The Adventurers Guild

Written by Reiko

Broadhead Journal #5: "It’s not just about risking my life to find cool stuff anymore. Now I have a real mission. I have to go to four more places. If I fail, we might all be doomed. Why me?? Well, at least the first one was easy."

As with Part 1, we start in our quarters, and the message light is blinking. I don't have any other leads, so I put my card in and retrieve the message. An unknown sender instructs me to meet him discreetly in the tanning room of the Pedroza lounge, accessible from the bar. Intriguing. I suppose there might be some concern for one's safety with an instruction like that normally, but in a game like this, there's no reason not to go.

The stakes are raised...

The man waiting for me reveals himself to be an aide to the president of the station, and he's got a secret mission for me that has an insanely huge completion bonus. That's just exactly what I need, right? Apparently the Aleph 4 device has revealed an upcoming catastrophe, but I'll need to go meet the prospector handlers to find out more details. This is a typical conversation where the character has a lot to say, but he won't give much of an answer to anything I try to ask. I just have to wait several times to get all the information he's able to give before he leaves [25].

The Heechee were also frightened of the Assassins and didn't want to deal with them.

I go over to the administrative offices, and the receptionist immediately takes me into the conference room. Worden gives me a non-interactive infodump about the mission [10], which I'll summarize. The Aleph 4 device was a computer called the Savant which not only taught scientists the Heechee language and some technology, but delivered a warning about a hostile race called the Assassins which destroy civilizations once they reach a certain technology threshold. They detect the use of technology using a station called the Watchtower. Planets the Assassins attack are utterly destroyed. Fortunately, the Heechee built a cloaking device to hide the evidence of technological radiation and protect themselves from the Assassins, but they never activated it. The mission is to go to four planets with shield generators and activate them. Simple, right?

This place looks pretty abandoned, if not destroyed.

I go to the hangar and travel to the first shield generator planet. I arrive on a landing pad. There's a round metal disk nearby with a cracked prism and a bright cube of some kind. I take them and then go into the dwelling, which appears to be abandoned.

A Heechee home?

One wall holds a transparent cabinet with a clear prism and a dark cube, plus some controls. The cabinet holds an oval depression and a black pyramid. Yay, another alien device to fiddle with. Except I can't find anything in particular to do with it other than take the corresponding prism and cube.

Oooh, technomagical teleportation. The Heechee are awesome.

So instead I go out and fiddle with the metal disk. It suggests I could stand on it. Some kind of transporter, maybe. I try swapping the cubes first, but that doesn't do anything, so I suspect the cracked prism and the dark cubes are non-functional. I insert the clear prism and the bright cube while standing on the disk...and it takes me somewhere else [7]!

Pretty colors...

I go up a stairway into a temple of some kind. There's a dais surrounded by a force field, and murals on the walls. Plus the walls are full of small insects. Very strange. One mural shows a man doing something with an insect, so I try capturing one [7]. The force field still zaps me, so I'm not sure what to do with it next.

I go through the other doorway and find myself in a multicolored room with each compass direction corresponding to one of the colors of the standard ROYGBIV rainbow (except the door I entered through), but scrambled. I go through the direction corresponding to red and find a very similar room, but with the colors scrambled a different way.

A simple color maze.

I continue through the rainbow in order and finally find myself in a room with the colors in order, plus a metal tripod [14]. But I missed something; I don't have the right thing for this yet. I find it interesting that there are so many color-based puzzles in this game, although they're generally knowledge-based rather than visual. Good thing this isn't a CRPG.

I return to the landing area and move the clear prism and the bright cube to the transparent cabinet in order to open it [7]. I can't immediately move the black pyramid, but there is an oval depression next to it. I try putting the beetle there and am rewarded with a click [7]. Now I can take the pyramid [7].

It's odd that the pyramid needs to be placed on the stand
pointing up rather than fitting into it point down.

I move the cube and prism back to the disk [7]. For some reason, this time I get points when I put the bright cube in the socket when I didn't before. Maybe because I'm doing it with the pyramid in hand? Anyway, now I can go back to the temple, thread my way through the color maze again, and put the pyramid on the tripod [19]. The room reacts slightly, but I don't find out what that did until I return to the temple. I find it interesting that the game automatically returns me to the temple without going back through the maze once I've placed the pyramid, but the first time I did that, I had to retrace my steps.

The force field controls are barely visible in the picture.

The force field is now gone. The control panel is accessible, with a power knob (square or oval), lever (gray or blue) and activation button. The actual activation is as simple as the talking heads claimed it would be. Turn the knob, pull the lever, and press the button.

The force field is complete.

A pretty animation plays, showing the shield activating, and it's done [25]. Yay! One of four activated, no problem. I drop the extra items back in the landing area and return to the station, acquiring a bonus of $5 million for the first activation.

This isn't the half of it.

However, the second shield generator is located in a very dangerous jungle with many deadly creatures. I poke around a little, but I don't get very far. I think I need a weapon to deal with one of the creatures, so I move on. Next time I'll deal with the third shield generator instead.

Score: 435 of 1600
Balance: $6,541,450
Status: Orion Program (green badge)
Missions: 8
Shield Generators: 1 of 4

Session Time: 1 hr
Total Time: 5 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 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 Aperama

I've literally been staring at a blank page for the last three days having played Eternam. Maybe it's been a week. Or a month. I really can't tell any more. (Technically, I had to stop writing for a month and a half after starting this, but that sentence was already written and is still true – I only have a point of reference because the time is saved on my computer.) Basically, there's the 'art' side of my brain which understands what I've just taken in – it's a game that manages to use surrealism to a point that even Salvador Dali would be impressed. There's the 'comedy' side of my brain which sees the fun of what the creators of this game were out for – there's lots of fourth wall breaking and there's clearly no place that isn't worth going for the sake of a joke. But this game takes those two facts and then forgets what it really needs to be a good game – coherence. Super Mario Brothers explains itself without ever needing to have a lengthy manual or tutorial. You can't go left (the screen ends) but the screen to the right moves. You get killed by more or less anything, so you jump around things, and then eventually land on something by accident to learn that they die when you jump on them. This game lets you kill the first three characters you meet to no obvious negative reaction. I decided not to just because I don't want to get through and find that there's a need to keep them alive. I literally don't know if there is a function behind the option to kill things, and have been given no reason to suspect there is. Vive le France!

That's not to say that the characters don't deserve being murdered with laser beams.
I literally quit after this scene, the first person you talk to in the entire game.
I had to close it. I was worried that my computer would explode.

I'm probably heading too far ahead of myself.. though I'm not at all certain of it. Eternam starts you with a ridiculously 90s introduction screen with several shots of the game and the title superimposed repeatedly over the title screen. We're then given the interface and a shot of Tracy, the lady who is 'helping out' DON JONZ (or as I did to keep some sanity about me, DON ADAMS from Get Smart). She gives virtually all of the plot I've actually put together thus far:

'Welcome to Eternam. If you consulted our brochure, you'll know this is the vacation of a lifetime! You, DON JONZ, are about to visit islands which are highly accurate historical reproductions. Many synthetic humanoids will provide stunning realism, adding to your intense pleasure. If you experience any inconvenience, I'll be in touch. Have a nice stay!!'

Then the game drops you in the middle of a field with a giant rock, or something. I really don't know what it is – I took a screenshot for the intro post, and nobody had any insights as to whether I'd even found the correct start to the game, let alone what the thing might be. The 'look' choice does nothing, nor 'use'. Then, there's Creepy Mc-Creeperson up there, or we can follow a road to a giant house in the middle of nowhere. It has a whole lot of nothing inside as best as I can tell, with the exception of a man who is standing around doing not an awful lot.

The house's occupant also tells us that the Duke's castle is to the east with no other
obvious use for him – not that the game gives you any bearings as to which direction is which

Thankfully, all the game requires is for the road to be followed. Simple enough! Stopping off at the house seemed like a good time to test out the interface. The 'use' command only appears to work as it comes to working with items in the inventory, and as the inventory starts out empty this is not really too notable by this point. The 'take' and 'speak' buttons are pretty self explanatory. The 'look' button is.. well.. what's the word I'm looking for...

Oh, that's the one! 'Useless'!

Actually, there is one practical use to the 'look' command – when in front of shelves etc with no definitive graphic for the item you're searching for (an unnervingly frequent occurrence), a text bar explains what is there. That said, when you're in front of an item where I'm attempting to work out exactly what it is, I usually get 'There's nothing to see!' which is.. yeah, not very handy. This said, the game seems pretty linear from here – there's a single road to follow, and it's the only thing with anything to actually react with. I sincerely hope that I've not missed something on the way there, as apart from this lovely fellow...

I really don't know what to make of the perspective they keep
giving for characters – it is definitely not flattering though

… there simply isn't anything much I can see to interact with outdoors. You can destroy just about everyone with liberal use of the 'fire' command, but again I find myself not willing to do so just in case it leads to any pain later on. There's a tower on the way to the castle that you literally bounce off of (the 'boing!' noise is something I'd expect out of Wile E. Coyote's playbook) but which the trusty 'LOOK' command doesn't notice, the 'USE' command gives nothing of and you can't TAKE or SPEAK to. Annoying, but at least it means for a reasonably straight forward path to follow!

The Ducal castle is less than magnificent.

But at least we know who his pet is!

Entering the castle itself, we're greeted by a very pretty (for the day) little cutscene of a drawbridge being raised. The game then dumps us in the entry room which has a ridiculously large kennel (if you compare it to Don Adams' size here, you'll realise that it tops out over eye height compared to him) and nothing much of anything else at all. Attempting to go the only way available leads to another cutscene where Rex, a huge anthromorphic dog, repeatedly punches Don only for a guard to come out and smack Rex repeatedly and allow us to go forwards. The 'beating Rex' cutscene is also stopped momentarily to assure that he's not really being hurt. How sweet of them. Don asks how much he's being paid only for the guard to explain '30gp' and then realise that he actually needs to hit him harder to get his money's worth. If we'd actually been allowed interactivity, I might have felt a little guilty for encouraging the pain to the dog.

Just to prove that this game really is as berserk as I insist

Heading on through, we find out that Lord Ethelred (I thought he was a Duke!) is 'at the end of the second hallway, in the council chamber'. That should be a reasonably simple task, but this game won't even make that much easy. Not only does actually accessing the end of the second hallway require a fetch quest which involves randomly walking around and LOOK-ing at cabinets and cupboards along hallways, but we have to talk with a skeletal guardian just to enter the place. Turns out he's another person who attempted to perform the 'ordeals' for Ethelred, which we're to do. Why, you ask? Well, because, uhm, uh.. because. I suppose that given the insane premise of the 'VR life' or what have you, it does make some amount of sense – but there's no explanation as to why he's still alive, no mention of magic or even what the end aim for Don is.

Nowhere near Murry from Monkey Island 3, that's for sure!

The skeleton says that the ordeal that 'finished him off' involves a 'gaze to be avoided'. From here, I more or less went through places randomly. I found a power point, a man who was very angry to have me in his room, a power point which zapped me, a match, a train (the Medieval Express), a warning that I'd not be allowed into the Duke's rooms if I didn't bring a 'sweetmeat for the secretary'..

'A train? What?' Yes. A train.

Perhaps this is merely knowledge that anyone from Europe has in the back of their minds, but the term 'sweetmeat' makes me think of, I don't know. Candied ham or something. Google clarified that it's more of a term for just generic 'sweets' in archaic English, but still. After this mental image of a ham covered in glossed sugar like a candy apple, I was already doomed. I note 'mental image' here because there is absolutely no inkling as to what these items might be – I found it on a shelf, but there was no real way of knowing what I was picking up. As I fully see the possibility for this game to come up with items that are completely out of the norm (as they have both scifi and fantasy tropes to fool around with), I am very very worried over this!

An example of how in-game items are displayed when they're actually discovered
– you have to 'look' to find it, but after that there's no pixel hunting

Or similarly, the 'inventory' screen. I'm glad the game at least has
the common decency to state that 'sweetmeat' is a bizarre term used

Hopefully, Eternam also includes an in-game hint guide like Space Quest 4

There's so much more to speak of in the castle, truly. Unfortunately, not much of it is actually stuff I want to talk about. For instance, the statues have a little bit of random conversations with themselves. I'm not going to recap it as I believe it to be all 'jokes'. The game's level of inanity means that it is very difficult to know exactly what is of actual need to pay attention to and what is just there for fun. A janitor in one area of the castle weeps about being fired from his job building boats and does it in rhyme. A reference to an archaic French poet or a reminder on who to go to in order to move the boat found elsewhere in the castle (built indoors but without a way to actually remove it from the second floor room it is in)? No idea. Anyway. On to the Duke.. Lord.. Let's just call him Ethel, the Red.

In a complete turnabout of likelihoods, he is also insane

We get a map of Eternam, at least.. or I think it is?
(No point of reference makes it useless anyhow. It looks like a dinosaur to me.)

He has a lot of treasures – they seem largely useless

Ethel lets us know that there's an ordeal 'somewhere in his castle'. Great. Real helpful. He has a small chair of advisors who are snickering at our chances (which counting Ethel makes a group of four), a cartographer in the next room over, a treasure room and a doctor. The doctor has an x-ray machine. Walk into the x-ray machine and at first it just shows off a skeleton.. and then zaps me dead. On being vaporised, we wake up in the bed next to the machine with a doctor standing over us – it turns out there is no permanent death on Eternam. Just random death. He gives us the 'creepy old German' routine, and a clock appears to show that a few hours went past during Don's unexpected death and rebirth. Healing? I don't know. He was a skeleton.

Least expected death in a fantasy adventure game of 1992 award is won right here

The game shows a closeup (literally closes in on) Don after this,
with a 'shocked' expression on his face. I mean, it's unexpected, sure!

Before I get to the 'ordeals' which is likely where I'm ending (I technically got through two, but want to play around with the third for a bit before I talk about them) I'll give a little more information on the castle. There's a door underneath a set of stairs (which is where the 'ordeals' come into play – expect to start the next post with another skeleton head talking to us). Upstairs is a super-slippery floor which almost leads to skating into Ethel's 'apartments' unintentionally. The guard there doesn't like the thought of Don going in because his boots are dirty (leading to a humorous shakedown where he ends up with his own body's length in dirt falling free). There's another random treasure room with a broken mirror and some questionable sculptures and a court jester standing next to the aforementioned indoor boat in yet another room. There's lots of creepy 'closeup shots' of characters which feel almost entirely like they're just trying to show off the pictures they've put their effort into creating – I mentioned them earlier, but I have to again. I don't know what to make of all of this. I really don't.

I don't know why, but this image somehow reminds me of The Fool's Errand, the old PC puzzle game. Just me?

A fitting image to end on

Time played: 1 hour
Mental age increase after playing: Minor dementia

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. That said, I'm only so frightened of spoilers. You can virtually leave all of them written in plain English and they'll still be about as incoherent as if they were written in ROT13. I might give you CAPs for them. Or not. This game makes me flighty.

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last week, I explored most of Zork II and ended my session with suicide-by-dragon thanks to the Wizard of Frobozz. He had cast a “Fierce!” spell and my character happily walked into a dragon’s den. The rest hardly needs explanation. But in dying, I found the first clue of an overall plot: a shadowy, possibly demonic, figure that wants my help to restore his freedom. Is he imprisoned by the Wizard? Is it a coincidence that the two of the colored rooms in the afterlife match the magic spheres that we found? I’m excited to find out!

First things first, I focus on getting past the dragon. I approach him again and take stock. I can’t attack. How about bribery? I hand over a treasure and the dragon takes it to some hidden trove, but it doesn’t change anything. Do I have to give him something in specific? I try to talk to the dragon for clues but it seems that he is trying to brainwash me. I give up and leave, but something weird happens: he follows me. He turns back after one room but this must be part of the trick! I hand him another treasure and expect the same, but he doesn’t follow. Why not? Talking was the trick! When I chat him up, he follows for one turn. If I do it too much, does his brainwashing succeed? I can alternate talking and walking so he follows me even farther. What can I do with a fire-breathing dragon?

Darwin Award Finalist!

I consult my map and there’s only one potential target nearby: the glacier room. I take him the handful of steps and am rewarded with a beautiful scene: the dragon is surprised by the ice and believes his reflection is another dragon. He attacks and melts the ice but drowns in the resulting torrent. A sad end for a mighty dragon! I love this “new” solution to the puzzle. The version of the puzzle in Dungeon was obscure; it forced me into my “request for assistance” in that game. Leading a dragon here makes more sense than throwing a torch and I’m content. This opens up new paths behind the glacier and in the dragon’s den; I’ll check the latter first.

The north passage from the dragon leads to his lair, a treasure chest, and a princess. I check the chest first, but the thrall that the dragon must have had on the princess wears off and she leaves the room. I follow her-- the game helpfully tells us what exit she leaves from each time-- a few steps south, then through a secret passage in the Marble Room, and finally into the garden. She sits in the gazebo and seems to wait. I wait with her and am rewarded by the arrival of the unicorn. She tames the beat and rides off side-saddle but not before she hands me a golden key and a perfect rose. I solved two puzzles for the price of one! Even better, there’s a dragon statue back in the treasure chest. 205 points!

Behind the glacier was the volcano, just as I expected. I won’t narrate the whole thing (I devoted much of a post to it already), but it’s identical to the one in Dungeon. I emerge from my hot air balloon ride and safe-bombing with a ruby, zorkmid, stamp, and crown. Just like that, I have 255 points, but the lantern is fading fast. This may be a problem soon.

I ain’t afraid of no shrub.

I visit the topiary and am disappointed to find nothing has changed. I hoped that the dragon and unicorn bushes would change in some way to signify that I had conquered those puzzles but no luck. Do I have to defeat them all before something changes? My guess is that this will be my way out once I defeat the remaining monsters: the serpent, dog, and “several human figures”. I’ll come back later.

That leaves the lizard-guarded door, the menhirs, and the baseball maze. I try the lizard first. Violence is not the answer-- I cannot attack either the lizard or the door-- but it will eat things that I give it. I work through my all my stuff to see what happens. The candy turns out to be the trick: when he ways it, he falls asleep. The door remains locked, but the unicorn’s gold key takes care of that nicely. I’m in!

Beyond the door is the Wizard’s Workshop, several interconnected rooms where our adversary does his take-home wizarding. Just to the south is a trophy room containing his wizarding certificate and an empty trophy case. I immediately think I’m supposed to put all of my treasures in there, but no… it’s closed and protected by spells. Do I need to find a way to open it? In a sly little nod at Dungeon, the wizard’s diploma was awarded by sending in a matchbook cover! The matchbook puzzle wasn’t in Zork I so it’s nice that it’s not completely forgotten. To the west is a workroom with three stands: ruby, sapphire, and diamond. Since I have both a red and a blue sphere, I’m going to guess that I need to be on the lookout for a white one. To the south of that is a room with a black circle. All four colors match the rooms I traveled through while dead so I must be on the right track, but nothing happens when I place the two spheres that I have. I’ll need the third.

Giant lights so the players don’t get eaten by grues.

With nothing further to do in the workshop, I turn my attention to the “Oddly Angled” maze. Last time, I spent far too long mapping it only to realize that the exits are randomized. I’m fairly certain there are nine rooms (judging by the number of items I had to drop), but if there’s a rhyme or reason to how they are connected I can’t find it. Each room also has a diamond shaped window which is either dark or dimly glowing although once I stumbled on a brighter one. One of the rooms contained a “club” which was really a baseball bat and I hoped I would find a ball somewhere out in the dungeon to play with. As I came back to it this week, my memory was jogged a bit. I don’t know whether I got a hint for this puzzle as a kid or just read about it later, but this is one of the “infamous” adventure game puzzles. I recall that the goal is to “run the bases” so I try to mimic a baseball game. I go to the room with the bat, swing it, drop it, and then make a square: north/west/south/east or northeast/northwest/southeast/southwest. Neither of those work, but I repeat the experiment until I discover that starting off with southeast does the trick (as if home plate was west) and the bases get increasingly lit up as I go. When I fully round the bases, I hear a noise and discover a new staircase has opened up. We did it!

To be honest, I doubt I would ever have solved this on my own. Figuring out that the puzzle was about baseball was easy, but I doubt I would have worked out the next step without having read about it before. This and the “Bank of Zork” puzzle are two of the least liked in adventure game history! I appreciate that the designer was trying to do a different kind of maze, but this could have used some more clues. Let’s keep going.

Who’s a good boy? You are! And you! And you!

The stairs lead to a dead end and a new puzzle: the entrance to a crypt, guarded by a three-headed dog. It seems to be the Tomb of the Implementers from Dungeon, but without the same level of fourth-wall-breaking humor. None of my items seem to do anything to help us get by the dog, but it’s a moot point anyway as my lamp has finally run out of batteries. I restore back and do a few things faster, but it’s clear I’m going to need more time to figure out what to do next.

The “do it all again but faster” puzzles have been a staple in all three Zork games that I’ve played so far, but I don’t particularly enjoy it. It’s part of the meta-puzzle for the game and an extra challenge, but I look forward to the first Zork game without a expiring light source. I work out a reasonably optimal path:

I begin the game and immediately grab everything from the gazebo then head to the carousel. There’s no way to predict which exit we’ll take, but I’ll do whatever puzzles come first while I wait to get the Riddle Room.
First attempt gets me to the Oddly Angled maze so I solve it and open the path to Cerebus.
The next attempt gets me north so I destroy the dragon and follow the princess. That nets me the gold key and the rose. While I’m there, I also solve the Bank of Zork. I leave the volcano for later since I haven’t picked up the fuse yet.
Third attempt lands me the Riddle Room! I solve all the way through Wonderland and the robot to stop the carousel spinning. Even optimized, I’m already getting messages about the lamp dimming.
Finally, I grab the blue sphere and solve the volcano.

After 350 turns, I’m back to where I was with the same puzzles left unsolved: the menhir stone, the topiary, and the cerebus. I haven’t found a use for the rose or grue repellent yet, plus the club and treasures could have secondary uses. Let’s solve this!

It’s the dawning of the Age of Aquarium!

I won’t bore you with the details, but what follows is a frustrating search of the entire game for anything that I might have missed. I re-checked every room for exits, experimented with the stones, and even got eaten by a hedge. Yes, if you wait in the topiary room long enough, the bushes come to life and eat you. I also had one lucky event where the Wizard attacked me and didn’t get away immediately. I tried to grab his wand but failed. I didn’t have my sword on me at the time so my attacks were useless and he escaped. I tried over and over again to make that happen again, but every other time the wizard managed to escape. If there is a trick, I can’t find it-- or perhaps the game just never lets that event fire if you are holding the sword. After hours at this and starting to write a “request for assistance” post, I found an exit that I missed in the workshop. Sometimes, you miss the obvious.

The remaining two rooms are the “Wizard’s Quarters” and “Aquarium Room”, just to the west of the sphere platforms. There doesn’t appear to be anything to do in his room but the aquarium contains a baby sea serpent. That’s one of the monsters from the topiary and so very suspicious. The aquarium is quite large and we’re able to climb into it, but the serpent eats us alive. I eventually work out that you can break the glass with the bat, but even then the dying serpent kills us with his final breath. Only by throwing the bat are we able to both kill the serpent and not get eaten ourselves. In the process, we find the white sphere! That’s a nice surprise because I was certain that it was behind the menhir.

Now that I have all three spheres, I place them in their color-coded stands in the Wizard’s workshop. Magic happens and we get a new black sphere, but this one contains a “huge and fearful” shape rather than a vision of a faraway place. Now what? I take it to the black pentagram just to the south-- isn’t it convenient that the Wizard had this all set up for us?-- and the demon is freed! He offers to grant us our heart’s desires… for a small fee: treasures. Lots and lots of treasures. The Wizard reappears and appears quite powerless against the creature, pitiful actually.

Who holds the devil, let him hold him well; He hardly will be caught a second time. - Goethe

After a few trips, I hand over all my treasures. I’m shocked that I had the right amount on the first trip as that means I didn’t miss any puzzles. What about the menhir and the topiary? Or do I just not need all of them? Either way, he’s glad to grant me my wish. I wish I had come to this point unspoiled, but it’s hard to not hear of such a famous sequence thirty years later: I wish for the wand. The demon grants my desire and the Wizard runs away. It’s time to practice my vocabulary of non-swearing F-words!

I explore around a bit to look for things to cast spells on but the menhir stone seems like the best candidate, plus the giant “F” on it is a dead giveaway. I point the wand at the stone and say “float”, but that doesn’t do anything and the wand needs to recharge. That’s unexpected and I was sure that was the right path. I go through my notes for every spell the wizard ever cast against me. Float, Filch, Feeble, Fierce, Fence, Fudge… None of them do anything. What the heck am I doing wrong? I try to do spells on the dog and on myself and nothing works. It turns out to be a stupid parser problem. Typing ‘say float’ doesn’t give you any errors and seems to work, but in fact you have to type ‘say “float”’ with quote characters around “float” for the spells to work. Bad design! Once I work that out, the stone floats away and I can enter the next room: a kennel containing an oversized dog collar.

At this point, it’s almost too easy: I take the collar to Cerberus and put it on him. He immediately becomes a very happy dog! I pet him and can pass into the crypt. It’s just like the one in Dungeon except it’s memorializing the Flatheads rather than the Implementers, but I still know what to do: I close the door and turn off the lamp. Nothing happens. It doesn’t let me pick back up the lamp (because I cannot find it in the dark) so I restore and try again. This time I realize that the crypt is actually two rooms. I go to the second room, turn off the lamp, and a secret door appears. I walk through it and the game ends. Onward to Zork III!

Time played: 4 hr 20 min
Total time: 8 hr 15 min
Total Zork Marathon time: 50 hr 10 min

Zork III: Oh No, More Zork!

Final Rating

Rating this game is going to be tough. It is frustrating: fantastic in some ways but incomplete-feeling in others. As a guy that has passed 50 hours of Dungeon-derivatives, I’m really glad to see the new puzzles and a new world to explore. Zork I did a great job making its puzzles all seem naturally connected to its world, but Zork II feels more disjointed. Perhaps it makes sense why a dragon would camp out next to a bank, but if you can come up with a reason why there’s a baseball stadium near some menhirs that is blocking the route to a crypt then you are more creative than I am. The dragon puzzle was the most satisfying of the new ones while the “Oddly Angled” maze was an exercise in frustration. The introduction of Wizard was fun, but he’s not too much more than a different take on Zork I’s Thief. I vaguely remember being able to solve more puzzles with the wand, but I may be thinking of a different game.

I’m having a harder time pinning down why the game feels incomplete. It’s certainly less polished than Zork I with more parser issues (damn wand!) and strangely missing vocabulary. Trying to solve the topiary puzzle without ever using the word “topiary” was difficult! And, as it turns out, impossible because there was no solution. I even checked a walkthrough afterwards to see if I missed a puzzle, but no. We also never needed either the rose or the grue repellent. The latter is especially strange because you received it as a reward for discovering “Room 8”, but why make a big deal of it if you never use it? It would have been better to put the candy there instead. This game is also considerably smaller than its predecessors. Dungeon was a massive 210 rooms by my count, cut in half to 110 for Zork I. This sequel only managed 80. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but combined with the lack of polish and seemingly missing puzzle(s), it makes me feel less satisfied than I think I should.

That covers most of what I wanted to say; I’ll keep the ratings themselves brief:

Puzzles and Solvability - Weaker than its predecessor with two of the “worst” puzzles of the series. I struggled a few times. The volcano is still one of the best puzzle sequences so far so I’m glad it was kept in here largely intact. Score: 4

Interface and Inventory - The interface could have used more testing and vocabulary, especially around the end of the game with the wand. It’s still a solid Infocom experience, but less solid than its predecessor. Score: 4

Story and Setting - The antagonist is better defined and we had an interesting interplay between the wizard and the demon at the end. Unfortunately, “at the end” is the problem because we spend almost the whole game solving puzzles with no discernable goal. I also found the setting weaker than the first game. Score: 4.

Sound and Graphics - No graphics or sound. Several of the treasures had ASCII art in the original Dungeon but all of that was excised. I suspect Infocom hadn’t worked out how to do it on mixed-size screens. Score: 0.

Environment and Atmosphere - The lack of cohesiveness hurt my enjoyment of this chapter, but the wizard was fun and an improvement over the Thief of the previous game. I’d love to say that we had a lot of tension, but it never really materialized. Score: 3.

Dialog and Acting - Excellent prose with fantastic depictions of the wizard and demon with a limited amount of real dialog. We expect great things from Infocom and they deliver. Score: 4.

The final tally is (4+4+4+0+3+4)/.6 - 32! I don’t feel the need to add or subtract bonus points so let’s just leave it at that. It’s lower than both Zork I and Dungeon, but that seems right to me. That places it about on par with the original Adventure and I can get behind that. If they had spent a bit more time polishing, it might have scored much better.

With that, Laukku wins! CAPs will be awarded with the next mainline game. Most of you guessed higher with the average score being 35, the same as Zork I. I also expected it to fare better, but perhaps Zork III will be the game to get the scores moving in the correct direction again.

Up next in our marathon: Zork III. I’m eager to bring our tour of the remaining parts of Dungeon to a close.

Written by Reiko

Broadhead Journal #6:"Wow, this planet is so relaxing. Almost like a vacation. I need to fix this dike, and there’s a huge beast in the forest, and I don’t see the shield generator anywhere, but I think I’ll just take a nap first..."

The third shield generator planet (the second one I’m doing) is called Dorman. The planet is terrestrial and temperate enough that I don't need to wear a spacesuit. I land by a beautiful pond with a path around it leading toward a nearby forest.

This place is a lot nicer than the other planets I’ve been on.

Looks like my ship did some damage to the area when it landed. Oops.

On one side of the pond I find a small stone [6] and on another side a large stone. The west side is blocked by a stone dike that's been damaged; a boulder has been dislodged from it, but it's too heavy for me to put back.

Ooh, scary.

The path to the east leads deeper into the forest. From a good vantage point on the trail overlooking a clearing, I see a monstrous alien creature that looks something like a sasquatch picking berries [4]. I also find a large branch [9] and a vine [5].

For some reason, the pond makes me get sleepy really quickly. The planet name is rather appropriate (Dorman/dormir). Apparently the day on this planet is about three hours long, so it's easy to take a nice nap. Yawn...stretch...zzzz…

My nightmare is trying to communicate with me...

I sleep at the edge of the forest and have a vivid dream [6] of being in the pond and then seeing the sasquatch, who doesn't attack but looks at me with great hunger. After I wake up, I go examine him more closely and notice that his leg is injured. I think he's having trouble finding enough food. But there are a lot of berries on the other side of the pond. The problem is that they squish too easily; I can't carry them.

Very crude shelter, but it shows the beast has some intelligence.

I watch the sasquatch for awhile and notice that he goes back and forth between two openings from his clearing. He'll chase me away if I enter the same room with him, but if he's in one side, I can go in the other one. One opening leads to a cave that doesn't seem to have much in it, but the other goes into a stone shelter where I find his crude wooden bowl. I take it so I can get him some berries [12].

I go back to the berries and start picking them, but I find that the bowl has a hole in the bottom! That won't do. I plug the hole with the small stone I found and then I'm able to fill the bowl with berries [8]. I wait until the creature is in his cave and then put the bowl back in his shelter where I found it [17]. I wait until he's occupied and then go into the cave again.

This is kind of a neat cave.

This time I notice that there's a mud-encrusted outcropping with a shard of something almost within reach. I poke at it with the branch and dislodge the shard [12], which I take [11]. On the way out, I encounter the creature, who momentarily freezes at the dull glint of the shard, then seems angry that I have it. I'm able to run away from him though.

I go back to the pond and wash the shard, which becomes brilliantly beautiful [20]. Now I can freely wander around the creature's territory because any time he sees the crystal, he simply stops and stares at it. Nothing else happens, though. So I go back to the edge of the forest and sleep again.

A second intense dream.

This time I get a different dream. I feel desperation from a large group of tiny creatures in the pond, and then the same from a pale woman with black hair who points to the mud-covered wall of the creature's cave. I already found the crystal, though. I need to know what to do with it.

The woman is the crystal?

I sleep again and get a third dream. I see the pale woman again, this time hovering over the pond and morphing into the crystal. Okay, that's weird. I try dropping the crystal into the pond and sleeping again.

I'm asleep still...

This time I get a sort of waking dream, where the woman stands by a window through which I can see an ordinary scene of a girl walking a dog in the rain. I think the woman is some kind of representation of a hive mind or a group of alien creatures that are trying to tell me something, but I'm not sure what.

When I wake up, I experiment more with the creature. I find that I can tie the vine to him to form a kind of leash [16], so then I can lead him around while he stares at the crystal. I want to use his strength to fix the dike.

Uh-oh, now I've made him mad.

I lead him over there and leave him by the boulder while I get up on the dike by myself [14]. Then I throw the crystal into the pond, breaking the creature's entrancement. He gets angry and picks up the boulder [15]. Perfect. Then he throws it at me. I dodge out of the way by jumping into the pond. The boulder settles back into its place, sealing the dike again [20].

The backstory is finally explained.

I'm immediately pulled down into the pond and into another dream. The Dorman representative explains a little more about how they're a collective entity. She thanks me for my help with the dike and for not harming the beast. She explains that he's the last of an ancient race that died out from genetic defects. He's only awake for short periods to feed and otherwise mostly sleeps, soothed by the dreams they send him.

The next shield generator room.

They also know about the Heechee and bring me along an underwater passage so I can activate the shield generator. It works the same as the other one, so it's easy to activate [25].

Another dream, out of order.

I sleep one more time, just to see if the alien collective has anything else to say. Oddly enough, I get another waking dream, this time displaying a painting of a leaking flask with the cork removed, and the woman asks me to undo what I've done.

I don't understand this. I've fixed the dike and activated the shield generator. I wonder if the dreams were getting triggered too late somehow. I probably just didn't sleep enough times once I started fixing things. I don't see anything else to do here, so I return to the station and collect the second $5 million bonus.

Bonus: Death #1

I found my first way to die in this game. When there are others, I'll display them at the end of each post. If I missed any in the earlier sections of the game, let me know.

If you let the beast throw the boulder at you. (#1)

Score: 642 of 1600
Balance: $11,541,450
Status: Orion Program (green badge)
Missions: 9
Shield Generators: 2 of 4
Deaths: 1

Session Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 6 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 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 the TAG Team

Notable Titles: Deja Vu, Maniac Mansion, Labyrinth, Monkey Island 1& 2, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones 3& 4, Simon the Sorcerer 1& 2

Notable Creators and Companies: ICOM Simulations (Darin Adler and Tod Zipnick), Lucasarts (David Fox, Ron Gilbert, Hal Barwood), Adventuresoft (Simon and Mike Woodroffe)

In 1985, almost at the exact same time as King's Quest was reaching some amount of prominence, a company named ICOM Simulations came up with a very similar idea. Whilst they wanted to create adventure games, they did so in a way that was notionally going to make adventure gaming easier.

A typical adventure game of the time relied on parser, which not only depended on a certain amount of typing proficiency as it came to a lack of typos, but imagination – if a game wanted you to 'CRAFT PAPER AIRPLANE' and didn't let you use 'MAKE', you needed to realise that the people who were writing the game only had the word 'CRAFT' in mind, which was always going to be an issue. Deja Vu made the potential for a game where one's imagination was the only real limit. By including the use of a simple drag-and-click interface, one needed only minimal computer skills to play through an adventure game.

You still have plenty of choices – but none of them are impossible to guess

Though the MacVenture suite of games is largely maligned due to difficulty, it doubtlessly inspired many adventure game companies to replace parsers with menus or lists of commands. Some of these early attempts took this approach to extremes.

Are you sure we really need all these verbs?

One of these early attempts was published by what would become the perhaps most influential adventure gaming company of all time.

I bet you weren’t expecting this

Starting their adventuring journey with the not so well known Labyrinth (1986) and continuing with the much better known 1988 classic Maniac Mansion, Lucasarts became undeniably the leader of point and click adventure games. Largely known for their wacky designs, the company which now sadly has been eaten up by Disney repeatedly hits 'greatest adventure game of all time' lists for their iconic and quirky games. And unlike Sierra, Lucasarts had some successful imitators.

Hey, it’s just the interface we copied!

One of the key things to come out of this time period was that game saves were far less important than they'd ever been – to open up to a larger market, it was repeatedly made at the very least 'quite difficult' to have an on-screen character death, meaning that they were games that all of the family could enjoy.

You can kill Guybrush Threepwood - but you really have to try it.

This period of gaming was doubtlessly where adventure games began to shine, with many people who are on this website likely having started their adventure gaming career either with this style of gaming or the other subtly different one to come.

written by Aperama

I'm not gonna lie – this game is a struggle. Staring at an empty DOSbox prompt with “DRIVE:\ETERNAM\>” is something I'm almost frightened to admit to. Eternam hasn't quite given me PTSD, but boy does it feel like it is capable of as much. The cardinal sin is that the game isn't so much weird as incomprehensible. I understand every word that is in front of me, but it just doesn't come up into coherent sentences. This section was almost something I'd call easy, but was made difficult by what I would imagine is partially an issue of translation issues and partially of desperate attempts for humour which are largely just inane.

As promised, a random skull to start the day

When I last left off, Ethelred had half-heartedly assigned Don King, ex-boxing manager extraordinaire and famed wearer of inanely tall hair, to go and perform some 'ordeals'. Not what they were – there was not to be a grand stage play he was to save, nor a dragon to slay – no. Don's task was to find the ordeals, perform them and then come back. It's as silly as it sounds (and again, it's not really Monty Python absurdity so much as it is just 'hard to follow'). There's only one obvious place to 'perform' them throughout the castle however, so it's pretty obvious that you need to go to the right of the staircase which leads to the top floor of the castle (yes, this is a castle with only two stories somehow) and down the little chute which appears to lead to a basement. Dungeon? Dungeon basement.

Make the walls cry..

.. grow, uh... immune to fire?

I'd already scoured the castle in every place I could search, so had a medieval camera (no idea still what this is), infrared glasses, a match and onion skins to get me through the 'ordeals'. Landing in the basement via chute, we're greeted by 'Yorick' (ha! Shakespeare joke), an animate skull which tries to give some rather cryptic clues as to how to make it through. I'd left off last post after solving the first two puzzles. The first was a pair of Medusa-like eyes appearing in the wall (which were done in by onion skins making them cry, which means that it's actually just 'peeled onion' and not the skins methinks). The second? Giant pillars of fire. These were solved by standing in the wash of the crying walls. The next room had me momentarily stumped too – for no apparent reason, the floor simply disappeared under me.

This seems like a major occupational health and safety risk, Ethelred

At least he actually addresses me as though he wants me to succeed, now

Not pictured: me getting crushed by the beam overhead as I stand under where it is due to fall

Somewhat unintuitively, the 'speak' command was the way out here. I'll be completely fair and give kudos to our fine French overlords for giving a clue to every failed 'ordeal', at least. Every time you fail, no matter the reason, you end up with Ethelred reviving you with his magical scary masseuse-cum-doctor and giving a Lord British-reminiscent pep talk, including his completely original catch phrase of 'May the Force be with you!'

Again, I just need to show pictures to prove that I'm not making this up

Sure, there's some laughs to be had when they go all Looney Tunes..

But what do you even say to this?

The rest of the 'ordeals' are decidedly less than arduous. The first one involves simply not going through a door. Naturally, the correct path is littered with 'actually, go here!' signs to make it appear a trap. This gives the above shot of a random cannon firing and shooting Don into the wall, flattening him like a pancake. The next 'ordeal' involves a huge 'green swamp beast' (and this I only call thus because that is literally what the game lists it as) – it's behind a great big set of cell bars. If you go up and talk to it, you get a few really bizarre dialogue options. 'So you're a long way from home too.' or 'See you round!' lead to the cell bars raising and it killing you, for instance, for it to randomly scream its name. Ethelred mentions that the trick is to 'pretend he's not there'. Walk past him, you say? Again? So a second useless ordeal, in other words. No problems!

Taking a shot of the 'blade' is somewhat difficult here

“If Igor get big hero job, can he be pyromaniac, too?”

The next couple of rooms are nice and simple inventory puzzles. Using the 'infrared glasses' you can find elsewhere in the castle allows you to avoid tripping a trap which bisects Don at the hips rather violently (you have to follow a path left in the ground, but it's not particularly difficult.) The next is a room full of wooden furniture. Walking inwards leads to a small chest of drawers full of ties crushing Don – setting fire to the room was obvious enough that I nearly didn't even get myself killed to find the trap. The issue I have with this game is that you can't really use the 'look' command to get an idea of what you're doing – I perceived no real risks within most of these rooms not because I am overtly trusting, but because there's no real reason to think otherwise. From here, there's a couple of levers in a room next to another empty room – tooling about with them enough leads to the floor raising in an elevator, and the ordeals are passed!

I actually thought this was another instant death, for the record

“Humbly, DON JONZ never seems to amaze himself”

Ethelred is still.. well, I suppose the term might be eccentric? It's not as though he's in any way upset with our success, but there's definitely the feel that he's not too interested in telling everything that he knows. This is essentially a great big plot dump from here, along with a little bit of a geography lesson. We're presently on the continent of Cauda, where he rules. To its south, there's a small area called Paw Island (which I suppose means there's likely going to be some way of travelling over seas given the way it is so implicitly mentioned). The isles to the east of Cauda he (and his scribe who makes the maps) know very little of, largely because their inhabitants are a 'degenerate race, bloodthirsty and quite pitiless!'

You can tell how serious he is by his mild frown!

The character portraits are actually fully animated to be fair, but I could probably take about twenty screenshots for the two that would look truly appropriate. Basically, Ethelred begins to lay out the issues – Cauda is presently cut off from the rest of Eternam because the ship that typically arrives once a month to deliver goods and load Cauda's exports has not been back for the past six months. It turns out that the continent's only ship (only ship! Small world!) went down with all of its crew a year prior, leaving them to the mercies of the ship owned by others. As such, our broader quest is to rush about and attempt to find out what has occurred here. The ship elsewhere in the castle makes a touch more sense here – it turns out that Cuthbert, Ethelred's son was obsessed with creating a new ship to set to the sea.

Meanwhile, back in La-La land, we get some random stuff
which will probably be plot important but is otherwise incomprehensible

Finally, after explaining all of this, Ethelred states that we're to inspect the 'nearby island of Dorsalis' for him. On beginning to speak of the likely 'real' reason (which I expect to be that his son went missing there some time ago given that the jester by the ship kept mentioning Cuthbert's wanderlust whenever I spoke to her), Ethelred starts to become belligerent that he's being interrupted and cuts him off. He then states that we are getting a 'terrifying lethal weapon which will prove of immeasurable help in our quest'..

“He speaks English and Spanish, and he's bilingual too?”

I complained about working out east from west earlier – now the issue is left and right

My reward? A sharp knife capable of splitting hairs!

He sends us to the 'captain of the guard'. His office is apparently the first on the right once inside the castle. This sounds perfectly sensible to me – I even know the place that he must be talking about! I'll interject here to state that I found another item only after lots of random running around in a set of keys. As soon as I found this, I knew where to go. I did not find this immediately, however. Instead, I followed the directions of Ethelred. This leads to a guard. This guard has absolutely no new dialogue, but does speak at least a little. I was thinking that this must have involved some sort of cryptic clues that I wasn't getting.. nuh uh. Turns out this was just quite plainly a mess up in translation or something – he meant to the left when entering, leading to the guy who is angrily looking for keys.

I really hope this means it's the scribe who has kidnapped his son

This doesn't really lead to much, in truth – he just tells us about a 'secret passage' through the son's quarters leading to Ethelred's, giving us a way of actually visiting him due to the last post's issue with Don's dirty shoes. I'd figured just giving him a new pair of shoes would have been the solution. Speaking to Ethelred in private, he gives us GP (which I assume is short for either 'Gold Pieces' or 'German Pornography'– I'm leaning towards the latter however). He does so two more times until he just says hello, so this could be a recurring way to get money? I'm not sure. Anyhow, I'm now at the stage where I'm due to leave the castle again. There's one vague goal and one precise goal (find Cuthbert, probably by visiting Dorsalis)... and then I'm on my own. This game would probably make a great platformer or FPS – unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be doing a great job as an adventure title at present.

Time played: 2 hours overall
Mental age increase after playing: Gerstmann's Syndrome

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. But I want spoilers. I'm afraid to leave the house now. Please, spoil me?

written by Aperama

Alright. This is a game that I now have to try and approach a touch more seriously, given how poorly it apparently comes across when joked about. Admittedly, my jokes weren't exactly up to par and were largely just a gimmick to make this feel more readable, but this game. This game. I would ask you all to realise that I am being completely direct when I state that in this previous hour and a half playing, I was given impossible directions (follow a path by direction when no sense of direction is given), walked on water with no clue as to whether or not I was moving in the correct direction in doing so (as most water drowns you instantly), and was then promptly sentenced to death for stepping on a lawn. Again, no hyperbole. This is simply what happened.

Vive le freaking France

I might be a touch ahead of myself, though. The first thing that happened upon attempting to leave the castle was a guard appearing in the middle of the entryway where 'Rex' resides, with him telling me that I came through the ordeals with 'flying colours'. Little did he know that it was just my persistent reloading at work! I was then assailed by what I was thinking of as a bat before I read the Wikipedia page to lean that it was supposedly 'flying reptiles'. A Drakkhen reference, probably. Followed by another one. Never letting them get close enough to truly give me any grief, I just held the space bar key until the things disappeared from my screen in an explosion. There might have been frivolous use of the 'alert!' in the bottom left corner along with a rather hideous noise, but there was never any real danger. Instead, I ambled my way around the castle and found another path (completely removed from the first, mind you) and began to explore.

I found a few local drunks, but never had the opportunity to ask any of them about 'Victor'.

Nearby, I found a 'humble inn'. Humble, because the owner called it thus. Fantastic, I thought – perhaps this was a place I might give up some of my 'GP'. No. All this let me know was that the dialogue system in this game is legitimately atrocious. For the vast majority of characters, you're only allowed to speak to them a grand total of once before they'll shun you for good. I sincerely hope this doesn't mean that I need to save before speaking to every character! For instance, speaking with the inn keeper allows at first brush to say 'where am I', 'who are you' or 'what can I get here'. 'Where am I', almost universally, is always the wrong choice. All you'll get is a sarcastic answer with no real inkling as to a direction. In fact, most dialogue is largely useless as best as I can tell.

Choosing the 'wrong' option..

At least there's sometimes a little bit in the way of answers

The nearby inn doesn't give much. I was hoping to find the Victor mentioned by the random guard in the streets. I was fortunate enough to save as I walked into it, so I was able to run the full gamut of speech options with the innkeeper, the 'refugees' on the first floor and the drunk on the second. The innkeeper starts by complaining of taxes, then upon finding a way to speak to him again (e.g. walking in and out of the room as it will not allow speaking to the same person twice in a row) he starts complaining that you're scaring away his clientele. There's again no real reasoning behind this – it's not as though choosing a particular line of questioning makes any of them irate. It's just a default 'go away' message, and while I'd normally be happy to know I've taken a wrong logical leap in an adventure title? This bugs me, purely because it gives the impression you're missing out on something. Even now, I don't know if some of the seemingly useless dialogue is actually necessary, nor if dialogue is even an important part of the game.

If this isn't the town drunk, I don't know who is..

But we don't get to ask him about Victor!

This said, there is at least something of merit learned via dialogue. Or at least, subjectively useful. The issue with 'usefulness' as a noun within this game is that such simple English terms don't really translate awfully well. Wandering the countryside and randomly shooting down the bat/bird/reptilian flying things which litter the roads (again, purely because it triggers the 'alert' in the bottom left corner as opposed to them being of any real menace as they never seem to come closer to you) I happened upon a monk. He told me to seek the 'temple of TwinRoses' to get some information about getting to the nearby islands, and to say that 'Franscecus' sent me. This actually unlocked dialogue at said temple.. but the information given wasn't actually of any direct use as I'll explain shortly.

There was actually an intersection with a forked road and three flags. This made sense. I was immediately suspicious.

Following the yellow-flagged road along to its end, there's a temple. It's surrounded by gigantic pixelated roses. Clearly, this is the temple I'm supposed to go to! Each room (the entire temple only goes three rooms long, though if I think of it Castle Daventry was a similar size back in King's Quest 1) has someone within. The first is a lady who rattles off a whole bunch of spiritual mumbo jumbo, but on being pressed correctly via dialogue offers a letter to give to her 'daughter Marianne in Dorsalis' where we're due to go. This again seems too sensible to be trusted, particularly given we're able to repeatedly ask her questions without her snapping at me. The next holds the 'Inquisitor', a guy who is apparently out to exterminate the 'walking skeletons and evil monstrosities' within Ethelred's castle. Eh, they seemed pretty nice to me. Next is the man who has all of the answers, the (elder?) of the Temple..

If you pick the second before the first, he tells you that you need a member of the Order to vouch for you – dialogue puzzle success!

On the other hand, we're again given a direction by compass heading with literally no grounds to declare one direction from another

So, the big bonus for randomly talking to strangers passing by is at least a thing – but unfortunately, it's not actually particularly useful. I was also quite confused here as I attempted to offer Francescus' name first, leading him to say I needed someone to vouch for me after already providing the sensitive information. Makes it a little less helpful! As though the programmers felt my pain, the prize for finding my way through this vague set of directions was to be a compass. If you're all wondering – taking the directions given here to be the crossroads we came from leads back to Ethelred's castle, so it must be some other crossroads he speaks of in the screenshot above. Basically, I walked around in a random direction, eventually finding some water with dark brown lumps in it.

Oh, of course you can walk on this..

Given they haven't made me think that water is to be feared and all

The first time I attempted to follow his directions, I got lost. I kinda hunched that the way might be over the random brown lumps. The issue is, after walking over them, everything you're walking over becomes entirely blue like the 'kill you' ocean elsewhere. So it's entire fluke that led me to the main city of Dorsalis, Middleville..

The imagery on the world map versus elsewhere literally does not match up

Middleville is.. okay, let's just get this out of the way. In a land of insanity on par with anything Lewis Carroll decided was a reasonable thing, this place was written by Carroll's schizophrenic French neighbour. French in multiple ways, mind. There are French flags littering the area surrounding it, the people here speak (broken) French, the décor is largely French, and their preferred method of execution is the guillotine. Really, really French. I had to look up the Wikipedia page after this and discovered it was Hubert Chardot, the mind behind the original few Alone in the Dark games, who claims lead design and story for Eternam. His surreal outlook worked far better in the creepy vibe of Alone in the Dark, methinks.

I'm not joking when I say looking up the 'story designer' here, this was nearly the first image on offer. This game makes sense now, somehow.

Meanwhile, back in Middleville, I'm again reminded not to ask where I am

So, in typical Frenchman-out-of-Monty Python fashion, I'm insulted as soon as I enter the town. I can live with some friendly banter and all, though – the second person we meet is out to sell us a compass! I've been crying for one since I opened the game up, so it's a great relief to finally have one in stow. Or rather, it almost was. See, this town is not precisely friendly. Admittedly, our omniscient helper did mention that Middleville was under some turmoil, but I hadn't thought to save within the first three screens. I started by getting insulted by the fisherman at the entrance of the town, bought a compass, stepped on some grass and was then sentenced to death.

Take all of my money. Now.

I was actually just on the path, but..

So, I'm not sure if this is actually supposed to happen as soon as it did to me, because.. well. I couldn't work a way out. See, as soon as I walked up to the first house I found in attempting to explore the town, I was accosted by some men with muskets and fancy bicorne hats. Turns out I was illegally on some grass. They informed me that I had the right to a phone call (but as they had no phones, I had no rights). Ha. I get it. After Don automatically tells them off for arguing with one another's attempts to arrest him in more vicious ways than one another, he gets told that he's insulted them and will as such be sentenced to death ('automatically found guilty after examination of the facts').

I mean, this could be funny if it had something else to ground it a little?

Yup – more harsh than death, apparently!

So, Don is thrown into jail. Fine, there's bound to be a way out, I told myself. Someone was talking through the bars to the outside, so I started a conversation – 'Isabelle' and 'Gaston' outside, a likely Beauty and the Beast reference I suppose? However, my first attempt at conversation had them run away from me. They then came in to execute me. I had maybe thirty seconds real time to react, look around my cell etc. Clock issues, perhaps? I didn't even have a chance to attempt to offer up the letter due to Marianne, given I was fairly certain by this point I was in Dorsalis. Nope – just death. I didn't save. That was the real problem, honestly. I spent the next forty five minutes making my way back across the ocean, again randomly stumbling without a compass. The issue is that there's really no points of reference upon the map to speak of, making the trip largely random as I wasn't exactly mapping with the awkward first person perspective..

The dread realisation of how bleak France is as it pertains to adventure games is not lost here

I really wanted to hop right back where I was after feeling like I'd made some actual headway – fording intra-island seemed like a big move towards actually getting something done in the game, but my next little while was simply spent walking in circles. I made it over the river once more after several deaths by drowning, but didn't immediately find Middleville. Instead, I found a few people on the roads and in houses. One told me to meet the 'bookkeeper' to find out where I was (the scribe from the castle perhaps?) Another told me that I ought take care of myself now that I was on Dorsalis, as there are apparently thieves all around. Then I ran into a random deer on the road which couldn't be interacted with at all, much like nigh upon everything on the world map. It stood out even in this game, with no seeming rhyme nor reason. Clinging to what little sanity I had left, I frantically closed DosBOX I put all of the blinds down in my house, fell into the fetal position and hid in a dark, dark corner.

Nobody. Just nobody.

Time played: 3 and a half hours, maybe. Time is not an object at present.
Mental age increase after playing: How old is Montgomery Burns, again?

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. I am a fish I am a fish I am a fish I am a fish I am a fiiiiiii

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last month, we completed the third game in our Zork marathon: Zork II. After exploring the prehistory of Infocom, we have finally reached the point where they are starting to fire on all cylinders. They even had a new office in beautiful Cambridge, Massachusetts! Zork II may not have been as solid a game as its predecessor, but it was very good and the company was banking on many sequels. As 1981 turned into 1982, they had three games in the pipeline under pre-production titles: Zork III, Zork: The Mystery, and Zorks in Space. These games would not only continue in the Zork tradition, but also prove that Infocom’s text adventures had legs far beyond their initial fantasy romps.

The mystery was released as Infocom’s third game, Deadline, preceding Zork III and Starcross (the space adventure) by several months. Despite the early title, Deadline does not have any connections to the Zork universe and so will not be covered directly in this marathon. Ilmari already wrote an excellent review of that game almost exactly a year ago, but I wanted to experience that game for myself before continuing on to Zork III. I have put together my own review of Deadline as a special bonus post which you can find here. Please check it out! Zork III and Starcross were released simultaneously several months later. We will cover Starcross as the next stop on the marathon thanks to a pointer that it may have a connection to the Zork universe after all.

As in the previous Zork games, this one is credited to both Marc Blank and Dave Liebling. Also as before, there is no mention of their mainframe collaborators in the credits. It is generally believed that this was Marc’s primary focus while Dave was working on Starcross. As Marc was also the lone developer on Deadline, this must have been a busy year! Beyond that, there’s not much history to tell. While Deadline had feelies, the original 1982 edition of Zork III did not have the extra manuals that many readers remember so well. We’ll cover all three of the expanded Zork manuals at some point down the line. Full disclosure: I booted up this game as a kid but am fairly sure I didn’t play more than a handful of turns. In any event, I can remember nothing about it now.

I’m not worthy!

The game opens with our character tumbling down a long staircase, presumably from the secret door in the Crypt of the Flatheads at the end of Zork II. In a vision, we see images that suggest what we may be up against: “imposing stone figures”, a clear lake, and an “old, yet oddly youthful man”. The man tells us that we have reached our final test and we must seek him out when we are worthy. We awaken at the bottom of the Endless Stair with the brass lantern at our feet. Right off the bat, we have a goal in mind and that is already an improvement over the previous game.

Just to the south, I find my elvish sword encased in stone. Playing King Arthur doesn’t help and I suspect we’ve found our first puzzle. There are exits in every direction and I’m just going to have to start mapping. I’m planning to follow the left wall as best I can, heading east and north when possible. Just to the east there is the bottom of a steep slide, a one-way trip from somewhere deeper in the maze and a reminder of the slide in the cellar of the first game. Just past that is a dead end and a room with runes that I cannot read. I make a note of both and return to the sword room. South and east of that is a passage filled with multicolored crystals on the way to a royal hall adorned with the deal of Dimwit Flathead. That also ends up at a dead end at a door that is rusted shut. Do I need to find some oil?

Of course, this isn’t underground...

Further south, I discover the an ancient lake shore and a view of an aqueduct. The prose in the game here is moody and depressing, more about the sad fall of a once great (if stupid) empire rather than finding humor in a dam built underground. I experiment around the lake and discover by accident that I can jump in! I’m fairly certain we couldn’t swim two games ago. Unfortunately, the water is icy cold and we drop everything. I have to restore. Next time around, I turn off my lamp and leave it and everything else safely on the shore. There’s enough ambient light overhead that we can see so no grues to worry about. I jump in the water again, confident that at least I’m not losing any items. I can either swim west or south. I try south first but the passages beyond the bank are dark and I’ll need to find a way to bring a light source across. I go west next and expect to find the same, but the passage there is lit and I make it all the way to a “Scenic Vista”.

While the room itself is not scenic, it contains a table that appears to show a hologram of another location in the maze. It takes me a little time to work it out, but as we wait the view switches between four different locations with an indicator telling us which number we are seeing. When I arrive, it was set to four but that may have been luck of the draw

The four views are:

A passage cluttered with broken timbers and an exit at one end.
A tiny room with the number eight written on the wall. The only visible exit is a strange blur.
The “Damp Room” that we visited earlier in the game, the one containing the slide.
The interior of a temple where human sacrifices are performed.

The second room seems like “Room 8” from Zork II… wait… could each of the numbers refer to the game that the scene takes place in? The first room looks like it could be under the coal mine in Zork I. Is the final location a sneak peek at a room in Zork IV? Of course, we know that there would never be such a game: the next games in the universe would be the Enchanter series, followed by Beyond Zork and Zork Zero. It’s interesting, but what does it mean to me now?

That looks like it might sting a bit.

I explore further and discover that if I touch the table, I am transported to wherever location it was displaying. I make the mistake of touching it first on the four and am killed on a sacrificial altar immediately. I restore and next time wait for the first room to come around. I cannot explore far before I am sucked back into the vista, but I can pick up the timber and it comes back with me. I also confirm that it is under the coal mine as we can see the ladder up in the next room over. I use the table again to travel to Room 8 in Zork II and pick up the grue repellent I know is there. I was so frustrated that wasn’t useful in that game. Was it a long con? An item they knew wouldn’t be useful until this game? The next part of the puzzle is the realization that I cannot take anything that I picked up back across the lake without dropping it in the water. The solution is obvious, if fun: use the vista to travel to the Damp Room and drop everything there before swimming across empty handed. On that trip across, I am prompted that a Roc appears and prepares to attack. I move quickly so he does not kill me, but I’ll make a note in case I need to deal with him later.

The next area in my “left wall” tour is the Land of Shadows, a gloomy place just to the west of the main north/south hallway to the lake. I hear footsteps and a hooded man appears and my sword somehow flies to my hand. The man is carrying a sword like mine. Is is supposed to be my dark reflection? Something else? He attacks and I get the brilliant idea to drop my sword and submit to him. He dispatches me quickly and starts to remove his hood, but I am dead before I get to see his face. Is that a clue what to do?

Hello, Sailor!

I restore and press on west, ignoring the figure entirely without incident. On the other side of the shadows is the Flathead Ocean. A turn or two later, a longship sails by with a single sailor on board. Dare I say it? Should I say it? I do! I say “Hello Sailor” to the man and he tells me that he has waited years for someone to say that to him and break a curse. My reward for the greeting is a vial of some heavy but invisible liquid. For those of you that didn’t read my previous playthroughs, this seems to be the payoff for an obscure Zork joke. Back in the first game (and Dungeon before it), you can read a holy text that says that saying “Hello, Sailor” is a sin, so naturally game players tried to say it everywhere. There was even a Dungeon Master trivia question in the Dungeon end game that asked where saying that phrase was useful. (The answer was that it never was.) Having it appear here is very fun, but also unfair on players that had not played the previous games. I’ll have to consider that-- and whether there are other hints to this solution in this game-- before I do the rating.

North of the ocean is a set of cliffs which we are able to work our way around. At the top is a room with some fresh bread, a rope hanging down from a tree, and a hint that someone had been there recently. I can climb the rope to a ledge containing a treasure chest. I can’t climb back up the rope with the chest, but I can climb down and around just fine. But take a look: we have found a piece of timber, a rope, and the bottom of a unclimbable slide. Is this going to be the infamous slide puzzle from the 600+ point version of Dungeon? That puzzle was present in the later versions of mainframe Zork but dropped from Zork I even though most of the components were kept. Unfortunately, I can’t untie the rope now. I run back to pick up my sword to cut it off the tree, but on the way there’s an earthquake. Is that a timed event? I make it back to the tree and can’t seem to cut the rope either. I’ll have to look for other options later.

I restore back to just before the earthquake to search to find what changes, if anything. Deadline has taught me that timed events are important! I manage to find the solution in my second attempt: if you wait in the Aqueduct View when the quake comes, you can see a pillar collapse into the water. Do I need to do something before the quake? Or after it?

My map so far

I ignore the earthquake for now and finish exploring the cliffs to find two more entrances into the Land of Shadows. I was just skirting around the edge before, but mapping the area is much harder than it looks. It’s not a traditional “maze” because each room as a different description, but those descriptions are occasionally confusing to keep straight. It’s like an improved version of the Maze of Twisty Passages All Different from Colossal Cave but simpler. I end up building a spreadsheet and copying the descriptions in to track which rooms I am in. In that way, I am able to map out eight rooms with exits out to the cliffs, the main hallway at the beginning of the game, and the ocean, but there is no “reward” room for paying attention like in many mazes. I assume I’ll have to defeat the hooded figure first to find the secret.

With that, I check my map and I’ve explored everywhere that I can. Next time out, I’ll have to start solving some of these puzzles. So far, I know of:

The rusty door in Dimwit Flathead’s hall.
The sacrificial altar from the “future” Zork IV.
The hooded figure in the Land of Shadows
Untying the rope from the tree
Opening the locked chest
The southern shore of the cold lake
The earthquake and the aqueduct
Finding the other end of the slide into the Damp Room

In terms of unused items, I have the vial, bread, and timber. I’m not sure how any of those will help me much…

This far, I am loving this game. Unlike Zork II, it doesn’t feel like it’s just new content to wrap around old puzzles. This feels fresh! I expect I’ll find a few more missing puzzles from Dungeon soon enough, but there have not been any puzzle retreads so far.

Time played: 2 hr 10 min

Since this is an introduction post, don’t forget to try to guess the score. Thus far in our marathon, Dungeon scored 41, Zork I scored 35, and Zork II scored 32 points. Deadline, the Infocom game that immediately preceded this one, scored an amazing 45 points. (If I were to have scored it, I would have gone slightly lower: 43 points.) Where do you think Zork III fits in?

Want to keep reading? Don’t forget to check out my bonus post on Deadline. I’ll be back next week with the next (final?) chapter in Zork III. I do not know yet if it will be two posts or three.

Written by Reiko

Broadhead Journal #7: "No $(*# way. I go from a beautifully relaxing planet to THIS? Every single thing here is trying to eat me, even the plants! And they’re all disgusting! I hate this place. I’d better get all that money they’re promising."

I started out this session by working on the fourth shield generator world, but I got a bit stuck there too, so I decided to solve puzzles on the station first, which I probably should have done earlier.

The consequences of stealing from the museum.

I knew I needed to get the tuning fork from the museum at some point, so I went there first. The easiest thing to do was simply to take it, but it didn't take long before I was arrested and fined $1000 and the fork was returned to the museum. That won't do.

Instead, I start experimenting with the other device in the room. The description mentions a circular depression about ten centimeters across, which makes me think of the medallion I'd acquired near the beginning from Nubar Kamalian. I put the medallion in the depression [5], and the machine starts to hum! When I put my card in the machine, the medallion projects a hologram of the card that remains even when I take the medallion away from the machine. So the machine is some kind of scanner and the medallion holds and displays the scanned information.

What is the security system sensing if a hologram replacement is sufficient?

Hmm, can I make a scan of the tuning fork, then? When I take the tuning fork, an alarm sounds and a voice warns me to replace the artifact immediately. I'd better work fast. I put the tuning fork in the device [10] (with the medallion back in the depression), and the hologram forms. I immediately take the medallion and put it on the tuning fork's pedestal [15]. Somehow this fools the security system and the alarm is canceled. I now have an irreplaceable Heechee artifact.

I need to get the gun out of the armory, too. The only other way out of the room is the maintenance vent. But the vents around the station are all locked with a strangely-shaped latch that requires a special key. I wait around in various rooms for awhile just to see if I can catch a maintenance robot going through a vent, but I never see any.

He's a trusting sort of fellow...

The only other lead I have is the emergency shutdown lever in the hydroponics park. I don't have any particular reason to pull it, but I go do that anyway just to see what happens [5]. After a few minutes, an old man appears to do the maintenance to restart the hydroponics system. He carries a toolbox which contains various tools, including a particular kind of special key!

He doesn't seem to suspect me of being the one to pull the lever since I'm new. In fact, he hands me the toolbox, asking me to make myself useful. After he opens the control box with the key, he even hands it right to me. Of course he wants me to put it back in his toolbox, but, well, let's borrow it for awhile. The fate of humanity is at stake, here. So I hide it in the planter tray instead [10].

Rolf was one lucky dude...until he wasn’t.

While he's tinkering with the hydroponics machine, the old man tells me stories about Rolf Becker's Heechee finds. I think the game is telling me this Rolf guy is going to be important. First there was that magazine, and now this. He was certainly lucky, except when he didn’t return from his third mission.

The old man also gives me a tip about some scientist who appears to be walking through Heechee walls. He says he hid in that shipping crate on Level Babe and watched him do it after midnight. Something else to check out. So triggering the hydroponics shutdown was definitely the right thing to do here, as far as the plot goes.

Next I go back to the armory and open the vent with the key [5]. There's also a little button inside the vent, labeled "Call Maintenance HVAC/LS Robot." I put the gun in the vent and push the button [10]. (For some reason I get two 5-point score notifications, so maybe it's 5 to push the button once, and 5 to push it here when the gun is in the vent.) I wait a moment and a spider-like robot appears and puts the gun into its waste container.

In one vent...

...and out the other.

Then I close the vent, go to one of the conference rooms, and use the button to call the robot again. It's the same one, fortunately, so I can take the gun from it [15]. The station certainly has some large security holes, doesn't it? Now I just have to make sure not to go near the guards, or they'll take it from me again.

Now that I have the gun, I proceed to the second shield generator, located in an alien jungle. A very dangerous jungle, at that. When I step out of the ship, vines immediately start growing around my feet, and after a few turns the vines will immobilize me. Sometimes a giant worm will break out of the ground and start chewing on my suit. One screen to the east I find huge anemones that won't let me past. Plus after a few turns a giant spider appears and will attack if I don't retreat. The only other item nearby seems to be a large seed pod from the nearby trees.

Spiders, anemones, vines, oh my!

I've got to time my movements carefully to avoid falling prey to any of these threats. Any of them individually is deadly; the combination is even worse. This place is terrible. I need to go this way though because I see a tower in the distance. That must be where the shield generator is.

I can only deal with one threat at a time...

I pick a pod from the trees [3] and carry it with me as I move around. Then the next time a worm appears, I "get" it to pull it off me and a huge pterosaur swoops down and captures it [4]. I move east and immediately shoot the spider when it appears, then shoot it again when it moves to attack. The spider tries to eat the gun, which discharges again and kills it from the inside [10]. Then I have to run away just so the vines don't kill me.

In retrieving the gun, my suit becomes covered in the spider's ichor, so I'm able to safely move past the anemones toward an alien swamp full of tentacles [5]. I've passed one danger just to find another. I think at this point I need to use the pterosaur, but the worm's too wiggly to hold onto after I pull it off my suit.

Epic battle!

The game's kind of a bit misleading here because if I just get the worm or throw it, it falls to the ground and the pterosaur gets it, even on the swamp screen. I have to specifically "throw worm into swamp" to get it within reach of the tentacled creature. That triggers an epic battle over the worm between a pterosaur and a huge octopus, which ends with the pterosaur killing the octopus [10]. Another danger is neutralized, and I can use the body of the octopus to traverse the swamp safely.

At least the rat is harmless? Maybe?

Arriving at the next screen [5], I find spikeball plants, which look just as dangerous as everything else on this crazy planet. I throw my pod at one of them. I miss, but a giant rat rushes out to eat the pod, like it does when I throw or drop the pod on other screens, except this time, it brushes one of the plants, which literally explodes, sending its spikes everywhere and killing the rat instantly [5]. I immediately take the rat [5], which prevents the spikeball plant from eating it. (Ew, a huge tongue emerges from the plant's stalk.) I also take a spike from the tree next to me [3].

The snake is even worse before it's full and content.

Having seen their power, I apparently pass through the spikeballs unharmed, quickly reaching the plaza of the tower, which is guarded by a huge snake. (Is anything not huge and dangerous on this planet? Argh.) Fortunately, I can just give the rat to the snake. It settles down to digest its meal and ignores me [10]. I open the door and go in.

There's the control panel! One more obstacle, a teeny little slug. No problem, right? I reach for the panel...uh oh! The slug suddenly becomes huge and completely blocks me from the panel. Well, the gun's clogged with ichor and won't fire, but I've got something else that's sharp. I poke the slug with the spike I picked up, and it explodes...all over the walls and me [10]. That's disgusting. I hate this planet.

Another creepy creature??

You have GOT to be kidding me.

After that, it's straightforward. I turn the power knob, pull the lever, and press the activation button, just like the other two planets, and the shield is activated [25]. I retrace my steps and return to Gateway, receiving the next $5 million bonus. The spacesuit is also cleaned, fortunately. It needed it after everything that got on it during that mission. Ick.

Bonus: Deaths #2-10

I did not find any way to die from the octopus, the pterodactyl, or the pufferslug, but literally everything else on that planet was deadly.

Death by giant spider. (#2)

Death by vines. (#3)

Death by worm. (#4)

Death by spikeball. (#5)

Death by snake. (#6)

If you shoot the snake with the gun. (#7)

Deaths mentioned by an "Anonymous" last time:

If you steal from the museum three times. (#8)

If you sleep in the beast's lair on Dorma 5. (#9)

If you visit random coordinates with the ship three times. (#10)

Score: 817 of 1600
Balance: $16,541,450
Status: Orion Program (green badge)
Missions: 10
Shield Generators: 3 of 4
Deaths: 10

Session Time: 1.5 hours
Total Time: 8 hours 0 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!

written by Aperama

I've probably spent more time ragging on France and its bizarre adventure game design choices than I'm probably allowed without becoming known as an enemy of the state. I mean, I live an awful distance from France anyhow, so I could probably continue with impunity, but that's not to say that I should continue to blithely fire away for no good reason. Eternam has provided some laughs. I can't deny it, there's been an occasional snort here and there. The game has so many flaws that they're just not worth the laughs, though. When I was (far too young to be playing) Leisure Suit Larry 3, I found the same issue that could easily have dogged my progress in this game. See, not only does this game have its bizarre first person map issues, but in the more traditional 'adventure game' pieces of the game, it's very easy to fail in finding exits from rooms.

On the main map, we're playing Space Invaders..

Where here, I have to ignore no less than three obvious exits which.. aren't

Again, there are some places within Middleville which are 'obvious' exits that are just there to tease, where there are some 'lips' to exits off screen that barely show the option to move through an area. I can live with 'this door is locked', but when the door is closed with a key hanging out of it and can't be opened.. this just feels somehow counter intuitive. Again, I don't need pure '1+1=2' logic, but I do need some degree of coherence in a game before I'm stuck clenching my teeth a touch. The good news is that I managed to get through the entirety of Dorsalis after much trial and error. Or rather, I hope that I don't need to head back to this island of literal thieves, murder and general ne'er-do-wells.

The Monty Python is strong with this one

So, the schtick of this island (as Ilmari mentioned in the comments of the previous post) is that it's 'French Revolution World'. There was a Baron who ruled over everyone quite happily, and then when he died his two sons took over leading to the mania which surrounds the island. Two Barons, zero cohesion. This is why they're so quick to kill you, apparently. As I was a bit lost at the end of my last post, I'd just finally found my way to Middleville again.. only to discover that on trying to buy my compass, I now had no GP to speak of. Turns out I was robbed whilst exploring (it actually ended up being the 'bookkeeper' who knocked off my not so-hard earned) so I made my way around the countryside in an attempt to find Middleville again. (It wasn't in the 'middle', just for the record.) After playing Space Invaders (no wait, Galaga as I'm able to move on four planes) for a bit, I ended up finding Marianne, the daughter of the lovely elderly woman in Cauda.

The use of the bonnet rouge is the main hint that we're in Revolution-world

Meanwhile, in another house, I'm finding it's done doggy style

Travelling further still, I end up at the house of what ended up being Charlotte. I didn't realise this at first. See, walking straight up leads to an instant death with 'Rex' from the castle in Cauda making an inordinately long run up to greet me. I worked out after a bit that this was because I was nearing the other dogs, not because I had actually made any missteps – it turns out that simply walking without nearing the dogs leads to Charlotte, a local who is spoken of by huge swathes of people within the rest of Middleville. I had figured at first that this 'Charlotte' would actually be not only within Middleville itself, but to have the 'c' and 'e' removed from her name. Instead, I found an abstract artist..

I am not kidding – the game literally zooms in on the.. lower left quadrant of the screen here

Turns out she's the easy way to get money in Dorsalis. Much like the Duke in Cauda, she'll continually give you money so that you're never left broke – she offers it so that you'll be able to spread her 'abstract art' to all of the nearby galleries. She doesn't even give away any of her art to show as a sample – she just hands over the GP and expects we'll be honest and caring. Sense? Who needs sense when you have Eternam? Given I already inspected the inn (with nothing much found within), there was only one building left outside of the main town. It never clearly explained who the lady was, but it was clear that she wasn't the friendliest..

Stepping on the lady's cat does not bode well

Speaking with this old bat, I'd have first insisted that her whole house was just an excuse to pad out the game's length – but this game hasn't truly had a great many red herrings to speak of as yet. Of course, what seems almost the mandatory 'stupid death' I've listed above – I didn't even realise I was walking into the cat when I was eviscerated for it, as I was just trying to walk around the house and find things to interact with. For all that the game uses the weird 'dotted line' to inform you of nearby items, it's still painfully short on actually giving these opportunities up, with the 'look', 'use' and 'take' functions going largely unused much of the time. This leads to the game being padded out instead by stupid 'walk on lawn' styled-deaths. After a rare opportunity of exhausting all of her dialogue choices, she seems to just be here to say that I can find a black market in Middleville by using the codeword 'strong' at the Middleville tavern. Not the best codeword in the world!

You say 'one GP', I say 'compass'

Not pictured here is Gonzo's boxers falling down. (Y'know, for the faint of heart.)

So, on finding this way of reliably finding ten GP and having exhausted most all other options (worth note is that another NPC out and about tells me that the password is 'argumentativeness', but I'm not sure at all what exactly this is the password for), I'm back to Middleville. I again buy a compass. I can afford it with the money given by Charlotte, but I had to show a little curiosity as to the fisherman at the entry to the town telling me I could get 1 GP (exactly what I'd need for a compass) were I just to fight Gonzo, the big Butterbean lookalike in the middle of the town. He has an iron strapped to one of his arms, so it's easy to tell he's out for a fair fight! The game gives about ten seconds for an inventory reaction before he splatters us into oblivion. I figured this an inventory puzzle, and as I'd just loaded up on crud in a screen nearby ('useless thermometer', 'rackets', 'canis crotus' and 'a key') I figured this'd be an easy fight. Turns out I just needed Ethelred's knife – Don throws it, it leaves him without his boxers and he falls to his ass, too embarrassed to continue. Easy 1GP! Guess this covers someone who didn't find Charlotte or the back way into the Duke's suites.

My escape from Dorsalis is near, even though I've not really done much here

But there again, I literally used this joke in an earlier post!

I'm not sure if the tavern is actually useful. It easily could be – I just don't know. The ferry gives my next destination rather clearly, saying I need 'two lots of authorisation' in order to head on. Mind, I still have no reason to head on at this point. I'm still searching the island for my initial impressions of what is going on. No mention of the boat or son of Ethelred from Cauda, just new craziness. I head into the inn (largely because I know I have my 'strong' codeword) but it really doesn't seem to do much. There's a black market guy who offers 'weapons' (which I am told I don't have the money for), whiskey and a few 'special items' which are either not in stock or not something he sells. I may need to get dialogue further on and come back here, I suppose. Again, I found myself lost here, so I decided to try getting sentenced to death again. Y'know, just for the laughs.

Cue 'the Great Escape' theme

Wait.. 'Stomaca'? Seriously?

Escaping my death sentence was not the arduous process I had feared it might be. Turns out, I just had to choose a different option in dialogue. The two outside the window just need to be sweet talked then bribed in order to make my way out. The fact that you're killed just for choosing the wrong dialogue option is freaking ridiculous, but anyhow. Turns out you can just pull the wall apart. The guy outside even reminds Don to replace the bricks so that other people can continue just walking out. Oh, this doesn't make Don a wanted man, mind. It just means that I can now walk on 'the grass' to enter one of the two Barons' mansions. I'm still a touch sore about this as I wasn't even walking on the grass – just adjusting my movement to walk through the door. I speak to this Baron, and he gives the authorisation with essentially no qualms apart from 'everywhere else is pretty nasty though!' I guess the 'puzzle' for this is not getting executed by randomly picking the correct dialogue option. And having 1GP. Hooray.

Polly's attempts to change the game from within fell upon deaf ears, apparently

Baron #2 is a little bit of a cinephile

Not that he mentions it as he tries to strongarm us into spying on his wife

All that remained within the Baron de BasseVille (the first of the two.. this is probably a joke somewhere I'm not getting outside of 'little Louis') was a parrot and a cook. The cook can be conned into giving me some parrot crackers. The parrot takes the crackers and gives me some more useless information (I need authorisation from Baron de HauteVille, the other Baron! What a surprise!) I then spent ten minutes trying to find the other Baron's manor. Turns out I have to go beneath the compass salesman. The bottom left side of the screen. Not the bottom side, which has two exits, but the bottom of the left. Larry 3 all over again, as I say. Long story short, after fluking this much, dealing with HauteVille's problems is easy. He believes his wife is cheating on him (but won't say so in as many words) and wants to have evidence of the man she's seeing. We have a 'medieval camera'. Seems pretty simple!

If any of you look at this screen and guess where to go, you're a better adventurer than I

The father-daughter duo here are largely unexplained – maybe later?

Oh, by the way, there's a subplot to this game that can barely keep its main story together

The effort of snooping on the Baroness is, as mentioned, not hard. I just need to approach the room from its left hand side door, where there's a permanent cabaret act between a piano playing father and his daughter, who is mentioned by many as being the 'most beautiful in the land'. No idea why this is going on with nobody watching, but.. it is. Snooping, it turns out that the Baroness is actually working for Nuke, the bad guy which is mentioned at this point only on the back of the box cover of the game. He's the bad guy that Don is out to stop. Or ends up deciding to on his holiday, maybe. Not really too clear, as literally all I know is from the box given the 'escapada manual' I went through earlier, and I'm not really too interested in reading that poorly written back story regardless. Anyhow, our illicit photography leads to authorisation from the second Baron to leave to Stomaca. It also leads to the piano player's daughter being kidnapped, and us having the camera spirited away. Turns out the Baron is more interested in it than the actual evidence of his wife's potential cheating. Oh, Eternam. You'll never learn. The ferry takes us away, leaving me with no impression that I've accomplished anything. This'll do me for now. I have walls to headbutt.

I'm frightened as to what 'bizarre' could mean, given how this game has been going..

MEET GEORGE JETSON!

Time played: 5 hours all up?
Mental age increase after playing: Napoleon Bonaparte, post-Waterloo

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. Tous saluent nos seigneurs français. Toute notre base sont appartiennent à eux. Nous sommes sur le chemin de la destruction. Ha ha ha.

Written by Reiko

Broadhead Journal #8:"Three down, one to go. How much worse could it get? This last one is habitable at least. And I’m not the first one to end up here, either, although from the look of his ship, the other guy might have met a messy end. I’d better keep my eyes open as I look for the shield generator."

Before I go to the last shield generator planet, I decide to follow up on the repairman's clue about someone doing something interesting at midnight on Level Babe. There's not much there, just an east-west corridor with blue Heechee metal at both ends. One end also has a large shipping crate that I can hide inside, so I hide and wait until the appropriate time.

A scientist named Gordon Perry appears and hits an artifact on the Heechee wall, making a pure tone. Sounds like another tuning fork! He puts the artifact into the blister and then does something I can't see from the crate that causes a portal in the wall to form. As he passes through, he conveniently drops a slip of paper. I run out and get it [5] and then hide again until he passes through again and disappears down the corridor. The paper contains a five-digit numerical code.

You can't tell in this picture that I'm hiding inside a crate.

Out of the crate and duplicating what Perry did.

Well, I've got my own tuning fork and now I've got Perry's code. Let's see if I can duplicate what he did and see what's back there! I get out of the crate and hit the fork on the wall. The blister appears [5], so I put the fork in [3], which causes a keypad to appear. I enter the code and the portal appears [10]. I enter the hidden room and find a large, bare room with nothing except a panel on the opposite wall [5].

The panel shows a mysterious diagram with three vertices illuminated and the last one dark. This seems to be displaying the progress of my work to activate the shield generators. I probably can't do anything else here until I activate the fourth one. The tuning fork does nothing at the other end of the corridor, either. I guess this is a dead end for now.

Anyone getting vertigo from this illustration?

The fourth shield generator control is on another terrestrial planet, this one more barren and mountainous. I land on a plateau. Nearby I find a ledge overlooking a deep chasm with a glint of something on the other side [5]. One path down from the plateau only leads to a pit containing a pickaxe and an odd little bush. I take the pickaxe [5] but don't find anything to do with the bush. The other path winds down toward the valley. At the halfway point, a cairn of rocks points southwest [1].

Rolf seems like a friendly guy.

Two of the other paths lead nowhere, but the last exit to the northwest leads to a trailhead, at which I find an old man who greets me cheerfully. It's Rolf Becker! Looks like I've managed to find him. I shake his hand politely [1]. He tells me a bit of his story and then invites me to his house. Before he disappears down the trail, I give him the magazine, which he eagerly takes, wanting news of home [1]. He's been stranded for decades, after all, and somehow managed to survive.

That's a lot of techno-babble, so I know some of it's going to be important.

I go back and follow the southeast path, which takes me to Rolf's crash site [3]. The Heechee ship is in pieces, almost entirely disassembled. The only useful part seems to be an actuator chassis with a panel attached by grommets, but I don't have a tool to remove the grommets. There's also a cactus with a whistle hanging from it and an empty nest. I take the whistle [7] and then continue exploring. West of the mountain trailhead is the river trailhead, where I find a wooden tiller, which I take [5]. The cairn here points southwest [1].

A garden in the desert...

Northwest of the mountain trailhead I find Rolf's garden, full of plants and tools. I take the shovel [5]. There's also a metal pail that's being used as a garden pot, but I empty it and add the pail to my collection of tools [5]. Rolf doesn't seem to mind. I also take some leaves from the "jubifruitus" plant [5]. I can eat them myself ("vanilla"!) but I'll need some for later.

Good thing I didn't touch the cactus near the wreck.

Up from there Rolf has built a tree house. I find an axe and a desk with a notebook on it. The notebook contains a number of detailed observations of various local flora and fauna, including all the creatures I've seen so far. The drawer in the desk holds actuator calipers and a discharger, which will probably be needed later, so I take them. I take the axe too, just in case, even though I don't get any points for any of those items.

North of the mountain trailhead is a bleak meadow with one elm tree that has a long limb overhanging the chasm. I can see the glint across the chasm again from here. I think I'll need a rope or something. I keep going north from the meadow and reach a cliff trailhead. The cairn here points northeast [1].

Looks like the pterodactyl is guarding the bridge.

I go that way and reach a rope bridge across the chasm, but it's guarded by a pterodactyl-like creature. There's also a coil of rope, which I take [6]. Convenient. Since I found the whistle in a place with another nest, I try blowing it. The pterodactyl immediately flies away to the nest in this location [1] and I can cross the bridge and enter Rolf's house [5].

We're going to see a lot of Rolf's house.

Rolf has made his house in the area right by the shield generator controls, but I think I'm going to have to actually repair the controls before I can activate the shield this time. I'm also going to have to deal with his pet. He's got a miniature dinosaur who lounges on the panel.

I can ask Rolf about a lot of interesting things. When I ask him about his pet, he tells me he feeds it the jubifruitus leaves sometimes as a treat. So I should be able to stuff the poor thing silly to get it out of the way later.

Rolf also has the lens cover for the shield controls, but he won't give it to me unless I find him some vermaculite, a purple mineral he mined from the mountains that makes his pots stronger. He also wants me to find his cane that he dropped in the chasm. He built a raft to travel down the river, but it doesn't float.

Jamming with Rolf and his bird.

I can also play drums with him [1] if I ask him about the music stand and say yes when he asks if I play and yes again if I want to play. If I play with him for several turns, a bird called a parroo flies in and sits on the stand and squawks along with the music. Pretty funny. I play long enough for Rolf to finish his song. He seems very pleased that I would play with him.

If you cut the tree down instead of using the rope, Rolf is upset.

I go back to the elm tree and tie the rope to the large limb [1]. It's not long enough to climb down, but it is long enough to swing across to the other side and grab the shiny thing, which turns out to be a Heechee focal lens [12]. That's one of the three items I'll need to fix the shield generator panel. I could use the axe to cut the tree down and make a bridge over the chasm instead, but that's not necessary and only upsets Rolf.

When I go back to Rolf and ask him about his wife Adriana, he admits he misses her, and asks if I'm wondering if he'll be coming back with me to Gateway. I say yes, and he says I greeted him properly, I didn't harm his pterodactyl, I got my lens without harming the tree, I let him read my magazine, and I jammed with him. He's keeping a close eye on what I'm doing, apparently.

So he's leaning toward coming back with me because I've been solving puzzles the non-violent way and being nice to him. It's possible to do things like shoot the pterodactyl instead of driving it away with the whistle, or cut the elm tree down instead of using the rope, which lowers his opinion of you.

It takes an awful lot for Rolf to hate you enough to want to stay instead of being rescued, if this isn't enough.

It's a nice change from the icky planet with all the dangerous creatures. This place has its dangers, too. For instance, it's not a good idea to sleep outside, because there are large carnivores around. And those crazy cacti aren't much better than the spikeball plants. But it's not like something's actively trying to kill you every step of the way.

Rolf is strangely oblivious to the second mendobrillium bush right in front of him...

I spent a lot of time trying to dig in various places with the shovel and pickaxe before discovering that I should use the pickaxe at the river overlook, the only other place with an odd little bush like the one in the mine near the landing site. Seems obvious once I figure that out. I guess the bush likes the kind of rock that holds vermaculite. Anyway, I dig once [12] but the pit isn't deep enough yet. I dig twice more before I find some vermaculite ore, which I take, of course [12].

When I give the ore to Rolf, he tells me to meet me in the garden so he can verify it. I can take this opportunity to read his journal, just in case there's something useful there. He wouldn't like it, and in fact if you try to touch it when he’s there, he’ll ask you very seriously not to read it. But the fate of humanity may be at stake!

Probably this incident is most of why he didn't want me to read the journal. Or maybe it was the poetry.

Most of the personal stuff is just bad poetry. There's more background on how he survived than in his scientific journal, which is pretty interesting. He also mentions how he killed a large creature using a Heechee actuator core, but he was appalled at the result and buried the core with the animal. That could be useful if I can't find a way to get the actuator core out of the ruins of his ship. Apparently that's a rather delicate operation.

Rolf's got standards.

I put the log back and follow him to the garden. By the time I get there (he's one spry old man), he's already made some new pots. He gives me the lens cover [12] and wanders back home after warning me to leave the pottery alone.

He's a pretty handy guy if he made his own raft. Even if it leaks.

I follow him back and talk to him some more. I say yes when he asks if I'm willing to help him find his cane, and yes again when he asks if I'm really going to help. He has a plan involving a raft, but he can't do it by himself. We just need to find the raft, since I already found the tiller. Fortunately, that isn't too hard. I go back to the cliff trailhead, with Rolf following. West of there I find the river shore, and there's the raft. I try launching it by myself, but it doesn't float, like he said. Let's see if we can do it together.

Bailing for dear life!

I give Rolf the tiller, step onto the raft again, and ask Rolf to do the same. Then I launch the raft. This time we proceed down the river [7]. I start bailing like crazy (every turn) with the metal pail to keep the raft afloat while we make progress. After several minutes of this, we pass the place where Rolf had dropped his cane, and he scoops it up [1]. Soon after, while I keep bailing, we approach a waterfall. We dive off the raft toward land just in time, before the raft and tiller are swept over the waterfall and destroyed.

This place is only accessible by taking the raft trip.

Rolf happily thanks me for my help, saying, "I'll make me another raft in no time. Then we'll do it again." Then he disappears, while I'm left admiring the waterfall [7]. The only exit is a steep climb that takes me back to the crash site. I noticed later that there's another raft at the river shore immediately, although when he would have had time to build it that quickly is anyone's guess, given that the first one took months. (Probably the programmers just forgot to remove it from the graphic.)

So now I've got the lens and the lens cover, I've helped Rolf with getting his cane back, and I have leads on two actuator cores, which means one is an alternate solution. I suspect I know which one is better. Let's see what happens if I go dig up that actuator core he buried. The journal said it was west of the trailhead leading to the crash site, which turns out to mean the river trailhead, which is west of the mountain trailhead.

Digging, again.

When I get there, I immediately identify the location, so then I can dig with the shovel to uncover the animal's grave and retrieve the cell [12]. But then if I go ask Rolf how I'm doing, I realize that digging up the grave is not only a negative in itself, but also reveals that I read the journal.

So that's not so good. It's better to get the cell from the crash site. Because I haven't done anything else he doesn't like, he still calls me friend and would go back to Gateway with me, but it isn't ideal.

So next time we'll get the final shield generator activated.

Deaths:
I was unable to cause a death from the killer cactus, unfortunately.

If you kill Rolf but not the pterodactyl, it kills you. [#11]

If you sleep outside, a carnivore attacks. [#12]

If you fail to bail while on the raft trip, you and Rolf both drown. [#13]

If you are deliberately stupid, you can “jump to gruesome death.” [#14]

Score: 967 of 1600
Balance: $16,541,450
Status: Orion Program (green badge)
Missions: 11
Shield Generators: 3 of 4
Deaths: 14

Session Time: 2.5 hours
Total Time: 10 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 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 Joe Pranevich

Hello, sailor! Last week, I started into Zork III, the final chapter of the original Zork trilogy, and explored much of this new region in the Great Underground Empire. I discovered an ancient aqueduct on an icy lake, a “scenic vista” that could teleport me into previous (and future!) Zork games, and battled a mysterious man in a land of shadow. The game has been fun so far, but more melancholy than previous outings. There are no inept wizards or sneaky thieves here, only monuments to a dead civilization. I have a bunch of puzzles to solve on my way to the Dungeon Master and I need to get cracking.

But where should I start? I don’t feel like I’ve made it through any part of this game completely and the structure makes telling a cohesive narrative of play challenging. Just like I did way back on Dungeon, I find myself bobbing and weaving back and forth between puzzles to discover which one I can crack first. Adding to the difficulty, the score in this game is worthless. There are only seven points in this game. Seven! Worse, these points seem to be awarded based on puzzles found rather than ones solved; I spent a chunk of today’s post with a full load of points but nowhere near victory. Let’s play!

If I never loved, I never would have cried.

The Lake & Scenic Vista

If I wrote out all of the random running around and experimentation that this game required, you might think I had some sort of mental problem that required prompt attention. Instead, I will do my best to organize my thoughts and present the puzzles solved one area at a time. This may make me appear smarter than I am, but just imagine me wearing a dunce cap while you are reading and it will just about even out.

The first area to explore further is the lake and “scenic vista”. I spend a lot of time traveling to Zork IV, trying to find a way to survive or avoid being sacrificed. From last post, you might remember that every time we dive into the river, the cold causes us to drop anything we are carrying. Usually, I would leave my stuff on the beach but eventually I forgot and wham, everything was on the bottom of the lake. Rather than just restore, I tried to dive down and found that I could pick back up the stuff I dropped! The lantern and torch are destroyed by going under water, but other objects made it through okay. While submerged, I catch a glimpse of something shiny in the silt at the bottom. We have to dig more than once, but before too long we retrieve a golden amulet! We can’t stay long in the water because there are deadly fish that will eat you from below and a roc that will kill you from above. I do not think there is a way to defeat either of those, but I will keep my eyes open.

As for Zork IV, none of my trials had a positive result. I try wearing the amulet, drinking the vial, carrying the sword, and a dozen other things but none of them allow me to survive the instant death on the other side. I’ll just have to let that wait for a while.

Mind what you have learned. Save you it can.

Land of the Dead

The next area that I spent some time working out was the Land of the Dead. Last time, I unsuccessfully faced off against what seemed to be a hooded version of myself. He followed me around the maze-like environment, ominously preceded by the sounds of his footsteps. It was eerie and he cut me down when I faced him. Violence is probably not the answer, but he won’t accept anything I have to offer. I eventually get impatient and try to kill him… and that works! Last time the combat was more difficult, but perhaps exploring more of the environment makes it easier? Zork I and Dungeon had a similar mechanic for combat. Maybe I just got lucky? Once the figure becomes staggered, the rest of the fight is easy.

Before striking the killing blow, I take the hint from earlier and remove his hood. (When he kills you, the last thing you see just as you are about to die is him removing his hood, but you are dead before you can see underneath.) It’s the Empire Strikes Back homage I expected: it’s me! Or rather, it’s a version of me and also someone else. My adversary disappears, leaving me with his cloak and hood. I automatically put them on when I pick them up so now I’ll be exploring in style.

What happens to us in the future? Do we become a failed business software company or something?

The Royal Museum

My next discovery came by accident: after the earthquake, there is a crack next to the door in Dimwit Flathead’s royal hall. I wouldn’t have checked those rooms again except that I was running out of things to do. Through the hole, I discover a royal museum in three sections: a technology area to the north, the Flathead crown jewels to the east, and the royal puzzle to the south.

I check out the puzzle first and find that it’s pretty much identical to its counterpart in Dungeon. There’s a hole with a note warning you not to go down, except this time it’s written by the museum management rather than our friend the Thief. One room over, there’s a locked door that I assume is the secondary exit. Inside the puzzle itself is a maze of sliding walls and ladders which you have to rearrange to find a treasure (now a book instead of a gold card) and then rearrange again to get a ladder to the exit. It was a great puzzle the first time around, but they made no changes to this version. In fact, I solved it completely using my Dungeon notes. The prize is an ancient book with color-changing text. Is it a treasure like the cloak and amulet that I just need to have? Or does it solve some other puzzle? I’m not sure yet.

The room with the crown jewels represents a harder problem. The “jewels” consist of three items, all hidden away in a protective cage: a scepter, a ring, and a crown. Even though the Empire has been dead for more than a hundred years, the locks are firm and I suspect I’ll have to find a key someplace.

The technology room is more promising but it also contains three objects: a gold machine with a seat and a dial, a gray machine, and a black one that resembles a clothes dryer. The gold one immediately draws our attention because it looks brand new even though it’s been sitting there a very long time-- long enough that even the description plaques have faded away! The dial on the machine is set to 948. Is it a time machine? We don’t know the current year, but that seems about right. The later manuals did tell you the current year which is why I’m vaguely aware it’s the tenth century GUE. The first two Zork games and Dungeon only hinted at the current date as being some time after the dates on the bank, the dam, and similar locations.

There is a dedication plaque in the next room so I take that as my starting point: I set the dial to 777, sit down, and press the button. The machine shimmers away and I find myself in a room with some very unhappy guards that kill me. They are all carrying “waffle” guns and I have no idea who those are, but they must not be very nice. I try 778 and die again but going to 947 (just a year ago) works fine and I can explore an empty museum. I try 776 next as the year the museum was under construction and that time I’m able to land in an empty room. There are guards outside (and occasionally Dimwit Flathead himself!) and they gossip about low pay, torture, or the building of the dam and the volcano from previous games. While I’m stuck, I also find that the plaque in the past is still legible and the other two machines are a pressurizer (fromZork I’s coal mine) and a room spinner (from Zork II’s carousel room). Neither seem useful immediately and even in the past they are not operable. Once the guards leave, I can emerge and explore the rest of the museum, but I do not get far: the door to the crown jewels is locked and I don’t have a key.

Is the issue that I am going to the wrong year? I make an effort to try a whole bunch of alternatives. 775 kills me by materializing in rock. Any future date seems identical to the current time except someone fixed the crack. I try dozens of dates to narrow it down, but I eventually determine that 883 is the first year where there are no guards that kill me on arrival. Is that the year that the Empire fell? I explore that time for a key or anything else different, but come up short. I think I’m going to have to punt on this for now.

The Aqueduct & the Key

What haven’t I completed yet? I examine my map to realize that the southern shore of the lake is unexplored. I marked it off to come back to once I found a light source for the other side, but now I have the next best thing: grue repellent. I swim to the other side and put that on before stepping into the darkness. Room after room, I hear the sound of grues slathering their fangs. I think I even walked by a grue convention! But the repellent works and I emerge into a room with a key in a beam of light. I take it and follow the passage out through the aqueduct and end up at a dead end. Was this one of the things affected by the earthquake? I might have just thrown my pen across the room. I restart the game from scratch and re-do the bits that I need to do to get back to the key room before the earthquake and I find the hallway is passable. That’s good! But it also means I have to backtrack and re-do a few puzzles. Just beyond that point is the anticipated long slide into the Damp Room and I hit one more snag in that I need to make sure there’s a light source ready when I get there. I restart again and put the torch in there first and now I’m through. Unfortunately, the key doesn’t work anywhere that I can find: not the crown jewels or the chest on the cliff (more on that in a second). It looks like it should work each time, but it never does. Is there a trick I am missing?

Before I leave this section, I am still concerned about the slide puzzle. As a reminder, the slide puzzle was one of the harder puzzles in the 600+ point versions of mainframe Zork. You had to take a timber from the coal mine, tie the rope to it, and then drop it on top of the long shaft into the cellar. You could then climb down the rope to find a hidden secret room on the slide that you otherwise just whooshed past. That puzzle was not kept when they created Zork I even though most of the ingredients were there; I assume it was too difficult for the beginning game. Thus far in this game, we have all of those elements present-- they even gave us access to the very same timber from the Zork I coal mine! Unfortunately, the rope is stuck and I cannot find any way to get it off the tree. My guess is that it was planned to be included here but excised for some reason, perhaps because it’s just too obscure even for this “expert” game. Perhaps it will come back in some form later, but I’m not holding my breath.

A chest on a ledge

While I failed to open the chest with the key, an event triggered that did not happen last time: a man popped up on the cliff above and asked me to tie the chest to the end of the rope. I’m suspicious, but I let the scene play out as he hauls up the chest and then tells me to wait. Just when I’m about to stop waiting and come back up the long way, he pops up again and tosses me down a rope. I climb up to find that he’s already sifting through “his” treasure on the ground. He hands me a staff, but he’s clearly getting the better part of the haul. I think I’m supposed to be tempted into killing or stealing, but I just let the scene play out and he eventually leaves me with just the staff and the empty treasure chest. Puzzle solved or puzzle missed? I’m not sure. I hope that I ran the situation the right way.

The Guardians of Zork

Since the key wasn’t the panacea that I hoped for, I run around and catch up on everything else that I did in my playthrough so that I am back to where I was before. The next lead that bears fruit turns out to be the book that I discovered in the sliding puzzle. The text seems to change color when you read it so I took it to rooms with similar lighting such as the crystals near Dimwit’s hall, tried to dunk it in the lake, tried to burn it, etc. We can’t leave any stone unturned in these games!

When I took the book to the engravings room, the only room that had similar unreadable text, I triggered another new sequence: I find an old man sleeping. The same old man that filched my treasure? I’m not sure. I try to wake him up and hand him the book, but he’s not interested in it. It only takes a moment of trial and error before I discover that it is the bread (that I filched from the top of the cliff) that he wants. He eats it and leaves but not before showing me a secret entrance to another part of the maze. Was the book really useful to trigger this event? I have no idea. I’m not sure what is triggering any of these new “old man” events but I’m happy that something is happening!

The puzzle beyond the secret door is very familiar to players of Dungeon and I covered it in my final post on that game. This is the “long hallway” puzzle, otherwise known as the Guardians of Zork. I’m in what appears to be a short hall with a mirror on one end but the mirror is actually the side of a strange type of train. If we get inside (by dropping the sword to block a beam of light then pushing a button), we can turn it and start it down the track. Along the way are statues, the Guardians of Zork, that will smash your train car to bits if it wobbles too much. The solution in this game is identical to the previous version except that rotations now appear to happen in 90 degree increments instead of 45. With that tiny adjustment, I am able to ride the train all the way to the exit. The Dungeon Master greets me at a nondescript door and tells me that I’m not ready yet. He gives me a magic incantation to get back (“Frotz Ozmoo”) and sends me on my way. I try again with all of my special clothes and amulet but that isn’t enough either. I’ll have to come back once I solve the rest of the puzzles.

The second-coolest time machine on TV today.

Back to the Time Machine

At this point, the only puzzles that I am sure that I have left are the Sacrificial Altar from Zork IV and the time machine, and I’m not positive the former is more than an easter egg for a non-existent game. With nothing but time and patience, I work out some more rules of the time machine. Normally, any item in my inventory is lost when I travel into the past, but if I put something on the seat next to me it will come too. With that, I can carry back the magic key, but even that doesn’t open the doors in the past. I try taking back other things like the book and the clothes, but none of them seem to affect the game in any way. It’s clear we’re supposed to use this trick somehow… but I do not see how. The strangest item is the torch: you can travel back in time with it this way, but picking it up results in the guards coming in immediately and killing you. I guess the light source was too obvious, even through a door? Exploring further, I also realize that you can also hide objects under the seat but almost nothing I have fits in there. Is that a trick to be able to take back more than one item?

The next revelation took hours to figure out, but I’ll spare you the time: you can push the time machine out of the room! Taking it to the puzzle room fails because it gets damaged on the stairs, but I can move it to either the hall or the room with the jewels. Once you move the machine, some of the rules seem to change: when you travel back in time, it disappears immediately and sometimes permanently. If we wait in the past too long, we are eventually still sucked forward in time, but it’s different from using the machine where it’s been parked for centuries. By pushing the machine into the jewel room and traveling back to before the museum opened, I am able to arrive at an inconceivable time when the jewels were in place but before the security system was added. I suppose there are guards outside, but it hardly makes sense to me. Even once I have the jewels-- the crown, the scepter, and the ring--, I can find no way to bring them back with me. The time machine no longer allows me to move them back to the future like that. My theory is that this is actually very well-thought out and that there is a difference between moving the machine back and forth along its own timeline versus moving the machine physically and landing in the past when the machine was elsewhere, but this is not explained in the game at all.

I can work out a way to steal only one of the three treasures: if you hide the ring under the time machine’s seat, it remains undisturbed and unnoticed by the guards. We can then pick it up there when we are sucked into the present. Is there a way to get the other two items? I can’t find any places to hide them so I am going to guess not.

The road to hell has a dial with eight settings.

The Final Puzzle

Taking just the ring, I return to the Dungeon Master’s door and am relieved that he lets me in without asking any trivia questions. This takes us to one final puzzle, a repeat from the Dungeon end-game which I covered before. I won’t go over it all in detail again, but we have a segment with a parapet overlooking fire, a prison cell, and a Dungeon Master that will do things that we ask him to do. We had to realize that changing the dial on the parapet (and pushing a button) would cause the prison cell to change. We can discover that cell number four has a second door out, but the door is closed and locked this time around. We then had to work out that we had to wait in the cell and ask the Dungeon Master to push the buttons for us, sending the cell back to the fiery prison that it came from. Once we are there, the second door (now only door) can be opened to arrive at the Treasury and the end of the game.

This played out exactly as it did in Dungeon except that this final door was locked. We had to use the magic key (finally) to open it and claim our reward. I feel bad for anyone making it this far without picking it up! We are congratulated on our victory and become the new Dungeon Master. The end!

Were they really planning Zork IV? There’s no “To Be Continued” here...

Time played: 4 hr 05 min
Total time: 6 hr 15 min
Total Marathon Time: 56 hr 25 min (not counting Deadline)

Final Rating
We’re finally at the end of the beginning! I had a ton of fun playing this game and it felt like a much better-integrated experience than the mess that was Zork II. But without a pre-made Dungeon to fall back on, will this be the high-water mark for the series?

Puzzles and Solvability - Despite being based on the final unadapted bits of Dungeon, this feels like a fresher game with new puzzles that are well integrated into the environments. The frigid lake, the walk through the dark, and the scenic vista are fantastic examples of puzzles that do not feel forced into the environment like so many of their predecessors. The time machine puzzle was frustrating and more difficult than it needed to be, but there are some really good ideas here. My score: 6.

Interface and Inventory - The Infocom parser is still best of breed and I found fewer issues than I did playing Zork II. There were a few cases where I couldn’t quite get across what I wanted to do, but not too many. My score: 5.

Story and Setting - I know many fans love this game for the story, but in truth there really isn’t too much. We know that the Dungeon Master is testing and waiting for us from the very first screen and the little vignettes with the old man in different guises was nice, but this still isn’t Shakespeare. The setting is the most well-done of the various games, giving the Great Underground Empire a sad gravitas that it was missing in previous outings. My score: 4.

Sound and Graphics - Other than the tiniest hint of ASCII art inside the sliding puzzle, there’s still neither sound nor graphics here. My score: 0.

Environment and Atmosphere - This game is evocative, spooky and dark, a somber view of the same setting that we have spent so many hours exploring before. There are some moments of levity here and there, but this is a game that builds and manages an excellent consistent tone. The look at the crumbling aqueduct still sits with me. As I played, I kept thinking about Percy Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias. Many of you may be familiar with its ending lines: “I am the great Ozymandias, look upon me ye mighty and despair.” The statue of Ozymandias had crumbled; his empire was a desert. So too is the fate of the Great Underground Empire. When a game makes you think about poetry, you know it is doing something right. My score: 6.

Dialog and Acting - As stated above, this game features great and expressive prose but only a handful of interesting characters. This final path is much lonelier than the previous games. My score: 4.

We can tally all that up in the usual way: (6+5+4+0+6+4)/.6 = 42! This game topped Dungeon as the highest-rated game so far in our marathon and quite nearly made it up into Deadline territory. How will its sequels fare?

With a guess of 39 points, Griffin is the closest to guessing the score! There were not many guesses for this game, but the average was 38. I suspect most of you thought it would do about as well as the previous games but it really had a narrative and quality leap. CAPs will be awarded with the next main-line game to complete.

With thirteen posts (and more than fifty-six play hours) to cover four games, I am finally done with Dungeon and its derivatives! This first Zork series is a gaming classic and I am so glad that I was able to play it through with all of you. We still have tremendously far to go in our marathon and the explosion of the Zork brand into books is still a few years away. Our next stop on this tour will be our first side-trip: Zork III’s fraternal twin, Starcross. Since I started this project, I have also stumbled on several references that suggest that Lurking Horror (another Dave Lebling game) is also unofficially a Zork title. Has anyone played that game enough to be able to confirm or deny this? Should I add it as a side-trip in my increasingly long marathon?

written by Aperama

Eternam is getting to the point where I repeatedly ask myself a simple question: 'why?' The problem is the direction of this query. At first, it was 'why would the developer do this'. This is actually a fairly common question as I look into games, particularly with a critical eye turned towards things given the relative age of the games we're playing here. Using the 'latest technology' at the time is often the explanation for a relative drop in quality (e.g. the FMV revolution to truly kick in some time soon on this blog). I'm past asking that question, as the answer to that is simply not one I have the capability to understand. I don't operate on that 'either crazy or genius' level and likely never will. The question I'm now asking is 'why am I even playing this?' Even with the impetus to complete the game for the blog, I'm struggling heavily with that question. The other bad games I've played here have at least had the saving grace of being short – this feels like it's gone on forever already! There are things that make you appreciate other, finer things. One might read Hamlet and find that they're encouraged to watch it as a live play, making their appreciation for the artistry of the performers that greater. Eternam on the other hand makes me long to read Twilight for its incredibly deep and emotionally strong female protagonist.

It is, after all, a game that has us watched by our robotic overlords

I could be again a little unfair here. I stuck out the entirety of 'Stomaca' purely because I didn't want to leave on a Request for Assistance post. This game might just not be the sort of game you can play for very long without feeling sick to the pit of your stomach (a). Anyway. Game. I start off by being escorted into the University (of what, I hear you ask? No idea.) It's essentially a town controlled by robots, or at least run by them. It's never made particularly clear as to who is a robot and who isn't. The game even calls itself a Westworld-like 'fantasy theme park' with robots, but the game never really goes into it deep enough for me to worry or care. Entering the University means being taken through an IQ test. Amongst them are questions along the lines of 'in question 5, which option was the one you chose?', 'at the end of the intersection, do you turn right, stop or turn around?' and my personal favourite, 'how do you think you did on this quiz?' If you get under a certain number, you get sent back to Dorsalis. Some of the questions are actually helped by ingame knowledge (the name of the first island, the name of the Duke's son for instance) – some just require you have information at hand (when was Halley's Comet first discovered).

I accidentally said that Marie Curie theorised the photon
as opposed to Einstein, so probably deserved this

I would rather have an alternate path through the game involving
making the robots explode a la Space Quest 3's Arnie-bot, though

After a touch of Googling over the less obvious questions (I couldn't say which planet has Titan or Triton as a moon without looking it up as the only ones I'm certain of are Phobos and Deimos thanks to Doom), the game spirits us into what I'm going to call a “car thing”. I just don't know what better to call it, and the game again never references it at another point. It takes us down the 'roads' that litter Stomaca. I'd quite have liked to use them once more to skip all of the random Space Invaders play, as the critters in Stomaca took me from 99 health to 38 in what felt like a couple of seconds as I left my computer unattended for a moment. The 'car thing' takes us to the Future City, which is a huge bunch of sci fi parodies and an elevator.

I think those plants are actually from Dragon Ball Z, aren't they?

To fully display its disdain for us, the game gives us a 'nostril eye view' of Don Jonz

The entryway involves a whole bunch of things you can't interact with. I feel I struggle to explain how annoying this actually is. To be precise, the whole city is littered with robots who walk by and in spite of looking similar to the ones which let us into the University are universally non interactive. It's just another annoying design choice to adjoin to the fifteen thousand little niggling issues of Eternam, though. Essentially, the whole city is a dialogue puzzle. Well, I call it a 'puzzle'– really, it's the equivalent of what I'd call pixel hunting in most other games. We have a keycard given to us for passing the quiz in the University, which lets us into one floor. This floor leads to another with another card and so on. The first floor (-1. Not 'basement', 'b1', 'lg' or any such seemingly logical term) has one interactive person who gives us a card to the 'hotel' floor because the 'heating is broken down and we can go get ourselves a cold drink'.

Can I just stay and talk? I'm half naked here after all

These drawers don't open until you walk right up to them,
then press the 'up' key.. unlike much anything else in the game

I'll fall slightly out of the chronological order I took through here because as per usual, Eternam managed to hide something in plain sight. See, after going through floor -1, there's new access to floor (+1? I'm not sure how the math works here). It gives a little bit of information, like 'the Commander is on floor 2', and a 'hotel room' which resembles a set of bunk beds. It also has a set of drawers which allow us to get to floor 3 – but as per usual, a lack of communication as to the control scheme means that unless you know you have to physically walk 'into' the drawers, there's no way of knowing they open. I only encountered it by fluke after traversing the entire island. Regardless, two leads to four if you're clairvoyant, made the game, looked at a walkthrough or had a minor psychotic break which involved trying to get Don to walk into walls to see if his life meter fell down.

This game isn't dated, at all

Ditto with the 'Twilight Zone' references

There's actually a bit going on in the 'Computer Center' on floor 3. Again, there's a lack of interactivity throughout, which makes things pretty painful to get through. There's a receptionist on each floor. If there's some purpose behind them I don't get it. They do at least say which floor we're going towards et al, which is only helpful in that they could have just used signs and been just as effective. There's a room adjoining the receptionist with no obvious purpose other than to date the game (people talking about the huge 'megabytes' they're dealing with) and another which holds a pair of time-shifted computer programmers. They're working on a video game called Eternam, and they're looking for a way out so they can finish their game.

If I don't save them, does the game implode?

This is what a burning pump station looks like

Kirk and Spock are at least good to tell us the distance to the end of the world

After speaking with them, I started wandering around further and found another card. Great, I figured – just keep climbing. This lead me to level 4. Level 4 is the 'Command Center'. It's something closer to the bridge of the Starship Enterprise than anything else. It leads to a huge 'viewscreen'. I almost got trapped in this, again. It's the first person mode, only without an obvious way to escape. You can't move back or forwards, it's just like a stationary pair of binoculars. Swinging around in the 180 degrees of vision offered, there are a couple of obvious landmarks to take note of that only pop up as is when you view them through it. The 'pumping station' is on fire / billowing out smoke, and there's another gash in the landscape which doesn't appear when you walk where it would logically be. The way to escape the viewscreen is to hold the 'down' arrow (not hit it – hold it down). Why? Because it is. I worked this out after about five minutes of trying random key commands. This game really needed mouse controls! Moving back, 'the captain' and 'Mr. Spot' come out and tell us that the pumping station being on fire is bad. Go figure – it's going to blow up the entire island. We need to go fix it.

Another show of 'the joke wasn't funny to start with' here

Note the timer – this was about two minutes or so real time, I believe

Given I've referenced that I fell slightly out of chronological sync here, even if there was supposed to be some difficulty found in the timeframe given.. I had none. Saying I'd followed the path as it was clearly designed, the problem is again that the game virtually doesn't even have puzzles. It just has slightly strange interactions that fall together by walking into a room for the most part. Knowing where the pumping station (which could be a way off of the island but doesn't end up being) is, I ran straight there. Don walks up to it, says 'nothing I like better than watching a specialist at work...', punches the controls and then the timer and fire stops. A robot who was sitting behind the fire pops out and tells us we're tourists, and explains that there is no longer any transportation to Paw, the next island. He says we need a boat. We do not need a boat, for the record.

Can't caption. My brain is wrapping itself in a ball and choking itself

The path to the next island (again, we've literally solved nothing and have had no leads to what we're actually doing aside from a couple of mentions of Mikhal Nuke) is.. okay. Let's just take a break. I'd like anyone reading this to say that the solution clearly involves the following:

go back in time
find Neil Armstrong as he lands on the moon
get him to take two computer programmers from twenty years in his future back to Earth in his space shuttle
unlock a toilet teleporter
find a 'starmap' so he'll do it, because apparently he can't find the planet he is literally circling

This is literally the solution, just for your collective information. There's a weird pool thing. I figured it was the 'teleporter' the game mentions elsewhere both in Dorsalis at the black market and via not-Spock – it isn't. Instead, after saving the pumping station, not-Kirk and not-Spock are willing to chat with us. One gives a keycard that will let us talk with the Commander on level 2 (which gave me literal no information) and the other tells us that the transporter which is supposed to be on level 5 was relocated due to 'necessary architectural modifications'.

The Commander lives in a palace.. by 1980s standards

This is Eternam's idea of a 'clue'

So, having learned that what is on Level 5 is not a teleporter, I decide to walk into it anyway – after all, why not. Instead, it turns out to be.. a toilet. I think the logical jump here is supposed to be that as such, the toilets are teleporters. Make sense to any of you? Congratulations, you're probably French. This was again not something that I discovered because I thought of this either clever and funny or psychotic solution, but rather because I was stubbornly trying still to avoid a Request for Assistance from the two of you who are still morbidly curious enough to look in on the play of this game. Walking into the hotel toilets back on level 1 leads to the huge black monoliths I found back on the previous two islands which I was busily rebounding off of. This gave me the idea of trying out the black market back on Dorsalis in an effort to actually make some use of it – turns out, he has a star map which Mr. Armstrong (never named but implied) is after.

I'm crying here

Through this completely inane and largely unrelated series of tasks, the programmers back in the Computer Center are transported back to their original timeframe (or possibly have to wait twenty years between 1969 and the game's development, leading to both of them likely warping time). They give a rather brief 'see you then', which lead me to try with not-Kirk again – he lets us know Don can go to the next island through the teleporters. Toilets. Toil-a-porter? If I set fire to my computer hard drive will it burn the game from my brain? Only one way to find out the answer to both questions!

Well, it's definitely no Tardis, hey Hugo?

Time played: I'm nearing the 8 hour mark.
Mental age increase after playing: I'm fairly sure my brainwaves now resemble that of a coma patient

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. I can't be spoiled anyway. I have altered time itself. I have conquered the moon. Maybe just post a whole walkthrough in the comments section? Just for science and all.

Written by Reiko

Broadhead Journal #9:"Seriously, we’re not done yet? Now I’ve got to go activate the whole shield system because there’s a control center at the Vertex in the same star system as the Assassin’s watchtower. If the Heechee had just activated the thing in the first place, this wouldn’t have been necessary."

I'm almost ready to trigger the fourth shield generator, but I still need an actuator cell to fix the controls if I don't want to dig up the one buried by the trailhead.

Getting the actuator cell out of the wreckage is a rather delicate operation, involving multiple tools and quite a lot of technobabble. I'd poked around earlier and saw that the actuator panel looked relatively intact, but was secured with grommets that I couldn't remove. I examined everything again and this time saw that the maintenance crib could be opened, so I did that and found a flange defuser and a grommet wrench. Now I should be able to do this.

Technobabble for Heechee technology.

I remove the grommets with the grommet wrench. Even this step involves some fiddling, as I can't "open" the grommets, or "turn" them, or anything except "remove" them. That reveals the actuator cylinder. I have to open it with "unscrew cap". Inside the cylinder is the actuator canister, which is secured with a flange connector. So I use the flange defuser on the flange connector, which allows me to access the core.

The next step is the trickiest. I don't know if there's a hint somewhere in the game about which way is correct, but I have to use the clips from the actuator discharger on the actuator plug to defuse the core before I pick it up. There are two clips, gray and blue, and two anodes on the plug, "pyramid" and "tetrahedron". Connecting the gray clip to the pyramid anode or the blue clip to the tetrahedron anode sets off the core like a bomb. There's no way to get out of range fast enough. Oops.

So the right way is to connect the blue clip to the pyramid anode and the gray clip to the tetrahedron anode. I'm guessing it's like a strong capacitor. Anyway, with the core discharged, I can pull it out of the cylinder with the calipers and take the cell out [12].

Successfully moving the pet out of the way.

I head back to Rolf's house with all three parts for the shield generator panel. I give the jubifruitus leaves to his pet [1] to get it out of the way, according to plan. Then I move the little creature's mattress to the floor [10] so it doesn't just go right back to where it was and be in my way again.

After that, it's straightforward to put the pieces in place and activate the shield. Points for the individual actions: inserting the lens [20], inserting the lens cover [20], replacing the actuator cell [20], pressing the activation button [25]. The activation itself is exactly the same as the other three.

Rolf's final summary of my actions.

Rolf doesn't say anything when I finish, but as I work my way back toward the ship, he appears again at the mountain trailhead and tells me again his summary of how I did. I tried hard to do everything correctly and avoid harming anything, so he is happy to come with me, if I want to take him. He even says I'm a "good man." Given the choice, of course I'm happy to bring him with me. There's a $1 million reward from his wife for knowledge of him or his safe return, after all.

Rolf follows me back to the ship, and when I return to the station, as expected, I get the $5 million bonus for the shield activation, plus the $1 million bonus for returning him [20]. Now we start Part 3: Endgame. You didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you? There's one more slot for a location code in the ship's display, after all...

Worden's clue about the next step.

When I return from the fourth shield generator planet, I'm immediately taken to an urgent meeting with Leonard Worden, in which he informs me that there's a fifth component to the shield system in a place called the Vertex, a satellite around the same star as the Assassin's Watchtower. It controls and coordinates the four main shield pieces.

He doesn't know the code or the location of that component, but he thinks it's on Gateway somewhere. All he knows is that the Savant, the Heechee computer that gave the original warning about the Assassins, showed him a diagram with four circles arranged around a rectangle that disappears to reveal a silver sphere. Where have we seen a diagram like that before?

The silver sphere, right where it's supposed to be.

I go back up to Level Babe with the secret Heechee door and do the technomagic with the tuning fork again. This time all four circles on the diagram are lit, and the central panel is open. Inside is...a silver sphere [50]. I examine it and find a little gold button. When I press it, the sphere displays a labeled holographic star map. I'm sure the scientists that studied the Savant will be able to decipher the location with this.

I take the sphere back to Worden in the meeting room. Of course it's the right thing. They take it and shortly return with the course code and add it to my badge [10]. Since I did all the other pieces, they want me to do the final mission as well, but before I go, they require me to complete a psych evaluation in the VR lab.

Ever had a psychologist ask you to step on your own hand?

I haven't been back to the VR lab since the beginning, when I broke the beach scene. For fun, I go through the "Surface Psych" scene first. It's merely a session with a slightly sadistic old psychologist who asks me to do a series of random actions like attacking a couch, dancing on his desk, stepping on my own hand, and straightening his papers. In theory, the process is stress-releasing. It is also possible to break the scenario by being uncooperative long enough.

Creepy demon.

When I'm done with that, I turn the switch to "Deep Psych" and enter the password the tech gives me in order to start the program. I appear in a bare cavern split down the middle with a crack. A rope is tied to me, and the other end is tied to a demon. Across the room, behind the demon, there's a huge door that appears to be glowing from the other side. Creepy.

Attacking the demon is too obvious.

Each turn, the crack widens. I pull on the rope, but the demon pulls back and I'm nearly knocked off balance. I jump the crack [10] before it gets too wide, but that puts me on the same side as the demon, which attacks me. If I counter-attack, the demon grabs my blade and pulls me down into the chasm with it, and the program ends in failure. The tech will always give another chance, so I can keep playing with the scenario without penalty.

Somehow I can still jump across the crack when it's nine feet wide. Eventually, the demon is frantic to escape itself and no longer paying much attention to me. I can't reach the bar of the door directly, and I can't stand on the demon. If I untie the rope at any time, the program automatically ends.

Cooperation is clearly the solution.

So the only other thing I can do is lift the demon up, after the crack is so wide that it's not paying any attention to me, and the demon's body raises the bar of the door and allows us both to pass through. The scene ends in success [15]. I guess the psychobabble here would be something about how cooperation is the best strategy rather than isolation or aggression?

The complete list of destinations in the game.

Now I can proceed to the final mission. When I arrive, a satellite pulls me in, and the controls of my ship go dead. No going back until I succeed. Nothing happens at first and I can't tell where I am, so I put on the suit and tentatively open the hatch of the ship. But inside the satellite there's a breathable atmosphere and comfortable temperature, so I leave the suit and start looking around.

I bet my hair is standing on end from the static.

I emerge into a control room full of equipment. The only obvious interactions are with a closed compartment with a button and a closed door. I press the obvious button and everything starts up for a moment [50]. Then it stops, and the compartment opens to reveal a silver globe and a metallic ring.

The globe is attached to the compartment, but the ring is actually a collar like the VR collar I just used. When I wear the collar [5], the globe starts throwing off staticky sparks. I touch the globe [15], which triggers a cut-scene conversation with an AI in the satellite's system. Nevermind that it's a Heechee system and the AI should have been unintelligible. Handwave that the AI is sending meaning directly to the user's brain, perhaps.

The Heechee AI reveals the enemy AI.

The Heechee AI informs me that there's an active Assassin AI program in the Watchtower that has already detected the activation of the shield system and will send an alert to the Assassin race in 23 hours if it isn't stopped. The Heechee AI can alter the message to a standard "all clear," but only if it's physically connected to the Watchtower system. Plus the Assassin AI must be destroyed so that it cannot alert the Assassins in the future. So the one who triggers the shield system also has to counter the enemy AI. The Heechee AI isn't going to allow me to use my ship until I've done that. The plan seems simple, but something always goes wrong with these kinds of things.

Traveling to the Watchtower.

I go through the door into the travel pod, which takes me to the Watchtower just as the Heechee AI said. When I touch the globe on the other side [15], I feel intense pain. Then when the hatch opens, it seems to turn into a normal doorway instead of showing me the place where I'm supposed to put the AI collar in order to stop the alert.

A woman appears at the doorway, cheerfully escorts me inside, and confiscates the collar and my gun. She explains that everyone in the party is a prospector who stumbled on the coordinates accidentally and is now being held here by the Heechee for some reason in total comfort. She hands me a credit card for use at the party's entertainment booths and walks away again.

The mysterious woman tries to distract me...

It's an interesting story, but it's total BS. First, there's no reason for the Heechee AI to hold anybody there that hasn't activated the shield and triggered the attention of the Assassins. Second, how would that many prospectors have randomly chosen those particular coordinates out of the thousands of possibilities?

Third, why are all the visible people beautiful women? The majority of prospectors we've met have been men, as you'd probably expect for a dangerous and solo occupation like interstellar prospecting. And especially if many have been here for a number of years - the description says the clothing represents a cross-section of generations of prospectors. Very few would be young and beautiful any more.

Cue Admiral Ackbar.

In other words, it's VR, and it's a distraction from my mission. The Assassin AI is trying to stall me. I need to break the simulation like I did with the beach scene. This VR scenario is a good bit more sophisticated, but it's got to have a weakness.

The party has three different games: ball throw, guess your weight, and wheel of fortune (roulette), and they're all rigged so that you win. There's also a poker game, but it's high stakes and doesn't let me in. Other than buying into the games, the only other thing to spend money on is drinks at the bar. But I can't get anyone drunk (even me) and I can't multiply drinks like at the beach, so that's not useful.

Implied adult content, for those that are curious.

Also at the bar is a completely obliging woman and a completely available back room *cough*. I think that's the only adult content in the whole game, though, and it's merely implied.

Guess Your Weight!

Ball Throw with magic balls.

There are some other oddities that help identify this as VR: the bot at the guess your weight game addresses me as "Madam" (and then guesses my weight at 412 pounds, which would infuriate any woman, so I really don't know why you'd have a game like this at a party populated mostly by women). That bot also wears spectacles but constantly bumps into things. The game that each exit leads to sometimes changes. If I throw the ball from the ball throw game at the bot, it actually changes direction in midair to hit the bottles.

Trying to lose at Wheel of Fortune.

So the point of the VR party is to keep the player winning so he stays occupied. If I can find a way to lose, that might disturb the AI's programming. The games are all rigged, but the wheel of fortune doesn't prevent me from making more than one bet. But if one number wins, then all the other numbers must lose...

GameBot: electronic mind blown.

All the NPCs start looking panicked after I make a second bet. The wheel spins, but tries to stop on one of my numbers and then swings to the other. The contradictions break the scenario [25]. Yay! But we're not quite done yet. Find out next time what else I have to do to destroy the Assassin and save humanity.

Deaths:

If you attach the clips to the actuator backward… (#15)

Score: 1290 of 1600
Balance: $22,541,450
Status: Orion Program (green badge)
Missions: 11
Shield Generators: 4 of 4
Deaths: 15

Session Time: 1.5 hours
Total Time: 12 hours 0 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 Ilmari

Since we don’t want to exhaust Joe with his marathon, we’ve given him some time off. In the meantime, I’ll take the opportunity to continue the story of Level 9, a text adventure company founded by the Austin brothers and known affectionately as the British Infocom (yes, this is going to be a sideshow). As those familiar with my earlier reviews of Level 9 games might remember, I have been less than enthusiastic about their games. We’ll see if Snowball fares any better. At least it is a change from their earlier, Tolkien-themed works and foreshadows nicely Joe’s upcoming Starcross-posts.

So, is that a giant net for catching space fish?

The plot of the so-called Middle Earth trilogy was almost non-existent and the supposed connection to Tolkien’s works was tenuous. Snowball significantly improves this sad state of affairs by giving us a manual with a detailed background story and an interesting tale of what the future might look like.

Let’s begin with the geopolitical summary of the world around 2195. It is no surprise that the world is ruled by superpowers and that two of these are China and US, although it is a bit weird to hear the latter called an Empire.

Oh yes, I forgot

Names of two other superpowers bring back memories from eighties: USSR (better known to the world as Soviet Union) and EEC (what we nowadays call European Union). Considering the current events of the world, it is ironic to read from the manual that England “is a minor part of the EEC”.

I knew they’d change their minds again

But I guess it’s just another ruse

There’s also a fifth superpower, called Pacific. Since Australia is the biggest landmass around that area, I guess this means that they got some delusions of grandeur Down Under.

He does have the makings of a world class leader

Within the five superpowers, which are neither true democracies nor dictatorships, people live in luxury. For instance, in England, “minor part of the EEC”, people live out of tourism and Experience Industry. Yes, apparently billions of world population are willing to pay up for British adventure games (no matter what Red Dwarf predicts, this bit seems like a wish fulfillment of the producers). For the rest of the world - the so-called Free Nations (the former Third World) - the future is not as rosy:

No significant improvements have taken place in living standards or technological infrastructure, though populations are higher than ever before. Communications are excellent, however. The people know that they are kept in poverty and resent the fact, and ironically this is a major reason for the Free Nations' poor development performance. Other reasons are: proxy wars, wealth disparity combined with ready supplies of weapons, poor infrastructure, reduced world market share due to automation elsewhere, excess imports to ruling cliques, skilldrain, population growth, endemic disease and climatic instability.

But the Big 5 were too busy to deal with such minor considerations. Traditional fuels were running out, and therefore the superpowers built accelerator chains to get raw materials from the asteroid field to make large solar reflectors for Earth’s orbit. Then the scientists finally discovered the secret of fusion power, and all these constructs in space became just a huge pile of scrap metal.

So as not to seem like complete nincompoops, the leaders of the superpowers decided to use the equipment for stellar colonization, because, you know, voters just love science fiction (a bit of wish fulfillment again).

Snowball 9 was one of the EEC sleeper colony ships, sent to planet Eden in Eridani system, where a fleet of robots was already terraforming and building infrastructure for the arrivals. Within the ship traveled also a secret agent Kim Kimberley - one of the earliest female heroes in the genre. The Snowball crafts were fully automated, but if something was to happen to the ship, a trained person, carried without the knowledge of the crew, could be awakened for the necessary repairs. And now in 2304, when it is nearing its destination, something has happened to Snowball 9.

I am pretty sure none of the larger background really matters in the game itself, although the details are quite intricate. In fact, the back cover has quite another selling point.

7000 rooms to map!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You gotta to be kidding me!
(Also, nine months of development seems ridiculously quick these days.)

I know some quite intelligent people get a sort of Zen vibe, when they chart huge and sprawling maps. Personally, I am not one of those people - I couldn’t imagine a more dreary afternoon than one spent in such a dull and mechanical task. My only hope is that most of these rooms are redundant and that there really is no need to do all this dirty work.

As with all the other games by Level 9 thus far, I shall play two versions - a pictureless version with more text, with a BBC emulator, and an updated version with added pictures, with a specifically designed interpreter for Level 9 games. So, let’s begin!

Kim Kimberley reporting 1: “I was born in England, a small part of EEC, on September 29th, 2172 AD, of Jorel Cowans and Alice Kimberley. I was raised by the Hampstead Creche, a peculiar place, set amongst decaying buildings, and heavily reliant on a mix of relationship-engineering, behaviour conditioning and Hell-Fire religion.

Then to the Milton Keynes School of Life; a fine, residential establishment situated (despite its name) in Malta. The staff were, in effect, my family. This was far from unusual, since advances in entertainment and travel, plus the sexual revolution resulting from AI, partho and cloning techniques, made a family upbringing the exception.

I returned to England for National Service before progressing to Oxford - I was not quite bright enough for Cambridge. I was a good student, and established many close relationships, though nothing permanent.

It was during National Service that I was approached, discreetly, to do security work. Initially this simply involved training, and occasional surveillance of possible subversives (Unionists, Americans, members of racial minorities etc), but it soon developed into counter-espionage (e.g. arresting Russians who used the public reference libraries).

And then, when the Snowball project got under way, I was approached to volunteer for the stars. The Snowball craft were as near automatic as possible, and carried a trained crew in case anything went wrong. But suppose something happened to the crew? What was needed were one-or-two trained people who could emerge and take over if something went really wrong. And, with the Snowball 9, it has …”

The graphics look as awful as in previous games

It all begins in darkness, with the game telling me that Snowball has arrived to its destination star system and would soon be colliding with the star, unless I prevented it. No matter what I tried, the game helpfully pointed out a lever after one turn. Pulling that lever opened up the coffin where I was sleeping. When I got out, the coffin vanished and I found myself in a blue mortuary.

Doing a quick check of the nearby surroundings showed that I most likely won’t have to endure that much mapping. You can see from the small map above the first few rooms of the game. I woke up near a central hub, leading to a spotless white alcove with a complex revival machine and adjacent to an elevator that didn’t work, because I had triggered an alarm when I woke up.

So why exactly the colonists shouldn’t wake up?

Two east-to-west corridors started from this hub and apparently followed a set pattern with blue mortuaries to the south of the corridor and green mortuaries to the north. At this point I had no idea whether I would eventually hit a wall if I followed one of the corridors or whether the two corridors formed a big loop. I wasn’t going to try it out, mostly because of the nightingales.

And I don’t mean these

Nightingales were robotic spherical wardens moving around the corridor. If I met them, they injected me with a deadly hypospray. Fortunately, their clanking sound was very audible and I could try to hide away. For some reason, nightingales detected me in blue mortuaries, but green mortuaries were a safe zone - perhaps some colonists are more equal than others?

The mortuaries have no other difference but the colour

All the mortuaries were marked by a set of three lights, different for each mortuary. Pressing that sequence of light in a panel in the mortuary revealed a coffin. If I took this coffin to the revival machine, the coffin was opened and out came a colonist. So far everyone I’ve tried has been so frightened that they have alerted the nightingales of our presence.

“EEEEEK! YEAAH! AAAAR!” So she begins scared, has a little orgasm and ends up a pirate?

Every mortuary had also a trapdoor leading to some upper level, which I just couldn’t reach. This was a simple problem. If I called a coffin to the mortuary, I could stand on it and reach the trapdoor. By going through it, I found myself in another mortuary.

Yes, I was in a freezer complex, where frozen colonists were stacked on one another, and the level above was just like the level below. I was still making some progress, since on the level above there was no general alarm and I could access the elevator.

I started on white level and now I am on grey level

I could use the elevator to access the levels I wanted. Most of them were similar to mortuary levels I had already seen, except for the top black level, which contained complex machinery, apparently meant for keeping the colonists frozen.

I could also use the trapdoors to go to the elevator shaft. At the bottom of it was a grimy pit, which contained a toolbox with an adjusting spanner and a ying-yang screwdriver. At the top of the shaft I found a winch room, where I could use the spanner to access a cylindrical ledge. Using this route was still a bit pointless, because the ledge could also be accessed by stairs from the black level.

Let’s pause here for a bit to get our bearings straight. The top black level is explicitly described as toroidal walkway (if you don’t know what a toroid is, picture a doughnut). So, all the levels below should also be toroids or circle around. Why wasn’t this mentioned down below? Simple, the black level is the most innermost of them all and therefore the smallest, so that its shape is more evident to the eye. Why is it then also called the top level? Presumably because all these levels together form a rotating disk, in which we would feel a pull toward the outer rim, which would then feel like being downwards, while the center of the disk would feel like being upwards.

My humble attempt to show what a freezer disk would look like,
each level coloured as it is in the game and the pink line symbolising the elevator.

But that’s not all! From the cylindrical ledge I could access a transpex tube going through the centre point of the disk and this tube took me to new freezer disks. What’s transpex, you ask? Apparently it’s some form of plexiglass.

So the whole contraption looks something like this: the freezer disks, symbolised by
the green lines, rotate around the transpex tube, symbolised by the red field.

What is most striking is that this whole complex of freezer disks is accessible in the game - no wonder there’s 7000 rooms in the game. I don’t think there’s any particular reason to map all of it, since the pattern is pretty clear, and I am not sure whether to congratulate the producers for their realistic design or call them crazy because of this utterly useless waste of bytes.

Well’ at least my journey through the freezer units was soon over, since at the one end, the transpex tube was attached to an airlock leading to the rest of the Snowball. We’ll see next time what I found there. Before that, don’t forget to guess the score!

Time used: 4 hours

written by Ilmari

Kim Kimberley reporting 2: “I’ve been awakened from my long slumber, so there must be something wrong with Snowball. It took me a while just to get out of the freezer section of the ship. Now I must find out what exactly is going on here.”

Massage parlor area

After exiting the airlock leading out from freezer units, I first encountered a long cylindrical tube, with another airlock at the southern end. Continuing north from this second airlock, led me inexplicably to another cylindrical tube, situated under the first tube - I could climb from the lower tube to the upper tuber, but for some reason I couldn’t climb down from upper to the lower tube.

I at first tried to to open southern airlock. I came into a docking bay, and I was promptly told I had no air to breath. I could still move for a while. First, I entered some dark area and then I found myself floating in space, and finally, I died.

It’s cold outside, there’s no kind of atmosphere....

A ramp led from the lower cylindrical room to a heavy plasteel door. A robot head appeared to tell me that I wasn’t welcome beyond that door.

I’m sure there are laws against being called fleshie

Another ramp went down from the upper tube to a massage parlour. Lying down on a couch, I received a massage that invigorated me. In game terms, I guess it meant that my inventory limit had just gone up.

But if you hang there too long, the treatment becomes lethal

Near the parlour was a storeroom with few items. One of them was a stacker lift, which was meant for lifting the coffins with freezed colonists. I knew that in the original we didn’t need such contraption for picking up a coffin, but I hadn’t checked whether this was true with the graphical version. In fact, I noticed later that in the newer version this gadget was required for picking up the coffins.

The other item was an ultrasound scalpel. I spent some time wondering where to use it, but I only noticed that I could cut with it a hole in the plexiglass tube going through the freezer disks. That wasn’t a particularly wise thing to do.

Afloat again

The upper tube also had a cyladder going down. I have no idea how a cyladder differs from a regular ladder, but apparently it is somehow automated, since it refused to let me in. At one point I managed to witness a scruffy robot going down it - the robot walked around the area doing some cleaning. Trying to take the cyladder just after the robot had used it allowed me to sneak in through the open hole to a new area.

Condo

The cyladder took me to what I assumed were the private quarters of the pilot of Snowball. This was truly a realistic take on what living facilities of an astronaut might look like, with an airbed suspended from the ceiling and other facilities a space faring person might need.

And for realism’s sake, the producers had to include this room, which serves no
gaming purpose. Is this the first time we’ve seen WC in an adventure game?

This looks as big as my first rented apartment

The condo, as the game calls it, was a source for new items. Under the bed I found some LEDs, which on further examination were revealed to be diagnostic probes for droids. In a cupboard in the kitchen I found a lamp, which lacked batteries, and a cup, which I could use to obtain some liquid from a food machine.

Lentil custard doesn’t sound that appetizing.
But could someone explain what’s a Maxwell Heatsink?

The pilot’s quarters were connected with the controls of the freezer area. The interface was rather intricate. In fact, it was too intricate for me.

So it’s all in VR. This seems simple...

...but apparently I am just too stupid to use it!

This was the first time I had to take a hint from the official clue sheet, because clearly I should be able to use this contraption. Turns out the solution was to blink after looking at the choice I made. This makes sense in real life - certainly one would automatically blink after a while, thus activating one’s choice. In an adventure game, this was just a really unfair “guess the verb”.

And now you tell me!

I learned from the VR machine that Snowball was undamaged and all 180 000 colonists were well. The ship had just veered off course and was now heading for the local sun. I also found out some basic information about the ship itself. Snowball consisted of an engine unit, which towed a great hollow ice-asteroid.

Within the asteroid were the freezer disks, protected by the ammonium ice, which was also used as a fuel for the fusion drive. Since this part of the ship was still in the immediate vicinity of the freezer disk, I must have still been inside the asteroid and I should try to find my way to the engine unit.

But most interesting was the diary, in which the writer was afraid of someone called Alpha. Indeed, I could find in the VR machine a note telling me that Alpha was battering the door. It seemed then that something had happened to the pilot. In fact, I found a body behind the display panel of the VR machine.

Full-body leotard? Considering what the body is wearing, it must be Zoe

From Doctor Who, you know

Near the freezer control room I could find a library. Unlike current libraries, this library had only a floating desk and a video viewer on it. Now, in the pictureless version of the game I could leave the table alone, since it appeared to be good only for carrying items. In the graphical version I eventually had to take the table with me, because for some reason, the inventory limit was more strict. Yes, you can carry around a floating table and put all your stuff on it.

It must be one of these inflatable furniture, filled with helium

Or at least most of the stuff could be out on the table - the game code doesn’t allow putting containers in or on other containers. What’s even more interesting is that, for example, a lamp is taken as container, because it could contain a battery. Oh yes, I did find a battery (or batpak) for the lamp in the video viewer. It only took a screwdriver to lever the battery out. What was more important was that I could use the video viewer to watch mempaks.

Cobol and Playgirl - some things never die

In this enticing selection there was really only one mempak I could interact with. This mempak contained a six-place colour code of my own coffin - and a different code for another crewmember. I knew instantly what to do.

Back to freezer disks

You might remember from the previous post that the freezer disk area was enormous. Luckily, I had now some idea how to navigate in it. The bracelet I had found with the dead body was not just for decoration, but showed a different colour code depending on where I was on Snowball. Specifically, one of the lights on the bracelet showed the colour code of the freezer disk, where I happened to be (there were ten disks in total).

Within the disk, the ten floors all had their own colour code, although only nine of them carried mortuaries. The third colour then showed something like a sector on that floor. Each sector had a blue and a green mortuary, and I knew I was looking for a green mortuary.

At the start of the game, I had thought that this would be the end of it - three colours to identify a pair of coffins, one in green and one in blue mortuary. Actually, each mortuary held a number of coffins, each with its own three-colour code to distinguish it from others in the same mortuary. This three-colour code was the second half of the code I had found in the mempak.

Who was this crewmember? Manual had said that there should have been two persons to deal with any emergences Snowball would fall into, the first one was me, and the other one I was most likely going to meet now. After finding the right coffin, I took it to the nearby revival center.

Two women speaking of something else but men. Bechdel test passed

My fellow agent couldn’t at first say anything, because she was too thirsty. Thankfully, I had this cup of delicious lentil soup to offer her. What I got out from her was another code, this time for a habidome. As I had not yet seen any habidome, this did not help me that much.

Fortunately, after a bit of experimentation I managed to find a new area - in fact, I found the same place twice. Firstly, you might have noticed in the map of the condo one exit I left completely unmentioned. Well, the game has a tendency to outright tell where you can go, which had made me lazy - I hadn’t wondered what I could do with a garbage hole in a kitchen. Yes, I could go down it.

Secondly, I finally managed to get through the plasteel door guarded by a robot head. I just had to wear the clothes of the pilot to be recognised a very important person.

Wearing a leotard is a key to all the high places

Droid-handled store service

Yes, there’s a padded cell. There’s no explanation why Snowball needs one

It’s easy to get in here, but difficult to get out. You have to notice
you can pull the nutrimat machine to find a hole in the wall.

The most notable thing in the droid-handled store service was a welding lance. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just take it, because I had to first give a correct form to a faceless android behind a wide counter. There were forms of all colours around the place, but most of them required giving other forms to other androids. And of course, before I could do anything, I had to find a ticket of right colour for each counter.

It seems we won’t get rid of bureaucracy in the future

In a typical British fashion, all blame is laid on EU

This was a pretty simple puzzle, once I just find out the form which I could take without a previous form. It did seem a bit too Douglas Adams in a game that had up to now felt quite serious in its tone.

Near the store service was the garbage tip, where I found a broken janitor droid.

It has seen better days

The droid was asking for a spare part. Using my diagnostic probe I was able to determine what part it required. The part I had to find was different in the text-only and graphical versions and might well be different in different playthroughs. Still, it was fairly simple to find the correct part just by exploring the junk around me. As a token of its gratitude, the droid handed me a helmet. Finally, I could do some exploration of the innards of the snowy asteroid, outside the freezer complex!

Time used: 5 hours
Total time: 9 hours

written by Aperama

I'm definitely regretting extending my last play post at this point. See, my previous post was spent running around making useless conversation with dozens upon dozens of bad spoof characters to pop culture. It generally involved too much insanity to actually be swallowed in one sitting. Inversely, this time around was the new island of 'Paw'– or as I thought of it mentally, 'Egypt-land'. The parallels to Westworld would be far cleaner in this instance were the game just slightly better grounded in anything – reality would be nice, but I'd even settle for something as steady as pudding at this rate. There are a total of six NPCs within this island, counting the genie who can trick you into a bottle and the Japanese photographer (stereotypes, ha ha!) who will then save you from it if you make the mistake of taking his offer of 'all of the genie's power'. It's as though they ran out of ideas for characters to speak to, and just figured 'eh, we'll put all of the game's puzzles here instead'.

Welcome to the 'giant tomb'

This section really turns more Myst crossed with a bad action game than it does any of the previous gameplay. For the first point in the game, there becomes a legitimate use for the (fireballs? Laser beams?) that Don fires out. It again took me far longer than it possibly should have to work this out – again, the game throws in a new gameplay mechanic without giving any inkling that it is going to be important. This game is so sorely missing the use of mouse controls and context sensitive iconography that it is painful. Anyhow. Essentially, the toilet transporter from the last island sends us here to Paw, and we land near a road which leads to two things – a sign and a pyramid. What you're supposed to do is walk into the pyramid, walk to the right, pick up a 'Rosy Stone' (because clearly Rosetta must have been trademarked or somesuch) and take it back to Spot in Futureworl.. uhm, Cauda. Instead, I walked straight to the aforementioned genie because.. genie.

I was rather hoping that this was the game's canon ending, but it immediately goes to another screen where the photographer lets you out

The genie's room leads to an Indiana Jones-like room where Don has to walk along things in a particular order to proceed. What I didn't realise at the time was that I was meant to be using the Rosy Stone to learn the Egyptian alphabet (which is actually somewhat accurate to be fair after some quick Googling) by taking it back to Spot. It just gives the alphabet on a screen for the one snippet, but this would have required a pen and paper back in the day this game was made as they don't simply allow you to 'look' at an item already in your inventory. Again, doomed by the interface to further mediocrity – apologies if I continually harp on here. You're then let further into the tomb after walking from A to Z, where you can either move into a room which looks like a dead end, or one with a gigantic scorpion which vacuums you in and kills you with its immense claws.

Walking between 'd' and 'e' here..

Again, this list isn't actually too far out – this may have had actual research put in!

WHAT NO WHAT NO I'M THIS I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR

This is where the game becomes an extremely awkward action game. This one fight is actually won by 'speaking'– there's no way of making the scorpion die through those fireballs. Getting through there leads to another set of rooms where several Don clones arrive and have to be killed through fireballs. I literally don't know why we had to fight the scorpion – there's no obvious reasoning given, and maybe it's just an Easter egg I could have avoided. I was also disappointed that the other areas didn't offer a way outside of holding the space bar key down. That said, it was somewhat valuable for learning that there was going to be my lot for the following little while. I did not think of fighting my way out at the time – I instead decided that there had to be an inventory solution and walked back outside to see if there was anything to assist with scorpion fighting.

Ironically, this conversation was only helpful because I screen grabbed 'KHEOPS' in the background there

The people out and about were not of use. As I say, there's only six NPCs to speak with on the entire island, with an additional conversation with Spot after handing the Rosy Stone over explaining what we're likely doing on Paw – retrieving the 'Staff of Miniaturisation', which was lost by 'Hardel' after 'Laury' obtained 'Staff of Duplication'. (They apparently went into construction together then fought after 'Laury' broke his staff trying to create another one of the one owned by 'Hardel'.) Otherwise, we have 'can't get off of the island' lady, 'brother of the skeletons in Cauda', 'big bad soldier who warns us about the Dragoons' and of course, 'guard who tells us how nasty the Dragoons are but also asks for a single GP'. The entire island is barren, sandy and featureless apart from the ever present random enemies.. oh, and still shots of elephants. Elephants! I'm aware they can live in deserts, but it's scarcely the norm. Anyhow, I figured out what to do with the Rosy Stone, headed back into the tomb and.. got a bit lost again.

Answer pictured here – guess what I'm doing. I dare you.

So, it turns out that in the side not inhabited by the scorpion, there's a wall mural with a 'sceptre' on it. This sceptre can be taken, which leaves you able to walk up to the next wall and 'use' the sceptre underneath a goblet being held by another wall mural. This can then be drunk to open the door to the tomb. Why? No idea! We don't deal with logic here in Eternam. We barely deal with plot. Still, after yet another random solution found (I actually tried using the 'Rosy Stone' at random points along the wall, but had the sceptre in the next slot along and accidentally used it instead) we're led to a room with yet more utter confusion.

Here's a shot of me killing snakes. They're in the way of me yelling so that Don can get the mirror off of that wall

Indiana Jones, Superman and a Japanese photographer walk into a bar, and..

Apparently, 'real life' Don shares Guile from Street Fighter's haircut

After getting two pieces of glass from the broken mirror, we then have to walk into a room with an obvious trap which will leave Don literally squished into the wall as a permanent imprint. Walking up to it with the 'big piece of glass' in inventory has it automatically fall onto the 'x' which is blatantly a trap, though, because apparently we need three 'small piece of glass' items. (We do, in reality.) See, the big 'puzzle' of the tomb was shown off in an earlier picture. We need to grab three statues from a wall, perform a 'blood ritual' into a permanently static goblet with a knife and then set the statues into the shape of a triangle. This generates a gigantic light which comes from above, and after being reflected several times unlocks a way into the middle of the tomb, where 'Hardel' buried himself in grief over the loss of his friend. I don't get why they bothered with the unfunny names here. If I was to be truly mocking, I'd have just called them both 'Steve' or something. Guess I just don't understand the French humour?

Meanwhile, 'Mikhal Nuke' makes his second appearance because.. well, we enter a room

Some degree of this is made fairly obvious – walking in, the 'triangle' of different colours was shown in a little cut off screen as I showed at the start of this post. Of course, I grabbed all of the statues without realising that some of them had to be left against the wall to reflect the light created later on, but that's neither here nor there. What continues from here is a completely unmappable set of rooms. They just don't connect logically. Even if one room is 'larger' than another, the rooms still wouldn't fit in any sort of floor plan. I won't go into my efforts to map the confusing rooms, but instead say that it turns out one throwaway item from earlier is imperative now. If I didn't grab the 'rackets' back in Dorsalis, literally just random inventory fodder which was sitting upon the wall, I'd have died multiple times over and likely given up. See, some of the rooms have what I'm guessing is supposed to be quicksand. Why? No freaking clue. Just do. You have to have the 'rackets' in your inventory, as they're instantly strapped to Don's feet as soon as the floor starts to give way. I only realised this as they're later required to be selected or again.. you die with no real rhyme nor reason given.

This is at least explained in a 'plaque' on the wall of the room with the quicksand

Again, the layout is explained well..

.. while broken mirrors make a highly unlikely deal of refracting an unsteady light source

This is one of those puzzles that is plain old 'moon logic'. See, what you have to do is go back to the room where the sceptre is taken from the wall, which creates a light where you use the broken bits of mirror to reflect it. It's a puzzle that more or less solved itself for me, as certain items work without 'using' them. I did have to select the statues when placing them, but not the glass – it just drops when you walk into the place you need them, meaning that even if you somehow struggled with it the game would largely solve itself. The less intuitive section involves randomly loading up the 'rackets' once you reach the final point where the light hits, as I stated earlier. The room fills with sand from the ceiling – if you don't have them selected as the active inventory item, you die. If you do, you float to the top. It's just not how sand works!

Blub blub.

The Sphinx looks really angry!

Again, the game leads to another short 'quiz' to pad out content. There's only one question that relies upon knowledge from within the game (using the word 'Kheops' which is apparently a pseudonym of Khufu) – I got all of the questions right on the first attempt, and didn't care enough to go back and find out what would have happened if I'd failed. This leads to the tomb itself, a mummified corpse clenching a Staff of Miniaturisation. So eager to work out what it actually did, I used it and.. the entire tomb shrunk around me. I did not expect this. (It doesn't work anywhere else – I guess it's just the exit from the sealed tomb.) Once more I found a puzzle intuitive here – I knew there was the station back in Stomaca where I simply needed a boat to continue.. and a huge boat in the middle of a certain castle back on Cauda. Turns out the boat was reused, GregT - just not in a true 'puzzling' fashion. Sure enough, this led off as I felt it might – and with that, I'm off to the final island. I hope it's the final island. It's the final island, right?

Don decided to use his Staff of Miniaturisation for the only thing he could think of – novelty hat creation

Time played: I could have watched the original Star Wars trilogy twice by now
Mental age increase after playing:“Mummy!”

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. Just tell me, am I up to the last island? It needs to be the last, right? They must be not have been able to parse more horrible pictures onto a diskette.

Written by Reiko

Broadhead Journal #10:"I’m in hell. Literally. I suppose I deserve it. I wish I hadn’t broken the party VR, but I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to help the Heechee AI destroy the Assassin. Now I’m paying for my choices and I’m not even allowed to die."

As they say, "out of the frying pan into the fire." This time it's almost literal. I'd just destroyed the Assassin's distraction through VR contradiction. The destroyed party scene dissolves into a new VR scene, a conversation with a huge demon who threatens me with eternal torment instead of pleasure and then throws me into a flaming hydra lair.

How many ways can I find to die?

There are actually four different rooms, each one containing a different torment. If I stay in the hydra room, it will eventually eat me after a few turns. From the hydra lair, I can go south to a demon gauntlet, a narrow pathway lined with demons who throw various things at me. After a few steps, they throw a rope net. If I don't escape, the demons knock me into the abyss.

The result of failure.

Either way, "death" isn't the way out of this: it merely brings me back to the huge demon, who taunts me for my failure and resets the scenario. So I'm not going to screenshot every one of these failures and call them deaths, because they don't end the game. It's only VR.

The frenzy dust causes temporary rage and hatred.

North of the hydra is an empty chamber that seems to contain invisible gremlins that occasionally shove me or cut me. Eventually the invisible blade will slice my throat. North of the empty chamber is a room of mirrors and demon statues. After a few turns, a demon animates and breathes a red dust which temporarily makes me insane enough to try to kill myself by beating myself unconscious against the mirrors.

Watch how the image in the mirror changes as the frenzy dust has more effect.

The first suicide attempts don’t kill me, though. It's not until the fourth statue animates and causes this frenzy that I manage to do enough damage to kill myself. But of course I just return to the beginning of the scenario again.

The hydra doubles its severed head.

Instead of all this pointless death, I need to break this new scenario. So I take the rusty sword [5] that's sitting in front of me. I first try to attack the hydra, but while I manage to cut off a head, soon two new heads grow. Classic hydra behavior. That certainly isn't the way to defeat it.

Collecting the demon's trash.

So I escape the hydra toward the demon gauntlet instead. When they throw the rope net over me, I immediately cut it with the sword [5] and then cut it again [5]. This time they throw a sack of garbage at me. I knock it away, and it lands on the catwalk. I don't need the garbage, but the sack might be useful, so I take it [5].

Acquiring frenzy dust.

I escape the catwalk and go to the mirror room, where I put the sack over the head of the first demon statue. Maybe I can get some of that frenzy dust. I wait and am rewarded with a sackful of glowing red dust [15]. First I try throwing it on the hydra, but that just makes it even more aggressive against me. I was hoping that would make it self-aggressive and tear itself apart, creating an infinite loop of new heads. I think I'm on the right track, but I missed a few steps. I didn't do anything in the "empty" chamber yet. But I also die instantly if I throw the dust at the invisible demon there.

If I wait long enough, I can tell it jumps onto a stalagmite stump or shelf. I can put the sack on the stump, with or without the dust, but that doesn't seem to help. I can throw the empty sack at the stump when the demon's on it, but the sack just ends up on the stump as if it weren't there. I die again and again trying different things.

I go away for awhile and think about this. The dust doesn't make the demon visible, but something else might. I realize the hydra room is full of fire, so it also ought to have some ashes. I go back to the beginning and re-examine the rooms and discover that yes, there is ash available. I also discover I can take the net with me after I cut it too [5]. So after I brave the demon gauntlet and get the sack and the net, I go fill the sack first with ash instead of dust.

The invisible demon is revealed and caught.

I wait in the empty room for the demon to jump onto the stump, then throw the ash at it to reveal it [15]. Then I throw the net onto it to entangle it [10]. I notice that it's got a ring on, which I swipe [10] before it frees itself, and escape into the mirror room. A ring of invisibility, perhaps? It even calls it, "my precious"! I wear the ring and disappear [10]! Now I can move around without danger from the monstrous occupants of the rooms.

I throw the frenzy dust...

...and the hydra tears itself apart.

All that remains is to sneak back into the empty room, retrieve the sack, and fill it with the dust of madness like I'd tried earlier. Then I can go throw the dust at the hydra and watch as it starts attacking itself [50], having no other visible target. As some heads are severed, more regrow, but the more heads, the more aggression, and soon the VR breaks from the overload. Maybe this one is overgrow instead of overflow!

Now I win, right?

The simulation dissolves and I'm back in the travel pod with the globe dark and cracked and the hatch open. I automatically place the collar in the depression, and the mission is complete. I return to Gateway and everyone celebrates for a week.

I'm given control back in the Blue Hell Bar after midnight. Oddly enough, while the score says 1425 out of 1600, it also still says "You have twenty hours and eight minutes until the Assassin's message is sent." What? Have we missed something? Well, I go to sleep, expecting to receive a message in the morning about what to do next.

Bad news, we're not done yet.

I am not disappointed. I put the card in the terminal and access my messages. The new message is from...the Heechee Virtual Personality. That's weird. "Despite appearances, you have not returned to Gateway...you are in yet another reality created by the Assassin..." Oh, no! The AI goes on to explain that since I kept breaking its VR scenarios, the Assassin is trying a new tactic to distract me long enough to send the alarm. But the Heechee AI has slipped a copy of itself into an unconscious part of my mind, so it was able to send this message into the VR while I slept. All I have to do now is activate the Deep Psych VR one more time in order to bring the AI into the Assassin's virtual reality, and it will do the rest. [20]

I'm actually really confused about how a VR could simulate a flight back to Gateway as well as dozens of conversations with Gateway scientists over the course of a week, all within less than an hour of real time. I can only speculate that this kind of VR can act like a dream where it can summarize activity and make the brain think that it's experienced more than it really has. I mean, at this rate, it would have to simulate months of activity to occupy twenty more hours of real time.

Anyway, I head over to the VR terminal to do as the Heechee AI asked. The tech is gone, but he left his manual, which I take [15]. I sit on the couch and try to start the Deep Psych program, but it still requires a password, and I don't have the current one. There should be a way to determine it from the manual. I read it and find the list, but it requires special light to see it. Let's see, where can I find the right kind of light?

Activating the Deep Psych program.

I seem to recall it had something to do with UV light. What about the tanning salon? I take the manual there, and this time I can see the list [15]! I note the right word for the date and dash back to the VR terminal. I type it in and get a success ping [20]. The last action is press the button to start the program [100]. The rest is all done automatically.

I'm rich!

The AI virus invades and destroys the Assassin's AI and frees me from the virtual reality. I put the collar in the depression and the AI resets the Watchtower's message to the all clear. I return to Gateway for real this time and collect boatloads of money, including a bonus of $25 million on top of the $22+ million I'd already amassed. After the fuss settles down, I can return to Earth.

But the Assassins are still out there, watching. "...the WatchTower itself is only an outpost - an active probe ending back daily reports to the most destructive race the universe has ever known..." And the Heechee AI seemed to think the Heechee were still alive too. Watch for the exciting conclusion when we get to Gateway II: Homeworld!

Somehow I managed to miss a single action somewhere, because I initially completed the game with 1595 points out of 1600. I check through a walkthrough and find that I needed to throw ash on the stump first before catching the demon in order to see his footprints. That's easy to fix, so I replay the ending just so I can get the final screen with a perfect score.

Perfect score.

Deaths:

If you wait long enough at any time after arriving at the WatchTower, the Assassin's message is sent. (#16)

Score: 1600 of 1600
Balance: $47,541,450
Status: Orion Program (green badge)
Missions: 12
Shield Generators: 4 of 4
Activated the Nexus and destroyed the Assassin.
Deaths: 16

Session Time: 3 hours
Total Time: 15 hours

That's it for Gateway! Next time will be the final rating. We'll see how well the game stood up to my nostalgia for the series.

Written by Ilmari

Kim Kimberley reporting 3: “I’ve found out why I have been awoken. The pilot who was supposed to take care of the last year of Snowball’s journey was killed by a mysterious person known just as Alpha. Now the ship is flying to a nearby sun, and it is up to me to turn its course. Fortunately, I have found space gear and I can move outside the freezer section...”

Free floating

Outside the airlock was a docking bay, with a handgun that I quickly took in my possession. The massive doors of the docking bay were open, and a huge web connected the freezer unit to the inner surface of the enormous ball of ice. Traversing the web wasn’t particularly difficult, but I also found a much quicker way to get down.

When I had earlier tried to explore the outdoor locations - slowly dying of the lack of oxygen and in complete darkness - I had been told at one point that I was leaving the web and asked if I was sure. I tried to duplicate that experience by going to some edge of the web and moving to a direction without any web (Later I found out that I could have just jumped at any point off the web). Suddenly, I found myself floating.

I should be floating inside a giant ball of ice, so what
are these white dots supposed to be? Giant snowflakes?

I was then floating inside a huge ball of ice. At this point it was pretty clear what I should do - I was supposed to find some way to move myself in this near-zero gravity to the ground. “Every action needs an equal and opposite reaction”, I told myself and started shooting the gun.

This spot just cries for spectacular animation

The first thing I found on the inner surface of the hollow ice ball was a pylon leading up from a snowfield. Upon the pylon was a platform with a button, by which I could call a monorail shuttle. Taking the shuttle, I found myself on another platform, on top of another pylon, built on another snowfield. And upon that snowfield I found a habidome called “Snowball Hilton”.

The whole construct just becomes more and more amazing.
They’ve even built a shuttle rail within this ball of ice

Holodeck

The first thing I found when entering the habidome was something called spidroid “hopper”. When I entered this contraption, I found myself back on the docking bay of freezer complex. If I ever needed to return there, I now had a quick way to hop.

A little bit further in the habidome I found a store room with a flask, with which I could replenish my air supply, and a spray can full of paint. At least in the game, taking a spray can in vacuum will make it explode, but putting it in a closed toolbox prevents this (can any physicists out there verify whether this would happen in the real world also?).

I am not sure inhaling minerals is that healthy

At one point of the habidome I found a security door, which opened with the code given to me by the woman I had revived. Inside I found a sunlit forest glade.

It’s true, just read it!

It’s no surprise that it was all just a hologram - I even found something called holowand, with which to stop the illusions. What is more difficult to understand is the holo environment itself, which seems just a medley of places stuck together. From the central forest glade you can get, for instance, to a beach near a desert island, recreation cabin, bathroom, comfortable cave and a cubicle in a library. I’m guessing this is just a parody of earlier text adventures, where game environment was often just a collection of such incongruent places. Then again, this seems a bit of a wishful thinking, since no matter what Red Dwarf says, they probably won’t play text adventures in the future, so why waste a holodeck for a recreating one?

Graphical version ruins the joke, because it already
shows what the rooms looks like without holograms

The holo-environment serves then no other purpose, but to hold a number of items, which all appear to be real. In addition to holowand, I managed to find dark glasses, silver tray with something called an electroflute, a debt card and an irritating pussy cat, which managed to stump my progress in the graphical version of the game.

You see, I had settled for a groove where I first played the game with the text-only version, solving puzzles as they came along. Then, long after I had finished some section of the game, I speedran through the same section in the graphical version. Now, you might remember from my previous post that I had some problems managing my inventory in the graphical version. Turns out the cat increased my problems tenfold. This supposed animal is actually some type of super-efficient automated vacuum cleaner. If the cat was not in my direct grasp, it would eat everything I dropped in the room it was. This happened even if the cat was in one of containers - something I noticed only when it was too late to do anything for it.

In the graphical version I was eventually carrying in my hands nothing but containers and all the other things were inside those containers - even the cat, who was sitting on a floating table. Before getting the cat, if I had to pick up something, I dropped one of my containers, then picked up the item I needed and put it in some container. With the cat on the table, whenever I tried to drop some container, the cat ate it and all the things contained in it. And yes, if I dropped the floating table, where the cat was lying, the cat ate the table and also itself (this would really demand some animation). Needless to say that my previous save was ages ago.

I imagine the cat is related to this fellow

Since I was playing the graphical version only to get the additional art assets and they were frankly quite disappointing, I felt no obligation to backtrack to this point. Thus, I don’t have graphics for the very ending where I would have needed the objects I didn’t yet have. I am sure the pictures would have been as underwhelming as the ones you’ve already seen.

What’s that even trying to portray?

Monorail

The monorail had even more stations and this is what I found at each of them:

A broken snowdozer, which required some welding. I did have a welding lance, but I still had to find some cylinders and a proper armour. I could enter the dozer and find a fire extinguisher in it, but I also required a key for using the thing,

Now this is at least a decent picture

A cave, with a titanium shovel in front of it. Within the cave I found something called Jacob’s ladder, which I couldn’t use because of a guarding massive waldroid.
Smooth snowfield with nothing of interest
Robodome where I could find some cylinders
Another smooth snowfield
A warehouse with broken stratogliders and a ceramic armour

Apparently a stratoglider looks like a freezer coffin

All the signs appeared to point to the snowdozer. With the ceramic armour and the cylinders I could finally fix the thing. I also found the keys simply by digging with my new shovel the snow around the snowdozer. I boarded the contraption, turned it on and waited it to move. Surprisingly, the thing wouldn’t move before I left.

When I exited the snowdozer, it started to move, pushing iceblocks in its way. I tried to find some way to prevent this from happening, but to no effect. Checking finally the clue sheet, I saw that I had just done what I should have - the snowdozer was meant to provide Snowball with some fuel.

My next bet was the droid. Perhaps I could somehow get rid of him? Indeed, that was the answer, but I really couldn’t have guessed the answer myself. Time for clue sheet then. Apparently I was meant to carry the paint spray can in my toolbox, then open the toolbox near the waldroid who would be blinded by the paint flying out from the can that exploded in the vacuum.

Now, this just seems like complete and utter hogwash. Really, I am supposed to beat a droid by covering its eye sockets with paint? Is that droid like a dalek in its saddest incarnation? And what are the odds that this supposedly exploding spray can would splurt its contents on the eyes of the droid and not, say, all over the toolbox where it was? Yeah, I am not buying this scenario.

The endgame

Going up!

With the guard droid taken care of, I could use the Jacob’s ladder. This was essentially a miles long ladder, within an opaque tube, taking me from the ball of ice to the engine pulling it.

Unislime sounds like something pouring out of unicorns

At the top of the tube started a wide red cylinder, and beside it, a ramp leading to the controls. It was all covered in slime, and as you would guess, trying to go up I would slip and fall to my death. This was a simple problem. After all, I had this cat who devoured any garbage left on the floor. Indeed, when I dropped it to the ground, it cleaned the whole ramp.

At the top of the ramp I found a pair of heavy blast doors, and behind them, a snowdozer jammed in it (if it is meant to be the same snowdozer, how did it get up here?). The snowdozer appeared to be nothing but decoration, and I could continue my way around it to a T-junction, where I was promptly blasted by laser fire.

Now, this was a puzzle I probably should have solved on my own, but I was getting a bit tired of the game at this point and I just grabbed for the next clue. Turns out, I had to use the reflective properties of the silver tray and wave it, thus turning the laser back on itself.

Getting finally to the control room, I was greeted by a sinister (female) figure, holding a petrol bomb - this must have been Alpha who had killed the pilot of Snowball. Alpha ordered me to keep back, or she would throw the bomb. What to do?

This was again a puzzle I couldn’t solve on my own, but this time I am quite sure that the game just gave me insufficient hints as to what would work. I had been carrying around something called an electroflute, and examining it had revealed only that it produced low and high notes. According to the clue sheet, I just had to blow the thing and the whole problem with the bomb would go away.

Let met get this straight - blowing a high note shatters the petrol bomb
and surrounds its holder with fire. Was that thing made of glass?

The hijacker staggered out of an unseen airlock and left me to handle the fire. Luckily I had a fire extinguisher with me. All I then had to do was to turn the autopilot on.

Yeah, I did it! Now onward to scoring

Time used: 7 hours
Total time: 16 hours

PISSED-rating

Puzzles and Solvability

For a while it seemed that Level 9 would finally have succeeded in improving the quality of their puzzles. Most of the problems were at least workable and some of them were even innovative, such as the use of a handgun in piloting yourself in space. Then in the final rooms of the game I faced one disappointment after another, worst offender being the puzzle based on the notion that a sudden effect of a vacuum on a spray can would make a robot blind. Because of these last impressions I am not going to improve the score from the previous Level 9 games.

Rating: 3

Interface and Inventory

I see no significant improvements in the parser, when compared with Dungeon Adventure. In the graphical version I faced some major problems with the inventory limit, so I will lower the score here radically.

Rating: 3 (2 for graphical version)

Story and Setting

The game has a rich and detailed background and the story is potentially exciting, although there is one question that is never really answered (who is the hijacker and what is her motivation). But the true gem of the game is the setting - a spaceship with quite original and still realistic structure.

Rating: 5

Sound and Graphics

The non-graphical version will obviously get no points. The graphical version is on par with the previous level 9 games (the Amiga version might have received a point more, but I am sticking to the Spectrum version for now).

Rating: 0 (2)

Environment and Atmosphere

A clear problem with Level 9 games has been an inconsistent tone. The spaceship setting itself is quite realistic, and the beginning stages, when you are trapped in a claustrophobia inducing corridors with mechanical killing machines, feel like they could come out of a horror movie. Then we face bureaucratic droids out of Hitchhikers Guide and a holographic parody of text adventures and the tone of the game just falls apart.

Rating: 3.

Dialogue and Acting

The quality of the prose varies from dull and efficient (especially in the repetetive freezer levels) to evocative phrases, present especially when you finally get to see the icy asteroid from above. There are some real characters - Alpha and the nameless frozen crewmember - but they have only few words to say. All in all, there’s still very little improvement over previous Level 9 games.

Rating 4.

3 + 3 + 5 + 0 + 3 +4 = 18 /0.6 = 30 (32 for graphical version). I also want to award the game for one bonus point, for the remarkable fact that all characters in the game are either females or non-gendered robots - something rarely seen in so early adventure games. Thus, the text version of the game is awarded 31 points, making it the first Level 9 game to get an official score in 30s.

written by Aperama

The reward is a wonky closeup of our 'helper'– they really love to zoom in!

The pain is finally over! I no longer have to worry about having to load up Eternam. I swear my computer has been quietly weeping over running it up! The music has been extremely lacklustre when it has actually existed, the graphics are weird more than endearing.. there's just pretty consistently nothing to look forward to. The game's consistent lack of logic is enough to make me want to cry most of the time. But it's over! You guys don't all have to skim through my posts of hate-filled ranting any longer – it's over! The worst thing is that the game ends on not just a cliffhanger, but an abrupt one. Much like the last French game which I played for the blog,B.A.T., I ran into a game which promised far more than it was ever going to be capable of fulfilling, desperately struggled to fit in what it actually had and then ended with little more than a 'The End!' screen. There again, at least Eternam doesn't have a sequel...

The full view of Eternam. The map does not match the overland – 'Sholda' is black and desolate

The 'Dragoons' are good fun, at least

As the title card intimates, I have the feeling that they wanted to insert even more into this game. There's no definitive evidence to speak of, but the 'end game' seems far shorter than the rest of the game. It's the clear and quintessential 'third act', but much like the previous island everything seemed quite rushed. There's no way back from the isle of Sholda – once there, the end game has started. There are lots of enemies running about the place, and the landscape feels quite different to the rest of the game. The enemies aren't actually much more than a hassle, though - it just takes a little more effort running past them. The only really memorable thing is having the 'Dragoons' (a hostile 'reptilian' species which are a bizarre dark blue/grey shade and are the evil Mikhal Nuke's minions) explain their favoured pasttime, Squishball. Essentially, two teams of fifteen squish a human into a ball and then take turns playing American Football – only instead of an 'endzone', the 'ball' is impaled upon a spiked pole at the opposing team's end of the field. I almost wish they'd included some (quite potentially gory) pictures of the game instead of talking about it – it's about all that actually got a smile out of me here.

This guy is largely useless...

While this guy explains why we needed to steal from Neil Armstrong.. well, in a limited fashion

There are very few places to visit apart from the 'Warrens', the end area of the game. There's one person who supposedly came to Sholda to spark some human/Dragoon relations, but I don't really know what he's there for outside of a little narration for the end game itself. “Guess what – there are people around here that are going to be dangerous!” (I'm not too surprised given that the last island was closer to a run and gun game than an adventure title.) There's another who has two pieces of important information, but I have to wave the flag from the moon in the 1960s to get him to talk. Apparently, there's a 'prophecy' handy which states that the 'human who commands the stars' will be the one to save the world of Eternam, so waving the old 'Stars and Stripes' is enough to impress him. He offers freely the fact that there is a mushroom which is poisonous to the Dragoon race. He was apparently tasked to fixing this little genetic blip, but they weren't willing to go his way so he turned himself into an outcast. He also has a 'spell to kill the Prince' to offer, but in return he needs his remote control so that he can watch the Squishball championships on the TV he took when he ran from the Warrens. Apparently, the TV has no buttons. Poor design should you ask me.

An idea of the landscape – oh, and yet another color for the Dragoons, I think?

I don't even know what this is supposed to be. Magenta is not their friend.

Dragoon décor is notably less strict than one might expect

As this is literally all of the notable encounters I can list outside of the 'Warrens', it's time to enter the endgame proper. I have yet another issue here – the rooms are wildly different, going between looking like an almost organic structure at the very entrance (or is it a rock carving? I seriously don't know here) to a series of big ornate chambers, rooms that look like they must be underground to above.. The entire thing, much like the temple which encompassed the majority of Paw, is as though they had a series of artists all get different direction as to what they were actually supposed to be drawing. I suppose you could give it the handwave of 'the entire thing is a simulation', but I don't like the thought of giving anything away here. Heading in, I may well have made a mistake by starting out walking straight up and to the left, leading into the lair of the Priest of the High Dragoon. He's the one praising Allah up there. He's a pacifist, so he's not really a concern – he starts going on about the 'destruction of the island of Capit'. I possibly should have paid more attention here, as that's actually the plot of the game, but it's shown the same irreverence as everything else. Instead, struggling to see why I even had this conversation, I moved on into, well.. 'the harem'.

The Prince catches Don, so he..

… lets him into his harem. Good god.

Turns out that the girl who was kidnapped so unceremoniously all the way back in Dorsalis is here, along with a whole bunch of other women of assorted alien varieties. There's no point in talking to said girl that I can see outside of being informed that there are some 'invisibility mushrooms' handy in the same room. In fact, there are three lots of mushrooms. One is the poisonous one the ousted and science-minded Dragoon who is after the remote control mentioned – one is poisonous to humans, and one turns us invisible. Why let me into this room, again? Oh, you crazy Frenchmen! You never read the Evil Overlord list from the mid-nineties. Superman never handed Lex Luthor any Kryptonite. I don't know of any way of telling between the two ingame outside of the use of saved games, but I guessed correctly the first time and then headed through the other door. There's a room which I still can't explain outside of 'it has a diamond in it we need later'.

Any ideas, guys? I don't. I just.. don't. (The centre is me trying the 'wrong mushroom'.)

Who's this riffing on? No idea.

I don't know if this is supposed to be a joke or they
just literally ran out of rooms and reused one from Drakkhen

Newly invisible, I'm able to run around the rest of the Warrens with essentially no harm coming to me. I never really saw the lady again, either. Instead, I walk through the now easily traversed rooms and discover a few things like a 'bone', 'shiny cannon balls', a terrible seeming band.. There's a room with a huge glass pane in it (which the adventure game puzzle-mind in me immediately says the diamond is for as the time machine from earlier didn't need powering). There's also an eventful jaunt across to get the remote control. If you make the mistake of walking up and speaking with the High Dragoon, you'll get tasked with bringing the old human back to him or get fed to the sharks in a very James Bond scene. Instead, after playing Donkey Kong for a room (only the barrels don't actually knock you over) past the Drakkhen room where random enemies start flying towards Don as soon as the invisibility ends, I immediately ran back to get the spell to 'kill the Prince' without ever speaking to him. Well, after he killed me. Science prevails always.

I literally mean Donkey Kong here, too

Why a race of huge reptilians needs a shark trap is beyond me, but hey

Newly armed with the spell, there wasn't anywhere obvious to go to from there. I figured I should go back and get caught by the Prince, but the harem weren't there any more, nor the guards who arrested me to begin with. Heading through the rest of this area becomes a Dragon's Lair clone in the worst way. Walk down the wrong path? Dead! Don't have the right inventory item handy? Dead! I'll skip by many of the 'puzzles' (throwing a bone into a gigantic lizard's mouth, not walking into the wrong door because it leads to instant death, overfeeding a shark tank so they don't try to kill you as you swim over) and go onto tricking the Dragoon chef by replacing his spices with the poisonous-to-Dragoon mushroom. Why do this? Because you die in all of the other rooms otherwise. It actually takes a little doing (it's a timed puzzle where you need to hide behind a pillar) but clicked easily enough when I saw the 'spices', though I figured I'd be flaking mushroom chunks inside and not just replacing the two.

Also pictured: a blatant Simpsons reference

Oh, so the plot is finally tied together! Well.. not really.

Continuing through the senseless torture chambers (they're 'mellowed out' by the mushrooms put through their food, so they just calmly go about their actions killing people mercilessly without a care in the world) it's discovered that Cuthbert, the son of Ethelred has been held hostage here all along. Nobody really seemed too worried about him being gone to begin with! After another Indiana Jones-inspired puzzle (there are two cages and one opening closes the other – you have to leave a weight in one to let both of you go free), he promises to run home to his father. He then gives us a flute (which is used to 'snake charm' through a passage) and rushes off, meeting the lady from the harem who is now free. Why? The drugging maybe. Or just the fact that they thought it'd be funny that way. She mentions how the guy who promised to save her a.k.a. Don Jonz left her high and dry in an 'elsewhere' cutscene, after all. It wasn't a loose end I needed explained, but they did anyway. So there's that!

In case you were wondering what I meant by 'snake charming'
a passage – playing the flute leads to a rope being dropped

The 'spell to kill the Prince' is certainly.. effective

So, the big culmination of everything we've kinda muddled through up to this point is finding the Prince in his chambers. It's another dialogue puzzle where the wrong answer is an instant death and the right combination of words will lead to Don automatically killing him. Turns out the spell is called 'throw the boat'. It literally crushes him to death. This is the second last 'puzzle' of the game. He drops a key on death, which leads to the aforementioned passing of the shark tank, swimming to the inner most point of the Warrens. The final 'puzzle' is actually walking into a rock.

See that rock in the mid-right of the screen? Walking into it wins you the game

Wandering about is enough to trigger the end of the game. Don walks into a room suspiciously like a bunker, staring as the island of Capit randomly explodes from entering this room. We get a little thing about Eternam's 'circuits are finally virus-free' after 'Nuke's relay station is eliminated', something about the 'Dragon being awakened once more', and then a space ship flies off, giving us a short conversation between Don Jonz and Mikhal Nuke. Turns out Mikhal Nuke was able to escape before Capit was fried, and there could be a sequel as Mikhal comes back to conquer Eternam once more!!!

… There wasn't one, thank god. If anyone is still confused? You're not alone. I've just tried to explain it as best as I can!

Time played: I'm going to call it fifteen hours for the entire game. It overstayed its welcome at about two.
Mental age increase: The sheer amount of liquor required to complete this game likely means I need a liver transplant

Gateway - Shield Generators

Eternam - Missed It By That Much

Missed Classic: Zork II - Won! And Final Rating

Gateway - Sleepytime

History of Adventure 4: Verb-select (Point and Click) Graphical Adventures (1985)

Eternam - When you can count your money, you ain't got none!

Eternam - Oh Deer...

Missed Classic 36: Zork III: The Dungeon Master - Introduction (1982)

Gateway - Blood and Guts

Eternam - Parlez vous francais?

Gateway - Digging Up Secrets

Missed Classic: Zork III - Won! And Final Rating

Eternam - Sunshine of the Spotted Mind

Gateway - Virtual Reality

Missed Classic 37: Snowball (1983)

Snowball - Eurocracy on a cruiser

Eternam - Through the Stargate

Gateway - Won!

Missed Classic: Snowball - Won! (With Final Rating)

Eternam - Whoops, outta budget! (Won!)