doorway. Through it, to the east, you can see a passageway that leads down into silent darkness. To the west there is a staircase leading up to the sunlit desert. There is a large seal impression over the lintel of the door.
READ SEAL
It’s a picture of what looks like a dog, with nine little men.
E
You start forward, but a shimmering figure appears in the doorway and some mysterious force holds you back!
I haven’t gotten past here yet; I assume some item or set of items is needed.
Anubis, from The Met. I don’t think this is necessarily the dog meant here.
Moving on the desert with the pyramid (and some of the mountains):
The exits off to the west are another route to the base camp; to the far southeast there is a “prehistoric egg” which counts as a treasure. The important point of note is not the pyramid (at least, not that I can find) but the temple a bit south. Instead of using the shovel we’re using the crowbar:
You are wandering through the burning sands of the desert.
S
There is a tiny ruined temple here, its roof long vanished and half of its yellow columns fallen. There is desert all around you, and on the horizon to the north you can see the silhouette of an immense pyramid etched against the blue sky. The center of the floor is made up of one huge sandstone slab.
LIFT SLAB
The end of the bar fits easily into the crack around the slab and, straining every muscle, you manage to pry it up and move it aside. There is a dark passage of some sort down below.
Again, though, we can’t get too far.
D
You are in a small, square, room, hardly big enough to turn around in. A flight of well-worn stone steps leads south. The ceiling slab has been moved aside, letting the sunlight stream in from the desert above.
The steps go down to a “chasm floor” where there’s a “beautiful lyre” (a treasure) but a rockfall immediately after.
This is the floor of a narrow, high canyon, hardly more than a chasm. It used to extend down to the south, but a massive rockslide has tumbled down and blocked the passage. Now the only exit is the chasm floor to the north.
If we can pass through I assume it comes later. (Maybe through the other side; the Dian games have been big on opening up alternate exits throughout the game.) Where the big break comes is instead at the Sphinx:
You are at the Visitor’s Center in the Valley of the Kings. A dark-skinned tourguide, wearing a bright red fez and a white linen suit, bows and asks, “Where would you like to go?”
SPHINX
You are standing between the front paws of an enormous sphinx, carved out of a monolithic sandstone rock. There is a small dark doorway to the north, that leads inside the monument.
N
You are in a tiny room, carved out of the solid sandstone. It is about 12 feet square, and there is an exit on the south. A ancient stone altar, eroded by time, fills most of the space.
READ PAPER
Hmmm. It’s a prayer of some sort — “Lion of the Sun, hear my prayer …” It’s written in Coptic, and looks very old.
PRAY
As you chant the ancient prayer the dim light streaming into the small room gets strangely brighter, and to your amazement the ancient altar slowly turns in the middle of the floor!
This opens the secret temple of the Sun God.
This is the secret Hall of Amon-Re, god of the sun. A dark hallway leads out of the east wall, into a huge chamber.
Upon trying to step in, I was attacked by the “dwarf stand-in” for this game. I guess we’re supposed to be American.
A slender young man with a rather fanatical gleam in his eye runs around a corner, throws an axe at you — which misses — and then runs off into the darkness yelling something about “Yankee imperialism.”
Just to show off the temple a little:
You have reached the secret Temple of Amon-Re. All around you are fantastic carvings and paintings, showing the Sun God on his journeys across the world. The great altar, lit by some incredible light, is to the south. A doorway in the west wall leads to a large hall, and another door goes east.
S
A brilliant flame, giving off a strong scent of petroleum, lights up this end of the vast Temple of Amon-Re. There is a huge stone altar here, with carved figures of the ancient Egyptian gods. The great Temple stretches out to the north.
A roll of papyrus has been carefully set down on the floor.
The papyrus is a treasure, and the game is even clear that it is a fragile historical artifact and you should be carting it over to the archaeologists rather than noodling with it.
Not much farther there are some bars, but here is when the hacksaw comes in.
There is a hint of dampness in the air, and the surprising sound of dripping water. Your flashlight reflects from a tiny natural spring that wells up in one corner of the room. Irregular openings lead out to the north and southwest.
SW
This is an ancient corridor, part natural, and partially finished off by human hands. You can go east or west. A set of heavy iron bars have been set in concrete across the passage to the west. Through them you can see a large cavern.
CUT BARS
The hacksaw is rather dull, but you eventually cut through several of the bars and are able to pry them apart enough to get through.
W
This is the entrance to a complex of ancient caves. There are some marks on the walls that may have been made by stone-age men. A passage goes north, and an ancient corridor leads east. There are strong iron bars across the passage to the east. Some of the bars have been cut through and pried apart.
From here the caves kept going and going and I suspect this is the main entrance to the “dungeon” part of the game so it seemed like a good place to pause. So far the puzzles are straightforward, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; the atmosphere seems to be more the point this time around than any kind of mental stumpers.
Norrell Data Systems published three games by the end of 1982, and I’ve now played all of them: a port of Adventure with 375 points, and two games by Dian Girard, The Hermit’s Secret and The Phantom’s Revenge. If you want a full historical background (including how they tie into the ultra-obscure Sphere computer) you should read about those games first; I’ll just briefly re-summarize here.
In particular, Dian Girard (or Crayne, depending on circumstances) is one of our earliest multi-game female authors of text adventures; she wrote an article in PC Magazine, September 1983 which outlined her methods and gave a brief biography:
Dian Crayne is the author of several adventure games published by Norell Data Systems: The Phantom’s Revenge, The Hermit’s Secret, Monster Rally, Valley of the Kings, and Elsinore. She has been a programmer/analyst for 10 years. Her science fiction writings are published under the pseudonym Dian Girard.
That’s five games, although she actually mentions having written six games in the article itself; the game that is unmentioned is the adult game Granny’s Place. In general the Norrell versions have never surfaced, but fortunately the games were republished under the name Temple Software in 1993.
Of the 1983 games (Monster Rally, Valley of the Kings, Elsinore, Granny’s Place), we’ve had Elsinore and Granny’s Place for a while, and Monster Rally was thought lost but got rescued in January 2024 off the website of Charles A. Crayne by way of the Internet Archive. There’s the additional wrinkle that despite the article explicitly stating Dian wrote the games, Charles is given the author credit in the rescued version. CASA right now credits both as authors. JTN analyzes the situation here (with some follow-ups in the thread); I’ll dig more into the situation when I reach Monster Rally.
The game not discussed in the thread at all is Valley of the Kings, because at the time it was considered completely lost, and described as lost as recently as August 2025. I was cross-checking my database recently against the Total DOS Collection and was surprised to find an entry:
Valley of the Kings (1983)(Temple Software, Inc.) [Adventure, Interactive Fiction].zip
I am not fully clear when it got added; with these sort of all-encompassing archives there’s often a delay between when something gets placed vs. when it gets found by people who care about playing it.
Just like the other games in the series, this is based off what seems to be a Crowther/Woods style engine and so still is all about gathering all the treasures and putting them in a particular spot.
You are about to take a trip into Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, a fantastic place where the ancient pharoahs were buried with all their treasures. Some of that treasure can be found by you! Of course, you may have some trouble with the fanatical Priests of Set. They don’t like intruders. One word of warning: Don’t go into any dark places without a flashlight. It’s dangerous. There is a tomb robber working around this area too. He isn’t dangerous, but if you find anything valuable, he may take it.
The treasures go to the “storage room that the digging team uses to keep their finds until they can be taken to the museum” so I guess there’s a difference between us and a “tomb robber” this time; we are doing “official research”.
This is the Visitor’s Center, a shady pavilion with maps of the local area, tourist brochures, and a snack shop. A paved road leads west from here, across the Valley of the Kings. To the east, there are the desolate Theban Mountains. Some distance to the south you can see a spectacular pyramid. A dark-skinned tourguide, wearing a bright red fez and a white linen suit, bows and asks, “Where would you like to go?”
The game’s structure here is a little unusual. Trying to wander lands you in a desert which is somewhat maze-y (like Hermit’s Secret)…
NE
You are wandering around in the Valley of the Kings.
N
You are wandering around in the Valley of the Kings.
W
You are wandering around in the Valley of the Kings.
There’s a piece of rare coral here, carved into a fish.
…but as the coral indicates (treasure, 5 points) I’m going to still need to map out all the sections to be sure I have everything. However, there’s still some connectivity implied by some room descriptions; you can head south from the starting room to a pyramid, for instance…
S
You are walking through the burning sands of the desert. There is an immense pyramid to the south of you, and to the north you can see the silhouette of the Visitor’s Center against the sky.
S
You are walking along the outside of an immense pyramid.
…but more importantly and uniquely, you can GO LOCATION while at the tour guide at the start to warp somewhere, as long as the tour guide considers it available. This takes the “shortcut method” of travel used in Crowther/Woods, where you can sometimes type a word to jump somewhere…
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.
GRATE
You are in a 20-foot depression floored with bare dirt. Set into the dirt is a strong steel grate mounted in concrete. A dry streambed leads into the depression.
The grate is locked.
…and turns it into a puzzle of sorts. There’s no indicator of where a good destination might be, you have to guess. I tried CAVE and got a fascinating response.
GO CAVE
The guide looks startled. “Who told you about the caves? That’s an old legend, that there are some caves under the sands of the desert.” He laughs and adds, “Maybe the sphinx knows!”
This implies GO SPHINX works, and indeed it does.
You are standing between the front paws of an enormous sphinx, carved out of a monolithic sandstone rock. There is a small dark doorway to the north, that leads inside the monument.
N
You are in a tiny room, carved out of the solid sandstone. It is about 12 feet square, and there is an exit on the south. A ancient stone altar, eroded by time, fills most of the space.
Typing GO TOMB turns out to lead the player to the base camp.
You are in a small square chamber that forms the entrance to the tomb of Seti II. The tomb is rather uninteresting and is being used as a field headquarters for the archaeologist. The corridors into the tomb go north and west. The exit is south. Some rather exotic fertility rituals are carved on one wall.
The previously mentioned “storage room” is here, along with a “crowbar”, “flashlight”, and “shovel”.
The markings show “guide landing” spots; GO MOUNTAINS lands you next to a camel, although the camel does not let you pass by to the east.
This is a narrow trail that leads through the hot dusty rocks of the Theban Mountains. The trail ends here, with the only easy access being to the south. There is a narrow rift in the rocks to the east, and nothing but desolate mountains nearby. There is a large camel here, with the usual sneer on its face.
E
The camel spits at you, and rather playfully tries to kick your head off. You’d better just leave him alone for now.
Knowing Dian’s other games I’m going to need to spend a while mapping so I’m not going to try to give the full lay of the land just yet. This kind of feel where I’m able to jump around an interconnected map really does provide a mysterious atmosphere; I’m sure it will be ruined soon enough by me trying to figure out why exit X connects to room Y but for now I’m enjoying myself just wandering a little.
There’s no walkthrough or maps out there; if anyone wants to follow along I have the game here. It needs to be played with DOS.
Renga in Blue 
