The Adventurers Guild

By Deimar

Jake Spenser Journal Entry #5"Elvira keeps insisting in her abilities as a cook. I hope she turns out better than the old one. As we don’t have anything better to do other than getting some keys, killing her grand grand grand grandmother and saving the world, I give it a try. I don’t know what she gave me, but with just a bit of honey and hay she made me see things. Things no man should know. Like the names of every single plant in the garden. It must also have boosted my courage, a side effect?, as I was able to tackle the werewolf, the gatekeeper and go down to the castle catacombs. It’s important not to mix them with the dungeons. The dungeons are grey, while the catacombs are blue. And my mind is blank."

And now, for the first time since forever, the incredible, the magnificent, the “not-very-adept-at-this-game” Deimar!!! (booing). Performing his legendary act!! (more booing). THE TRANSFORMATION OF HONEY AND HAY INTO SOMETHING A TAD MORE USEFUL!!! (tomatoes being thrown)

The magic system in this game is not very complex. Elvira is the one actually doing most of the work while we only act as kitchen help. Whenever she is in the kitchen with the spellbook we can select her and the “mix” option will light up on the menu. If we select it, a close up of the book comes up showing the list of spells. We can then select any spell and a new page will be open with a blank page on the left and the ingredients we are carrying on the right. Although in my screenshots you won’t see it because I prefer to use the ingredients directly from the floor. That’s the way I roll. Dangerously ignoring the five-second rule.

Nothing insightful to say. It’s a book. I bet you have seen photos of them in your tablets and phones.

The list of ingredients for each spell is part of the copy protection system. The spells come described in a small book accompanying the manual, needing a pair of those funny colored glasses to read them. Or it did until someone actually bothered to transcribe the book. God bless people with too much spare time!. In any case, at the moment we are just going to mix one spell that needs the hay from outside the stable and a jar of honey from the kitchen. Herbal Honey. This spell allows us to “gain knowledge of the true names of all plants”. A.K.A. it’s time for some gardening.

It’s a kind of magic!

After fighting my way through some blue soldiers and monks I got to the garden. Like the spells at the beginning of the game, this one presents itself as a green bottle. One sip and some carrying later and I was back at the kitchen with the floor totally covered in fruits, leaves, roots and any other form of green. However, I was still missing some key ingredients like thistle or nettle to make the other key spell. I suspect that there is the exact amount of ingredients in the game to allow you to craft every spell once, but since some spells share ingredients and not being able to make some of them is a sure way to get to a dead end, I opted to stop making spells and continue exploring.

And so I took the crucible from the forge, the silver cross from the gardener and a pair of kitchen mittens and proceeded to mercy kill a rabid dog. With the help of the mittens we can manage the crucible once we put it into the forge. Then, we can melt the silver cross and dip one of our bolts. Voilà, a silver tipped bolt. I really hope this is what the werewolf meant because if he was referring to any other silver tipped thing he is in for a nasty surprise.

I’m no dog whisperer, but my method certainly works

Such a waste of time. No key, no incredible treasure… The only thing I found there was a bit of horsehair. I was so mad I decided I had to let out my rage. Hence the only sensible thing was to pay a visit to the only other being who had mocked me and didn’t have a good pair of…shoes. The gatekeeper. As I didn’t have any interest in a fair fight, I simply used all of my fire dagger spells to kill him. Well deserved if I may. He was such a poser, reading a blank book. At least I got the “Primus” (first) key, which was hidden behind a notice on the board behind him. The note was a warning to the soldiers about not removing a crown. Useful advice if I ever see a crown, were I not the kind of guy who has a problem with authority figures.

Who is the slimy lizard now? I like my lizard meat medium rare! (comment approved by the Arnold Schwarzenegger committee for bad puns).

I went back to the kitchen, dropped everything and mixed the Alphabet Soup spell using some dandelyons, elderberries and rose petals. The spell is “essential before understanding of runes can be gained”. Basically, there was an inscription at the entrance of the main keep which I couldn’t read and this spell helps with that. The message is “Beware thy very soul lest it exist without flesh or bone”. Useful for pretending being cool at parties, but I don’t see how can it help us with our current predicament.

With nowhere to go now, I decided to start exploring the castle towers. Starting with the northwest one, with its complimentary green soldier. These guys are starting to look like the Power Rangers to me. Inside I was surprised to find that I could go up and down. Guessing that up meant the castle walls, I decided to see what lied in the tower basement. After a short animation of our character going down some spiral stairs, I reached the castle catacombs.

To be fair, considering the whole game is just 4 disks the graphics are impressive. And repetitive.

Another new zone, another new tune. This one a bit similar to the dungeons one, slow and tense. The catacombs are very… blue. Nothing fancy, just plain rock and darkness. Suddenly I remembered that you can put the soul of the torturer to rest here, so I ran back to the kitchen to take his bones and a shovel. Grave robbing ahoy!!

Navigating the catacombs is problematic. There are places where the turn arrows don’t just turn, but also move the character one square which is the reason my maps may not be very exact. I blame the graphics, and you can’t prove it’s just my bad orientation skills so I am right. In each hall there is a crypt. As happened in the dungeons, all the crypts are the same. First an elaborate door with two weird statues holding a skull. And inside you get two sarcophagi with bones.

And all day and all night and everything he sees is just blue like him inside and outside...

However, unlike the dungeons, these crypts are mostly empty. There is one that contains dragons blood inside the skull over the door. Seems a little unfair hiding an object inside an item that in the other occasions can’t be interacted with, but what do I know. Watching my footage from the session, I see I also missed something in the floor of one of the corridors. In any case, the only other crypt with something of interest has an empty sarcophagus and another one not so empty. I tried putting the torturer bones in the empty sarcophagus but I didn’t get any message so I don’t know if that worked. Specially because opening the other sarcophagus in the room kills you, so I didn’t try to leave the remains and go back to the torture chamber.

Not even another vampire or a mummy. These catacombs are no fun.

Yep. It’s the same image used for the bones in the torture chamber. I don’t know if it’s a clue or simply a way to reuse assets.

I left the best for the end. The enemies. Right after you go down to the catacombs, some skulls come flying at you. They are quite easy to dispatch, as they die in one hit. The only caveat is that you have to time your attack with theirs and attack the same side they are attacking. Soon after, you get to meet their flesh puppets… or something. It is better if you just see the picture, I can’t write any description worthy of such a magnificent monster. You kill them by cutting their arm, whose hand converts then into one of the flying skulls.

I have no words for what I’m seeing. But…

... I think it’s time for my first caption contest. Don’t be that guy with the phallic comments!!

And the final interesting thing here is a giant troll that kills you on sight. There is a specific crypt I have not been able to explore because whenever you get near its entrance, this bugger comes and stones you to death. Old testament style. The rock he uses seems to have something written on it, and the game warns you about needing the right weapon to kill him, so it’s a dead end at the moment.

That will be the end of the catacombs for now. We leave almost completely empty handed. Fun. Meet me in the next instalment where we will change the cold stone in the dark for the cold stone in the outside over the castle walls.

CATACOMBS MAP:

DEATH BONUS ROUND (TOTAL DEATHS: 9):

Those are some sharp teeth to make such a clean cut…

Look, I’m cold, I’m wet and I’m just plain scared

Could you bring that stone closer so I can read it? AAAH! NOT SO CLOSE!! NOT SO CLOSE!!

Session Time: 1 hours 10 minutes

Total Time: 3 hours 30 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it herebefore making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Written by Aperama

Ernie Eaglebeak's Journal #5: I managed not to get myself killed by being the preferred chewtoy of an entire island of Amazons after all. I, er.. through my cunning use of what little they had to offer, I managed to find myself back to my trusty surfboard (it's pretty much mine now. I mean technically I'm just borrowing it. But after all I'm doing for the Professor I'm pretty sure he'll let me keep it!) and head off to.. somewhere else. My map had a picture of an hourglass, and.. I had a backwards game of chess, a mudbath, found another.. god, I don't even remember exactly what happened. After the director told me to drop a BUNDEROT spellbox, I ended up with it in my hands, and I was back on the Amazon island again! Of course, I had to get away pretty quick before any of them realised their precious man was missing, so I headed down to the Restaurant at the End of the Ocean. Minus side? My tutor was right, restaurants fall apart really quick. On the plus side, I got about two bites of some pygmy shark and a MAJJELLO spell box. Turns out that 'BOA' was just hidden on the surfboard by a spell! Guess I know where I'm headed to now...

Our last puzzle was simpler than I'd thought!

As I've written a few posts up for this blog now, I can't help but think about the obvious comparisons to the way in which Trickster always wrote his posts up as against Chester's at the CRPG Addict. There's a few reasons why I always preferred Trickster's style, but I can't help but feel that I'd be benefited by following Chester's today. The following post was almost under half an hour of gameplay, but seemed like I made my way through enough significant bits and pieces to actually warrant a gameplay post. Were this the CRPG Addict, however, it'd be time to talk about the combat interface or anything other than what I'd just seen – two extremely railroaded series of puzzles that in my humble opinion just weren't fun at all. It's not like they were nonsensical, and they didn't grate on my nerves – they just weren't very good! I played through them, frowned and then just hoped that the game will come back to the fun of sitting in class writing notes and taking in the game's lore. Anyhow, enough whining. On with the show!

Escaaaape!

The last suggestion I had given to me in the comments was that I had to prove that I had the same 'gigantic spoilers' as an Amazon. I'm quite glad that I didn't choose to pay attention to Kenny's suggestion, however, as they really weren't looking for the shapely curves of a fellow Amazonian woman – they're used to having other, non-Amazonian women around the island. It's just 'not looking like a man' that was the key here. After giving up on attempting to bribe the shopkeeper or hide in things (I figured maybe hiding underneath the bed might help), I realised something – we're playing a game with a spellbook! I didn't see any obvious things that could come out of BLUBBAing in the Amazonian Queendom, though, and ZEM proved rather futile even with the lead-plated sword in tow – so I started to FRIMP random objects, starting with my cloak as I was sure that it had something to do with the outcome – but as it turns out.. there was a bonnet hidden underneath the bed in the VIP room. Oops. Cross-dressing away, and we're outta there!

That's a strange name for an island..

But I can think of a reason or two as to why

This is really not a series of puzzles to come. It feels sorta like Mr. Meretzky was a little lost as to how to make the gameplay stretch out and just looked for very simple puzzles. The series of name-based puns weren't the worst the game has to throw! Indeed, after the seemingly largely useless Amazonian island (the only potential items I can think of that might come in handy from there are the pomegranate and the lead-plated sword I left there) I ended up in the Island where.. time.. runs.. backwards. This is the equivalent of a running quick-time event. Instead of telling us to push X at a contextually sensitive point, though, it tells us to reverse every single command. I'd be okay by this series of puzzles if it allowed for failure! Instead of doing so, it continually lists a command or a thing that has been done and has us react to it. So, after 'GET ON THE SURFBOARD' pops up, you need to type 'GET ON THE SURFBOARD'. (Well, this particular example isn't truthful – we actually get told that some waybread falls into our hands and we need to drop it.) However. Say, for instance, you want to look at the waterfall instead?

Evidently, wanting to not follow the path is cause for DEATH

As such, there's no actual 'gameplay' within this section. Repeating each command leads Ernie through a faux Goldilocks-styled scene, complete with a director on the beach sending him off to do so. Sending him out (well, sending him in) by having him pick up (drop) an object from the beach, he ends up launching himself from the ground to the second floor of the roof – well, he was thrown out of it, in truth. So, by 'heading south' (moving from the north), it leaves Ernie suddenly feeling an awful lot less beaten up from the rapid smacking he received directly prior to. The three steaming mud baths he tried (one too cold, one too hot and one just right) led him to have a nap in the baby.. mud devil's home. Mud devils, I remember from Ernie's classes, were one of the nasties that we have no real defense against. The advice given was 'Avoid, avoid, avoid!' Of course, technically, we're not doing anything.. we're just resting to have the previous action take effect. Confused? Good. Returning downstairs after the mud devils discover us, we find a chess set, three meals of waybread and three concubines...

The notion of Ernie having his excitement return BACK into him made me turn to the 'nice' mode. Instead of concubines? Nuns. Nuns who want to play chess with Ernie.

Sampling the waybread (uneating the small piece, finding one of the other hard and the other too soft) and the.. nun chess matches? Ernie un-enters the cabin in the woods, ending up in front of one of the Great Attachment pedestals, the 'Nozzle of Blather'. He even looked at it for us to actually let us get some more information on it! This is my real problem, honestly – were the game to allow us to actually take in the surroundings even if it wouldn't let us do things without time undoing itself, I'd be okay by this puzzle – it'd be fun and quirky instead of quite annoying. Undoing everything he does, we end up un-dropping a BUNDEROT box ('decomposition'), setting the surfboard we got on back to the co-ordinates we started by going to, riding our surfboard backwards and ending up back on the island of Amazons once more. With an extra spell box. Woohoo! So now, we're stuck with only one location – the 'EATS' sign on the map. Not only was the quote from the previous chapter from Douglas Adams..

But the next isle was quite reminiscent of him too

As Kenny and Ilmari both alluded, the rather large degree of 'steps in restauranteering' training taken back in class at SU comes out to make some sense. Well, it does now, anyhow. There's not an awful lot to this island – if the last we were on was to be considered short, this is amazingly so. There are quite literally two screens to it. That said, simple isn't necessarily terrible. I'm not entirely sure, but I think I may have been forced to play it in this order – it turns out that the BUNDEROT spell obtained in the last island is critical here. (I also found that I couldn't re-enter the restaurant after our first visit.) The opening screen has a harbour, a restaurant and a MAJJELLO spell box. Naturally, I go to claim MAJJELLO for our own – but things don't quite go the way I'd expected..

They SCREW you at the sail-thru. They know you're gonna be miles away before you find out...

As soon as we go to pick up the MAJJELLO box, the restaurant we're standing out the front of happens to decide to open rather abruptly. It turns out our SU professors really knew what they were talking about! The six steps of restaurant evolution take place before our very eyes. We walk in to a restaurant that, having just opened, has great customer service, good and cheap food – everything is good! As we're seated and read the menu (one of which just happens to list 'freshly caught pygmy shark'), the place gets extremely crowded. As we receive our meal (given that it came in five minutes, I've got to admit that this is pretty impressive), people start grumbling about the prices and portion sizes. (We received our portion sizes early enough for this not to be a problem, though.) As we BUNDEROT our meal (I found it wasn't really a choice – having a bite of the apparently rather tasty food makes it impossible to finish off the 'puzzle' within) we receive an under-digested spell box, leading us to the MAJJELLO from the beach. The restaurant remains closed afterwards, so we're stuck with what could be no clear direction – except for MAJJELLO, 'show hidden information'. As I alluded to in the previous post, there's a missing dial from the surfboard as it corresponds to the map. The 'BOA' I was missing, it turns out, is found with a MAJJELLO, and it then directs me to the one thing on the BOA line, the small pictograph of a thunder cloud...

And we have our destination for our next post!

As I say, there really wasn't much to these two chapters of gameplay – they're fine little bits of fun and all, but they're just not 'puzzling'– it's not like I was scratching my head and thinking over things. Instead, I was railroaded into the realms of not really getting to choose what happened. Six turns in the restaurant and it closes, even if you want to look around and do other things. If the game just allowed for a little more playing around instead of giving you limited to no opportunity to stuff up, these last two chapters could have been really enjoyable. Anyhow. The game can't have too much longer to go, and it still has every opportunity to finish up strong, now that my inventory has swelled to two extra spells..

Session Time: 30 min
Total Time: 6 hours

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Written by Mad Welshman

Between interactive fiction and first person graphical adventure games, there were some interesting experiments in the genre: What I like to call Graphical Parser games. We've already seen at least one style of this subgenre played by Trickster (ICOM's Deja Vu), but there were at least two more, from two other companies: Legend Entertainment (At least one of which, Frederik Pohl's Gateway, is on the list), and the Magnetic Scrolls games (Which are not.)

Magnetic Scrolls was founded in 1984 by Anita Sinclair, Ken Gordon, and Hugh Steers, originally wanting to develop games for the Sinclair QL (A computer many won't have heard of outside of the UK), but moving quite quickly to the Commodore and Atari line of computers on seeing their utility. Their first four games were well received, for the most part, but it is the fifth I'm going to be looking at, because it is the first game that received the Magnetic Windows treatment that made them somewhat different: Wonderland (1990), published for the Atari ST, PC, the Acorn Archimedes, and the Amiga line of computers by Virgin Interactive, and written by David Bishop.

I'm specifically going to be using the Atari ST version for this Missed Classics review, because it highlights how much hard work was put into the technical end of things. Let's begin with a shot of the Atari ST Operating System, CRYSTAL (Precursor to GEM), also affectionately known as The Little Green Desktop.

And now, Wonderland as it would look when you first get past the title screen.

Looks similar, doesn't it? But this is all in game, and looks pretty much the same no matter what platform you play it on. It's not using CRYSTAL, it's creating these windows in program. With that said, let's introduce the game itself.

Wonderland is, as you might have guessed from the title, loosely based on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, and, if it weren't for these bells and whistles, would firmly be placed in the “Text Adventure” portion of Interactive Fiction. But its features are quite powerful: A map, drawn as you explore. A window each for your own inventory, and all the items you can see (More on that when we get there). A graphical window (Sometimes animated, and always drawn from a preliminary description of the scene by many different pixel artists), and finally, the parser window itself. All of them are resizable, movable, and can be closed or opened at will. I'll try not to keep things too cluttered for the screenshots, however, generally keeping only the graphics and text windows open at the same time.

I'll be working from memory, as I have played this before, but the game also has a hint system... So, apart from an example or two to highlight the use of the hint system, I'll be comparing your inputs to the game's, and the usual hint rules apply.

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

By Deimar

Jake Spenser Journal Entry #6"Ah! Fresh air and a gorgeous view. Just what I need to forget everything about these gho...Oh. They are also here. Never mind. And the fresh air is making me feel sick. I think I need another of Elvira’s concoctions. Not like I’m now an addict. I simply feel the need to get more of her juice. The other one. She says I need some more plants. Is it not enough to have the whole kitchen covered? Why is it always me going to the dangerous places? At least she is good for getting another of those damn keys. These things are hidden everywhere. Well, I guess it’s time to show these gremlins the meaning of the word “genocide”"

Last time I expressed my intentions of going to the top of the castle walls. And I kinda did. There were some problems there that made me reconsider my choice, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Up, up and away!

The stairs from the northwest tower took me to another floor. Mostly empty but for another set of stairs going up and two doors. One in front of me and another one to my right. Going up takes us to the very top of the tower, with a glorious view of the English marshlands. Gorgeous view, but with nothing to do.

The marshes are alive with the sound of music

I went back down and took the door in front of me. As I had guessed, a.k.a I remember because I’ve played the game before, this led me to the castle walls. What follows is a series of outdoor wall sections with a new tower and outskirts view. None of them have anything worth mentioning beside the new iteration of soldiers, but with a closed helm and the usual range of colours. The other thing worth mentioning is that you can take ivy from some plants dangling over the walls.

Spot the seven differences between these guys and the soldiers

After two identical towers I reached the northeast tower. I went down to check if there was another entrance to the castle catacombs but I only found a well. You can actually go down the well, but its is better to avoid it for now, at least until we have a reason to go there. Going up again the next tower has a nice surprise for us, a cannon. Yep, at the top of the tower there is a cannon pointing to the next tower. Suspicious. If I had some violent tendencies I would be tempted to shoot the cannon. Oh, wait. I DO have violent tendencies. I’ll add it to the list of things to do before dying. Next to killing puppies.

Yeah, baby. That’s exactly what it is.

The next part is where I stopped exploring the castle walls. You see, I went further ahead, but soon enough I started to realize I no longer could start a combat in the attacking position and had very little time to attack when I deflected a blow. After studying my char for a while I realized that my dexterity was close to single digits. I don’t know why, but it seems my dexterity has been continuously dropping. It could be due to injuries, but the healing spells can’t bring it up just like they bring up strength, and I had run out of them by now. Fun.

Well, let’s just load a savegame from just before the catacombs, as we didn’t get anything there, and let’s see if I can be more conservative in combat. Nope. I started to panic. I use an incremental naming convention for my saves. From Elvira001 to Elvira005 which was my current save in the tower with the cannon. Each time you save or load, the game asks you to introduce a name. Fine until now. The problem is those names are file names. Old MS-DOS users have probably already spotted the problem. MS-DOS only uses 8 letters for file names. My current naming scheme had 9, which means that all my saves, or more accurately the only save, were overwritten by the last one, as the only character varying was the last one. So… no savegame. Great.

I started to panic. This is a horror game, but I think this fear inside is quite more than the developers intended. Was restarting my only option? I could go ahead anyway but it was clear that soon enough I wouldn’t be able to win any combat. I went back to the kitchen to see If I could make some spells to enhance my dexterity or recover it. Careful study of the spell book revealed that yes, there are a few, but I was missing ingredients. If I wanted to finish the game, I would need to gather those missing ingredients without fighting too much. The missing ingredients were mostly plants. I was not sure, but I had a pretty good idea of where to find them. Time to go to the garden maze.

My saviour!

Until now I have avoided this place because its inhabitants are nasty gremlins. They don’t do damage, but whenever you find one he steals from you unless you can kill him using a missile weapon. Ammo for the crossbow is quite limited and still needed for later sections, meaning that you need ranged spells. I had left only the other starting spell, fingerlight, and I didn’t know it that would be enough to clear the maze. Only one way to know…

Gizmo, caca!

I explored the maze until I ran out of spells and had to run back to the kitchen. But the exploration was not in vain. Although I didn’t find any special room, only more green maze, there are some items dispersed through the map. I got back with some thistle, nettle, fern and even a bird’s egg. I was still missing a four leaf clover for the lucky surprise spell, but I could do something with what I had gathered. For starters, get another fingerlight.

Do you remember the first time we were in the kitchen there was a dark passage behind the goods lift? Time to bring some light into the heart of darkness. My Growing Pride will light up the way. And that’s definitely not a reference to my penis but the name of the spell that can illuminate the way for Elvira, who now comes back with another golden key. Quintus (fifth). Two more to go.

Could you… erm… go back in and out again? A few more hundreds of times?

I resumed the maze exploration to see where it led. The maze is approximately a 10x10 grid with not many things worth notice. At the center, you can reach the gremlins’ lair. A hole between bushes full of little evil eyes. I had spent some spells and bolts to reach here, so I was not ready to just leave empty-handed. I starting raining fingerlights into their little lair until there were no more eyes left.

Now that I was safe, I entered the lair. The first thing I noticed was a ring with a big ruby on it. Elvira’s ring, the eye of Dawn, which her diary indicated had gone missing. Dirty little rascals. A bit further ahead I reached a little pond with a stone cross in the middle. There was not a lot to do in this place but for gathering quite a few lilies and algae from the pond. It’s something, at least.

I like the celtic touch. May I call your designer?

I was still missing that clover so I searched the maze and the rest of the garden clicking on everything to no avail. Sadly, it is still a mystery if I will be able to complete the game. And it will keep like that at least until the next instalment of this series. Keep tuned!

MAZE MAP:

FUN FACT: Take this map and the garden one and explain how can you put this maze in there

DEATH BONUS ROUND (TOTAL DEATHS: 10 and a half):

Ok, ok. Not a death, but I wanted to show it anyway. Now you can see the sacrifices my eyes are making for your sake.

Rockin’ Ricky Rialto fans? No, you are not f… AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!

Session Time: 1 hours 50 minutes

Total Time: 5 hours 20 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

By Joe Pranevich

Happy Wanderer Travelogue #2:Have you ever had one of those days where you set out to rescue a princess and then you find out that she is hidden in a castle far, far away? I had one of those days today and boy, do my feet hurt! Along the way, I learned a few spells, fed a lion, crossed the ocean in a leaking rowboat, and stole a treasure from a pirate. I can see the mountains in front of me. The princess is close, I can feel it.

Episode 2: In Which Our Hero Traverses More Desert

Deja vu. Didn’t I just solve a puzzle about a snake in the desert?

Last week, the happy wanderer and I solved the mystery of the desert maze and defeated an inconveniently placed rattlesnake. I’m still not sure why I couldn’t just walk around it, but hey: it’s an adventure game. My trusty rock in hand, I set off north to see what new challenges Roberta Williams would throw at us. Unfortunately, those challenges primarily consisted of more desert and more snakes.

The first of these snakes is guarding a hole in the side of a small hill. I can walk past him easily enough, but if I try to find out what is in the hole, he bites me and I die. My trusty rock doesn’t do the trick, so I’m going to need to find another approach. For now, I think I’ll see what else is in the desert and come back later.

This section of desert is at least more interesting than the last, with most screens having something to see or pick up. Very quickly, I find a locket on the ground (inscribed with “LUCY” on the inside), a stick, and a strange note. The note looks like it is written in code, but I do not have a way to decipher it yet. I also find a cracker hidden inside a cactus, which is strange.

Because two snakes were not enough, I also meet up with a third: the King of Snakes. This very important snake seems to have had a rock dropped on him and I am faced with a decision: should I kill him? or let him go? Naturally, I let him go and he rewards me with a magic word: “HISS”. I try it out and am transformed into a snake, but change back after a brief time. It’s pretty cool, but haven’t we had enough snake-based puzzles?

In the far north of the desert, I see the promised land:

The artist wanted to draw “some woods”, but managed to only draw one tree?

Unfortunately, I will need to cross a wide and water-filled canyon before I can escape the desert, but at least I can see that escape is possible. I have a feeling that somehow the solution will involve a snake. Now that I have enough items, I take a break from exploring the northern part of the desert to go back and make sure that I had fully explored the maze from the beginning of the game. I do not find anything new, but there was no way around it. I do not trust Roberta not to have hidden something I’ll need for the end of the game there.

With nothing else to do, I revisit the snake guarding the hole. Assuming that the snake would not attack another snake, I use my “HISS” spell to transform then try to squeeze into the hole myself. Apparently this particular snake is anti-social because he bites and kills me anyway. I check my inventory and try a few objects and one of them does the trick: I can fight off the snake using the stick I found lying in the desert. Once it is driven off, I reach into the hole and pull out another encoded note!

The two notes are written in a sort of code, but are clearly related to each other:

The top one might read “CULUN”, but the bottom one just has me scratching my head.

Because I’m playing this game on an emulator in the future, I print out the two notes and play around with them. I try using a mirror on the center line, or flipping them horizontally. The solution is obvious in retrospect, but I was thrown off because the note with the text on the BOTTOM is actually the TOP of the message. And when you paste them together, what do you get:

Hocus Pocus Alimagocus!

It is obvious that “HOCUS” is my next magic word. I try it out and see what animal it turns me into, but it is not that kind of magic word. I wander the desert from screen to screen, typing “HOCUS” like an idiot before I go to the obvious place, the ravine. When I use the word there, it creates a bridge! With luck, I can leave this desert (and its abundance of snake-based puzzles) behind for good.

Before I cross into the green beyond, one side note: I am starting to suspect that there are other magic words scattered throughout the game. On a whim, I try “LUCY”, the name from the locket, and that is a magic spell, too! When I use it, all of my stuff disappears and I have to reload the game. It must come in handy somewhere, but I can’t imagine how.

Episode 3: In Which Our Hero Is Mugged By A Gnome

Wasn’t that house brown a minute ago?

On the other side of the ravine, I immediately check the house for valuables, but only find an apple. Before I can get anywhere else, something terrible happens: I am mugged by a gnome. I replay the scene a few times, trying to find a way to escape or kill him, but in the end I give up and assume it is supposed to happen. I probably had it coming to me anyway.

Hey, is your name David? Just checking.

I start exploring the forest, but I hit immediately on a new obstacle: a snake. Just kidding! It’s actually a lion and he’s guarding a path down to a beach. In the distance, I can see a sailboat and crystal blue water, but before I start hitting the lion with rocks or sticks, I need to find my stuff and see what else is around.

This side of the ravine is a pleasant forest. There’s a brook where I can refill my water jug, a parrot in a tree, a different tree that I can climb all the way up to get a good view of the ocean, and a hill with a strange crack in it. More importantly, I also find a tree that contains a staircase down to a locked door. Could this be where the gnome has hidden my equipment? I’m not sure, but I cannot find any way to unlock the door so I will need to keep exploring.

Just a thought: we have a house in the woods, a short distance away from a tall tree that you can climb. Is this a coincidence or a reference to Mystery House?

Two trees, alike in dignity?

I climb to the top of the tree, but cannot find anything to do with it so I concentrate my puzzle-solving on the hill with the crack in it. Back in the desert, I tried to sneak into a hole by turning into a snake and slithering in, only to be bitten and die. I try the same approach again and this time it works! I crawl through a dark tunnel for several screens before emerging into a room with a door and all of my stuff. This is obviously the gnome’s lair, but he does not seem to be at home. Not wanting to stick around for too long, I pick up my things and exit out the front door, emerging at the tree that I discovered earlier. Now what?

I delegate the captioning of this image to Kenny.

I check my inventory and notice that I have the cracker that I found in the cactus back. And who might like a cracker? A parrot, of course! I head back to the parrot and exchange the cracker with him for a vial of liquid. I save my game and try it out: I can fly! The effect wears off almost immediately, but I set about seeing if there is anywhere that I can use my new prize. I try it first at the top of the tree, thinking that I can leap out and cross the ocean like Daedalus. Unfortunately, that does not work.

Lambert, the sheepish lion! Or did they not have the ability to use yellow in this game?

A little more experimentation shows the answer: I can use it to fly over the lion guarding the beach. Once there, I find some rope and a rowboat. The sailboat I saw from the last screen is nowhere to be found, but perhaps I will find it later. The rowboat has a giant hole in the bottom, so I try a whole bunch of my items until I find one that works: the blanket. Somehow balling up the blanket and sticking it in the hole makes the boat seaworthy. I am fairly certain that this would not work in real life, but the next time I am in a leaking rowboat with an old blanket, I will give it a shot.

Episode 4: In Which Our Hero Searches For Buried Treasure

“X” marks the spot!

Setting out to sea in my rowboat was not as climactic as I expected. While I had hoped for a bit of The Wind Waker-style island-hopping, I realized soon enough that the ocean continued on forever in every direction except landing on this one specific island, a bit to the east. The first feature I notice on the island is a large “X” on the beach, obviously a pirate treasure. But generally doesn’t “X” mark the spot on a map where treasure is buried? If you were a pirate and actually put an “X” where your treasure was, I think it would get stolen pretty quickly. I would be stealing it already, but I do not have anything to dig with.

Exploring the island is easy, but there is a bit of a interface-stupid here. In a couple places, it seems that if you type a direction and there is nothing that way, you walk off the edge of the island and drown without warning.

Treehouse of brown, now sit down!

I explore a bit further and find a treehouse in the jungle, but no way up. The rope that I found seems to be the right approach, but there’s no heft to it and so I can’t get it high enough. I keep exploring and the answer comes immediately: there is an anchor on the beach in the next screen. I tie the rope to the anchor and throw it up to the treehouse. This lets me climb up and explore, where I find a shovel. I backtrack to the beach and start to dig.

Putting my “Happy Wanderer” muscles to good use, I unearth a treasure chest. Before I can open it, a pirate jumps out from behind a tree and steals it. That makes twice this game that something of mine has been stolen, but at least there are no snakes. Thanks to the poor graphics of this game, you never actually see the pirate except in your imagination. His whole appearance is only described in text.

The last time I met a pirate that hid things in a cave, the cave was a bit bigger than this.

I continue exploring the island, quickly finding a cave containing a treasure chest. This whole section of the game seems a bit under-designed. Maybe I am just lucky, but I keep finding the puzzle objects I need immediately after learning that I need them. There is no challenge here. I suppose I could have stumbled into the cave before I got the treasure, but at least the way I am playing it through it all connects pretty simply.

Inside the chest is a harp. I can play it, but there is no obvious magic. I continue exploring the island, playing the harp in random places, but do not find anything else of interest. I also do not find any way off the island, or even a good clue where I might go. I know from the manual that the direction of the evil wizard’s fortress is north, but that does not help all that much. Not wanting to give up, I cross back to the original landmass and play the harp everywhere there as well. No dice.

I am not ashamed to tell you that this is when I spent a LOT of time trying to chase after that sailboat. Remember the sailboat? The one you can see from the beach and the top of the tree? The one that is definitely not a rowboat with a leaky bottom? My thinking was that something from the north island would let me snag the boat so that I could continue sailing north.

Curse you, sailboat!

In all of this exploring, I decided that maybe I could use the vial to get to the sailboat. I restored to before I sailed over the lion and looked for a different approach. I did not have to go too far through my inventory before I discovered that this lion enjoys bread. I gave him some bread and he let me pass, but this time I still had the vial. I used it on the beach, but I was still unable to find a command that would let me get to the sailboat.

Running out of ideas, I started trying the vial in various places on the jungle island. I found the trick pretty quickly and I am fairly ashamed that it took me a while to work it out: I went to the northernmost screen I had found so far, the beach with the anchor, and used the vial there. I then typed “north” and I flew over the water to another beach!

Is this the right solution? I do not know. The vial was used once already to solve a puzzle that I could have solved another way. Was this the right solution? Or a cheat that will trap me later? I am not sure, but I am sure that my time is up for this week.

Thus far I am enjoying the game, but it is far from perfect. This week’s session was not as annoyingly difficult as the desert maze was, but there were spots when it just came too easy. Finding the object you need in the screen after you realize you need it is fun once, but it happened several times on this leg of the journey. Let’s hope next week is better!

Next time: the thrilling conclusion!

Session time: 4 hrs
Total time: 5 hrs

By Aperama

Ernie Eaglebeak's Journal #6:“Well, that went faster than I'd thought! I'm an honest-to-god hero! I'm gonna save the world! I've graduated! I know all sorts of spells! Well.. I did before I burnt my spellbook. Back. Back, back. After I found the picture of a boa on the surfboard, I realised why it was hidden – it was the way to the very Isle of the Gods itself! After.. doing my humanly duty with Ocarina, Glockenspiel was quite upset that his wife was willing to spend more time with me – but all of the gods forgot pretty quickly when I wiped the legendary garbage dump of the gods clean. I worked out from the brazen trail of breadcrumbs that were left that I was going to have to head down to Fort Blackwand – and sure enough, everything all came to a head. I fought not one, but two mythical beasts, saved my beloved Lola Tigerbelly, and even found out that Joey Rottenwood was the one behind it all after everything! It was pretty satisfying to not only foil his plans, but to cover him from head to toe in whale poop. Anyhow, enough of this journal schtick – it's time I got to know my Lola's.. shopping habits. Sigh. The chores of being a hero..”

Level 5! If only I had some level 5 spells to cast..

I'll admit that while it's felt like a slog from time to time, Spellcasting has actually been quite enjoyable and hasn't actually dragged as much as it has felt it has. All of the puzzles have been largely logical, albeit hindered by the parser and often difficult to work out from what information was given all too often. Not being crazy long is doubtless its strong suit, though. I reckon that with my list of KABBULed names (I kept them all in a separate set of notes) I could probably beat the entire game within about 20 minutes of rote typing now. Anyhow, enough bragging. The opening to the Island of the Gods was quite difficult to comprehend to me – the island is 'locked'. How do you lock an island? Yeah, I'm not sure on this one either. (There's no keyhole.) However, back at the Isle of Bad Puns And Typing 'KABBUL' Heaps – er, the Isle of Lost Soles – we received a 'key'. It wasn't a key to their township, their island, themselves – it was just the only key they could find to give me out of appreciation. But sure enough? It's the key to unlock the very ISLAND OF THE GODS!

All too often this happens! It literally gives you an exact word on screen then won't react to it.
Also just missing in this screenshot: 'You see nothing special about the Condo of the Gods'. ARGH!

The majority of the rooms within this area are actually quite benign. I'm willing to give it credit for at least thinking of a few clever lines – you can VAI (heal) all of the flowers and bushes et al in the Garden, but on trying to GUB (disease) them they either give 'it must be a GUB-resistant strain' or 'I hope you don't think we'd bother making a version of this picture without the flowers just so you could go around casting the stupid GUB spell.' There are lots of things to interact with (well, look at) – but unfortunately, there's not much more to them. The opening room to the Condo of the Gods is a large chamber with entrances to the Garbage Dump of the Gods to the north (living for all of eternity creates quite the landfill, y'see), the room to the east with the condo of Bagatelle, Goddess of peace, and Baccarat, God of war (split perfectly in the center like any number of old sitcoms where 'lines were drawn' between two characters).. and a similar line created between Ocarina, Goddess of Beauty, and Glockenspiel, God of Ugliness, to the west. If one was to have been paying attention back in class (or had they read Ernie's notes), they'd know that both of these two halves were the lovers which created the realm of Peloria through arguments, death and marriage. Essentially, to give a contemporary example, the entire creation of Ernie's home world was an episode of Game of Thrones.

… 'the same headache for sixteen hundred years?'
I'm suggesting that she could do with some really good paracetamol.

Turns out that the Goddess of Beauty doesn't share my love for naked jogs through gardens...

Upon hearing arguing voices, Ernie has the opportunity to hide behind the drapes and ignore the sounds of a lovers' tiff. See, it turns out that Glockenspiel believes that Ocarina has been enjoying herself with other men while ignoring her poor Godly husband. Being the embodiment of Mr. Eaglebeak, I do my utmost to be the true gallant gentleman and offer her the opportunity to show Mr. Glockenspiel that his worries are unfounded – she instead goes on to swiftly turn Ernie into a seven foot tall weightlifter with, as I quote from the game, 'a little love monkey that turns into King Kong'. (Un)fortunately, this only lasts rather shortly – Ernie deflates in more ways than one after enjoying himself with the Goddess.. who steals one of his cigarettes. (He's not even a smoker. I'm beginning to think he's getting advantage taken of him!) She gives him a GWEEK spell box for his troubles – 'shrink inanimate objects'. Glockenspiel chooses now to run in on Ernie – and in trying to find a suitable punishment decides that he can spend the rest of eternity cleaning up the venerable Garbage Dump of the Gods!

Or, y'know, he can just GWEEK the garbage to tiny-size,
then BUNDEROT it to decompose it into nothing. Works, too.

The puzzle itself wasn't particularly difficult to solve, so a quick zap or two and all that's left is a GOBERDUNA spell box – 'tie or untie mighty knots'. As it's unlocked, dozens of gods begin to flock out into the newly-cleaned Big Empty Field of the Gods (patent pending), all declaring that they have their own thoughts as to what this new empty swathe of space could be used for. As they begin to fight, Ernie decides to invoke the better part of valour and run while the going's good. As I've gotten through everything on the map, it's pretty clear that the next stop is the place noted in almost every island that has mentioned what happened around about the time their individual Great Attachment™ to the Sorcerer's Appliance – they had a visit from the seamstresses over at Fort Blackwand. It's one of the only three visitable places on the map that is inland and not shown by a symbol rather than a little 'shield' map dot in the game – there are about a dozen red herring areas to make the game look far larger than it actually is to the outside observer.

Only problem with this plan is the gigantic sea monster..

The Loch Pik Monster was one of those covered in Ernie's General Magic 101 class – it was considered something of a legend. I didn't even have the opportunity to puzzle over it – there wasn't much information given by looking at it, and I just randomly started casting some spells on it to see if it made any difference. Turns out it's quite long, though, and to 'tie a mighty knot' with it is enough to snap its neck. GOBERDUNA Loch Pik monster? RIP Loch Pik Monster.. oops. Plus side? Chapter eight!

I don't understand what screwing has to do with sorcery.
Did this become Handyman's University 101: The Quest To Fix IKEA Furniture?

The game drops us from the lagoon into a room that.. looks identical to the rooms given in the Simulation Lab back at SU! Hope that you weren't like me and didn't leave the sword in the Amazonian shop! I figured I could always go back given the encumbrance kicked in when I tried to pick it up.. instead, I speedran back from first landing on their island. (I lost the lipstick so I couldn't escape the island after retrieving it without restarting.) So after replaying the previous two posts or so.. GUB tree. ZEM me. South. Kill dragon with lead-plated sword that I totally didn't leave back there and ruin Ernie's chance of being the hero with. VAI ivy. Climb ivy. Pull lever. Unchain damsel...

Find childhood crush. Proceed to wonder if unchaining her is the right move
(clearly, because her captors will work out she was unchained – not for any other reasons!)

Turns out that 'he's' down a trap door with 'that machine', or so Lola tells us. The 'machine' is clearly the Sorcerer's Appliance, so the only real question here is as to who exactly 'he' is. I'll admit that my mind innately came up with a few ideas regarding some sort of rival we'd made in our opening few weeks off screen – or, indeed, an angry professor who was somewhat less than impressed with the present establishment of SU. After trying to.. show my appreciation for Lola's fine assets (which in a first was not successful), I found her purse – filled with the essentials. A compact (which Ernie is quick to assure himself he is quite spiffy looking with), a credit card, a tampon, a flame thrower. Just the typical stuff most girls keep in their handbags, I'm fairly sure you'll find. Still, down the trapdoor? A puzzle! It's pretty obvious, though it very nearly again stumped me. There are three coloured 'x's with three correspondingly coloured gates. They each need to be stepped upon to bring up the gate. Ernie's one, and Lola climbed down with us, which just leads us needing a third person or something heavy. I've already lost the lead-plated sword from killing the atomic dragon just prior, so there's nothing in my inventory of note, and BLUBBA just kills us both by flooding the room with whale meat. The only thing in here is a painting of a landscape with a lamp pointing towards it inside..

Three points if you thought of this as soon as you heard I needed a third body

But more importantly – the EVIL END BOSS!
(The graphics often invert every time the 'loading' screen comes up and I'm not sure why)

Thanks for letting us know, Lola! Thanks a bloody well lot!

It turns out that instead of being an angry professor or the like, it's a scorned ex-student that was expelled – and that someone is Joey Rottenwood, Ernie's awful stepfather! He knows of the little prophecy that our mother was trying to let us know about, which is exactly why he married her – it doesn't exactly explain what that prophecy is – but I digress. Joey's plan is to use the Sorcerer's Appliance to supercharge himself with magic, create a rival school to SU and show them how great he is. The problem with his little plan is that nobody actually knows what this is likely to do (hint from if you allow him to: they name the resultant mess that clears out the majority of southeastern Peloria as 'Rottenwood Crater') – he's just learned how to use it in the terms of 'making it work'. In the same way that George W. Bush probably knew that the red button under his desk 'made the nukes work'. Trying to cast any spells results in Joey smacking us for our efforts – and even with ZEM cast, Ernie's not ready to undo years upon years of ingrained beratings and beatings alike and just smack him. The flamethrower doesn't work, either.

The final puzzle of the game. We needs us some whale poop! Problem? Three turns!

We distract Joey by giving him the popular book back from the SU library which is simply too good for him to put down, stopping him from pushing both buttons of the Appliance at once (the explosive option) – but as he settles down to read, he hits the red self destruct lever next to the Appliance. Nobody offers to help out, naturally – we're the protagonist in an adventure game! Dammit, we're the only one who can do anything. So, we need to drop seven tons of whale poop into a convenient receptacle of the Appliance – in three turns. BLUBBA and EKLAKSIA are the clear solution – but there's a problem. Casting BLUBBA has the pressure of a whale dropping from the air force the spellbook out of our hands, and EKSLAKSIA on the ground is clearly what we need to do on it from there. This one took me a little as the nature of 'spell boxes' was never really explained, but it appears that they search for the easiest place to ply their trade once invoked through the book – the obvious stopping spot being a spellbook. After casting BLUBBA to put the whale in its place, we need to use Lola's flame thrower on our own spellbook – then, as we open the EKSLAKSIA box, everyone is given the impetus to begin losing the contents of their collective stomachs.. including the whale, who overfills the receptacle and then some to spray over Joey. Oops! The collective entirety of SU turns out to have been captured around, so everyone gets freed – including Ernie's true dad, who hadn't died after all! A happy ending! Well, sort of..

Fourth wall breaking plot twists? Check!

Can't say I wasn't thorough!

Session Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 7 hours

By Deimar

Jake Spenser Journal Entry #7:"Ok, ok. Let me check the ghost busting manual. Magical sword belonging to a long forgotten king. Check. Six golden keys to open the chest. Check. Burning coal to shot the cannon and destroy the tower hiding said chest. Check. Magic stone to open the tunnel to hell. Check. It seems like is all ok. Time to face the evil witch and get my reward from Elvira. I hope it’s kidney pie. I love kidney pie."

Oh. My. God. This game sure can be frustrating. Even considering I had already played and watched walkthroughs. If you remember, last time I had a little problem with my dexterity score which was making fights really difficult for me. Not that my natural clumsiness was making that part easy anyway. But who doesn’t like a challenge?

He doesn’t. He enjoys beating easy prey like me.

The thing is, I was unable to mix the only spell I thought could help me. And I didn’t have any clue where to get the clover I was missing. Maybe the garden but I hadn’t seen anything there in my last visit. In any case, I needed healing so I mixed a Wooden Heart, the same spell I was given by Elvira at the beginning of the game. I spent all three charges and got back to almost 100 life and 44 strength. And just 27 dexterity…

Well, no sense in crying. I took the sledgehammer and the prayer I found inside the bible in the second floor and ran to the chapel. Only it was more like a walk. A painful and repeated walk. There was a purple soldier in the chapel door waiting for me. These are the most difficult soldiers and they hit like a truck and quite fast also. I tried to best him to no avail, although I took good practice fighting in the screen instead of using the commands. The trick seems to be that is the enemy’s left and right side instead of the screen’s.

And so I tried several different strategies. First I mixed a Brain Ache spell, which slows and paralyzes an enemy, but it did next to nothing. Next round I mixed a Demon’s brew spell, which the manual says is the most powerful attack spell. Two charges worked, but I didn’t want to spent such a valuable resource in this guy. Back to the drawing board I tried mixing a Knightyme Pleasure spell, the most powerful defensive spell, but I was kicked from the game after the third time I failed to give the right ingredients. But Deimar, did you have a brain fart? You DO have a manual with the ingredients, don’t you? I do, I do. But after searching the internet for a bug or something that explained this behaviour I found out that is also a matter of the number of ingredients, not only selecting the right ones (even though there is no number in the recipes in the manual). Great, no protection spell as I hadn’t found the right amount of ingredients apparently. I even tried another healing spell, Clotted Surprise, that did absolutely nothing.

Desperate, I decided to man up and take the purple guy upfront. And by upfront I mean that I used a demon’s brew charge and a crossbow bolt. I don’t know how many charges of the spell I have, but I do know I only need one more bolt.

So… is this where the well of the souls is hidden?

Once in the chapel I approached the altar where the gold chalice was. The gold chalice with an octagonal hole in the middle. Just like the shape of Elvira’s ring. Subtle, isn’t it?. The ring opened a passage under the altar which led to a chamber with a crown in the middle, and a picture at the back with a Latin phrase and the drawing of an angel giving a sword to a knight.

Only the penitent man shall pass

I remembered that a note in the gatekeeper’s office warned about removing the crown, so I let it there for the moment, concentrating my efforts onto the wall. Effort is the name I’ve used to call the sledgehammer. Sadly, it did nothing. They say the pen is stronger than the sword, so I started to pray. In the game too, by reading the one I was carrying. To be fair, the picture also showed someone praying. The wall came down revealing a death skeleton holding a sword. The skeleton seemed to be a king of shorts, but it didn’t have a crown. Hence I put the crown in his head and he allowed me to take the sword. Yes, that means I took it from his cold hands. The sword had the drawing of a hideous monster and a pentacle in the hilt. And I know exactly which hideous monster it was.

He seems so happy with his little toy crown and his little toy sword...

Back to the tower catacombs and to the guy with the stone. Lucky for me, the only enemies I found in the way were the flying skulls, because otherwise I might had been in trouble. The troll was even harder than it looked even considering I now had the right weapon. I managed to kill him in my first attempt, but he took too much life so I reloaded. This fight is special because you don’t have to defend yourself, you just have to spam the attack button until you chop the beast’s hand. I suspect my lack of dexterity was hurting me, but I killed him after receiving just one hit the second time.

Do you want me to give you a hand? Do you catch it? Wink Wink

The runes in the stone told about a hidden passage in the depths of the castle. The crypt he was guarding was mostly empty but for a key inside one of the sarcophagi. Not a golden key, mind you. A rusty key. I was starting to get worry because I was still missing two more keys and I only remembered where one of them was. But I had more work to do down there. I decided to drop the torturer’s bones in the empty sarcophagus and open the water one to see where it would take me.

To the bottom of a cesspool. That’s where it took me.
Become a ghostbuster they said. You will see the world they said.

And it took me to the castle moat after using the rusty key on a gate in the underwater tunnel. I swam a little trying to explore but found nothing. I got back to the tunnel to find a hole in the middle which took me to the bottom of the well in the north east tower. I took some moss in the walls there and used the well’s rope to climb back up.

Beauty is such an empty thing… Just like this moat. Completely empty.

I climbed up to the tower with the cannon and advance a little. There I found a guy which “looks invincible in a close fight”. It’s even stated in the manual. Well, if I’ve learned something from this game is that there is no problem a crossbow to the face can’t solve. The “knight” fell down the walls, presumably to the castle moat. Anyone else coming for another bath?

What’s your favourite colour? Green. NO! Re… AAAAAAAAAAAH!

I hate the castle moat with a passion. Really. It’s fascinating. If you swim at the surface, you can cover like five or so positions in one step. So in order to explore the bottom of the moat you have to dive to the bottom and walk one position at a time. But the moat is four positions deep. And three steps width. And each movement takes some air from you, even turning. Which means that to explore it all and find the knight’s corpse you have to be going up and down all the time. I didn’t even bother to check how long it was before going back to the tunnel’s grate. And there is absolutely nothing in it besides the corpse. Very boring. But I found the corpse. And the sextus (sixth) key which was part of the handguard of the sword.

Somehow I feel the need to search for a puppeteer...

So at this point I was at a total lost about what to do next. I started to explore the castle again, room by room to see if I could find where the missing key was. Most of the enemies were no problem, because they were still red enemies. I think the difficulty increases the more you visit a room, so new rooms were quite easy, as the rest of the castle walls. I didn’t found anything there but a wooden plank in one of the towers which allowed me to see the moat from there.

That moat is deeper than the Atlantic so this doesn’t seem that big of a deal

Back down I went to the dungeons where I had more problems with the enemies, which were green. Took the tongs, without any problem now, but no sign of the key. I re-explored the garden, the keep (taking some burning coal from the kitchen with the tongs), the gatekeeper’s office, the forge, the towers… It was in the stables. Do you remember when I said that getting the torturer’s bones and the golden key there was a bit tricky because they were behind an iron ring that didn’t register as an item anywhere? Well, guess what. There are three “iron ring used to tethering horses”s. Except the third one only says “iron ring”, and is guarding a key. And again it doesn’t register in the room inventory. At least you get it in yours when you drag it. It just seems like these two puzzles were half implemented.

Anyway, time to wrap it up. I went back to the tower with the cannon and did what any sensible person would do. Use the burning coal to ignite it and demolish half of the tower in front. The one from where the knight came. Going there reveals a hidden chamber with a mysterious chest with six keyholes. What could it be, what could it be…

I forgot to wear the casserole and jump inside. Damn it.

Inside the chest, there is a ceremonial dagger and a scroll. I was expecting a good description from both of them but that’s as good as it gets. It seems the developers were as eager to finish as I am right now. Wait for me, Emelda, I’m coming. Yes, Emelda is how the witch is called, although it seems so long ago since we last spoke about her…

At least the devil knows how to make a good presentation when gifting evil daggers and scrolls

I went down to the catacombs and fought my way to the thing I said I missed in the floor in the catacombs entry. There is a new enemy here, which seems to be a scantily clad woman who appears as a ghost and the moment we advance tries to murder us with her dagger. But like the troll, we just have to spam the attack button, which at this point is a relief. The thing I missed is a hole in the floor in the shape of a particular rock with runes which you may remember from this very own post.

To be honest, I’m tempted to let you keep hitting me…

Puzzles 101: Put the thing in the hole with the same shape

Putting the rock opens a hole in the floor which takes us to the lair of the beast. Emelda in all her glory, sitting in an underground throne ruling over the departed. The moment we arrive she stands and tries to steal our vitality. There is a pentacle in the middle of the room, which reminds me of the sword. Using it there stops Emelda's attack. Reading the scroll makes her old again, and a bit of dagger in the chest finished the job. Of course that sequence took a bit of trial and error, but in the end it’s all worth it because we get a lame animation of Elvira and a screen of text telling us congratulations. As if it were a NES game, old school forever.

Amazing, I guess...

UPPER TOWER LEVEL MAP:

The blue squares are position in the open while the white ones are towers. By the way, the road between the SE and SW tower is only three positions. It’s funny how crazy this place is...

DEATH BONUS ROUND (TOTAL DEATHS: 12 and a half)

The crown cannot pass beyond the great stairs!!i

Emelda just sucks me dry

Session Time: 2 hours 30 minutes

Total Time: 7 hours 50 minutes

Written By Ilmari

Entering the annual Manhunter convention;
now where did I lose my hood?

Infinitely replayable? We'll see...

Spellcasting 101 and Elvira have just been finished and both Aperama and Deimar are busy doing Final Rating, so it's a perfect time to begin a new game. For the first time since the Trickster era, it will be a solo run, with no other games being played at the same time (except the possible occasional Missed Classic).

Rise of the Dragon is the first adventure game designed by Dynamix, a company founded by Jeff Tunnell and Damon Slye, two guys not from Andromeda, but Oregon. The story of Dynamix begins 1981 when Jeff Tunnell bought his first computer, learned programming and founded a software store called Computertutor. After meeting Damon Slye, a fellow programming enthusiast, Tunnell hired Slye and couple of months later sold his store and created with Slye the Software Entertainment Company, which was meant to publish games developed by Tunnell and Slye. Computer game publishing was already getting hard for small companies, thus, with help of two more Oregonians, Kevin Ryan and Richard Hicks, the name of the company was changed in 1984 to Dynamix, which now focused on developing games for big companies like Electronic Arts and Activision.

First game by the founders of Dynamix. Not so stellar graphics

Even after this change, Dynamix struggled financially. Fortunately, help was on its way. Ken Williams of Sierra-On-Line -fame liked the works of Dynamix and reportedly suggested that Sierra could buy Dynamix and so end their financial worries. Dynamix did in 1990 become a part of Sierra. Ken Williams had originally bought Dynamix to create simulations, which was what Dynamix was really famous for and which no one at Sierra had been doing. Dynamix did continue developing simulations under Sierra, like the famous Red Baron, but they also started almost immediately publishing some well-known adventure games, like Willy Beamish.

We are quite excitedly waiting for Willy Beamish

Did the developers of Dynamix then think “now we are part of Sierra, now we must do adventure games”? Probably not, since Rise of the Dragon had been planned even before the sale of the company. Indeed, one might say that an earlier game, David Wolf: Secret Agent (1989), was already a step from simulations towards adventure games. David Wolf was an early attempt at what would later be called interactive movies. The majority of the game experience consisted of watching digitized cinematic cut scenes telling the tale of a spy in hunt of a missing stealth fighter (this seems a common trope), while the actual game play consisted of simple action sequences in a 3D environment. Somewhat prophetically a reviewer from Compute! suggested that the game should have given more control over the character and had a more intriguing plot and it would have been an instant hit.

Too bad THEY didn't get the James Bond license

And so we come to Rise of the Dragon. I’ve never played the game, although I am familiar with the later adventure games of Dynamix. The pictures on the original game box promise beautiful graphics, which is no wonder, since one of the artists, Robert Caracol, had worked with Dark Horse Comics. Indeed, the game was originally shipped with a comic book detailing the background plot of the game - an ex-cop with the rather unimaginative name, Blade Hunter, is awoken by a visit from the mayor, who wants Mr. Hunter to find out why so many people (especially the mayor’s daughter) have been recently killed in Pleasure Domes. The grim and dystopian tone of the comic is somewhat broken by wanna-be-humorous ads and letters-to-the-editor, which include a plea from a mother of one of the producers that her son should quit playing with silly Dynamix and get a real life. Included in the comic is also a Step-by-Step Guide to Private Investigation, which explains proper interrogation methods and also the use of equipment for eavesdropping on videophones.

Hopefully the quality of game's graphics is near this

Is anyone looking for a job?

In addition to the comic book, there’s also a control manual. I am not going to comment on the controls before I’ve actually played the game, although the manual speaks a lot about the “revolutionary concept” that through point and click the player actually picks things up and uses them. What seems more revolutionary is that even though the game will have arcade sequences, there are an unlimited number of chances to complete them, a sliding difficulty set and even a possibility to completely skip these sequences. I am also happily taking into note the promises that you cannot get yourself into a dead end without an important object you cannot find anymore and that there will be multiple solutions to major problems. I am somewhat more intimidated with the facts that passage of time will change the surroundings and that characters have distinct personalities and remember your previous interactions with them - these features can make the game more complex, but they can also screw things up. Oh well, I guess I’ve read the manuals enough - it’s time to start the game itself!

Sierra clock, I’ve missed you!

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 40 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

By Aperama

Still don't know if Ernie is frightened or aroused...

I've really got the idea that Spellcasting is going to score lower on this than it perhaps should. This comes down to the fact that moreso than anything, it's not a graphical adventure game - it's a text adventure with a graphical interface tacked on. Really, the game would have been just about identical if it had no imagery whatsoever (and in some cases it likely would have benefited more than hindered) and while the point and click verb-noun interface is an interesting touch, I found myself never really tempted to use it. It was just simpler to type in all of the commands the majority of the time. This isn't to say that I haven't enjoyed Spellcasting in its own right – but it's just a hunch that the PISSED rating system might not look too favourably on it. Anyhow, enough conjecture. To the meat and potatoes!

Puzzles and Solvability

Spellcasting certainly has puzzles. Unfortunately, they range from those that are less than obvious and lacking in substance (for instance, the island of KABBULing random names obviously had the 'fairies' tacked on near the end as an effort by the QA team to make it slightly less horrid) and those that are simply far too easy (the island of 'repeating the above command backwards for twenty moves'.) It hits a happy medium a few times, though. I quite enjoyed the maze, which is something definitely worth noting given how much I tend to utterly hate them – in fact, just about everything in the first two chapters was quite fun, with it feeling like they ran out of good ideas as soon as Ernie mounted his surfboard. (Sorry. GOT ON his surfboard. It doesn't like the word 'mount'.) I've also got to give it full credit for the fact that the opening screen has three ways to escape and gives a plentiful amount of time to fiddle around with the interface and work your way out. It's just unfortunate that a game which started so strong finished so weakly. Were the entire game like the opening two chapters, I'd happily give it a 7 or an 8 – but overall, the game doesn't hold true to this.
Rating: 5

This is the style of puzzle I can get behind. It's not incredibly straight forward to a point of being unworthy of my time, but my mind immediately took it in and ran with it

Interface and Inventory

This could very easily be a place where Spellcasting falters. As a graphical adventure game, I found often that were it not for the mixture of both the item list on the side and the room descriptions, I would very easily have missed things. Now, I know what you're all thinking – why isn't this a positive instead of a negative – after all, the interface allowed me to find things? Well, if you list an item and just have a random picture to correspond to it, it's not guaranteed to actually be of any help. So when you have to KABBUL MIKE and the clue given is 'a device for recording sound'? I could be fine with this. All this would be requiring would be a picture of a microphone – plain and simple. Unfortunately, it instead has a random picture of some musical notes as though that were supposed to be enough (see below) – I can only consider this a failing when the interface could give some form of correspondence to clue you in to 'microphone' instead of just depending on either guesswork or for you to wait for a hint. I also have to deduct a point for not being able to scroll back over text in a game clearly designed to be played by mouse. Particularly given the default obscenely small text window, it's nigh inexcusable to have to remember three to four pages of text and simply remember what's there (or work off of the 'SCRIPT' command as I ended up having to). I also had to run through a part of the game twice because of inventory limits that were rather arbitrary (you could have dozens of items on one island, then the next wouldn't allow much more than wearing clothes and holding a lead-plated sword) so I couldn't claim to approve of this. On the plus side, though, certain items do at least exist in the image as something to remove or add or interact with by mouse – and the novel idea of including a mouse-interactive parser that corresponds to things in the small image window is at least worth a nod to, even if in practice it doesn't work very well. (I actually found that the mouse often just caused an error message when used – but that might just be my experience, admittedly.)
Rating: 4

I understand the design decision, maybe – but that doesn't make it a good one. This is by no means the only room where the picture was just of no help, and that means it's 100% down to the text

Story and Setting

Were the interface a worry for me, the story feels like it should definitely be a place where Spellcasting makes its way back... but maybe not. The points I want to give it here are entirely more about the atmosphere surrounding the game than the story that the game follows. It's clichéd, covered in meaningless MacGuffins and is more of a vehicle for a joke than anything else. My last game was Countdown, where I felt a rich plot was unfolding around me – in this, I can essentially boil the entire plot down to a single runon sentence. 'You, Ernie Eaglebeak, are a fabled person of prophecy (or something like that, so long as it sounds cooler than it actually is) – and you must journey to save the Sorcerer's Appliance from Fort Blackwand and kick your evil stepdad's butt!' In some games, a cliché will fit well and feel like the intent – in this, it feels more like this is the best excuse they could find for writing a character who is virtually Lewis from Revenge of the Nerds with a little more social ability and a more successful love life from the getgo. The setting itself feels like it belongs in a Discworld novel, though, so that's definitely a positive – but the setting rarely plays into things and where it does it's largely just as a set up to either a joke or a puzzle instead of feeling like being an organic part of Daventry, for instance.
Rating: 4

I'm not saying that they had their main character written for them – Ernie is more of a stand in for most of the game for bad things to happen to him – but the resemblance is uncanny

Sound and Graphics

The games of 1990 are getting to a point that they are no longer just 'alright for their age', but legitimately not too hard on the eyes even from a modern standpoint. You only have to look at the modern obsession behind pixel art to realise that there is a definite style in 'less realistic' styled graphics – and in spite of not looking fantastic, you can look at someone who is supposed to be a 'person' in Elvira and immediately go 'that's a person'. This is true of Spellcasting, too – but nothing actually looks 'good', and I doubt it did back then either. Everything looks as though it were drawn by someone with a minimal knowledge of computerised art to my eye. It's a subjective thing – but I would almost have preferred this be the true text adventure it was put together as. The sound, on the other hand, was pleasant and forgettable at its best – and grating/annoying at its worst. A high-pitched shriek of a 'beep!' comes out every time you misclick on something you shouldn't have, and the music turning into what sounded to be one octave off randomly, particularly on the Amazon island, just made me want to claw my eyeballs out. (This may possibly have been the fact that this game only allows for MT32 or Adlib input. Adlib only gives music in the opening screen, where MT32 gives music throughout the entire game.) Still, I can only rate from my experience – less than appealing but functional graphics and less than pleasant sound. That said? There were animations in the imagery (e.g. blazing fire), so I'll mark it up one from my mental picture of three to four. Not looking good, Mr. Meretzky!
Rating: 4

This is all legible and readable. It's also not very appealing at all to me.

Environment and Atmosphere

Finally, this is where I can give the game some full-blown credit. Spellcasting makes you want to play it – but it doesn't quite make sense that you want to do so. The game doesn't add up in this way. The first two hours of gameplay were by far my favourite – soaking in the rich lore surrounding the game, finding new things – sitting down and watching Ernie's dorm mates play a game of Malls n' Muggers. Sure, there wasn't an incredible amount of it – the 'game' loops after about thirty actions, the sporting events you can watch are pre-scripted affairs that only happen one way, the newspapers are short and sweet – but I am being perfectly honest when I say this was what kept me interested in the game. I was really just hoping that the game would go back to its strength in encouraging more of this out – but in spite of the hugely muddled end where everyone suddenly pops out and everyone is happy at least giving moderate lip service to what had taken place? I can't really fault it. It left me wanting more of the same – and that's really what any good designer should be aiming for.
Rating: 8

The college newspaper was taken over by Mr. Rottenwood's cronies midway through Ernie's education, and it showed upon a reading. Great stuff.

Dialogue and Acting

I'd like to say otherwise – but it's almost difficult to find many places in which Spellcasting actually allowed for dialogue. There were several instances in which people spoke to Ernie, and several more places in which you could interact with characters.. but only a couple of times did I find an interactive character that would allow me to 'speak' with them over things. This is more a design issue than anything – there are probably a few people you could speak further to were it not for the tight window of opportunity used in puzzles. Text adventure stalwarts and parser lovers alike will understand the sorts of conversations that tend to be had with a character in a game like this – and when I ASKED the Amazonian leader Ursula ABOUT the ATTACHMENT, it worked and gave a response. The majority of other times I tried to speak to people, however, I just received a 'blah, blah, blah...' message to tell me I was barking up the wrong tree. Still, the writing was clearly the star of the show here – and it succeeded quite well. Most of the characters felt fluid. I just can't conscientiously rate it as I would, say, a Monkey Island or King's Quest where several pages of dialogue were put together and were made into an interactive experience – dialogue was clearly a secondary worry here, but where it was it fit well enough.
Rating: 4

The Professor was probably one of the easiest to find conversation topics with. If only more were like him..

As my simple math goes, 5+4+4+4+8+4=29, which when divided by 0.6 gives a score of 48 – and that's probably about where I think Spellcasting sits, honestly. It achieved a touch better than I felt it would after fully thinking it over – at its core it is more IF than adventure game with several IF tropes (continual time-based puzzles and finicky wording taking the place of pixel hunts and awkwardly positioning a character as the primary irritations) taking over. Not having Ernie on screen also makes it quite difficult to relate to him just as good ol' AFGNCAAP from Zork felt.

According to the ol' database, that means that Canageek has guessed right and received both the CAPs reward and a little something I decided to spring for myself. There's a GoG copy of the Zork Anthology waiting for you if you'd like it – it's the closest I could find to anything of the old Legend-styled games for purchase.

CAP Distribution

100 CAPs for Aperama

Blogger Award - 100 CAPs - For blogging his way through game for our enjoyment

20 CAPs for Mad Welshman

What's Your Story Award - 20 CAPs - For giving his answers to WYS question

15 CAPs for Fry

Spelling Bee Award - 5 CAPs - For having the balls to correct spelling errors of Aperama
Art and Noel Award - 10 CAPs - For suggesting puns before they were needed

12 CAPs for Kenny

Corny Pun Award - 10 CAPs - For winning the caption contest
Couple of Gigantic Spoilers Award - 2 CAPs - For failing in his attempt to con Aperama

10 CAPs for Canageek

Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For getting the closest guess for the final rating

10 CAPs for Corey Cole

Pizza Award - 10 CAPs - For revealing the story behind fifth element

10 CAPs for Ilmari

Helping the Player Award - 10 CAPs - For giving two hints to Aperama

5 CAPs for TBD

Genre Support Award - 5 CAPs - For announcing a sale on Steam

I'm quite glad that both Deimar and myself ended at exactly the same time by sheer fortune, as I can now say without a thought of how it might otherwise go to say – on to Rise of the Dragon!

Happy Wanderer Travelogue #3: The hero comes and the hero conquers, but he also learns a valuable lesson: always get your contracts in writing. I have explored the mountainous region in the far north and found the castle of my nemesis. Though it was not easy, I was able to use his own magic against him to rescue the princess and return her home. But alas, my days of wandering are not over yet and I must quest onward if I ever hope to claim my reward. I think I’ll go explore the desert first. What could possibly go wrong?

Episode 5: In Which Our Hero Does Some Shopping

The artist must have practiced drawing people between games, but not trees.

Last week, the happy wanderer and I crossed a desert, explored a forest, sailed over an ocean, and dug up a buried treasure. As we ended the session, we had just used a vial of flying water to sail over the northernmost part of the ocean to land on a new continent. This has been a long journey and I admire the game for providing a sense of distance, something that many quest games don’t manage to do. My feet are sore just thinking about it.

Unlike the wide-open spaces of the desert and forest, the new land is mountainous with one pah that presses me onward with few few diversions. Along the way, I find a ring on the ground and meet up with a woman that warns me that there is a giant up ahead. Giants in these sorts of stories always end up being the evil “use your bones for bread” kind of giants, but this seems vaguely racist. For once, I’d like to meet a giant in a story that was just sort of a tall accountant.

Too deep for billy goats.

A bit further along the path, I discover an old bridge crossing a deep gorge. The bridge is in bad shape and when I cross it, it collapses and I die. Over the next few deaths, I try to lighten my load and cross but each time meeting the same end. Only when I am carrying nothing does the game let me keep going. Since I do not have much of an alternative, I proceed empty-handed.

I continue crossing the mountains and it starts to rain. Since this is the first weather in the game, it must be significant, but the rain stops and a rainbow appears. I do not immediately find I can do anything with the rainbow, so I keep going west. In the next screen, I finally find that promised giant: he doesn’t seem all that bad of a guy, but he won’t let me continue. When I retrace my steps, I notice that the rain and the rainbow are gone. I smell a puzzle! I restore back to when the rainbow was out and beat my head against the parser before I find something I can do: “follow rainbow”. At the end of the rainbow, there is a single goal coin. I had honestly hoped for a full pot of coins, or perhaps a figure from Irish folklore, but one coin is a good start! I go back to the giant, coin in hand, and confidently try to pay him off. That gets me absolutely nowhere and this puzzle is not quite as simple as I thought.

Red, orange, and yellow were unavailable. Blue and green were drunk.

Back at the bridge, I am wondering if this is where I should have been using the flying vial. I restore back to the previous island and look for another way to cross, but fail. I even revisit the parrot, but he will not give me a second vial. I will spare you the long narration of playing the harp in every room and generally acting like a fool, but I found a lead right where I didn’t expect: I had been so used to being forced on a linear path in the mountains, that I did not notice that one of the screens (on the far side of the bridge) let me go north. When I followed that, it to an empty cave. Now, when you see an empty cave, I’m not sure what you think of, but I had a moment of “I’ve Played Roberta’s Games Before” intuition and it paid off! I return to the bridge and instead of dropping all my stuff, I use the “LUCY” spell to send the items into God-knows-where. When I cross the bridge and check in the cave, all my stuff was present! I had completely forgotten about the locket until the cave jogged my memory, so I will call this a lucky break.

So many items! Wait, is everything levitating?

With my backpack filled again, I return to the giant. I remember my children’s stories, so the first thing I try is to give the harp to the giant and he lets me pass! Do you think this is the same giant from King’s Quest? I suspect not as he was guarding a chest of gold, rather than a harp. (Gurer jvyy nyfb or n unec va Xvatf Dhrfg I, ohg V sbetrg gur qrgnvyf.)

Just ahead on the path is a peddler, apparently unaware that a giant was blocking his paying customers. His wares are spread out on a table and each cost one gold coin: unless I find more money, I will just get to pick one. With a bit of experimentation, I can make out a pair of boots, a dagger, a vase, a pan, and a horn but I have no idea what any of them do. Leaving that for now, I head north and discover a castle with a moat. Is this it!? Have I found the wizard’s castle? Unfortunately, the drawbridge is up and the moat is filled with crocodiles, so I do not find a way in. Let’s see if anything I can buy will help!

The selection is great, but no free shipping.

I head south and the salesman is gone. Since there is no way to know what to buy when you meet him the first time, it hardly seems fair that he disappears before you can come back. Something for me to complain about in the PISSED rating, but for now I restore back. In my first attempt, I take the violent approach: I buy the dagger and try to kill the crocodiles. I guess Roberta only believes in the mass slaughter of snakes, because that doesn’t work AND I lose the dagger. On the next pass, I try the horn. When I play it, the drawbridge opens and I can finally enter the castle! Time to fight a wizard!

Final Episode: In Which Our Hero Does Not Get Everything He Deserves

No castle moat would be complete without a collection of crocodiles.

Inside the castle, everything looks normal enough and I have some options how I want to explore: there are doors to the north and west, and a stairway leading up. I choose west at random and find myself in a large dining hall with a flag on the wall. I note a door to the north, but keep moving west. That leads to a throne room. No one is home, so I do exactly what you would do in this situation: sit on the throne.

ZAP!

After a moment of disorientation, I realize that I have been teleported into an open courtyard. There is an angry looking boar here, but after failing to kill the crocodiles I decide to take the non-violent approach: I still have the apple that I picked up in the cabin just after I left I desert. I hand that to the pig, he eats it, and is dead at my feet in moment. Seriously? Who would leave a poisoned apple out where anyone I can pick it up and eat it by accident?

I just feel so guilty...

I re-enter the castle and find myself in an old fashioned kitchen. I start to explore further, before…

ZAP!

I am teleported again, this time to a small room with a locked door. How am I supposed to make any progress if I am teleported around like a madman? I do not have any way to open the door, so I step outside and into a hedge maze. At least, I think it’s a hedge maze; you know how the graphics are… Fortunately, the hedge maze turns out to be large, but simple: each corridor heads off in one direction and there are no switchbacks or hidden exits. Along the way, I find a dungeon room that contains a cell (that I cannot open or do anything with) and the exit back to the castle entrance hall. (The hedge maze had been out the door to the north.)

This pass, I try to explore north of the dining hall instead and… ZAP!

This hardly seems fair.

This time, I find myself in a cell with a locked door, probably the same cell that I just found the other side of in the hedge maze. Unfortunately, I cannot find any ways out so I am forced to reload the game.

This time, I do some experimentation. I find that the zapping is consistent and that it happens whenever I do anything in the teleporting rooms, and always loads back to the same place. More importantly, it seems to only happen once! When I retrace my steps all the way through the hedge maze this time, I can explore the throne room freely without getting teleported anymore. I do not find anything but it is at least a lead!

When I’m done exploring the downstairs, I head up and find a landing with rooms left and right. Left takes me to a gigantic frog, but ZAP! I am pushed back to the landing. I go in again and the same thing happens. This is the only play that zaps you more than once, so it must be significant. Could it be that the princess has been turned into a frog? Who would ever see that coming!?

Not looking forward to kissing that…

The room to the right is a former bedroom, but I find a pair of shoes on the floor in the closet. When I examine them, they have the word “WHOOSH” written on the bottom! I try my new magic word in the frog’s room, but I am still teleported out. It must be something else… how about that locked cell? I force myself to be zapped back to the cell and try my new magic word: nothing happens. But I do not give up that easily and try it again after putting the shoes on. It works! I am teleported back to the very beginning of the game!

Oh God, not again.

Thinking on this for a second, I remember that walking back to the castle won’t be an option. The rowboat is on the wrong shore and I still have no means of getting a second flying vial. Fortunately, using “whoosh” again here teleports me back to the castle entrance. Awesome!

Having triggered and survived that teleport trap, I can explore north of the dining hall further but that ends up not being as exciting as I hoped: it just leads back to the old fashioned kitchen where I was teleported to in the first run. This leads me to another boring segment where I type stupid commands in bunches of places and try to find something that I didn’t before. It’s not the most fun to type up and read, so I’ll spare you the details and just tell you that I found that I could pick the lock in the door at the end of the hedge maze using my knife. (That’s the room I was teleported to, so I wonder if I needed to solve the hedge maze at all.) That leads me to a new room with stairs and a door to the east. When I go through that door, I find myself in the frog room and am teleported out, but the stairs take me to the top of a tall tower.

Now, the first time I went into the tower, it was empty, but at some point I entered it a second or third time and there was a bird flying around. I try to catch the bird or kill it, but that doesn’t get me anywhere and I find myself stuck yet again.

Anyone have a rod with a rusty star on one end?

And this is where I get really stuck. As in, hours and hours of not finding anything new. I even explore the entire first section again after using the “whoosh” spell. Other than the rowboat resetting (so I could get to the second island), there was still no way to get more flying vials so I could not retrace my steps to the castle completely. After hours and hours of this, I gave up and took a hint. I am not proud of that, but I did want to finish eventually. I made it pretty far solving some puzzles and beating others to death with sheer stubbornness, but this one beat me.

The trick is in the ring that I found in the mountains: if you put it on and “rub” it, you transform into a cat. In your cat form, you are able to easily pounce on the bird and eat it. Are there any stories where you rub a ring? I would never have thought to try that verb. Did I miss a hint anywhere?

While that does not seem to do anything immediately, for some reason I can now enter the frog’s room without getting teleported away. (After winning, I consult a guide and it seems that the wizard had disguised himself as the bird to evade detection.) I pucker up and kiss the frog, transforming her back into a beautiful princess.

You still look a little green. Are you okay?

The princess follows me back to the throne room and I expect an ending, but that does nothing. For lack of any better ideas, I use “whoosh” one more time and we are both transported to Serenia. With all the pomp and circumstance of buying a soda from a machine, the game is over:

JUNIOR-MASTER!?

After all this effort, walking halfway around the world, and defeating the wizard, the best they can do is “Junior-Master Adventurer”? The manual clearly stated that I would marry the princess and take half of the kingdom, but now I’m just left disappointed. Did I miss something? Is there a better ending that I could have received? Please reply in the comments!

Time played: 4 hrs
Total time: 9 hrs

Final Rating

Without further pomp or circumstance, let’s talk about the game overall.

Puzzles and Solvability - 3

This game is a mess when it comes to puzzles, with some absolutely brilliant/fun ones (the notes that you have to assemble to leave the desert) with some real losers (rubbing the ring to kill a bird that was secretly an evil wizard). This game loses points for the opening maze as just an example of poor pacing, as well as the puzzles that required reloading to solve. I may be able to forgive the latter since the game was nearly over and we expect an increase in difficulty, but to start the game off in a maze? That was just poor design.

If only the Professor had thought of this, Gilligan and his friends may have made it home.

Interface and Inventory - 3

Other than color, the interface to this game is the same as Mystery House with few exceptions. The keyword “all” has been added and can be used in a few cases, but that is about it. (And the only way I even know about that is that the manual brings it up.) This game however has a great collection of inventory items, almost all of which you need to solve a puzzle. While many of those puzzles had their flaws, the inventory in the game isn’t that bad in itself.

Story and Setting - 4

I sort-of like the story and setting of this game. It’s a decent traveling journey across varied terrain and you really get a sense for having gone a long way. While it was not well-used, I also liked that you could re-explore pretty much the whole game at the end. A better game would have made that worthwhile, but this isn’t that game. I know I’m letting my future-sight cloud my judgement here, but this felt like a King’s Quest game with that same hodge-podge of fantasy tropes and mixed up mythologies that enjoy. I am sure that many would not find that as endearing as I did, but I liked it.

Sound and Graphics - 2

The graphics were somewhat more mature than Mystery House, but it still looked amateurish and unpolished. Worse, it seems that the continuity wasn’t always there. The damned sailboat thing really screwed with me for a long time, but I bet that was just an artist trying to draw the rowboat from far away and not caring that different kinds of boats look different. Sound was nonexistent, of course. I also have to ding some points here for the blandness of some of the environments, especially the two mazes. Since you spend the majority of the first hours in the desert, at least they could have made it slightly less bland.

See the pirate hiding behind that tree? Me, neither.

Environment and Atmosphere - 3

Just like the “story” section above, I find myself uncontrollably reading the Kings Quest feeling into this game, but otherwise the environments were hit or miss. The desert section went on far too long, detracting from the feeling that the game was going anyplace. While I found it somewhat annoying, the constant “zapping” in the final castle created an unsettled feeling, like you could get whisked away at any moment. Exploration became more hurried, tension was higher. That was a good way to shake up the final segment and I’ll give the game a point just for that.

Dialog and Acting - 3

Like its predecessor, the text in this game is sparse and there are relatively few NPCs that you can talk to. I’m reminded of the lonely town of Serenia which apparently has no people at all! But unlike Mystery House, there was enough text to get a feeling for the tone of the game and to appreciate the writing when it was there. I scored it a bit higher for that reason.

Drumroll Please...

(3+3+4+2+3+3)/.60 = 30 points! That is just slightly ahead of Mystery House. I was considering deducting a point for the terrible opening, but I think the scores speak for themselves overall. The first Kings Quest game scored a 48 and while I can see a glimmer of what that series will become in this game, we can see a much earlier and less refined approach to storytelling here. If the art had been a bit more consistent and the start not quite as frustrating, I think we would be a lot closer. I am curious whether any of the “Hi-Res Adventure” games will come close.

Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Roberta Williams may have taken the criticism that Wizard and the Princess was too hard seriously: her next game would be Mission Asteroid. Released as her third game in 1980, the game was renumbered as “#0” to act as an easier prequel of sorts to help new adventurers get into the genre. That will be my next “Missed Classic”!

Written by Aperama

Ernie Eaglebeak's Journal #2: Wait.. what just happened? This journal was supposed to be about how I was learning all of these new spells, and about how my dinner with Professor Tickingclock went a completely different way to how I was imagining (given that his wife Hillary was definitely more interested in me than in the dinner she'd made) – but now I'm stuck trying to work out why the back of my head hurts so bad more than anything. Okay, so after I'd finished my usual schedule of classes, I decided to use that key I.. found that Gretchen dropped.. and found my way into the President's House, where I got to see the Sorcerer's Appliance itself! Plus I picked up another spell, which led to another one after some work finding my way through dusty passages and a weird, corn-filled room or two. If I can work out how to use all of these new spells, I'd be way on my way to being able to kick the living heck out of Joey Rottenwood – but instead, I was sure.. my mom was there, I got hit in the back of the head, and now everything's trashed? After I get over this headache, it's time to find some answers!”

Told you I was being gallant, Kenny!

I definitely don't feel like I'm very far into Spellcasting, and I already get the feeling that having played previous Steve Meretzky games in the past is helping me. (I played The Hitchhiker's Guide as a younger man, and fondly remember a puzzle requiring me to have 'tea' and 'no tea' at the same time.) In that way, I suppose that I 'get' the idea of humour being interlaced into puzzles, if that makes sense – there is one that I looked at, rolled my eyes and immediately went on to solve as I realised that they were actually using an immense double entendre. I'll admit that after the pointer (thanks, Ilmari!) that the command 'take notes' would literally provide me with an in-game set of notes, I reloaded and received some extra notes on the classes that I'd already attended. My own notes were similar (albeit without pointers like '**GET ACNE CREAM BACK**' or little love poems to Lola Tigerbelly) but having them there makes me feel a little better about myself. It also makes me feel less like I missed out on anything.

A simple little set of notes on the 'Math and Science 101' class. Peloria sounds an awful lot like Discworld at this point!

When I last left off, we were going to bed after our first 'on screen' day of school at Sorcerers University (and our first in-game incident in a boudoir). Ernie appears to be very consistent – you can keep him up until around about 11:30, where he unceremoniously passes out until just after 8:00 every single day. The first screenshot in this post explains why we're sans one Gretchen as we wake up as she left us a note – she didn't re-steal her key back, which I think of as really quite nice of her. I noticed a 'President's House' when I was out on the boat dock near the Sorcerer's Stadium earlier, so I've got a fair idea of what the key unlocks – but first, class! Being the titular 'Spellcasting 101', this is (probably rightfully) the 'premiere' class of SU – the one where all of the people who don't really turn up to class miraculously find their way into the lecture hall. Ironically, for all that I was sorta looking forward to it, very little seems to come of it. I've got Ernie's notes in front of me, and aside from a few little jokes (such as telling people not to cast while drunk, as HURVON, 'clean tarnished silverware', can easily turn to HURBOM, 'summon a cloud of flesh-eating locusts', which I think could actually come into play eventually as I was told I couldn't cast BIP after drinking from a keg at Tappa Kegga Bru due to not being able to properly enunciate my words).. there's not too much to go off of. I'm looking at Ernie's notes here and the only three things I noted down that link in with this were 'we get MUK – 'raise dough'– on Monday's class, try casting a spell in a thunderstorm at 11:50 PM (impossible due to Ernie's sleeping schedule) and Sunday at noon will be the Junior Spelling Bee'.

I need to remember that you need to get a 'spell box' to learn a spell. Not that I think 'WIX' will exist in truth.. or will it?

The game takes five minutes per action.. and I have between 11:30 and 1 PM to explore – or in other words, 18 actions. This is actually plenty to run down to the docks and open up President House (5 actions, or 7 if you struggle with things like 'unlock door'– with what? - 'key' as I am quite wont to do) and rush back to class without missing out on anything between lectures. I was a touch disappointed with the insides of President House – though I was quite pleasantly surprised when a 'Graduation Nymph' popped out of nowhere and gave a little message explaining that Ernie is now a level 2 sorcerer! (The 'levels' matter as they enable you to cast spells, as I touched on briefly in the previous post.) There was a spell box with 'FRIMP' in it which I swiped before I was even able to take any more stock of the room I was in, giving me a new spell in levitation. The rest of the room seemed remarkably uninteresting – some books, a desk.. and what I can only assume is this game's MacGuffin, the 'Sorcerer's Appliance'. According to the game, 'The Appliance is about the size of a small closet. None of the five Great Attachments are in place. There are two buttons, one black and one white, on opposite ends of the Appliance. As always, its purpose is impossible to divine.' (The manual explains that it was first built by Waldo Nimblefingers in the years of the Great Melon Shortage, but doesn't actually let you know what it does.)

Oh, the most powerful item in sorcery might be there.. but I just graduated for breaking into a room with a stolen key. Best school ever!

The next lecture is on General Magic 101 – or to put it in a slightly different fashion, 'more lore under a different name'. This one has a little more information, I'm thinking, giving a list of assorted nasties (Mud Devils, Pufferslugs, Hellhamsters, Cankersaurs..) and ways in which to defeat them. I already know that one is to be paid attention to – the 'atomic dragon' which we took out in the simulation room was killed with a 'lead-lined sword', which the game makes mention is its hidden weak point. Does this mean that we're going to be fighting the Vamoose, 'a creature that is half moose, half gorgeous woman that lures its victims in with spells promising sexual delight only to gore them on its great antlers'? Perhaps, though I rather doubt it. Again, it feels largely as though I'm not going to have to worry about this too much. Still, it seems like we've got plenty to do on campus grounds yet, so I'm just keeping my three sets of notes (the ones I'm making, the in-game ones and having a full transcript of each play session) and worrying about it later. There's one thing that a 'levitation' spell seems like it'd come in handy for – the trap door in the lecture hall was 'too heavy', so my mind immediately flashed to trying out my new magic fingers..

I love it when a plan comes together

The notion of a foreboding empty hole to jump into was rather a strong force to ignore, but Ernie's schedule explains that between 4 and 6 he's to have 'Physical Skills 101'– and I've been such a stickler for forcing him to attend classes, so I simply can't explore. Turning up only gives us a short message about how 'he's excused due to a rather severely bruised pinky finger', though, so we're off to the deep, dark tunnels..

Caption contest? I think so!

You'd never believe it – it's a MAIZE. Yes, no good (or bad) adventure game can go without a ma(i)ze. This one is somewhat less egregious than most, though. It's a 5x5 square with no exit except for the manner in which you enter, with each room having a letter assigned to it. I'll include the little map I haphazardly scrawled to work my way through it – more fool all of you for not complaining about my handwriting earlier!

Once the letters were in front of me, there was no other way through I could see apart from 'TEX KIK QUIK(ISH)'

About five minutes of scribble later, and the obvious lettering (you probably can't read my terrible handwriting, but I assure you it's there) leads you down 'THIS WAY OUT'. When you go to the final and second 'T', an opening appears underneath you, leading you to yet another trap door and the 'Secret Society Meeting Room', along with a DISPAR spell box ('remove magical protection'), though again I feel like I'm expecting something more out of the room that I'm just not seeing. I'm mentally listing here and President House as 'come back to later' spots.

I feel like 'skull and corn' is some sort of pun I'm not getting...

I almost managed to get myself stuck, here. The next goal is to get to Professor Tickingclock's dinner – the only problem I had was finding where he'd actually invited me to come to! My first thought was the President's House – no such luck. He wasn't in his office – a whole bunch of running around finally led me to realise that I could actually go UP in the dorm hall. (I didn't see the tiny arrow in the top left of the screen – my bad.) I'd timed my maze run quite well and was perfectly in time to have dinner – a lovely affair with pheasant and potatoes. Prof. Tickingclock seemed a little tired, though, so after briefly discussing the Sorcerer's Appliance and his prized mystical surfboard of Spittul (both being 'magical', 'legendary' and 'dangerous'.. though I do note given our most recent spell that the surfboard has a protective enchantment on it), we leave the room.

Oh, like you actually thought we were here for the PROFESSOR...

The professor, it turns out, has a little bit of a snoozing issue – as soon as he gets his potatoes into him, he conks out almost straight away. This is, it turns out, why he has potatoes almost every night. Hillary makes no bones about it – Ernie is not there for every night, he's there for tonight and.. well, maybe he can make his way onto a schedule after that between the masseur, and.. maybe someone else.

This game's parser is very limited. Apparently, it doesn't understand the word 'be'.

I was willing to call it a night with the luscious splendour of Hillary's expensive crockery (she breaks several pieces) and sweating (I'm imagining we did some minor home redecoration whilst the good Professor was asleep), I felt like there was still more to be had from the day. With the revelation of 'up', I ran around like a crazy person looking for upstairs rooms. Above Meltingwolf Hall was what I feel I should have been looking for far before this point – a library! Inside wasn't an awful lot to look at, just a 'popular book' (points!) which reads like.. popular fiction. Enough said, methinks. No other books actually come up as interactive. However, there is a BUST..

I actually thought I'd be SKONNing it to read the bust – it turns out all I needed was a ladder...

KABBUL is to 'restore lost souls'– at this point, I'm not going to be surprised if it involves 'fixing shoes'. If there's more to be had 'In the Stacks', I couldn't find it – and after this discovery, we're about due to head to sleep. The next day seems like it'll go off without a hitch, so I head us off to the final class we have yet to cover, 'Math and Science 101'. We get a free map for our troubles (which is apparently the one that comes with the game box). It gives a short idea of some areas surrounding SU along with some ideas of how the seasons work, using a whole bunch of references to gigantic ice monsters, dragons and rodents controlling the seasons. It's more in the 'note this down for later' basket in my mind, with one lone exception that definitely caught my eye, albeit not due to THIS game..

Uh.. Corey Cole, do I detect a hint of homage here? I feel like my original QFG2 manual did delve into what we all know to be the true fifth element, but it might be my mind being revisionist..

I was looking forward to the second set of classes at this point – all of them had quite a bit of character to themselves, with each day having new things to search for. With an open mind, I started searching around for new things to interact our new spells with..

And a nice little cliffhanger to leave off on!

Inventory..
A spellbook with BIP (romantic music), SKONN (statuette enlarger), FRIMP (levitation), DISPAR (remove magic protection) and KABBUL (restore lost souls)
A cloak
A college registration form
An almost full pack of cigarettes
An embossed key
A notebook
A scribbled note
An ancient map

Session Time: 1 hour 30 min
Total Time: 2 hour 30 min

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

By Deimar

Long time no see title screen. How are you doing?

And here we are, deciding the fate of Elvira. Elvira is a strange beast. It tries to be a RPG-graphic adventure hybrid but it seems to me the developers didn’t dare to venture far into any of those genres. Unlike Quest for Glory, the reference hybrid, Elvira doesn’t take too much advantage of its RPG elements. They are there mostly for the combat, and it’s not very exciting, although it doesn’t get in the way (unless you are me and enjoy being beat to a pulp). And the puzzles are not that difficult or creative and there is no NPC interaction to spice the dull moments. However, and even though my last hour and a half of pixel hunting almost drove me mad (or at least quite bored), I will say that Elvira is a good game. Certainly there are better games, but it is quite enjoyable. So let’s see how it fares in the PISSED scale.

Puzzles and Solvability

Elvira is at its core an adventure game. The proof is that there are almost no big enemies in the game that can be beaten by pure strength. And I have to say most of them make sense, in a “I hope you’ve done your homework about terror tropes” way, or there are hints about to solve them. For example, the werewolf just plain tells you how to kill him. The vampiress is dealt with in the typical horror manner. The salt gives you a straight hint about what it is used for and so do the torturer’s bones and the crusader’s sword. And I really like the idea of using spells to solve puzzles a la Loom, Spellcasting or QfG, even though is not really explored.

However, there are some puzzles that are solved through tedious pixel hunting. Finding the key in the stables or the torturer’s bones for example. Or the knight’s corpse. I don’t even know if I should call that a puzzle or simply busywork. Putting Elvira’s ring in the chapel's cross is almost a lucky guess, as nothing makes reference to the ring’s shape. Not even its picture. Fortunately, those are limited occurrences.

Rating: 7

Oh, key! How much I despise you!

Interface and Inventory

I’m a bit conflicted about this one. On one hand, the inventory is quite functional. It could be better. For example, I would like to know what armor I’m wearing or what weapon I’m wielding. Each item has a distinct icon that greatly helps to identify one from another, which is also very helpful. However, there is not a lot you can do with your items. Descriptions are quite short in most cases. Sometimes it is even repeating the name of the item, making the “examine” button not that useful. Another issue is that you can’t combine items apart from using them as a container. For example, to make the silver tipped bolt you have to take the crucible, put the silver cross inside, leave the crucible in the room (which automatically places it in the forge) and put a bolt inside the crucible. It is not impossible but not exactly intuitive either. This mechanic is even more patent when the game makes you use items together without you knowing it. For example, you can’t use the stake on the vampiress until you have the sledgehammer. Or you can’t take the crucible from the forge until you have taken the kitchen mittens or take the burning coal without the tongs. You don’t need to use them, just having them in your inventory works. And there is no message telling you why you can take them now. And don’t make me speak about the iron rings that can be “taken” but have no verb associated and don’t appear in the game room inventory.

Let’s not forget the combat interface. I don’t have too much to say about it to be honest. It is simply functional. It is not very engaging and it is too fast for my taste, but it is functional.

Rating: 6

One of the most satisfying solutions. Even if it leads to nothing.

Story and Setting

The game’s story starts and ends with the manual. There is no story to this game, it’s just a gigantic fetch quest. A funny one, but a fetch quest. Nobody is gonna play Elvira for the story, it is an exploration focused game. The setting is also a bit lackluster. The manual says that EIvira is trying to transform the castle into a bed and breakfast. There is a bar in the main keep, there are rooms being refurbished, the two “museum” rooms (the one at the castle’s gate and the armory) some modern things lying around... And that’s about it. Limited to the main keep and the castle entrance. I think the developers could have included some items tied to the story or some more rooms with modern details, because as it is, you can forget the story is set in modern times and think you are playing a sword and sorcery game.

Rating: 3

And not a drop of good cider. In England. Preposterous!!

Sound and graphics

Music. Music never changes. Or at least only changes about 4 times in the whole game. Taking in account it took me nearly eight hours to complete the game you could say I kind of grew tired of it. It is nice and helps a lot with setting an oppressive atmosphere. It’s the same with sound effects. The only ones you will hear during the whole game are the combat sounds, which are always the same regardless of the enemy. I am still baffled that the Hamlet creature from the lagoon screams. And so do the skeletons. It gets repetitive. I know, I know. It is so because of the limited storage space. But in the end you've spent the whole game listening to the same sounds and music.

But it is all for the benefit of Mr. Graphics. Man, this game is gorgeous. You can take screenshots from Elvira and compare them to any of the other 1990 games and see that this game is superior in this aspect. The amount of detail in each screen, the close ups, the animations, the funny death scenes... It is all very well crafted. And even considering they also get repetitive (you get to see all varieties of grey walls and there aren’t that many) it is still a marvel to watch.

By the way, take a look at the far superior Amiga version which even has digitized speech. Take into account that the music is also different from the DOS version.

Rating: 7

One day Elvira, all this will be yours. What? The maze?

Environment and Atmosphere

This is where the graphics, the music and the overall tone of the game really come together. The game really feels like being inside a bad monster movie. Getting inside the garden is peaceful and bright, and the monsters are probably the less dangerous ones, although they are the most obnoxious. The dungeons and the catacombs are dangerous and tense. But while in the dungeons you get the skeletons and a serious threat, in the catacombs there are the… things, directly taken from monster movies. The underwater scene, where the only music is your heartbeat is very stressing, even when you are in the moat above water. I think it works really well. My praise for the designers in this aspect is they managed to capture the essence of the Elvira premise. If I have one but, it is that I think the game takes itself too seriously whenever Elvira is not in the screen.

Rating: 8

Setting the mood since the very beginning

Dialogue and acting

Speaking of which. I don’t think the game should be punished by this decision but allow me to rant for a little. Why is Elvira relegated to such a small role? She is the titular and only known character, she has a personality more or less well developed by her TV program and the movies... Why would you throw all of that away? I’m pretty sure if any Elvira fan played this game only for Elvira, they would have felt disappointed. It feels like they got the license and threw Elvira into the first game they had that somehow fitted the premise.

Regarding dialogue and acting, well, the acting is mostly fine I guess. The little there is, because there are only two speaking characters in the whole game - Elvira and the gatekeeper. There is no option to interact with any NPC other than killing them. Or make them mix spells for you. This is getting a very low score as you could guess.

Rating: 2

This is the only interaction of our character that doesn’t involve hitting someone

Final Rating

So let’s see. 7+4+3+7+8+2 divided by 0.6 is 52. I’m going to add one discretionary point for the deaths, getting the final score of 53. I think that’s fine taking into account it is a graphic adventure with no dialogues and no story beyond “save the princess, save the world”. The CRPGAddict said that as a RPG he didn’t like it, but it was a decent adventure game. And I wholeheartedly agree. That means Fry takes the prize with his 51. Congratulations!!

Cap Distribution:

120 CAPs for Deimar

Blogger Award - 100 CAPs - For blogging his way through the game for our enjoyment
What's Your Story Award - 20 CAPs - For sending What's Your Story -answers

50 CAPs for Joe Pranevich

Classic Blogger Award - 50 CAPs - For blogging his way through Wizard and the Princess for our enjoyment

20 CAPs for Fry

On Fire Award - 10 CAPS - For guessing closest to the game’s score
Simpsons Award - 5 CAPs - For finding a TV show reference in Deimar's post
Connecting the Dots Award - 5 CAPs - For revealing some King’s Quest trivia

18 CAPs for Kenny McCormick

Things man is not meant to see Award - 5 CAPS - For watching Elvira 2.
Ambidextrous Award - 5 CAPS - For providing a satisfactory explanation to the parry and block mechanic
You know who Award - 5 CAPS - For beating the dare
Jealousy Award - 2 CAPs - For noticing the really important part in Joe’s post
Taking The High Road - 1 CAP - For not responding to Joe’s call to caption the slightly obscene hill

15 CAPs for Andy Panthro

Holy Grail Award - 5 CAPs - For finding movie references in Deimar's post
Snake Charmer Award - 10 CAPs - For his acquaintance with snakes in all King’s Quests

15 CAPS for Ilmari Jauhiainen

I dreamt a dream Award- 5 CAPS - For finding a movie reference in Deimar’s post
Wizard Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing the correct rating for Wizard and the Princess

10 CAPS for Aperama

Globe Theatre Award - 10 CAPS - For winning the caption contest

10 CAPs for TBD

Genre Appreciation Award - 5 CAPs - For announcing a GOG weekend sale
Orange Award - 5 CAPs - For knowing the colour of lions

5 CAPs for Dehumanizer

Apple Award - 5 CAPs - For sharing some info on Apple II graphics

5 CAPs for Laukku

Carnivore Award - 5 CAPs - For knowing the feeding habits of lions

5 CAPs for Kenjab

Genre Appreciation Award - 5 CAPs - For announcing a GOG weekend sale

5 CAPs for Canageek

Die Hard Award - 5 CAPs - For finding a movie reference in Deimar's post

5 CAPs for Laertes

The Bard Award - 5 CAPs - For finding a reference to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Joe’s post

By Mad Welshman

'What a strange day today has been!', Alice declared. 'I had only thought to follow that strange white rabbit, and now I am stuck in some other world, of marmalade jars and pear lanterns!'

The Reviewer tutted. 'Oh, Alice, what a terrible memory you have! The pears were in your world, so is this world so strange?'

Alice frowned. 'You may have a point, but I am entirely uncertain what it is.'

The Reviewer smiled, and took another puff of his hookah 'As it should be.'

This first section is mostly to do with what exploration we can do before we get to Wonderland, and to highlight the design of this first, introductory segment of the game. Be warned, I'll be copy pasting some of the text, to give you an idea of the writing here. Let's start with our somewhat wordy introduction. There is a splash screen (Based on the box art), and a short musical sting, but apart from that, there is no sound or music. Considering this was the first port of the game to the Magnetic Scrolls engine, I'm pretty sure that's all we get.

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and having nothing to do. It would have been bad enough having to watch Emily read her book all afternoon without the additional bother of trying to stay awake in this terrible heat.

Anyway, what kind of book has no pictures or conversation, you wonder to yourself. All of your books are far more interesting, being crammed full of pictures and conversation, which is just as well,really, as there's never enough room left for boring old words.

Why couldn't Dinah have come with us today, you wonder drowsily to yourself. She's far more fun than Emily even though she's only a cat. Anyway, Emily's too old and sensible to be any fun.

Why is it, you muse, that cats while away the entire winter sitting by the fire and yet guard their chosen spot of shade with an equal degree of ferocious fanaticism in mid-summer? Strange animals, cats.

My my, we are a little... BRAT. Still, there's nothing amazing going on, let's try and raise hell! We begin on a riverbank, also next to our sister, Emily, who, in the grand traditions of Victorian upbringing, is completely ignoring us. Funny, that. We've got no obvious goals right now (Although I have a feeling we'll be seeing a White Rabbit sooner or later) , so we try some things...

Our inventory, items in the room, and the landscape.
90% of it we cannot meaningfully interact with. THOU MUST FOLLOW THE RABBIT.

We can't hit Emily, because we're sanctimoniously told: “Now, you'll only turn people against you if you do things like that and quite frankly you need all the help you can get.” Okay, I'd already figured this wasn't a violent game. Sleeping just acts like waiting, except it says “Zzzzz...” instead of the good old “Time passes.” … Emily won't let us read the book, or take our clothes off for a swim, and, come to think of it... We can't swim. Southwest of us is a lane, Emily's not stopping us from going anywhere, so let's go there...

There is nothing interesting beyond the description and graphics here. Wow, this is pretty empty. Okay, fine, West to the Field.

Almost unique, in that the graphics and text windows can be placed
so as not to interfere with each other.

Again, nothing, because there's a bramble hedge. But, just on a hunch, let's wait... Five actions later, the rabbit appears. The next, he's past us and into the hole.

...Wait, what hole? I get the distinct feeling we aren't getting the whole story. I also get the feeling we have timed events going on... Well, sod it, let's follow him... Whereupon we smack our head on the roof of the rabbit hole (Because it's dark), get woken up by a beech nut dropping on our head from the tree (Because we were dreaming, didn't you read Wonderland?), and we get treated to a witch-hazel flavoured game over. Confirmed, this game has deaths. Although it does warn us that we shouldn't go any further, so it's an avoidable one, in this case.

Let's start again, and this time, let's try the other way. Before we do, however, the map so far. The missing portions are the dark rabbit hole (West), a country lane that not only seems to extend endlessly, it does extend endlessly (South), and a Pear Grove (East).

Okay, fine, this time we'll go east first. And I'll gif this, because it's important to see how big of a spoiler the graphics can sometimes be. If you come into this room in the first turn... It's just pears. But the gif will play once every time you enter the room. Whoops. Either way, there's only one pear-lantern we can get, and we can either pick it up now (And it miraculously turns into a lantern), or we can wait until it changes.

I was incredibly tempted to slap a Spoiler Warning over this image.

On the fifth turn, two things happen at the same time: The rabbit turns up, complaining about how savagely he's going to get treated by the Duchess for being late, and the pears turn into lanterns. We know where the rabbit's going, we know what he looks like, so we might as well pick up the pear. Which is a lantern. Which already hurts my brain. And nets us a whole 4 points. Out of what turns out to be...

Part of this statement is a lie.

So there's another thing confirmed: We're playing an old adventure game (with all that implies)... And it's using dream rules as well. This... Doesn't bode well. Oh well, time to catch the rabbit!

Entering the rabbit hole, we find that the thing that caused our first game over was... The tunnel tightening up a bit. Also a sharp bend that means we turn south now to follow thaAAAAAHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh...

I fell into a rather long tunnel, with busts, and owls, and windows... All manner of things! I wish I could have saved a screenshot that does it justice, because it's actually a long, looping animation, pretty smooth too... But GIF capture has its limits, and every attempt at capturing it has led to failure.

Right, falling past all manner of things, I know this from the Disney movie. I don't remember seeing a marmalade jar mid fall, however, so, just to be safe, I grab it before we fall onto some soft leaves. Better safe than sorry, after all...

So, after the first twenty minutes of playing, saving, loading and writing, we've found ourselves in Wonderland, and... Already there's death. No need for help yet, folks, but before I head off, let's take a look at the hints, and how it impacts our score...

Help → Game → Rabbit Hole

The rabbit hole looks like an interesting place to explore.
It would help if you could see where you were going.
A lantern would light the way.

You have used the Help facility 3 times. No score change, and our first puzzle solution can be potentially missed on your first try, or even your second. If you're impetuous.

Alice is carrying a jar, wearing shoes, and a white dress. We have 4 points, and the game is already looking pretty arbitrary, just as I remember! (Things will hurry up from this point on)

Time played: 20 minutes (Would have been 30 if I hadn't played this part before)

Written by Ilmari

Blade Hunter’ secret diary, part 1: I’ve (once again) screwed things up with Karyn. I think it’s best if I lay low for a few days in my apartment.

Just look at these pictures! Don’t you feel you are reading a good comic book?

I’ve not yet played the game much, but merely toyed with the interface a bit. What little I’ve seen of the plot seems promising. We already know that there's something fishy going on in the pleasure domes, where mayor's daughter was killed. The introduction shows a young woman purchasing some illegal substance, which instead of giving her good time disfigures her body - a similar story was told in the comic book that came with the game. We also see two sinister figures, straight out of a Sax Rohmer novel, discussing a mysterious plot, by which the city will be brought to its knees in three days, some prophecy will be fulfilled and everyone will learn to fear the name of Bahumat again - typical bad guy chitchat.

The main villain and a henchman, I presume?

After the intro, I am dropped into Blade Run… I mean, Hunter’s cozy little apartment, somewhere in LA. Occasionally some helicopters fly outside, but otherwise the neighbourhood seems peaceful.

A bigger person wouldn’t even fit here

Moving the mouse around I note that near Blade’s computer the pointer changes from an arrow into a magnifying glass. Clicking opens a close-up view of the computer. I instantly note a blinking light and a remote control. Clicking on the remote lets me cycle through three messages on my computer. First is from the mayor, who tells me new kids have been found dead in the same condition as his daughter, Chandra. After that he suggests that I visit Pleasure Dome and Chandra’s friend called Jake, who is the last known person to see her. He also says he will send a picture of her dead daughter to me.

Is that under the camera an old-fashioned rotary dial?

Second message is an ad from a hovercraft company, which doesn’t appear that helpful now. The final message is from Blade’s girlfriend Karyn. She is obviously pissed, because Blade forgot their date. Karyn also tells that she has Blade’s keys and that she will be at the Bureau of Records, if he wants them back.

Do I see a beginning of a beautiful friendship?

Playing with the computer for a while, I find the picture mayor promised and my ID that is apparently required for getting access to the computer. Getting an object is not as easy as clicking on it. Instead, I have to drag it to the picture of a person standing on the lower right corner of the screen.

Getting away from the computer, I start to investigate Blade’s apartment. Left-click operates objects, right-click gives a description of them - seems simple enough. After a little bit of investigation, I’ve found Blade’s clothes, his trench coat and a gun, which Blade keeps under his pillow. There’s also a small cabinet over a sink, but I don’t have the keys for opening it.

So convenient that kitchen, bedroom and home office are in the same room

I also check my inventory for the first time. The inventory is seen by left-clicking the picture on the corner. Right-clicking the picture opens also the inventory, but in addition a picture of Blade, who is currently wearing only some underwear. If I want to make him wear something else, I have to drag the clothes on him in this screen.

Boy have you been training!

I also notice that in some points of the screen, the pointer turns into an exit sign - there seems to be two different ways out of this room. One of them leads to a small shower/WC -combination. Here I find a medical kit and and an aerosol can.

Improvement on old pepper sprays

The other exit leads outside. I naturally tried taking a walk with nothing but underwear.

You call walking in underwear indecent?
Wait till you see my lawyer, Mr. McCormick - he is a dedicated naturist!

I also noticed some arrow buttons in the inventory screen. I first thought they’d just scroll the inventory back- and forward, but pressing them had an effect on time - they were buttons for waiting. Since the game provided me this opportunity, I decided to skip all the way through to the end and see what happens if I don’t do anything at all.

And soon the city was full of mutants and those, who preferred whisky over water.
The latter noticed no difference, since they were used to seeing weird creatures.

Well, I guess this means Blade must really get going and save the city. Perhaps next time I’ll get to venture outside also!

Session time: 0.5 hours
Total time: 0.5 hours

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Written by Ilmari

Blade Hunter’ secret diary, part 2: I really hope these organically grown flowers will help my way back to Karyn’s heart. If they work, I have a perfect date planned - Astro Burgers, a sixpack and some cyberball on Karyn’s satlink.

Last time I had learned that a) there's been new deaths in the Pleasure Domes, b) Blade's girlfriend Karyn is mighty upset of him not appearing on their date, c) I should really get going, since some maniac is about to release dangerous substance in city’s water supplies, and d) I’ll be arrested if I try going out naked. Putting on some clothes, I made my way out of Blade’s apartment, took a quick look at the empty roof and continued down to the subway. Entering a train opened a map of the city.

L.A. of future. Someone appears to have stolen the last D in Hollywood sign

Mayor had mentioned that his daughter had been last seen in Pleasure Dome with someone named Jake, but I thought I’d first check out the City Hall - maybe I could speak with mayor some more and get some new clues. On my way from subway station to the City Hall, I met an old Chinese drunk, who went on and on about some prophetic catastrophe coming soon. I also noticed a woman selling some organic flowers, which I obviously bought.

Another poor soul has wasted his life on an infamous FPS

The city hall itself had three doors: one to Bureau of Records, one to mayor’s office and one to police headquarters. I spoke for a few minutes with mayor’s secretary, Jenni, who suggested having some good time later. Rise of the Dragon appears to have dialogue trees with real choices, so it was up to me to decide whether I wanted Blade to pursue an affair with the secretary. Since I wanted to play it nice, I declined, because Blade happens to be taken. As Karyn, Blade's lady friend, was supposed to work in Records, I decided to look at there first and see whether I could make her less angry with my fresh bouquet.

Nice to know Stallone is still in action

What wonders simple roses can do?

Dinner or astroburgers?

After making up with Karyn, I fixed a date with her - we are going to a place called L’Etoile at 7:30 PM. Karyn also gave the keys to the locked cabinet in my apartment.

Next I tried to enter Mayor’s office, but Jenni told me Mayor was too busy. I also went to police headquarters, even though Jenni tried to stop me. As I didn’t have a proper authorization, I didn’t get very far.

Are you new, dude? Don’t you recognize Captain Logan?

With nothing else to do in the city hall, I retraced my steps. At the room with the Chinese bum and flower seller, I noticed I could walk to another direction, finding myself in a warehouse complex. After few twists and turns, I found an old Chinese man, who knew me and the case I was investigating, but had otherwise nothing helpful to say.

Could you show me the crane stance?

I then finally headed to the subway and traveled to the Pleasure Dome. At the door, two burly security men wanted me to hand over my gun. I tried to be diplomatic and use witty remarks to convince them otherwise, but the results were far from optimal.

Doorman - Blade Hunter: 1 - 0

Doorman - Blade Hunter: 1 - 1

Doorman - Blade Hunter: 2 - 1

It appeared then that I had to leave my gun to the doormen, but then I remembered something from the manual - I could drop items to a specific room and pick them up later. I somehow felt that I shouldn’t probably leave my gun out on the streets, so I took a subway to my own apartment and left my gun there. At the same time I used the keys Karyn gave me to open the locked cabinet. I found some explosives, wire-tester meant for bugging phones and a chocolate bar.

I guess I should start hoarding sweets

During my visit back to home, I witnessed also a cutscene, in which the henchman from the game intro, now named as Jonny Qwong, had a conversation with a lab technician. Apparently the production of the mutant producing substance wasn’t going as fast as it should have, and Mr. Qwong threatened his employee with the wrath of Bahumat, if the production wasn’t speeded up.

Subtle reminder of the time limit

Getting back to Pleasure Dome, I now passed through the security scan with flying colors. While the place was advertised as a center for all vices, it appeared merely a huge disco. I tried to chat up with some card players, but they didn’t know either Chandra or Jake, so I proceeded to the bar.

I’ve seen wilder things happen in a kindergarten

Discussing with customers in the bar quickly revealed that Jake I was looking for was sitting at the far end of the bar. He was at first reluctant to speak with me, but when I showed him the picture of mayor’s dead daughter, he changed his mind and called me to his “office”.

I’ve just been listening this song

Jake, AKA Willard Jakeston was clearly distraught by Chandra’s death and slipped that it was probably due to hanging out with some guy called Chen. Interrogating him further made Jake spill his beans. Chen was a pump for some big guys in Chinatown, and Jake even had his address. Finally, a solid lead!

Many faces of Willard Jakeston

Getting back to city map, I noticed that Chen’s apartment had appeared in it. I then proceeded at once to Chen’s and in the hallway met a suspicious character.

Eye patch = bad guy

The door to Chen’s home was open and I could just see some movement behind the door. When I entered, I saw a man - probably Chen - slowly turning into quivering flesh and then into a skeleton. The eye patch guy had been ahead of me!

And I didn’t take it literally, when they said that TV melts your brain...

Few moments after entering Chen’s place, I witnessed another cut scene. Apparently some alarm had just went off, and a police team was alerted. If I took too much time in my investigation of Chen’s apartment, I was arrested as a murder suspect.

Luckily the mayor is on my side

Bad news is that Karyn is pissed

After some reloads, I think I managed to gather all the necessary evidence before cops had a chance to get me. I began by taking a look at Chen’s vidphone, which had a copy of only one phone call. Someone named merely “voice of Bahumat” reprimanded Chen for getting mayor’s daughter killed, because that would only turn mayor’s attention to them. The call ended with a veiled threat that a personal representative was about to come and discuss matters through with Chen.

I took Chen’s ID from the vidphone and checked out the bathroom, which contained a patch of some drug. Finally I went into Chen’s bedroom, which at first appeared to contain nothing of interest. Then I noticed a glint in the eye of a dragon statue. Pushing that eye revealed a safe behind a picture. I had no idea what the combination would be. After waiting and thinking for a while, I decided just to check all my screenshots and look for some suspicious numbers. Then I noted that a certain string of numbers was repeated again and again in Chen’s vidphone profile.

At least it isn’t 1234

That code worked perfectly and I had the chance to grab a paper with some Chinese markings and another candy bar. With nothing else to do, I left the building. It was almost the time of Blade’s date with Karyn, so I traveled to her apartment. Result was not very surprising.

Ooohh, how romantic!

On second thoughts, not that romantic

After spending the night with Karyn - and definitely not on the couch - Blade returned to his apartment, which seemed like a good place to stop. The plot appears to moving fast forward - just one day has passed and there’s already another dead body. So far there hasn’t been that much of puzzles, but I do like the game’s dialogue system, and at least to my untrained eye, the graphics look just divine.

Session time: 1.5 hours

Total time: 2 hours

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Written by Ilmari

Blade Hunter’s secret diary, part 3: I feel like I am getting so close with Karyn after our night together. It’s good that my case requires me going and asking her for information. It’s so nice to bask in her radiance frequently!

The game is going like a blaze and I seem to be progressing quite nicely! I am just hoping I haven’t lost an crucial item… But now I am getting ahead of myself. A brief recap of the plot thus far: some bad drugs killed mayor's daughter, Chandra, who had a best friend called Jake, who knew Chandra had been hanging with a guy called Chen, who was then turned into slimy goo by a guy with an eye patch. An eventful first day, I'd say!

Last time I had just returned to home from my nightly adventure with Blade's girlfriend, Karyn. I decided to head down to her office right away, since she had said she might help me in analysing stuff - and I had plenty of stuff I had got the previous night from Chen’s apartment. I started by giving Karyn the drug patch, which she promised to give to lab boys to investigate. The analysis wouldn’t be ready until tomorrow, so that didn't provide me anything new to do yet. I also gave her the paper I had found in Chen’s safe. Karyn didn’t recognise the symbols, but suspected it was some archaic dialect of Mandarin Chinese. She also suggested visiting some Chinese scholar and I knew right away who to call!

Bearded, underpaid fellow, who has no idea of references to modern world-- yes, clearly a scholar!

My Chinese friend in the warehouse complex could translate the paper, which told that Rise of Dragon was soon about to happen and target was Hollywood water reservoir. The paper also contained a reference to Bahumat, who according to the scholar was an evil magician living in year 3000 BC. Bahumat could turn himself into a dragon and he tried to rule the world. Bahumat was killed by a white magician Gin-Su or Knife (I can see where this is heading…), who banished Bahumat to netherworld for 5000 years, but got himself killed in the process. The old Chinese knew also a prophecy of the return of Bahumat:

“In the Age of Decay,
Marking the Dawn of Darkness
The Dragon will arise
His evil will become an addiction in the soul of mankind, and death shall be a blessing to those he has touched.
Many will fear him
Many will fall before him
One will sacrifice all to destroy him.”

The Chinese scholar gave me also a talisman, a book of ancient wisdom and a fortune cookie. A more practical gift was a Kevlar vest, which I immediately put on.

Great song, but I fail to see the relevance

I bet this is some kind of code

I now had one more place to visit on my map, the Hollywood Reservoir. Unfortunately, there appeared to be nothing to do there.

But Mr. Tarantino said there would be some dogs here!

With nothing else to do, I went to visit Jake again. He was pleased that Chen was dead and told me that Chen had had some connection with Chinese mafia, who was working in some warehouse right under the nose of City Hall. I tried to show him the evidence I’d collected, but nothing useful came out. He did take one of my chocolate bars for safe keeping. I hope this act of charity will not come and haunt me in the future.

I then wandered around aimlessly for a while and even saw the next “Meanwhile” -sequence, which was nothing special, just another reminder of the imminent deadline. I then noted that I hadn’t shown one item to Karyn: Chen’s ID. Cursing myself for not doing such an obvious thing, I went immediately to Karyn, who could easily pull out some info on Chen’s known accomplices.

I knew eye patch meant no good

Bingo! Now I’ve got the address of Johnny Qwong, the henchman

I went straightaway to Qwong’s house. It was a huge villa, guarded by armed patrols walking on the roof. I couldn’t get in, but I could go down the sewer, although the local bum tried to warn me.

Rats? Great, I can start grinding!

The only thing I could access in the sewers was a locked box.

What’s that on the box? A treasure map?

Oh for Pete’s sake! I guess I should have studied electronics!

The lock went out with one of my explosives and I was not too happy to find out a mess of wires waiting me.

Yes, a minigame! Just what I was expecting!

I knew that this is where my wire tester was going to be handy. I had to tap into Johnny Qwong’s phone line and listen to his Vid Phone conversations (wireless technology must have been forgotten by then). The manual had pretty good instructions. I had to make three connections: red wire to positive, blue to negative and yellow to ground. My first attempts were not successful.

I guess I should leave changing the light bulb to more capable hands

It went on like this for almost an hour and I was already planning on rants of how bad puzzles developers could think of. I had noted that I could connect the wires, whenever both the meters were pointing on green area, and when the pointers went back to red, I was fried. My first idea had been that I had to be quick enough - the wire tester had three wires, and I thought I had to plug them all in before the pointers returned to red zone.

Then I finally managed to connect one of the wires, without getting fried when the red zone was reached. I knew at once that no electrocution would happen, if I just had plugged the wires to right places. After that it was just simple to test for the correct position of each wire, and beating the minigame became incredibly easy.

It’s good that Blade knows, when this contraption is ready, because I sure don’t

Getting back to Blade’s apartment, I took a look at what Mr. Qwong had been chatting with his buddies. He had received one call from “voice of Bahumat”, who now revealed his name: Deng Hwang. Qwong was told to stop all further delays in the production schedule and to check progress in the warehouse. I then remembered Jake telling me about Chinese mafia having a warehouse near City Hall, where I traveled now.

I don’t know if I had been too lazy before or if the warehouse doesn’t exist before the plot progresses forward, but I found the place quite easily. Only thing I could do there was to get a close up of --- well, I don’t know what it is!

Any suggestion what these might be?

I tried using one of my explosives with it and the results were far more satisfying than I expected.

If his career as a detective doesn’t work, Blade could become a demolition man

Getting back to the main map, I noticed a new place: Deng Hwang’s corporation headquarters. This proved to be another dead end.

But I was just going to sell these fine leather jackets!

I then returned home to see if Johnny Qwong had been notified of the explosion. Indeed, the news had reached even Deng Hwang, who reprimanded Qwong for failing to do anything to prevent the damage. He also asked Qwong to visit him in the headquarters. Soon I watched a cut scene.

He sure doesn’t like mistakes

Nice to know they care for me

The ingame clock was getting late, so Blade went to sleep. I am also stopping at this point. The plot appears to be moving forward almost by itself, with more and more dead people every day. One thing I am getting a bit worried is, whether there won’t be more challenging puzzles. Until now, the wire tester has been the only true brain teaser and otherwise everything has been so obvious..

Session time: 2.5 hours

Total time: 4.5 hours

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

By Ilmari

Blade Hunter’ secret diary, part 4: I am a bit worried, since I haven’t see Karyn for a while - even down the office there was someone else on her spot. Now someone is finally calling, could it be her?

At the end of the last post I had just managed to piss off the Chinese mafia by bombing their warehouse full of bad drugs, and the henchman, Jonny Qwong, had to pay for not being able to stop me. At the beginning of new morning I went to see Karyn and ask for the analysis of a drug sample I had gave her the last day. She did have a tape ready for me.

Black dot: Hi new guy, do you want to play?

Formerly black dot: What the…?

Formerly black dot: Help, I've mutated! Where’s the police, when you most need them?

I’ve from time to time tried to meet the mayor, but he has always been busy. I also tried it now, and I noticed a new dialogue option: I could now threaten mayor’s secretary and demand seeing him, because I had some info that might ruin his chances in the elections.

Well now that you mentioned it...

A heated discussion with the mayor followed, in which verbal punches were not saved:

Hero - bureaucratic twit, 1 - 0.

Hero - bureaucratic twit, 1 - 1.

Hero - bureaucratic twit, 2 - 1.

Mayor was finally convinced that something major was going on, when I showed him the tape that I’d just received from Karyn. He told to me to get to the bottom of the drug operation with Chinese mafia and with utmost clarity explained that I was not welcome to his office before the case was closed. A bit unsatisfied with the results I left the office. The debate with the mayor didn’t seem to have moved the plot forward, so with nothing else to do, I decided to meet Jake. This meeting was also a bit underwhelming.

Jake, I thought we were friends! I gave you some chocolate even!

Jake said just that we would have to meet somewhere more safe and that he would give me a call. As all the cellphones have somehow disappeared in this dystopian future, that meant I had to go to my apartment and actually wait for the phone call. While there, I noted I had missed something very crucial.

So I’ve been walking around with empty gun all this time?

Well, Jake didn’t call, but something else happened.

Who is this guy? He doesn’t look like Snake at all.

After this plot twist, Deng Hwang called me and told that I shouldn’t interfere with his plans, if I wanted Karyn to stay alive. Plot was going fast forward and I was still confused what to do next. I’ve waited till next day and nothing appears to happen. Jake hasn’t called, mayor hasn’t done anything, no new threats from Chinese Mafia, nothing to do in all the places I’ve found. I am a bit confused what to do next and Ï’ve resorted to mere aimless wandering around the game world. Should I just wait? Or am I missing something crucial?

Well, at least this happened...

Session time: 1.5 hours

Total time: 6 hours

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Written by Ilmari

Blade Hunter’ secret diary, part 5: KARYN, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Last time Karyn had been kidnapped by the Chinese mafia and I was a bit stumped, with nothing obvious left to do. I regret to inform that it turned out I just had to wait for something to happen. After another day of staying near my un-wireless vidphone, Jake finally called.

Couldn’t be me they are looking for. I’ve been in my apartment,
waiting for your call, for a couple of days.

Unfortunately, Jake didn’t really have anything to say - he just told me to meet him in the warehouse I had demolished at 8.30 PM. What I was supposed to do for another 8 hours? Eventually I just went to the warehouse and started waiting. Meantime, Deng Hwang made an ultimatum for the citizens of L.A. He wanted the mayor to resign and also demanded 500 million dollars in diamonds and platinum. If his conditions were not met, he would release his drug to water supplies.

When the time of our meeting had arrived, it became very clear that Jake had managed to get himself into some serious trouble.

No, never seen him in my life. Say, did you happen to find a candy bar, when you searched him?

Look, if I had wanted to play a shoot’em’up, I would have chosen Ikari Warriors

Yes, it was time for a minigame! I must confess that I didn’t even bother to look at the manual for the controls and so I never found out such essential things as what button made Blade jump. Thus, it was impossible to get through the tanks full of toxic waste, which melted Blade into goo. My excuse is that I was just waiting for the next screen.

Adventure game producers: this is a feature that should be included in all minigames

Having (apparently) killed all the bad guys, I could release Jake, who at once told me that Karyn was being held in Deng Hwang’s headquarters. He also gave me an ID to get through the security.

And I got this

I got easily past the front door of Deng Hwang’s with my new fake ID. In the main lobby, the way forward was closed by a laser field, but there was also a door leading to a security room. I talked a while with the receptionist, who surprisingly was revealed as an old schoolmate of Blade.

Blade used to catch up goats

I suggested I could go on a dinner and a movie with her, if she just let me in the security room. Reluctantly, she opened the door, but just if I promised to be quick, as all guards happened to be on a break, but would come back soon.

So this is the security room. I wonder what is going on in the break room?

Guards really don’t like me interrupting their break

Learning from my mistakes, I reloaded and left the break room door alone. Instead, I checked the computer. Before I could really do anything, the computer asked for a proper authorisation. There were some colored buttons, and I instantly remembered the code I had seen in the fortune cookie. It of course worked, no matter how little sense it makes. I then closed down all the security systems, lowered the laser field in the lobby and locked the guards in the break room. Time to move on!

Backdoor to a multimillion security system sold in Chinese restaurants?

The receptionist was getting a bit doubtful about letting me in and threatened to call security - Blade noted that he’d cut off the alarm and warned his past schoolmate to get the hell out of here. Going through the now defunct laser field, I found the room where they kept Karyn. I have no idea what I should have done, so the results were sad.

Can Karyn be saved? I don’t really care, since this is so dramatic

Vowing to kill Deng Hwang, Blade ran to a convention of all the bad guys and started to clear his way through Deng’s henchmen. The big boss had still a surprise up his sleeve.

He can turn into a dragon!

At this point it was expected that a new minigame would begin. I did try to make it a bit more nearer to the end this time, but I got quickly stumped and decided just to move forward.

I can deal with the bad guys, but what should I do to the pipes that shoot fire?

Apparently I had been able to kill Deng Hwang, AKA Bahumat. And then it was all over! Blade got himself out of the building, where mayor was waiting with some policemen. Blade and mayor had a friendly chat, Blade accusing mayor for conning him into a case in which Karyn got killed and mayor caring not a whit.

This was very satisfying

Sequel, sequel! No? Drat…

Considering that most of this post has just been waiting around and skipping action sequences, the ending came really fast. I am sure the Final Rating will reflect that, although I do have a positive view of the game. See you next time!

Session time: 0.5 hours

Total time: 6.5 hours

By TAG reviewers

We've only got two more games from 1990 to go, so it's time to prepare for the annual TAG awards! In last year's award ceremony an idea of a new Reader's Choice -award was thrown into the air and great affirming applause followed.

An enthusiastic reader cutting up his limbs just to get a vote

The rules are simple: just pick out your favourite game from 1990 and vote for it. The winner of the Reader's Choice -award will be revealed at the TAG Awards Ceremony, after we've played both B.A.T. and King's Quest 5 to conclusion. May the best game win!

And anyone voting for this game better have a resurrection card available

Reader's Choice: pick the best game of 1990

By Ilmari

All things come to an end

It’s time to score yet another game. I decided to compare Rise of the Dragon with both Mean Streets and Countdown, since all three are hard-boiled detective games (two of them even share the scifi theme), all of them depend heavily on dialogue, all of them contain action minigames and all of them might perhaps be better called interactive movies. We’ll see how it goes!

Puzzles and Solvability

I started Rise of the Dragon with high expectations. I had good memories of later Dynamix games, and the beginning promised a decent enough plot full of mysteries and serious detective work. The plot indeed flowed forward effortlessly and I became a little bit worried that there might not be any good puzzles to speak of. Then I got to a point where I had nothing else to do but wait - and this is almost all I had to do to get to the ending.

So, long story short - the game feels just a bit too easy. There were just two puzzles that left me scratching my head for a while (finding the right code for Chen’s safe and listening to Johnny Qwong’s phone) and I think this is not enough. Especially the inventory based puzzles were too scarce and bland to be of any interest. This is something Rise of the Dragon shares with the games of Access Software (Mean Streets got 4 and Countdown 3), and a low score on this category would seem to be in order.

Then again, there’s one redeeming quality in the puzzles - alternative solutions. Remember the receptionist I talked to just to find out she’s an old schoolmate of mine? It turns out there’s a completely different way to deal with her. I could have just grabbed my old can of euphory inducing gas and sent her to a personal trip to the seventh heaven.

You can’t get higher than this as a receptionist

And this is not just the only example. Forgot to take your ID with you and are locked out of your apartment? Don’t worry, you can also short circuit the door. Didn’t buy those roses? Well, you can always just sweet talk yourself to the heart of Karyn. Dynamix really wanted to keep their promise that you cannot deadend yourself just because you forgot some item. I think this deserves a bit higher score than Countdown therefore.

Rating: 4

Interface and Inventory

I’d like to say that the interface is simple and easy to use - left mouse click for action, right mouse click for looking and dragging an object, to the inventory icon, if you want to take it, to something on the screen, if you want to use it. And you can almost get to the end of the game with using only these commands. Yet, some of the rarer actions required rather unintuitive tricks. I struggled at the beginning for a while, just to get my clothes on, because I had no idea how to wear them - it took reading the manual to find out that right-clicking the inventory icon would open a larger inventory screen with Blade’s picture in it. And jumping in the action scenes? Well, perhaps I could have guessed it’s done with ENTER... But the biggest problem I found out after completing the game and heading out to look some walkthroughs.

One FAQ writer suggested that SEGA version of the game differed significantly from the PC version, because only in the former you could gas down the receptionist. I took this as a challenge, and after reading the manual, I was able to do the trick with my trusty PC. I still wasn’t surprised that whoever made the FAQ hadn’t stumbled on this possibility, because the sequence for using the can was so unintuitive. You first had to open up the larger inventory screen, with Blade’s portrait. Then you had to drag the can on the Blade, who would then equip it. Now pressing BACKSPACE allowed me to actually use the can… Wait, what, BACKSPACE? I thought this was a mouse controlled game… and even if you’d had to rely on keyboard, why would you want to use BACKSPACE?

Yes, it’s in the manual, but still...

I’d say that controls of a game should be either so intuitive that the player knows at once how to use them or then the game must at least force the player to use the controls, so that they become intuitive after a while. But an unintuitive control sequence that is used only once or twice is just too ridiculous (lucky it is not necessary even to use it at all). I’d otherwise had given a bit higher score for the interface - the mouse controls in general are smoother than in Countdown (2) or Mean Streets (4), and the inventory system is way better with detailed descriptions of all items. Yet, the small faults deserve a reduction of few points.

Rating: 5

Story and Setting

If you look at the story too closely it might be a bit cliched, as Laukku said, and the mixture of mutant producing drugs and ancient magicians coming back to life and turning into dragons is admittedly a bit corny. Especially compared with Countdown’s (6) intricate plot twists, Rise of the Dragon seems like a cheap B-class movie.

One thing that might raise the score of RoD is the advertised use of alternative plot lines. Unfortunately, there appears to be not that much of them. There are many optional sections in the plot - for instance, if I hadn’t given the candy bar to Jake, he wouldn’t have called me, and I should have seen another battle, only this time at the water reservoir. Still, the only really big question is whether you save Karyn at the end or not. Yes, I might have saved Karyn. Instead of running to his beloved, Blade might have checked out a storage room for a couple of wires and used them to short circuit the mutating machine, in which Karyn was trapped - after that, the Blade and Karyn would have accidentally stumbled in the room with all the criminals. Somehow this alternative feels not so emotionally strong as the ending I found, even if it ends happier.

So, there’s not that much possibility for alternative plotting and the advertisement for an infinitely replayable game was just an ad. Still, even if it is straightforward, the plot is still very effective - and seeing that creepy mayor getting punched in the face was truly a highlight of the day. If Mean Streets with its silly mutants and president Michael J. Fox got 5, then certainly Rise of the Dragon deserves it too.

Score: 5

Sound and Graphics

Graphics are a high point of the game, even if the use of dithering is obvious. It’s perhaps a matter of taste, but if I had to choose between the photorealism of Mean Streets (5) and Countdown (4) and the clearly more hand drawn style of Rise of the Dragon, I’d definitely pick the latter. The backgrounds and items are just gorgeous and the characters really have faces that reflect their personalities and emotions.

As for sounds, there definitely was plenty of it, but none of it was particularly memorable. When it comes to music, couple of place dependent themes varied and were played in repeat. In addition, there were some sound effects, like the sound of electric charge, when you touch the wrong cable. All in all, I must definitely give the game a high score to the overall category, but the blandness of the musical side prevents me from giving the same score as with Monkey Island (8).

Rating: 7

Environment and Atmosphere

Yet another strong category.While Mean Streets (6) and Countdown (6) couldn’t decide whether they wanted to play it straight or go to pure comedy, Rise of the Dragon feels much more balanced in its tone - except for few throwaway lines by Blade, it’s strictly business. This makes the whole Blade Runner imitation seem that much more convincing, although the lack of wireless communication makes the image of the future feel a bit dated.

But what I really like is the variety in the sceneries. Just look at some of the different subway stations.

I never really had a chance to introduce the different subway stations, but here’s a quick sample.

It would have been easy to make all of them look exactly same, but the developers have added small details that distinguish them from one another - the more well-to-do areas have more guards, while the station near Blade’s home has just a dead or drunk bum etc.

I noticed that Trickster complained about the emptiness of the city in Mean Streets. L.A. of Rise the Dragon has empty areas too - seemingly abandoned warehouses and water reservoirs. Still, there’s plenty of places with people coming and going or at least just standing around. My special favourite is the pleasure dome, which truly feels like a place with real live people - particularly as you can chat up with some random dudes.

The seedier parts of the city

OK, well I shouldn’t call them dudes

Rating: 7

Dialogue and Acting

This a difficult category to score, especially as in my comparison games the scores are all over (Mean Streets got 6, but Countdown only 4, and I didn’t think they were that different in their dialogue systems). Well, at least Rise of the Dragon has less dialogue than those two games and definitely less characters to speak with. Then again, I think that this might actually be a plus for the RoD, because the few characters I talked with were more believable and rounded persons than any of the x + 1 characters in the Access Software games. This might be more due to the graphics than the actual dialogue - the hand drawn facial expressions of RoD just convey more of the personality of the characters than the photorealistic images of the other games.

One thing that I really liked was the use of dialogue trees, which required true decisions that really affected how the game would unfold. Sure, you could choose to bully people and make them angry in Mean Streets or Countdown, but you would just have to go somewhere and return and all would be forgotten. Not so in RoD. For example, try taking your flirtation with the mayor’s secretary too far and you might really make your girlfriend pissed. Such possibilities make the dialogue seem more lifelike and realistic.

A point of criticism is the use of racial stereotypes in characters. The list of Chinese people doesn’t look good: apart from a drunk and a Yoda-character, all Chinese are evil in the tradition of Fu Manchu. And as for all the Afro-Americans being of a lower social class and using very notable slang… well, we might give the producers the benefit of the doubt and call it clever social criticism.

You’ve already met Jake, the scrub-boy with a sweet tooth,
but here’s Mujalambo, the obese bartender that Blade affectionately calls a rhinoceros.

So, all in all a very mixed bag. I’ll settle for a middle road.

Score: 5

Putting things together we have (4 + 5 + 5 + 7 + 7 + 5)/0,6 = 55. I am also tempted to give the game one bonus point, just because it let the player choose whether he wanted to complete the arcade minigames. So, 56 it is!

Was Rise of the Dragon really that good? I’d definitely affirm it was. It certainly doesn’t have the magical qualities of Monkey Island or Quest for Glory 2, but it is fairly pleasant experience, which looking back was something mostly missing in games of 1990. The nearest guess was Laukku with 55! Here’s the rest of the CAP winners this time:

Cap Distribution

100 CAPs for Ilmari

Blogger Award - 100 CAPs - For blogging his way through game for our enjoyment

23 CAPs for Laukku

Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For making the closest guess for the Final Rating
Eye for the Detail Award - 5 CAPs - For noticing the dithering in the game's graphics
Albert Barille Award - 3 CAPs - For recognising quality edutainment
Parallel Universe Award - 5 CAPs - For showing the alternative ending

9 CAPs for Kenny McCormick

Real Estate Agent Award - 3 CAPs - For trying to sell Fifth Element as an influence to the game
Child Genius Award .- 6 CAPs - For more intelligent being me than

8 CAPs for Aperama

Fisto Award - 3 CAPs - For questioning the sensibility of chocolate bars
Gas Meter Award - 5 CAPs - For teaching the blogger some hard facts of life

5 CAPs for Fry

Fu Bar Award - 5 CAPs - For noticing the obvious acronym

5 CAPs for TBD

Genre Support Award - 5 CAPs - For linking to Adventure Gamers -awards of 2014

5 CAPs for Rowan Lipkovits

Electricity Meter Award - 5 CAPs - For teaching the blogger some hard facts of life

4 CAPs for Laertes

Everybody Wants Some! Award - 4 CAPs - For appreciating classick rock

4 CAPs for Andy Panthro

Every Breath You Take Award - 4 CAPs - For an alternative take on police

That’s it for today! I am ready to pack my things and move away from the limelight. It’s time to let Aperama and TBD get in business with B.A.T. and King’s Quest V. We’ll see how well they manage...

Game 49: Elvira - Practical Magic

Game 47: Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All the Girls - Have Surfboard, Will Travel

Missed Classics 6: Wonderland - Introduction (1990)

Game 49: Elvira - Gremlins

Missed Classic 5: Wizard and the Princess - Over the River and through the Woods

Game 47: Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All the Girls - Won!

Game 49: Elvira - Won

Game 51: Rise of the Dragon - Introduction

Game 47: Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All the Girls - Final Rating

Missed Classic 5: Wizard and the Princess - WON! and Final Rating

Game 47: Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All the Girls - Pheasant and SCONNs

Game 49: Elvira, Mistress of the Dark - Final Rating

Missed Classic 6: Wonderland - Part The First – In Which Alice Stumbles Blindly, As Is Her Wont

Game 51: Rise of the Dragon - Lost!

Game 51: Rise of the Dragon - Roses Are Red

Game 51: Rise of the Dragon - Wire is Blue

Game 51: Rise of the Dragon - Gone is my sweet!

Game 51: Rise of the Dragon - And dead are you (AKA Won!)

New Poll: Choose the best game of 1990!

Reader's Choice: pick the best game of 1990

Game 51: Rise of the Dragon - Final Rating