The Adventurers Guild

Written by Ilmari

When it comes to Missed Classics, it's obvious that Joe's huge formerly-just-Zork-and-now-probably-whole-of-Infocom-Marathon is the main attraction right now. Because Joe is currently doing another gig in the Main Game Division (Hook), it's time for another warm-up show with a game from the company known as the British Infocom, Level 9. Braze yourselves for Lords of Time.

Why exactly does Father Time carry a scythe?

A while ago Joe Pranevich was discussing about the moments when the original creators of Sierra and Infocom begun to use outside help for their games. I’ve finally reached the period, when this happened with Level 9. While all the games of Level 9 I’ve played thus far have been designed and programmed by the Austin brothers - Mike, Pete and Nick - their fifth adventure game, Lords of Time, was designed by Sue Gazzard. She was essentially a fan of Level 9, living the life of a bored housewife, and sent a suggestion of a new game to the brothers. After some changes and addition of few new puzzles, the brothers agreed to program Mrs. Gazzard’s brain child. It seems that after this attempt Sue Gazzard never returned to game design in any role.

While we are comparing the three early adventure game companies, we might consider also the themes in their early games. Sierra, Infocom and Level 9, all produced fantasy games quite early (Sierra with Wizard and Princess, Infocom with Zorks and Level 9 with their Middle Earth - trilogy), while scifi games followed somewhat later (Sierra’s Mission: Asteroid, Infocom’s Starcross and Suspended and Level 9’s Snowball). In addition, both Sierra and Infocom had produced mystery games (although one really cannot compare Mystery House with Deadline and Witness), while Level 9 never tackled this genre.

Now, Sierra did a time travel game (Time Zone) already in 1982. If we don’t count time travel elements in some Zork games, Infocom didn’t do a proper time travel game before Trinity in 1986. As the name suggests, Lords of Time is also a game about time travel. In fact, when I read from the manual that I was about to face evil Timelords, I had a pretty good hunch what TV show inspired Mrs. Gazzard.

Even my time machine looks like Master’s Tardis

The manual recounts a dream, in which whole history appears to have become chaos: dinosaurs live to the time of first humans, and good dragons fight in Middle Ages against evil knights. It is all the handwork of nine Timelords, who use human lives like pieces in a chessboard for their own nefarious purposes. To defeat them I should throw into a cauldron several items:

Olive branch
Dragon’s wing
Ivory tusk
Teardrop
Evil eye
Dinosaur egg
Jester’s cap
Silicon chip
Gold buckle

Before I’ll begin the game proper, a note about different versions of the game is in place. Originally, up to and including Lords of Time, all the adventure games of Level 9 lacked graphics. Later, when the first individual games in Level 9 history were collected into trilogies, pictures were added. To reflect this fact, I have played two versions of each game - BBC version as an all-text version, and a graphical version made for Spectrum. While the official score was based on the text-based version, the graphical version was used for getting interesting screenshots (the quality of the graphics makes it impossible to speak of pretty screenshots).

Now, while the first two trilogies (Jewels of Darkness and Silicon Dreams) were published in 1986, Lords of Time was included in its own trilogy (Time and Magik) in 1988. It might be for this reason that I didn’t find a graphical version of Lords and Time for Spectrum. After much pondering, I thought it was about time to upgrade the graphical version I’ll be playing. I didn’t want to make the jump to a different platform too noticeable, so I’ll still use a version made for an 8-bit computer, but this time I chose C-64, mainly because it is easy to emulate. While I continue through the works of Level 9, I’ll probably stick to that choice for couple of games.

It still looks incredible compared to the Spectrum version

Prologue

I began the game, debugging a program that should be published by Level 9 (groan), when a blinding flash appeared. After this, I found myself in a living room, with a golden hourglass and a picture of an old man on a mantelpiece. When I touched the picture, the old man or Father Time came to life and essentially recapped my quest, which I had already found out from the manual. Examining the hourglass I saw that it was a valuable treasure and picking it up increased my score. So, in addition to the plot about Timelords, I am also supposed to collect valuable treasures? What a disappointment, I was hoping Level 9 was already past the treasure hunting phase.

Unlike in the Spectrum versions of Level 9 games I’ve played, C-64 version of Lords of Time has only one image for an area. Furthermore, there’s more text than in the original version

In the next room, I found a matchbox and a candle. The obvious point of these items was to produce light in dark places. The lifetime of the candle was limited, but I couldn’t just keep on shutting and turning it on, like lantern in Adventure or Zork, because I had only four matches to use.

The room contained also a large grandfather clock that I could board after winding it - this would be my time machine and also a place where I could store my stuff when I didn’t need it. Inside, I found a big pendulum and huge cogs numbered from 1 to 9 - I do hope these are going to follow some sensible pattern. By turning the cog number 1 I moved to another time and by pushing the pendulum I could open the door to the world outside time machine.

1) 1980s

Exiting the time machine I found myself at the end of a gravel drive.

Ah, the English countryside!

Touring the countryside, I found a few dead ends and roadworks, where I could snatch a grubby pick and two sturdy planks. With nothing else to do, I made my way to the delightful country cottage I was clearly supposed to investigate. Like so many mansions in adventure games, this one was desolate. I did manage to find plenty of things to steal:

Masai spear
Tin of catfood
Metronome
Jewellery case
Coil of hessian rope
Rucksack, which increased my capacity to carry things
Butterfly tin-opener, with which I could open the catfood tin
A petrol can
Looking-glass

Unless the protagonist is a pretty boy, we might have again a female hero

Having plundered the house, I proceeded to the garden. Among the flowers, I found some valerian. I also discovered a garden shed, but the keys were inside the shed and I couldn’t reach for them.

Climbing over the garden fence, I found myself on the east bank of a river, clogged with MacRonalds boxes. Beside the polluted stream I found a weeping willow with tears raining down from it. When I tried to examine the tears, the game told me just that I couldn’t see a diamond teardrop, which was one of the quest items I was supposed to find. A bit careless programming, I thought and continued interacting with the tree. I didn’t succeed in anything, but when I tried to hit the tree, the game told me I couldn’t see a sharp axe - more careless programming.

Although these unexpected revelations irked me, I got really annoyed when I noticed that the original game was really lacking in hints. The text version told me about valerian only that it is a magical herb - great news, but should I eat it, rub it on my chin or sacrifice it to gods? Now, the remake with graphics added the note that its stalk appeared ideal for waving. Great, I wouldn’t have guessed it otherwise! Waving valerian in front of the willow made the poor tree speak. Apparently it was so tired of living beside a polluted river that it wanted to get out of its misery. Now, where to get that axe?

Another place of utter stupidity - do I see the narcissus or not?

At the other side of the polluted river I could see a narcissus growing among weeds. The problem was just how to get to the opposite bank. I did have the planks. Individually they were too short, but tying them together did the trick.

When I tried to take the narcissus, it bent away and told me it was sad because it couldn’t see its own reflection in the dirty water. I naturally gave it my looking-glass, and the narcissus rewarded me with a lodestone. It was pretty obvious where to use this thing - I waved it in front of the garden shed and got the keys from inside. Now I could finally enter the shed, finding a sharp axe and a shovel. I used the axe to cut down the willow tree, which gifted me with a diamond teardrop.

One puzzle still remained. Beside the garden there was a compost heap, containing an old silver coin. When I tried to take the coin, something slapped it from my reach. When I ate a mushroom that I found in the same heap, I saw the person who had teased me - a tooth fairy. I found no way to get the coin from the fairy, so I decided to move to the next timezone.

2) Ice age

Unless I was mistaken and the first time zone was actually meant to be the age of fairy tales (with all the talking plants and tooth fairies), the numbers in my time machine didn’t appear to follow any historical progression. Here I was in an icy field that was slowly killing me to coldness. Mission number one was to find something to warm me.

With a quick search, I found a spot at the edge of the glacier with some dried wood and a mammoth that was blocking all exits. I tried to light the wood on fire with no luck, until it hit me - maybe petrol would help. After pouring the stuff all over the wood, burning became much easier. What I didn’t expect was the mammoth becoming so scared that it jumped out of its skin and ran away. A silly puzzle, but at least I now had mammoth skin to warm me and the ivory tusk, required for vanquishing the Timelords.

Since I hadn’t mapped the ice age completely, I walked up a mountain trail, stopping only to collect a meaty bone. At the end of the trail I found a cave guarded by a sabre-toothed tiger. I had brought no spear to guard me, so the tiger attacked.

The cave system looks a bit… maternal

After a reload, I was sure to take my Masai spear from my time machine, before approaching the cave. Tiger wouldn’t still let me in the cave, but it seemed hungry. Still, it didn’t want the meaty bone to chew. Instead, the kitten food satisfied it. Looking at the animal a bit closer now, I noticed that its cheek was in pain. I snapped a sore teeth out of the tiger, and it was happy enough to go away.

The first thing I found in the cave was an icicle, which was just out of reach. I spent a good while trying to figure out how to get it. I was convinced that it had something to do with spear, whether throwing it or using it to reach for the icicle. I was quite certain that I was on the right track and that I just had to find the correct phrase, and eventually I just looked at the official clue sheet for the game. To my surprise, the answer had nothing to do with the spear. Instead, I just had to shout and the icicle would loosen and fall to the ground.

The next thing I found in the cave was a silver fox, guarding yet another entrance. The meaty bone that the tiger didn’t want was just perfect for the fox. After the fox had gone, I saw that it had been guarding a wall of ice, which I shattered with a pick. My reward was a valuable candelabra.

Beyond the cave system, I found a frozen forest and a cold lake I couldn’t cross. This was again a slightly silly puzzle. I was juggling a bit with my inventory and dropped my icicle at this spot. To my surprise, the lake froze completely from this action, allowing me to reach the other side, where I discovered an intricate alpine garden and a miniature throne room with a solid cube of ice. Breaking the cube, I released a snow queen, who rewarded me with a sword.

Back to the future

Now that I had a tiger tooth, I had an idea that the tooth fairy might like it. Indeed, after a bit of haggling, he was willing to give me in exchange his silver coin and a firefly, which turned out to be a permanent light source.

Size does make a difference

It doesn’t pay to be too greedy

I think this suffices for the first post. I still have seven time zones to visit, but it is already clear that the scenes have very little to do with real history, because the producers are quite willing to mix in some fairy tale material.

Quest items found: diamond teardrop, ivory tusk
Other treasures looted: golden hourglass, metronome, jewellery case, candelabra
Other objects discovered: picture of an old man, matchbox, candle, ice pick, spear, tin-opener, valerian, lodestone, bunch of keys, sharp axe, shovel, mammoth skin, sword, silver coin, firefly

Session time: 5 hours
Total time 5 hours

Written by Alfred n’ the Fettuc

Aaaaah, Legend of Kyrandia. One of my all-time favorites! I don’t know why but the first game has always evoked images of my childhood, be it the wonderful music, the lush colours, the zany characters, the thoughtful puzzles… Needless to say I’ll be wearing huge rose-tinted glasses on this one, or I’ll find some detail point that annoys me and isn’t as good as I remember (fireberries, anyone?) and I’ll flay this piece of crap. Only the next few weeks will tell, but I’m certainly curious about playing through this one again all these years after.

That’s what I call a cover that screams adventure and danger. There is even Tinkerbell in it!

Westwood Studios has always been one of my favorite game development studios. As a young player, I was looking forward for their logo, knowing that nothing would go wrong for me if I played their games (until around the end of the millennium when things started to go sour). I’d compare Westwood in the 90’s to Blizzard nowadays. Their games were not original necessarily very original but they were polished way more than the usual product. Beautiful graphics, excellent animation and sound design…

With Dune II, Westwood hit all the right notes and almost single-handedly created the template for modern Real-Time Strategy games, which would be taken later by Blizzard for Warcraft (and we come full circle with my comparison). With Command & Conquer, their major hit which basically printed money for them during the next few years, Westwood evolved mainly into a sequel factory, spawning game after game with the same template.

But before that, Westwood tried its hand at several genres, hitting huge successes in the RPG and adventure subgenres. Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore,Blade Runner… and the aforementioned Legend of Kyrandia series.

The Land of Kyrandia, so peaceful and green…

The name of Kyrandia would famously come from a MUD Brett Sperry (Westwood co-creator) was playing with his friends called Kyrandia : Fantasy World of Legends. Apart from the name and the general heroic-fantasy setting, the game Legend of Kyrandia is totally unrelated to said MUD. The label “Fables and Fiends” that appeared on the cover of the game was supposed to helm a new series of possibly unrelated games, but only the three Kyrandia games were released under this label, probably because of the tremendous success of the first installment (it made more sense to make a sequel to the first game than take risks by changing a working formula).

The first game tells the tale of Brandon, innocent orphan still unaware of his royal lineage, while his grandfather Kallak has been turned to stone by the psychopath court buffoon, Malcolm. Malcolm is the archetypal bastard (in this game at least) without any humanity or sympathy, while being dressed as a joker. Clearly inspired by the Batman’s Joker (and might have been or not inspiration for Kefka in Final Fantasy VI two years later, but that’s only my opinion). He is the perfect embodiment of monstrosity and is surprisingly violent for an adventure game in this day and age. Comparatively, Brandon, your own character appears a bit as a whiner (might be his voice actor though).

Malcolm, showing random cruelty towards animals

Besides turning Kallak into stone, Malcolm has killed the royal couple and is basically blowing random stuff up for his own enjoyment. Brandon will seek revenge and try to stop the evil jester to wreck any more havoc in the realm. His adventure will take him through several maze-like Kyrandian forests and the dreaded fireberries caves, to finish in the Royal Castle that’s been taken over by the buffoon. He’ll find some help in the Mystics of the realm, who can’t face Malcolm themselves because of their magic slowly disappearing. As usual, Brandon will reveal himself as the chosen one, and the only one that can face the terrifying clown.

A classy cutscene with focus-pulling shows the encounter between Malcolm and Kallak

Legend of Kyrandia would later spawn two sequels, Hand of Fate, where you play as Zanthia, a pretty magician with a taste for clothes and Malcolm’s Revenge, where you play as Malcolm himself, even if a bit retconned in order to show him more as a victim than the crazed monster he clearly is in the first game. All these games show the beautiful graphics, sounds and animation that’s been Westwood’s speciality. The land of Kyrandia itself would also evolve quite a bit during the series, starting as an almost classical heroic fantasy setting in the first game, to a completely zany universe by the third one, more akin to Monty Pythons than Lord of the Rings. The trilogy has been released back-to-back with only one year apart each installment and is considered today as one of the few classics that didn’t came out of Sierra or Lucasarts offices.

We’ll see together if the game actually holds up to my cherished childhood memories or if its flaws overcome the rose-tinted glasses. It’s time to explore the fabulous land of Kyrandia, to save Kallak and the realm!

Malcolm, what have you done? Vengeance will be mine!

Written by Joe Pranevich

Clap if you believe in faeries!

Our game begins in a town full of pirates. If you missed the introduction, our protagonist is Peter Banning, a boring and career-obsessed lawyer with two kids. While visiting London, his kids are kidnapped by the evil Captain Hook and taken to Neverland. Mr. Banning learns that faeries are real and that he is actually Peter Pan, grown to middle-age and without his memories. Tinkerbell flies him off to Neverland and they land right smack in the middle of pirate-central. Why there and not with the Lost Boys? I have no idea! In fact, the only reason I know this much is because I vaguely remember the movie as the opening cinematic is sparse on the details. If I will need to recall the film to understand key plot elements throughout the whole game, I may get into trouble quickly.

My first impressions are not too bad. The opening area that I find myself in has a good respect for the Peter Pan mythos: the Crocodile, Hook’s ticking nemesis, stands stuffed in the center of the square as a sign that the pirates have won in Pan’s absence. The whole town seems to be made of parts of ships pulled together, perhaps from a long history of shipwrecks on the Neverland shores. Tinkerbell is my constant companion, hovering around Peter’s head, but the pirates don’t seem to pay much attention to either her or me. What am I supposed to be doing?

Peter and Hook squint and fidget a bit every now and then.

I size up the interface and it’s pretty understandable: bottom-of-screen actions like LucasArts games while adapting Sierra-style cursors. We have icons for “look”, “speak”, “get”, “use”, and “give”. Underneath those is a box for inventory items. I already have a “letter about the project”, a “holster phone” and a checkbook. Strangely, the save game disk is also an inventory object! By “using” it, we can get to a very simple saved game menu with five save slots and no way to label them. I hope that there will be a metafictional moment later where you have to throw your saved game disk at a pirate or something, but I suspect I ask too much. Unlike the Sierra games, your mouse cursor doesn’t change when you click on an icon but at least mousing over exits tell you where they lead. Finally, a ton of space is set aside in the corners for images of Hook and Pan. Every now and then they sneer or something but maybe that will be used for something later. All in all, it’s not a bad system but we’ll see how it plays.

What do I do first? I try talking to Tinkerbell and that’s doubly an exercise in frustration: first, because she’s so hard to catch as she moves around quickly and second, because all she says when I finally nab her is, “Welcome to Neverland!” I can talk to a few of the pirates that run by but all Peter does is ask about Hook and no one wants to answer. The area scrolls a bit to the left and right and we can find a tailor shop, a bait shop, roads to the north and west, and a pier to the east. Of course, I’m making up the compass directions but you get the idea.

Pants and Magnets ‘R’ Us

I hit the tailor shop and get the first clue what I am supposed to do: I need a pirate uniform! Why, I have no idea, but Tinkerbell says I need one so I believe her. I talk to the shopkeeper and am initially concerned that the game is bugged because conversation gets stuck in an endless loop, but that’s just me misunderstanding the interface: when you talk, you have to right-click to change Peter’s response. I was left-clicking and so always picking the first option since it wasn’t clear I had a choice. I should have been more careful reading the manual! Running through all my options, I discover that the tailor would be happy to sell me a hat (44 gold), pants (84 gold), or a magnet (9 gold). Since all I have is a checkbook and he won’t take either that or an IOU, I leave. I’ll need to find a way to get some money.

There’s an Emmy on the shelf in honor of all the awards Hook would *cough* win.

Just down “Mugger’s Alley” to the north, I find the “Jolliest Roger’s Place”, a tavern catering to drunk pirate patrons. The Jolly Roger, if you are not up on your Peter Pan, was the name of Captain Hook’s ship. There’s a huge “Hook vs. Pan” banner on the wall and the bartender tells me that they are gearing up for a final war between Hook and his young adversary. A pirate in the corner, labeled simply “lazy pirate”, offers a few more dialog options than most: he tells me that when he drinks too much cocoa, he falls asleep and people steal his clothes. Aha! Is that a way to get a pirate’s uniform without having to pay the tailor? I ask the bartender about cocoa and he’s happy to sell me some for a gold piece but they are all out of mugs. Really? I’m not sure if I’m more perplexed by a bar serving hot cocoa to pirates or one that doesn’t have anything to put drinks in.

The engine’s seams are beginning to show already. The pirates we’ve come across while exploring are named simply like “dumb pirate” or “dangerous pirate”. Most of them do not have unique dialog, but we have to try them all anyway because (like the “lazy pirate”), some of them do. We have to talk to everyone or risk missing an important clue. After the main square, the screens have been quite static with very little music or animation to speak of to bring them to life.

This looks promising...

The next stop down the alley is Dr. Chop, a multi-purpose dentist and surgeon that serves pirate clientele. His character design is cartoonish and doesn’t match the style of the rest of the game. Tinkerbell tells me that his clock is magnetic, another example of a clue given before I have any idea what the heck she is talking about. There isn’t even a clock in the room! When chatting up the dentist, he offers one gold coin for one of my gold teeth and I intend to say “no” but bump the left mouse button instead. Oops! He props Peter up in the chair and extracts one of our teeth. Fortunately, it doesn’t kill me and I end up one gold coin richer, but I do not have nearly enough teeth to buy a suit of clothes. Before I leave, I snag the roller blind off his window. Why? I have no idea but it wasn’t nailed down. I also try to snag the map of the island but it is stuck to the wall beyond my reach.

Shouldn’t that be “fairies”?

The alley ends at a different road into town but Peter refuses to go down that way… yet. Is that where I need to go once I get a full set of clothes? I am not sure. Off to the right is a pair of passages to Good Form Pier and its associated beach. Hook’s ship is moored nearby but a guard won’t let me onto it because I’m not a pirate. Aha! That is why I needed the pirate uniform! I’m not upset about the puzzle but it seems lazy somehow that I get hints to the solution before I even learn what the obstacle is. There’s also a sign that says “no fairys” so I may have to part ways with Tink before I board. I check out the beach as well but there doesn’t appear to be anything I can do yet. (Editor’s Note: Yes, I was absolutely blind and missed the “X” on the beach. I was too busy monkeying with the plywood and pulley but I’ll get back to it, I promise.)

I hope no one needs to use the bathroom...

Since I explored all the way down Mugger’s Alley, I head back to Pirate Square and finish exploring the other two exits from there. First up is Dead Man’s Pier off to the east, a scenic spot with a pirate fishing in front of a beautiful Neverland sunset. There are two shops there: the Crossed Swords Inn and a bait shop. I explore the inn first, stealing a mug off of a table, but not finding much else I can do. A sleeping pirate is blocking a set of stairs to a door labeled “WC” and I know my Britishisms enough to expect that means a bathroom. If I want to explore there, I’ll have to find a way to wake the pirate. (An alarm clock?) I also see if I can steal his clothes but the game doesn’t even give me that option.

I’d like to buy some… bait?

The bait shop… doesn’t look like a bait shop. If anything, it looks like another bar. If fact, now that I put these screenshots next to each other, the last two rooms look surprisingly similar! The pirate at the table in the lower left is identical between the two buildings, the second floor is on the same level, same clock, etc. I sense budget-cutting. At the top of the stairs are two doors: one with a sign that says “busy” and another leading to a balcony overlooking Pirate Square but I don’t see anything that I can do there yet.

So, I have to ask? Is this all an elaborately hidden prostitution joke in a children’s game? There is no “bait” for sale here anywhere. The name of the store is “Bait and Tackle” and there was a fisherman outside but inside doesn’t have anyone selling any fishing gear. Is this an obscure pun on “wedding tackle”, a British euphemism for male genitalia? Does the “busy” sign mean what I think it means? Am I reading too much into this or did they really hide a brothel in Neverland?

More clothes!

My final stop is the western exit from Pirate Square. Despite looking like a major thoroughfare, it actually leads only to a small alley containing someone’s laundry. Peter seems particularly drawn to a jacket on the line but there’s no way to reach it. I mark this down as a clue.

Unfortunately, I’ve now explored all of the rooms so I have to hunker down to solve puzzles. My first stop is back to the tavern and I purchase a cup of hot cocoa from the barman. Strangely, we don’t use the “use” icon here, rather we “give” both the money and the mug to the barman one by one and a full mug of cocoa appears in our inventory. At least, I assume it’s cocoa. The game just tells us that it is a “full mug” from this point. Was the whole “cocoa” joke a last-minute replacement for an alcoholic beverage? I give the cocoa to the lazy pirate… and nothing happens. There's no animation. He doesn’t mention it. He doesn’t react. There is no feedback at all except that the item disappears from my inventory. I talk to him again and nothing is different, not even the dialog options about sharing a drink. Is this a bug?

I restart the game just in case and this time re-explore everything to see things that I might have missed. I missed a lot! You really have to click on everything. I am out of practice with these types of games…

How’s the fishin’?

Doing a pixel-by-pixel hunt of the game, I find a number of things that I missed on my first pass:

Two more mugs, one in the Crossed Swords Inn and one in the “bait shop”. They were in plain sight but I didn’t think to try and pick up them all.
A washing line pole and an anchor in the alley with the hanging laundry.
A second gold coin if I’m willing to get another tooth pulled. After that, I’m out of gold teeth. Dr. Chop also (finally) tells me that he buried his clock on the beach. I find the obvious “X” there but we can’t use our hands to dig. I suspect this is where I’ll need the magnet from the tailor’s shop.
A spare rope on the pier by the fisherman.
Tinkerbell gives me a lot more tips if I keep talking to her. I make it a habit to talk to her in every room, but I’m not sure if the location matters or not.

Using all my new stuff, I work out that I can almost grab the jacket off the line with my pole but am stopped when the washer-woman pokes her head out the window and yells at me. I’ll need to figure out a more subtle method. I also work out that I can tie the rope to the anchor but at this point I am unsure what I could use that for other than mooring a boat. Using my second painful gold coin, I buy another mug of cocoa for the lazy pirate but still get no feedback at all. Tinkerbell occasionally gives me a hint that I’m on the right track (“Fake Jake looks like he needs a mug of cocoa or two”), but I’m not completely sure that the lazy pirate that I am giving the cocoa to is even “Fake Jake” since there’s no way to find out his name.

A complete accident!

While experimenting, I stumble on something terribly random. I was up on the balcony next to the… er… bait shop trying to see what I could do with the crocodile. I thought I could snag the clock out of the crocodile’s mouth by throwing the anchor and rope at it. Instead, I end up swinging all the way across Pirate Square. It’s exciting! It also defies physics because the rope gets thrown well-above anything it could attach to, but that’s okay. On the other side of the square, I land on a balcony with a door. I knock and it’s the lady who works at the laundry! She doesn’t want to let me in and I end up having to swing all the way back empty-handed.

I swing back and this time Tinkerbell gives me a hint that the tavern keeper knows how to get a hat. I chat him up and discover that in his youth, he would swing across the square and steal people’s hats. That sounds like just what I needed! I do the swinging again and this time I retrieve a hat off of one of the pirates below. I do not know if it was just that I got lucky or if there is some timing involved but I have one item down. Tinkerbell’s next hint is that we can play tricks on Mrs. Smeedle, the washer woman. I have no idea how contextual these are but it seems that the quality of her hints just skyrocketed. Either I was just unlucky before or I’m on the right track now. With that hint, I do the swinging and knocking yet again but this time try to run all the way from there to the hidden area behind the square. I make it (in two attempts) and am able to snag the jacket without being interrupted. That’s two! Where do I get the third? That answer comes quickly: the jacket contains the missing third gold piece that I needed to buy another cup of cocoa. I use that and finally the “lazy pirate” falls asleep! I steal his clothes and have to search to find someplace private to get changed; I end up doing it back where I stole the jacket. That’s very subtle, Peter, returning to the scene of the crime with the stolen goods literally on your back…

I’m a pirate with a fairy. Do you have a problem with that?

With the outfit on, the guard blocking Hook’s ship disappears and I can board. The ship is a few screens wide with a crowd of pirates blocking the way on the far left and a prison cell and cargo hold entrance on the right. The pirates are listening to someone give a speech, but I can’t press my way through. Similarly, I can’t seem to open the cell or enter the hold. I can interact with the cannons on the deck, but the game doesn’t let me fire any of them. It takes another pixel hunt of the entire game, but I find eight gold coins in the pots of gunpowder by the cell. Now, I can buy the magnet!

Not an efficient means of treasure-hunting.

I buy the magnet off of the tailor and I use it on the big red “X” on the beach. That pulls up a still-ticking alarm clock. I remember from the TV show that Hook hates the sound of ticking because it reminds him of the crocodile that ate his hand. I take the clock onto the ship and this time the crowd parts to let me through. As we approach Hook, he hears the ticking and pauses his speech. He captures us and Peter gives a wimpy little speech before he is silenced by Hook. The captain is disappointed and Tinkerbell negotiates with him for three days to get “Peter Pan” back into fighting shape. Even with that agreement, he forces Peter to walk the plank and we disappear beneath the waves.

“Bite your tongue. Don't make a scene, dear.”

So far, I am of a mixed mind. It took a long time for me to figure out what to do and start solving puzzles, but once I got back into the mold of pixel-hunting and random experimentation, it went pretty quickly. I also came to appreciate Tinkerbell’s help once I worked out that I need to talk to her frequently to get all of the clues that I needed to progress. The game is missing some polish and flair, but it’s not half bad. Let’s see how the rest of it goes now that we’re out of the opening section.

Glub, glub, glub.

Time played: 6 hr 5 min
Inventory: Letter, Phone, Checkbook, Pole, Anchor & Rope, Magnet, Alarm Clock

Written by Ilmari

3) Flintstones Era

I landed on a prairie, with large animals grazing around me - dinosaurs. I particularly ran into one allosaurus and one tyrannosaurus, which both started to follow me and finally had me for a lunch, if I happened on the same screen with them. The obvious answer was to lead the allosaurus to the tyrannosaurus and watch the two take care of each other.

With the dinosaurs taken care of, I could continue mapping the prairie. Soon, I found myself at the bottom of a pit, which had been hidden by a bunch of fresh-cut leaves. I took the leaves and a strange mirror that had been half-buried in the ground. What was so strange about the mirror, you ask? Well, if I tried to examine it, the mirror expanded and swallowed me, leading to a game over,

My next task was to get out of the pit. Fortunately, a brontosaurus was peering at me, and if I gave the leaves to it, it would lift me from the pit. Problem was, the brontosaurus then prevented me from walking anywhere. I finally tried waving the mirror that I had just found in front of the brontosaurus, and indeed, the dinosaur was swallowed wholesale. I noticed quickly that if I tried to drop the mirror, it would break and release the dinosaur.

I was just in Ice Age studying caves, and now I should do
the same thing in dinosaur age. Pretty unimaginative

The manual had already mentioned that I would find cavemen and dinosaurs at the same period, due to the meddling Timelords, so I wasn’t particularly surprised when I found a cave full of human beings. The cavemen didn’t like me and promptly killed me, if I loitered around for a while. The simple solution was to break the mirror and let the brontosaurus chase away them.

The cave system was one of those illogical maps I really hate to explore - if I went west, going east wouldn’t lead me to the original room. I did manage to find several interesting things:

Pebble painted white, with black eye markings
Dinosaur egg, required for defeating Timelords
Stone pot, a valuable example of stone age handicraft
A stone club
An animated skeleton guarding an entrance
Caveman dragging a cavewoman by her hair (groan)
Something called an invention room with a closed door

The stone club just begged to be used, but it didn’t work against the animated skeleton, which would just kill me, if I attacked it. Instead, it was pretty obvious that I should use the skull-like pebble in some manner. The graphical version even hinted that it would be ideal for throwing. Indeed, throwing the pebble at skeleton destroyed the magic animating the thing. As a reward, I found a carved tiger figurine.

The caveman was resilient to my attacks. The graphical version once again gave the additional hint that a well placed missile might be able to take care of him. Indeed, throwing the club at the caveman killed him. The cavewoman I had released showed her gratitude with a gold nugget, which by pure chance resembled Venus of Milo without her head and arms.

All that was left to solve was the invention room. In the original version, this puzzle was just incomprehensible. The graphical version was kind enough to give an obscure hint, telling that I found a cartoon of a man taking a bath and saying “backwardness can make rueful”.

Notice how the cave system has changed somewhat

The first thing that came to my mind from bathing and invention was Archimedes, who was famous of saying Eureka, when he entered his bath and noticed the water that was replaced by his body mass. I didn’t get it at the time, but it now seems obvious that the latter part of the hint was meant to point out that EUR is RUE backwards.

In any case, saying Eureka opened my way to the next room, the invention alcove. This was a slightly better puzzle. I saw JWAAMTETS inscribed on one wall. Taking every other letter I got JAMES and the rest of the letters spelled WATT. Saying James Watt I got inside a small recess, where I found The Wheel, world’s first hard disc. For some peculiar reason, dropping The Wheel returned me back to my time machine, although I of course didn’t want to do that and miss one treasure.

4) On high seas (almost)

Entering the next time zone, I encountered a completely new problem. In all the previous time zones the door to my time machine had remained visible, but when I now exited the clock, it and the door were gone. I could have used The Wheel to get back to the time machine, but I didn’t want to lose it. Yet, I already had an idea of the solution. I haven’t mentioned it, but in all the time zones I’ve visited, I have found a sort of “backdoor” to my time machine. It hasn’t been a literal door, but more like some dimensional wormhole hidden in some crevice, which has led me inside the clock. I was probably supposed to find the backdoor in the current time zone.

I am already pining for the fjords

I could see a Viking ship, which unfortunately appeared to be nothing but decoration, and a lone guard, who appeared to be shivering. I gave him the mammoth skin and he handed me a lur, mentioning that there was a reward for capturing the pirate. Sure enough, when I played the lur, a horde of vikings appeared and were very angry that I had summoned them with no Pirate Pete around. Game over.

I am a bit perplexed what time this is meant to be, since Viking Era is definitely distinct from the Golden Age of Piracy. Yeah, I know pirates as such existed outside the 17th and 18th century Caribbean, but it still seems weird - especially as Vikings could also be called pirates.

Caves? Again!?

It appears to be a common trope in early adventure games that pirates live in caves - at least this one was close to sea. One cave room was told to have a soft ground, which seemed an obvious hint that I should dig there. Indeed, I found a parchment with the following poem:

To the sunset you must go,
keeping high and never low.
In a sheltered, hidden cove,
you will find a treasure trove.
Pitfalls you are sure to meet,
you may even get wet feet!
but in the end you are sure to greet
that dreadful scoundrel, Pirate Pete!

This was a pretty clear instruction to go west and up, but where should I begin? I managed to find a cave room, with a rocking boulder blocking further movement. Pushing the rock away, I found myself in yet another cave maze, where walking anywhere else but west or up led me inevitably to a death by giant squid or water scorpion.

Really Pete, you hide in a trunk and wait travelers to find your cave before you rob them?

At the end of the maze I found the pirate’s hideout with a large chest. When I opened the chest, Pirate Pete jumped out and stole something from me. When I played the lur, vikings came and took the pirate away, at the same time handing me an olive branch, which was one of the quest items.

The chest was huge enough that I could enter it. It contained whatever stuff had been stolen by the Pirate Pete, but also a handle. By pulling the handle, I found the backdoor I had searched and could now continue my travels in time.

5) Middle Ages

At the start of my next adventure, I found myself on a road leading to a small village. A milestone, which I of course pocketed like a true adventurer, told me that I had come to Hope Village.

At least I’ll have some hope for a drink

Like all good villages, Hope came with an inn. There was a cask of ale on the table, but the bartender wouldn’t let me take it without a payment. Fortunately, he accepted my gold nugget.

Moving along, I found several things of interest:

A maze-like copse, with a hungry dragon in the middle of it

It must be a small dragon to be able to hide here

Cobble Square, where I could throw a rotten apple at people in stocks, although this was an act leading to an immediate game over
A castle moat I couldn’t cross
Thirsty guard in front of the castle

It was pretty clear that the thirsty guard wanted some ale. As a reward, I received some food.

In the text-version it’s just spiced bread with pickle

The dragon in the copse was hungry, so it was a natural move to offer it some food. Dragon thanked me, although it would have liked more mustard. The noble beast offered to take me to a ride, but after a short flight, the dragon dropped into the castle moat and went away soaking wet. Still, I had gotten to the other side of the moat, although I had now no way to go back the other way.

Looking around me, I found a small dragon wing, which I would require against the Timelords. I also noticed a small frog, which obviously was in need of some smooching. The animal turned into a handsome prince. Considering that the anonymous protagonist expressly likes to keep on kissing the formerly-froggy-prince, we can definitely say this is pretty progressive game for its time.

In the castle keep I found a gauntlet, an armour and a black knight preventing me to go further. The black knight attacked me, but wearing the armour prevented my death. Then, the prince dealt with the knight and carried the body away.

Entering the dungeon

After taking stairs down I found myself in the castle dungeon. The ground was disturbed, which was again a sure sign to dig. At first, I found an empty, but bejewelled coffer, and after that, the backdoor to my time machine. Time to go to the next zone.

6) Middle ages, again?

My target this time was a stately manor.

Starting with the first floor I found:

Drinking horn
Sweetmeats
Pack of playing cards
Silver bell, with which I could summon a jester, who had lost a tool of his trade

My first thought was to give the jester the pack of cards, but that wasn’t the solution looked for. Instead, when I examined the cards in the graphical version, it told me that I could shuffle the cards. Of course, you can do it, but it’s not a verb you’d expect to be used in an adventure game. Well, I shuffled the cards, found the joker and gave it to jester, who rewarded me with his cap. Another object in Timelord shopping list crossed.

Was I searching a medieval mansion? Or could it be from some later period? Jesters did exist in renaissance too. I continued upstairs, but the things I found there didn’t really solve the problem:

Valuable oriental rug
A lute
Dogs guarding an ottoman

If I lingered too long in the same room with the dogs, they alerted the guards. Fortunately, the sweetmeats, which I had found downstairs, kept the dogs happy. Within the ottoman I found a valuable crown.

Playing the lute I had just found, I was told that I heard ghostly steps moving to the stairway. Playing again in the stairway revealed a secret door. Behind this door lied a hedge maze - again just a filler. At the centre of the maze I found a well with water that boosted my strength, and within that well, a backdoor to my time machine.

Only three time zones to go, so this is a perfect time to stop. I can already say that the four zones I now played were a bit of a disappointment. Many of the zones felt like I had seen them before, and there were too many mazes to my taste. I am hoping that the final zones will add something interesting to the proceedings.

Session time: 7 hours
Total time: 12 hours

Quest items found: diamond teardrop, ivory tusk, dinosaur egg, olive branch, dragon wing, jester’s cap
Other treasures looted: golden hourglass, metronome, jewellery case, candelabra, stone pot, carved figurine, The Wheel, bejewelled coffer, oriental rug, jewelled crown
Other objects discovered: picture of an old man, matchbox, candle, ice pick, spear, tin-opener, valerian, lodestone, bunch of keys, sharp axe, shovel, sword, silver coin, firefly, lur, parchment, milestone of Hope Village, gauntlet, armour, lute

Written by Alfred n the Fettuc

Brandon’s journal - entry #1 : Damn Malcolm! This monster has turned my grandfather Kallak to stone! And now the wooden wall of his hut starts talking to me telling me about my destiny and how I’m supposed to fight this jester devil and save the world! Now if I could only find a way to read the magic note that I found on grandfather’s desk? Maybe Brynn will be able to help me…

Note : having experienced a tragic MacBook crash, this post will be shorter than usual in order to be able to release it (somewhat) on schedule. Sorry about that guys, I promise you a full-length post for next week! -Alfred

First of all and without further ado : playing Kyrandia nowadays is still a blast! The MIDI music and the low resolution graphics are still as beautiful and enchanting as it was before. Pixel art is still what’s holding up best, especially when you compare it to digitized graphics or early 3D ones! But enough of this for now, let’s try and figure these puzzles out…

Pretty hut, and with a natural elevator to boot!

The first thing that happens to you is the wall of the hut animating itself and talking to you. It tells you you have to stop Malcolm because you were chosen for it. It doesn’t give you much, though, even after Brandon pleading he wouldn’t know how to start.

Don’t use drugs, kids, or this might happen to you too.

Come on, answer me, damn wall!

I thoroughly examine Kallak’s hut, finding a note on the table (unreadable except for the name “Brynn” from the nearby temple written on it), a garnet, an apple (in the pot) and a saw (well hidden under the table, pixel hunting, here I come!). With four (!) items to find on the first screen, I’m guessing there’s gonna be a lot of inventory puzzles on this one. I exit the hut, using a moving branch as an elevator (which appears perfectly normal to Brandon while he was shocked to find the wall speaking…)

This is a game that involves mapping. A lot of the screens around the forest just look the same. On the plus side, it makes the world bigger than it really is, while on the minus side, it can sometimes feel like repetitive scenery. Thankfully the gorgeous graphic and fantastic music do a great job easing you through the world and I never felt bored (with Brandon’s walking speed put to the max).

Once out of the hut and down the natural elevator, I go west towards Brynn’s temple. On the way I pass a dead willow tree with a tear-shaped mark in the trunk. Probably Malcolm’s work as well.

The green screen behind proves that the shooting of Legend of Kyrandia probably has been done in studio and not natural location. No willow tree was hurt during production.

I reach Brynn’s temple who uses her magic to translate Kallak’s message. He asks her to direct me towards the amulet (whatever that is) and to use the lavender rose to key the spell. Still cryptic, Brynn sends me on my way to get a lavender rose.

Fetch quest number #7561

I exit the temple and start to map out the eastern area of the hut. I see three major points of interest. A lake with tears falling into it (I grab one of them) and an altar surrounded by lavender roses (which I hungrily grab as well). The third point is a cavern in the south where the bridge that allows passage to other parts of Kyrandia has collapsed. I meet with a guy there who tells me he’ll need a saw in order to repair the bridge. I’m happy to oblige.

Herman is the first example of the loonies that inhabit Kyrandia

Herman leaves the cave to get some planks. On the way exploring and mapping the forest I found two more gems to add to my collection which are an emerald and a sapphire. I know the fact that gems appearing randomly out of the blue is somewhat justified in the second part but we’re touching what is probably one of the weakest parts of the game : half-randomized item placement. I know it’s the biggest part of what will be our first major puzzle (coming soon) and can’t remember if that happens later in the game. We’ll see about that, I guess. On my way, I pass again in front of the dead willow tree. I put the tear I got from the pond in the recess… The results are great and the tree gets back to life!

Why? Hmmm… Magic I guess?

As soon as the tree is restored, a kid, Merith, enters the screen. Brandon and him seem to have a history of playing together, probably hide and seek, considering that Merith immediately tells Brandon that he has found a marble and that he has to chase and catch him if he wants it. Before chasing him, I finish my trip to Brynn’s temple and hand her over the lavender rose.

She transforms the rose into silver and tells me I have to use it on the magic altar in order to get the amulet. I exit the temple again and start chasing Merith.

Give me the damn marble or you’re gonna get it!

After a few screens, I get in Merith’s back (involuntarily but still) and be able to surprise him in a nice and friendly way :

You know you can count on me…

This little bit of slapstick allows me to get the marble Merith found. It allows me to “reboot” the altar that lights up with magic. Putting the silver rose on it makes my inventory flash and sparkle… the amulet appears! Well, for now, it’s pretty useless. I’ll need more time to reveal its powers. I come back to the temple. Brynn is nowhere to be seen… the plot thickens…

Bzzzzt

Going back to the bridge, I see that Herman has finished his job. I can cross it to the Timbermist Woods, where my next adventures await!

Join us next time as we tackle two of the infamous parts of Kyrandia as we’ll be randomly picking gems in a lot of forest screens and spend time mapping the feared fireberry caves…

Spoiler alert : It won’t take very long and he probably won’t like it...

Session time : 1 hour
Total time : 1 hour

Inventory : Garnet, emerald, sapphire, apple, note

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

Welcome back! Last week, our lawyer-turned-hero had two of his teeth pulled, drugged a pirate with cocoa, and stole pirate clothes all to gain access to the famous Jolly Roger, Captain Hook’s ship, to rescue his kids. Making it there wasn’t enough: Hook easily defeated me but Tinkerbell argued that she could get me into fighting shape in three days. Hook let me go so he could have more of a challenge but still forced me to walk the plank. It’s been a fun adventure so far, but I am curious where this will go next.

As I was playing and working on this post, I also tucked into Peter and Wendy, the original Peter Pan novel from 1911. (The play came first but it was modified many times in its theatrical run.) Honestly, I do not think it will help much and puts me in a strange position where I am catching the obscure references to the original book but have no idea of even the big connections to the Hook film. Depending on how things go, I will try to either watch Disney’s animated Peter Pan or Hook for next week’s post. My first observation: this book is much darker than I expected, very focused on topics like death, memory, and the role of parents. It’s a fun read, but somehow I didn’t expect a book that would make me think so much. More on that in a bit. For now, I think I have to help Mr. Banning to stop drowning…

All the places we’ll get to explore?

I start this week standing on the bottom of the lagoon next to a giant plug and a large shell. A few mermaids are nearby but they won’t talk to me, or perhaps they cannot because we’re all under water. How isn’t Peter drowning anyway? The mermaids point off into the distance but I’m stuck on this screen. I click around for a few moments to discover a conch shell in the giant one; I can “hear the ocean” in it-- not quite a trick since I’m standing in it-- but I pocket it anyway. What I initially interpret as a plug turns out to be a pulley system with something wedged in it. I can use my stick (previously used to get the pirate jacket off the line) and can remove the obstruction. That allows me to climb into the shell and take it as an elevator up onto a cliff (or a tree?) overlooking Neverland. It’s quite a view from the top! It’s one of the most memorable sequences of the game so far and I hope the map (with a skull cave, giant waterfall, and forests) suggests places that we’ll go later in the game.

North, west, south, west… right?

I didn’t notice at first, but I am alone: Tinkerbell was left back on the Jolly Roger. Without her, I won’t have anyone to ask for hints, but perhaps this means that the training wheels are off and I’m in the main part of the game. Somehow I come off of the elevated section into a dark forest with confusing signs, mushrooms, and the occasionally spooky tree. I pass through a few screens before I realize what it is: a maze. Not a huge one, but I have to map it out to make sure that I do not miss any exits or items. I’m sure there are lots of games where you wander through a forest, but I’m strangely reminded of the Quest for Glory I remake here. I double-check and the art style isn’t quite the same; I assume that one spooky forest just naturally looks like another.

Not even the size of the Hundred Acre Wood.

The secret entrance to Konohagakure?

I explore the whole of the forest and find the entrance to the Lost Boys hideout but surprisingly nothing else: no hidden items, nooks with obscure characters, or anything. I see more than a few trees with faces on them (that I cannot talk to), rock slides, mushrooms I cannot pick, and more but there appears to be nothing I can do with any of them. The Lost Boys lair turns out to be in the far north of the woods with two possible paths there. As we approach a particularly large tree, we are suddenly snagged by a rope-trap. Just when we think all is lost, Tinkerbell reappears! She releases us from the trap and reveals that we will have to convince the Lost Boys that I am Peter Pan. The tree opens up and I can enter the boys’ hidden village.

Invisible food?

Just inside the entrance is the dining room where a number of the Lost Boys are eating an invisible meal. The assembled boys include (from left to right), Thudbutt, “Don’t Ask”, “Too Small”, “Latch Boy”, and Pockets. Rufio, their leader, sits at the head of the table. I remember Thudbutt and Rufio from the film but am unsure about the others. Unlike back at the pirate village, I can learn their names by looking at them. I chat up the kids but other than asking them to help me get into shape, there isn’t too much to say. With Rufio, in contrast, most of my dialog options are insults. I can call him a “juvenile delinquent”, for example, or an “undersized grease monkey”. Peter needs to work on his put downs! I’m not sure if this is an oblique reference to the Monkey Island series or something from the movie but for now the insults appear pointless. There are three exits from the dining room: “Lost Boys Workshop”, “Round Pond”, or “Sling Shot”, roughly left-to-right. I start to explore from the left. Meanwhile, Tinkerbell seems to have flown off again. I won’t be able to go to her for hints in the same way that I did at the pirate village.

The world’s lamest archery range.

Inside the workshop, I meet up with an unnamed Lost Boy who is working on an egg launcher for the upcoming battle with Hook. The pirates will be using guns and swords but sure, an egg cannon seems like a good idea. He offers me some elastic if I will fetch some eggs for him. I make a note of it and run down the rest of our conversation options. He tells me that I can get fairy dust from Tinkerbell and that I can get wood for a bow in the “Four Seasons”. My old pan pipes are up on the wall and the boy explains that they are used for target practice. Apparently, none of the boys have very good aim… My guess is that I will need to create a bow to knock them down using the wood and elastic. I also find a suction cup arrow I can pick up on the table, reinforcing that conclusion. The pan pipes are from the original stories; Peter played them at the foot of Wendy’s bed when she was asleep.

Cue up the fitness montage!

Just to the west of the workshop is the “Jogging Area”, something like a Lost Boys fitness club. Pockets is here, but the game won’t let me talk to him. (Instead giving me the error, “How can I talk to that?” when I try to. That just seems rude.) Despite being called a jogging area, there is nowhere here that I can run, but I can use an exercise bike and lift weights. Neither of those seem to accomplish anything except trigger little animations. There are two more exits from here, the “Four Seasons” and the “Avenger”. I take the latter.

Have you ever had shawarma?

The Avenger turns out to be a small ship, not very seaworthy but in Neverland the power of pretend is a powerful thing. Peter did not have a boat in the original stories, at least until the end when he had captured the Jolly Roger for himself and sailed it to London, but the “avenger” was the title that Peter took on for himself when he rescued Wendy and the Lost Boys at the conclusion of the book. There’s a bit of fishing net that I can pick up and a bell that I can’t seem to ring. A second dock here cries out for another ship to be moored at later in the game. There’s no other exits from here so my next stop is the “Four Seasons”.

I was hoping for violin music. Anyone else?

In what I think of as the far north of the Lost Boys’ complex is the “Four Seasons”. That turns out to be a long hallway of a room where, naturally enough, different parts have different weather from winter in the far west to autumn in the east. In the “spring” section of the room, I find a chicken but there is no obvious way to relieve her of an egg. I am also able to collect some dead wood and pick some flowers. I assume this area was also created for the movie because no such place existed in the original novel.

This looks safe...

With those four rooms explored, I have covered the western half of the village. I cross the dining hall and discover the “slingshot”, a practice area for teaching Lost Boys to fly. The slingshot is broken, but that’s not too bad because the Lost Boy here (named “Ace”, not one of the ones eating dinner) says that I’ll need to practice jumping off the cliff first. Oh, boy! Ace tells me that I can fix the slingshot with some elastic and that Rufio will train me in sword fighting. Now that I know what I need the elastic for, I need to hunt down a way to claim an egg!

The script called for a cliff, but this is the best they could do.

The “cliff” is just off to the right and isn’t very high at all with a convenient pile of mud to land in to break my fall. In my first attempt, I don’t even start to fly. From the stories, I know that fairy dust is the missing ingredient. Where is Tinkerbell hiding? Thudbutt waits at the bottom of the cliff to remind me that I also need happy thoughts to fly. We get a nice little animation when we jump and land in the puddle and after a few tries Thudbutt tells me that I’m ready to try the slingshot. I am going to need to figure out the chicken sooner rather than later. Incidentally, there’s a tiny art-bug here: Ace tells me that the Lost Boy in the workshop is “Don’t Ask”, except Mr. Ask at the dinner table looks completely different.

There you are!

The final area in the far east of the Lost Boys compound is the Round Pond, a place so important that the music changes when I arrive. Tinkerbell is there and tells me that I will need to collect some of my old belongings to help me remember my time as Peter Pan. That must be why I need to grab my pan pipes! I experiment a bit and find that I can give Tinkerbell the flowers that I picked in exchange for a thimble. A thimble! In the original novel, Peter thought of thimbles as kisses, they are a token of affection. This might be the one that Wendy gave him at the beginning of the book. I can also pick up a “sturdy branch” here which looks better than the “dead wood” I collected already. I run back to check, but even with the thimble, I can’t seem to fly. How can I get fairy dust?

With every location explored, I turn to trying random things in random places. I quickly work out that I can pull a piece of string out of the fishing net that I found to create a bow using the sturdy branch. With that, I am able to shoot down my pan pipes. That is two objects from my past! But I try flying again and it still doesn’t work.

What are you, chicken?

My next break is that I discover that I can blow into the conch shell to make a noise to scare the chicken! I can grab her eggs while she’s flying. The hint before that I could hear the ocean in the shell doesn’t seem to have played a part here. I trade the eggs for the elastic and use that to repair the slingshot. I still cannot fly, but this time when I talk to Thudbutt at the bottom of the cliff, he hands me a set of Tootles’s marbles. He was one of the original Lost Boys but did not have marbles in the book; I assume that was added for the movie. That is three memory items. What else am I missing?

“Dead dog’s nose” was the secret word!

I try talking to everyone again and discover that I have picked up (somehow) a bunch of new insults for Rufio. I run through the whole list and suddenly food appears on the table. Why? I have no idea! It may have something to do with my telling Rufio to suck on a dead dog’s nose. We get a brief animation of a food fight but it doesn’t give me any items or clues. I’m still stuck so I explore everything over again and this time I get conked on the head when I head back to the Round Pond. (At least, I think that’s what happened. Something that looked like a baseball or snowball flew towards Peter and then he seemed to fly across the pond to the tree on the other side. The animation didn’t make much sense.)

A fixer-upper.

The tree turns out to be Peter and the gang’s original hideout, long-since destroyed by Captain Hook. This much at least is consistent with the story: the entry into the Lost Boys lair was through a specially-sized hole in a tree, one for each Lost Boy. This meant that no one except the Lost Boys and Tinkerbell could access their home. Unfortunately, one of the lost boys widened his entryway and Hook was able to use it to gain access to poison Peter. My assumption is that this is the now-widened tree which Peter can use to access as an adult. Or more likely I am over-thinking this.

As I explore this room, Peter remembers more and more: the beds where Michael and John slept (John actually slept in a basket…), the chair where Wendy would sit and tell stories, and the fireplace where Peter would stand and play the pipes. Tinkerbell hands Peter his teddy bear, Taddy (not from the original book), and he suddenly remembers his mother. This sets off a series of cut scenes explaining Peter’s origin:

Big Ben is three miles from Kensington Garden...

Peter remembers being a young boy in a pram (stroller for us Americans) with his parents talking about how he would grow up and eventually go to nice schools. Peter suddenly realized his own mortality and decided he didn’t want to grow up. He tossed and turned in the stroller until the brakes came loose and the stroller rolled down towards Round Pond. That pond is in Kensington Gardens, just as in the original Peter Pan stories, but unlike the picture above it is miles away from Big Ben… Peter claims that he eventually returned but his parents had forgotten about him. The game doesn’t make it clear, but the book suggests that Peter had been in Neverland for years before returning to his parents. There was another boy in his bed when he arrived and he concluded that he had been forgotten about. Peter then traveled to other windows and met other children. That’s how he found Wendy and had his adventures with her.

This would have been a great scene if they had remembered to hire an artist.

Kids are awesome.

I feel this way, too.

After he dropped Wendy and that first generation of Lost Boys in London, he went back to see her many times but she kept getting older. Wendy then had children and eventually grandchildren of her own. The last time Peter visited, he met Moira, her granddaughter, and he finally decided to grow up. Peter eventually married Moira and they had kids, Jack and Maggie. Peter realizes that his family is his happy thought and suddenly he can fly again!

I found the Master Sword!

Peter soars up out of the tree and lands back in the dining room, now dressed in classic green tights. Instead of getting trained by Rufio, the latter immediately re-accepts Peter as his leader and hands off his sword. Peter flies away to combat Captain Hook, but we will leave that for next time.

Time played: 1 hr 40 min
Total time: 7 hr 45 min

Inventory: Letter, Phone, Checkbook, Pole, Anchor & Rope, Magnet, Alarm Clock, Conch Shell, Dead Wood, Thimble, Bow, Teddy Bear

Original illustration of the mermaids in their lagoon.

Before closing out this week, I have to admit that I did myself no favors by reading Peter and Wendy. Knowledge of the book helped a bit to fill in some of the plot gaps left by the too-sparse text of the game, but none of the puzzles were simplified. That is probably a good thing, especially as not all players would have been familiar with the book, but now I have dozens of questions I wouldn’t have had before. I’m going to have to watch the Hook movie to figure it out, something I hope to do soon. For one thing, neither Tinkerbell nor Captain Hook survive to the end of the book and here they are in the purported sequel. A brief sequence is included where he meets Wendy’s granddaughter, but there was nothing to imply that he decided to stay in London. It’s clear that his experience with Wendy left him changed: the book’s Peter Pan is eternally living in the present, unable to make long term memories. When Lost Boys (or faeries or anyone else) die, they are immediately forgotten. Peter has to be constantly reminded who Wendy is in the beginning of the book because his memory of her keeps slipping out of his head. By the end of the story, Peter not only remembers her but remembers her forever, returning again and again to London to visit. There’s a sliver there that the movie might take off from, but I’ll have to watch it to find out how they approach it. Thematically, this works in the context of the game because Peter’s memories are a critical part of the plot.

Looking back over the scenes in the last segment, I appreciate a number of little references a bit more but I am uncertain whether to credit the game or the film with them. The opening scene with the stuffed crocodile is excellent, suggesting that Hook didn’t die in his final (off screen) battle with the crocodile. (Peter and Hook dueled with swords on the deck of the Jolly Roger but Hook was kicked overboard into the mouth of the waiting beast.) There was no pirate town in Neverland, but it seems reasonable that one could develop within a few years after Hook “won”. None of the pirate characters other than Hook seem to be from the book; the closest they come is Mrs. Smeedle, the washer-woman, whose name sounds like Mr. Smee, the bosun. He survived the events of the book (one of the few pirates to do so) but probably didn’t become a washer-woman.

With that, I am going to end for this week. Next week, we’ll see what happens when a newly reinvigorated Peter Pan returns to Pirate Town.

Written by Ilmari

7) Scifi zone

It’s a pity that this time zone has just a picture of my time machine

I ended my last post by complaining how repetitive the time zones had become and by wishing that something new would appear in the last three time zones. The seventh time zone taught me that I should stop wishing for things, since in worst case my wishes could come true.
At first, the zone seemed quite normal. Moving to one direction I reached a spaceship, which required some authorisation, before letting me in. Moving to another direction I found a crater, and when I tried to go down in it, I fell and died. Two straightforward puzzles to solve.

Things got a bit weirder, when I found Intergalactic bureau-de-exchange, with a galactic groat guarded by an android. When I tried to take the groat, I was electrocuted. What’s a groat, you ask? Well, checking Wikipedia, groat could be a kernel of grain, but it is also a traditional name for an old English silver coin. I already had another silver coin in my possession, so I just gave it to the android, who exchanged it with the groat. Somewhat unusual, but still relatively normal.

Then I found myself at the foot of the Milky Way. Yes, I could climb the Milky Way. Well, not all the way, because most of the Milky Way was still under construction and would crush under my weight (yes, this is seriously what the game told me). Still, in the part of the Milky Way I could access, I found a fallen star. I of course couldn’t just put my hands on it, since this star was blazing hot (stars tend to be). I was clearly meant to take the star, since it was labeled as a valuable treasure. I eventually had to read a hint and I wasn’t really surprised I couldn’t figure out this problem. Apparently medieval gauntlets were made of so tough material that it would withstand the great heat emitted by the star. It was still hot and I couldn’t drop it anywhere, but I could go around carrying it.

A real star in my hands, the AI of the spaceship thought that I was a special person and let me in. The first thing I found in the ship was a swimming pool, and not just any old swimming pool, but a space swimming pool. When I got in the pool, the star hissed and cooled down, so that I could put it down.

In addition to the pool, I also found in the ship a valuable emerald, grapple-firing rocket and an old mattress. Since this section had been quite realistic so far, I had a great idea. I jumped again down the crater, and indeed, the mattress softened my fall.

Here I was down in the crater, which was actually inhabited - or had been inhabited, but no one was present at the moment. I did manage to find a lightsaber and a valuable phial, which I could never drop, because it was too fragile and would shatter if handled carelessly. The problem was how to get out of the crater. Well, one room was explicitly described as having no roof. I just fired the grapple rocket and lifted myself up.

The new area I had discovered was closed off from the rest of the scifi zone, but I managed to find a backdoor to the time machine. Before entering it, I explored the area and found, firstly, a curved ruby, which acted as a lens, and an arena, which I could enter, if I payed one groat. Inside the arena I found a fencing hall, guarded by a ferocious cyberman (more shades of Doctor Who), which I could easily slice with my lightsaber (ok, there’s also a Star Wars reference).

In 1980s, cyberman would look like this

Cyberman had guarded a robot repair shop, where I found a delicate screwdriver. By using the ruby as a lense, I could open the remains of the cyberman with the screwdriver. Inside, I found a 68006 silicon chip, which I needed for my battle against the Timelords.

8) Roman empire

Unless I am now on planet 892-IV, the order of the time zones has
definitely nothing to do with the order of historical events
One thing I really have to congratulate here is the care put to this time zone. I mean, not many games would use such terms like caldarium and hypocaust. Even if hypocaust is just another game lengthening maze, at least its presence in the game shows the authors’ wish to make things as authentic as possible.

But now I am getting ahead of myself, since hypocaust and the maze in it were the final obstacle I encountered in the Roman times - I had to lift a grate in hot baths, fill my drinking horn with water and take a sip just at the right moment, while I was trying to get through the hot and steamy hypocaust and find the backdoor to my time machine.

Before I got to this point, I had to search the Roman setting and discover many other things:

Arena, which I couldn’t open myself
Temple, where I tried to pray on an altar, but the local divinity found this too disrespectful. This was another point where I had to take a hint - I should have knelt before paying. When proper respect had been shown, Mercury gave me winged sandals.
Barracks, which contained a trident and a net.
Forum, with lot of shops, which were only decoration, and a deserted treasury, which had the golden buckle I needed for completing this game.When I tried to grab the buckle, a gladiator stole it and ran to the arena.

After the theft of the buckle, the arena was open and I could enter it. The gladiator was there, but also a lion that was approaching me. I threw my trident at it, and the game told me that the trident pinned the net in place, holding lion securely. But I hadn’t done anything with my net! Perplexed, I restored and tried throwing the net first. It entangled the lion, and now throwing the trident at the lion produced the exact same answer as before - just another case of careless programming.

Although the lion was not anymore a problem, I still couldn’t just take the buckle from the gladiator, because he was too quick for me. The solution was to wear the winged sandals, which apparently gave me superspeed, and then it was easy to overtake the thieving gladiator. So much for Roman era.

9) The lair of the Timelords

So is this Gallifrey?

The almost paradisaical starting screen of the end game was closed off from the rest of the Timelord realm by an archway. The arch said that everyone entering through it should abandon all their hope (readers of Dante might recognise this statement). Well, I did have that milestone from the village of Hope, so I tried dropping it. This opened up the archway. Father Time appeared also and said I was about to witness what the future would be like, if I didn’t stop the Timelords.

Future that shouldn’t be

The first thing I found was yet another maze, where almost all rooms were described as being a dead end. I managed to find half buried in the ground a bottle of poison, which I could dig up. If I happened to drop the bottle anywhere, it would shatter.

Pretty plain laboratory

I also found a laboratory, in which animals and human beings were kept locked in cages. I released them, and the humans rewarded me with the final ingredient of the Timelord banishment potion - evil eye in a box. I am not sure, if it was because I carried the evil eye, but around this time I noticed that I could be killed by some random event, like suddenly appearing scorpion or lightning bolt, if I stayed in one place too long.

Finally, I found a room with strange plants, one of which grabbed me, if I tried to leave the room. I could only go within the plant, where its digestive juices were trying to change me into dust. Fortunately, I had that bottle of poison, which I could just smash on the plant, incapacitating it completely.

Beyond the plant, I found a tunnel leading to a stairway. On top of the stairs I found an invisibility inducing cloak. I put it on, before climbing to a place, under the table where the Timelords were scheming.

So close…

I moved up, behind the Timelords, and then east, to the Mists of Time, where I found the cauldron, in which I was supposed to throw the nine items required for vanquishing Timelords. Then I just did that and the game was over!

Sorry Fry, there wasn't any meaningful use for the quest items

Session time: 3 hours

Total time: 15 hours

PISSED-rating

Puzzles and Solvability

In an interview of Austin brothers by Page 6 magazine, from the year 1988 I found a great quote:

They have always gone all out for the entertainment and they don’t really put enough puzzles in them. [...] Their games do tend to lack good puzzles but they have extremely good text. Their text is probably unrivalled. The problem has always been though that for a game that has in the past been £30 or £40 which you can finish in one day you wonder if it is really worth it.

The Austins are, of course, speaking of the worst rival of Level 9, Infocom. The passage shows very vividly the difference between the two companies. For Infocom, puzzles became more and more something that served the story of the game. If that meant the puzzles were too easy to solve, so be it.

Level 9, on the other hand, used puzzles mainly to make the gaming experience itself longer. Often this involved making bad puzzles, like pointless mazes or problems requiring you to read the developer’s mind. I am not really convinced by their rhetoric of getting your money’s worth. I mean, if you are duped to pay an outrageous sum for a pint of Foster’s, it won’t really make you happier if you’ll have to drink it slowly instead of taking it all down in one gulp.

Lords of Time is just a perfect example of this strategy of making a game longer. Mazes abound, and no proper clues for certain puzzles were ever given (waving valerian, freezing lake with an icicle and saying Eureka to open a locked door, just to indicate few of these puzzles). The graphical remake at least fixed a portion of the latter problem by giving some badly needed hints, although it was also far from perfect.

Score: 2 (3 for graphical remake)

Interface and Inventory

I don’t know if it was the speed in which Level 9 was producing these games, but parser feels a lot more rushed in Lords of Time than in some of their previous games. The game occasionally revealed beforehand what the crucial items were for performing an action, while at other times it failed to acknowledge items I could see in the room description - even if I could interact with them in other rooms. Add to that the fact that a large portion of the inventory items consisted of mere treasures and that Level 9 still likes to infuriate their players with an inventory limit and you can understand why I won’t be giving a great score for this category.

Score: 2 (3 for graphical remake)

Story and Setting

Although Lords of Time had a rudimentary plot - and it really is rudimentary, since we don’t even learn, what the Timelords are plotting - the game is basically nothing but a slightly modified treasure hunt, where you are not taking your trophies to your personal vault, but to a magic cauldron. We don't even learn how the items we've collected defeat the Timelords!

The feel of a treasure hunt is heightened by the optional goodies, which exist probably just to give the game more replayability value. In fact, it is a bit odd that the protagonist has time to procure valuable historical items while trying to fix the fabric of time - and even odder that Father Time has nothing to say about it. All in all, the plot is nothing but a muddle.

Score: 3

Sounds and Graphics

This will be the last time, when the original version of a Level 9 game had no graphics, so this should be last official zero for this category. The graphical version I played looked definitely better than the earlier Level 9 games, although there were only a handful of pictures.

Score: 0 (3 for graphical version)

Environment and Atmosphere

The producers had to choose nine periods of human history and this is what they came up with? Many of the time zones were too similar to each other, like the Ice Age and the Stone Age. Or take the two Middle Ages: the official clue sheet names the other one Tudorian Age, but there was nothing distinctively Tudorian in the whole setting.

Even more frustrating was that like in a bad scifi series, you often saw nothing else of a time zone, but a meandering cave system. This was most evident in the "Viking" Era, which was sorely lacking in vikings (I really won't count that magically appearing bunch looking for Pirate Pete). But even the most detailed time zone, which appeared to have some real background research behind it - the Roman Empire - had a huge maze eating up most of the rooms.

The other side to the relative blandness of the time zones was the trademark Level 9 style of mixing disparate story elements together - in addition to Whovian bits, like Timelords and Cybermen, I met various fairy tale characters, all sorts of weird magic and even Roman gods. The worst example of this tendency was the future era with its climbable Milky Way. The overall result felt like an attempt to enliven a grey-on-grey patchwork quilt with some glaring neon colours.

Score: 3

Dialogue and Acting

The previous Level 9 games had some glimmers of light hidden in an otherwise unmemorable prose - humorous lines, almost poetic passages and interesting characters. In the original version, I found nothing of this sort, but the graphical remake added some rather nice flavour text.

Score 3 (in graphical version 4)

(2+2+3+0+3+3)/.0.6 = 22. I still want to add some bonus points. I liked the hints that the protagonist might be a female, I respected the obvious care put to the Roman period and I also appreciated the environmental message of the first time zone. All in all, I am willing to give the game two bonus points, which makes the total 24 (for graphical version 33), making this the worst Level 9 game played thus far. I am actually quite satisfied with the score. The basic flaw of Lords of Time is its repetetiveness - same old bland cliches are recycled over and over again. I really hope I won’t face another maze for a long time.

I see that although many of you tried to guess low scores for this game, all of you were still way too high. Thus, the award goes to the closet guesser, Alfred n' the Fettuc. Just like with all previous Missed Classics, this and other CAP awards will be given in a Final Rating of a suitable main list game.

Written by Alfred n the Fettuc

Brandon’s journal - entry #2 : Okay, I know have a perfectly useless amulet and Brynn seems to have disappeared somewhere! I certainly hope the other mystics will be able to help me. First I have to go see Darm and Brandywine, then I’ll try and get access to these darn caves…

We’ve left Brandon at the entrance of the Timbermist Woods. The first screen after the entrance leads to a big hut which seems to be the abode of Darm and his pet dragon Brandywine. Maybe they’ll be able to help me…

Worst roommate ever

There is something to be said here about the general lack of directions and context you suffer in Kyrandia. I meet characters that Brandon seem to have known for years. The mystics (Brynn and Darm), as well as other minor characters Herman and Merith have obviously known Brandon since he was a child and the game does a poor job of introducing these characters to you. It’s not that problematic when the characters are self-explanatory (Merith is a pain and Herman is the place’s loony) but when you meet what appears to be a forgetful wizard and his cat-eating pet dragon, you’d like to have a bit more of context and lore exposed to you. But no, it doesn’t seem we’ll get that. Darm (visibly forgetting who I am) and Brandywine (apparently knowing I’m on a quest to fight Malcolm while not moving its lazy ass to help me with some flying-fire-breathing action) simply ask me to get a quill somewhere.

Fetch Quest #7560

I’m then left to map the Timbermist Woods area, which seem like a much more crowded place than the first forest. The first screens I encounter are :

A statue of a wizard with an emerald stuck in it, which I’m guessing I’ll have to find a way to pry it out in order to add it to my gemstones collection.
A crazy old man on a bench who tells me there is a songbird somewhere that’s hurt and needs help.
A huge altar that makes me remember I’ll need the gemstones in order to make something happen here. I drop my three gemstones here in order to make room in my inventory.
A beautiful ruby tree with a huge “danger” sign next to it, where I get my first death screen. Trying to pick one of the rubies has a snake bite you. You can still play while poisoned but I don’t think I’ll go very far, so I reload for now.

Okay, fair enough…

An ancient well where I can put everything in my inventory, resulting in its loss. I try putting a few things in it to no avail and I reload afterwards.
The nest of the aforementioned songbird, which is hurt indeed. Except throwing a gemstone at it, I don’t see what to do for now.
A place with dead plants called Deadwood Glade
A nice water spring

Finally, once I go to the southeast of the map, I find a huge serpent head leading to a cave. Trying to enter it leads to my first confrontation with Malcolm! The jester is playing with knives and threatens me.

This screenshot looks like a 1-on-1 fighter game. Don’t worry, no stupid action scenes here…

Malcolm throws a knife at me which plants itself in the tree behind me. I have a few seconds to react and throw it back at him. He then leaves the place and erects a solid wall of ice that prevents me from accessing the cave. Pfiou.

On my travels, I found several new things, an acorn, a pinecone, an amethyst, a walnut and a tulip. I sense a “nut and flowers” category has been added to the “gemstones” category concerning the trash laying around that I’m randomly picking up.

I try doing several things to help the bird but none of my objects seem to be able to help him. In the Deadwood Glade, however, something attracts my attention. Trying to put a gem in the hole in the middle of the ground tells me “there are seeds in the hole”. Considering I don’t have any water or contenant on me (which would have made sense) I try putting my acorn into the hole… and it seems to do something. The ground starts shaking!

Botany 101 : the use of magic prevents the use of water for your garden.

I put the walnut and pinecone in the hole as well and a giant plant sprouts from the hole!

Reference contest : in what other game do we find pseudobushia hugifloras?

The plant thanks me for “restoring life in Deadwood Glade” (shouldn’t they find another name for it now?) and gives me a power for my amulet! Trying to use it makes Brandon tell that this could “become handy if I get hurt”. I guess that’s a healing spell! I see two puzzles I can solve using this power, which is always an exhilarating thing. I’ll first start by saving the birds! Well… as soon as I find how to make the healing power recharge, that’s it. I had a little moment of panic when I realized the power I tried wasn’t coming back… Maybe I needed to go see the flower every time I needed it? It turned out I didn’t need that but that the power took something like 2 to 3 real time minutes to reload. I guess it’s good to avoid “spamming” the powers every time I encounter a situation but I hope not too much trial and error will be involved or it’ll start to be boring. Anyway I proceed to help my friend the songbird… and he gives me a feather for my troubles. Yay!

Restoring glades and saving birds… maybe Kyrandia started as a prototype for Ecoquest 3?

I had not tried my new found power on the snake tree yet but I had now something more urgent to do. I went back to Darm’s house to deliver the “natural quill” to him. On my way I find a pearl laying around in a screen I already passed through which means that items are literally spawning from the nether when I’m not looking… mmmh not sure it bodes well if it means I have to run around in circles to make things appear…

I give the feather to Darm who uses it to write a magic scroll (without telling me what it does, of course). He tells me I now have to find my birthstones in order to get another tool for my quest. I have to put four stones on a plate (I’m guessing that means the plate on the altar) in the order of the seasons. Summer is the first. He remembers hiding the summer stone somewhere near.

You mystics sure do have a lot of errands to run, don’t you?

All of this seems pretty straightforward. Summer probably points to the ruby (or the garnet but I already have it in my inventory) so I’m now on my way to get a ruby from the ruby tree! I certainly hope the healing spell will be enough to get rid of the snake’s poison. Before trying this, however, I try the magic scroll. It seems to be some kind of freeze spell that just makes some snow appear on my shoulders. No idea where to use this (or why Darm gave me this in the first place). The scroll doesn’t disappear afterwards but I reload anyway just in case it has a limited number of uses. I’m not sure there are dead-ends in this game but considering it doesn’t stop me from putting all my stuff in a bottomless well, better safe than sorry...

I go back to the ruby tree, save beforehand and pick a ruby. The snake appears and bites me. Brandon takes a nice shade of green that foreseen my future death, but a click on the healing spell and I get rid of the poison. Score! Now I have a ruby!

Brandon smash!

I then proceed to the altar and drop all my gems on the ground around me. Without more guidance, it’s time to experiment on the gem puzzle. My first hope is quickly shot down, because neither the ruby nor the garnet (the two red gems) are burnt by the plate. I then put every other gem I have on me on the plate and they all disappear one after another. I end up with nothing…

You said it, buddy…

Okay, so where to now? I have an idea to get the emerald that’s stuck into the statue on the town square, but I need to reload before the Malcolm encounter. I try not to throw his knife back at him (hoping it would allow me to keep it) but he just kills me in this case. That was worth a shot. I now go back to the second best idea I have : randomly walking around to find new gemstones… I find a diamond, an aquamarine and another peridot… which only help me to learn the names of gemstones in English because they all are burnt down by the plate… I try and recall the only hint I had for the puzzle which is Darm telling me he has hidden the summer gemstone “somewhere near”. Maybe I missed something around his house? I start combing all the areas randomly clicking on everything, pixel-hunting thoroughly but to no avail… I even come back all the way to Brynn’s temple and get an opal and a topaz for my troubles.

Kyrandia gem trade show 1992

Needless to say these two gems didn’t work either… I desperately try again and put everything on the plate. Once I’m out of gemstones I try putting the apple and the tulip on it… ok that’s a bit desperate, but you never know. I stumble upon the solution purely by accident. You have to click exactly on one spot of the spring to fish a Sunstone! To be honest I don’t even remember clicking on the spring voluntarily...

There, exactly

Okay, now, game, we have a problem. There is absolutely no hint to the fact there might be something hidden in the spring (or is there? Tell me if I’m wrong). If you click to any other spot of the spring Brandon just comments on the fact that it’s pretty, giving you no clue whatsoever. I certainly hope one of you readers will tell me I missed a very obvious hint about all this because if not, it’s crappy game design all other again. I have flashbacks of the jacket in Dark Seed coming back to me!

The best thing about this would be if the Sunstone didn’t work either but, thankfully, it does. The rest is a simple trial-and-error matter. I save, put every stone I know in the plate waiting for one to be accepted, then reload not to lose every gem that’s disappeared (even if I’m pretty sure the random appearance of gems all around the world probably means I can find them again if needed) and try again. The results are : Sunstone, Garnet, Topaz and Ruby. The seasons? What? Okay, so if Sunstone symbolizes summer, how come autumn is symbolized by a darker shade of red, then winter a nice yellow and spring a bright red? Where does the guy who made up this riddle live? Mars?

Stupid puzzle…

I’m sorry for Kyrandia lovers out there (which I completely am, don’t think otherwise) but this puzzle is complete crap! The first major puzzle of the game is as multi-layered as they come, which is always a good thing in my book. However, two of these parts are completely busted. The hidden sunstone is too difficult to find (but serves as a warning that I need to be thorough in my clicking for the rest of the game) and considering new gemstones appear randomly, you have no way of thinking you’re supposed to do anything else than just randomly walking around the game world until you stumble upon something new. There is also the fact that an emerald is obviously hidden in plain sight but is not part of the solution (we’ll see later if it has any use at all).

The second problem is the fact that the hint “one stone per season” is completely useless (except if someone knows of a way Sunstone, Garnet, Topaz and Ruby are linked to the seasons?) and the whole thing relies on trial and error… Meh... Anyway! What I get for my trouble is… a pan flute! Yay! I know magic items don’t always look impressive but I can’t help but feeling it’s a bit anticlimactic there…

My thoughts exactly

Playing the flute doesn’t do anything but considering the notes seem high and Brandon insists on this fact, I’m guessing it’ll be able to break the ice wall, Castafiore-style. I go to the entrance of the cave, use the flute… and tadaaa! The way is opened!

Have you considered any other career than musician? Video game protagonist perhaps?

I enter the dreaded Fireberries cave. The game is neatly divided into chapters and covering the looong maze in front of me would make this post way too long, so I’ll just leave you here for now and go prepare my graph paper for next week’s ordeal. Hopefully I’ll find a use for my apple and my tulip in these caves? Should I have taken more random gemstones with me? You never know when an aquamarine might come in handy… We’ll see, I guess. See you next week!

New beautiful environment and music… better get used to it though!

Session time : 1 hour 30
Total time : 2 hours 30

Inventory : Apple, flute, magic scroll, tulip
Powers : Healing

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

The final battle begins!

Last week, Peter Pan got his groove back: we were able to recapture his old memories and remind him of his happy thoughts, his family. This allowed Peter to reclaim the leadership of the Lost Boys from Rufio and he reclaimed his sword before flying off to Pirate Town to rescue his kids and confront Captain Hook.

Before we start, I mentioned last week that I had read Peter and Wendy, the original 1911 novel, and was considering watching either Disney’s animated Peter Pan or the actual Hook film. Since this post won the game, I skipped the cartoon and went straight for Steven Spielberg’s Hook. I did not watch the film until after playing and writing down my rating so I promise that it didn’t interfere with the score. I’m going to conclude playing the game, talk about the movie briefly, and then finish up with the score.

The same scene from the film. (Notice Peter’s son Jack is now a pirate.)

The final sequence isn’t what I expected-- I didn’t even expect it to be the final sequence. When Peter flew off to face Hook at the conclusion of the previous part, I suspected we’d have another brief story section in Pirate Town (or perhaps elsewhere) before the conclusion. Instead, we are immediately locked into the end-game. This final part is not a traditional adventure game ending as we cannot use items or control Peter in any way. All we can do is engage Hook in a swordfight which is done entirely through dialog options. Pick the right insults and Peter gains ground on Hook; pick wrongly and it’s Peter that falls back. Since the insults do not change, it’s easy to keep track of which insults worked so that you can advance to try a different one next time. It’s anti-climactic and easy. For example, the first choice I have is between telling Hook that he is larger than I remember, asking him to return my kids, or just crowing, “Peter Pan the Avenger!” at him. (The latter is a call-back to the original book and Peter’s final battle there.) Only by picking the “Avenger” line do we advance. We then repeat slightly deeper in the ship with three new possible insults to pick from.

The next victory line is “Good form, James”, a reminder of Hook’s dedication to “good form” in the original novel (although that seems to include poisoning kids so I’m not sure how good his form ever was). The next line is to remind Hook of his fear of the crocodile, then say that he deserves to die for kidnapping Peter’s kids (er… probably not technically). That pushes him back far enough that we Peter’s children are visible and they toss some insults at Hook as well. The scene changes to and Peter is now fighting Hook off the end of the plank.

Like Prince of Persia without any of the actual gameplay.

The next line is “It’s Hook or me this time”, another callback to the original story where Peter finally has enough after the pirates capture succeed in taking the Lost Boys captive and nearly killing both Peter and Tinkerbell. The final line is once again “Peter Pan the Avenger” and Hook falls into the water below. The scene deliberately echoes the Hook “death” scene from the book, but without the crocodile waiting below it is missing a bit of its punch. Peter has his victory, the rest of the pirates are very friendly all of a sudden, and the game is over! The credits roll.

Peter Pan the Avenger!

Time played: 5 min
Total time: 7 hr 50 min

Hook vs Monkey Island

Before we get into the film, a few commenters brought up a second possible inspiration for this game: Monkey Island. It’s not exactly a secret as Bobby Earl mentions it as an inspiration in an interview he did around 2011. Both games offer a humorous look at pirate culture through an adventure game lens. That said, almost everything that happens in this game, including the sequences that seem to be borrowed from Monkey Island, comes directly from the film. Even so, the Lucasarts classic had a tremendous influence on how the game unfolded and the puzzles and sequences that the designers incorporated. I think it’s better to say that this game was developed by someone seeing the world through a Monkey Island lens and that influenced the final product. This may have been in part because the game was produced well before the movie and the designers did not have access (according to the interview) to the final film until shortly before launch.

From left to right, the film, the game, and Secret of Monkey Island.

Let’s take an easy example: the mermaid sequence. In Secret of Monkey Island, Guybrush ends up underwater and has to solve a puzzle (amusingly) while holding his breath. In the Hook film, Peter ends up underwater after mistakenly being pushed off the plank by a pirate (after Captain Hook had agreed to let him go). A series of multi-colored mermaids help him to their elevator-shell while kissing him to give him air. It’s a confusing and stupid scene, but it’s in the film. The producers of the game could have interpreted that scene in several ways, for example by adding time pressure to prevent him from drowning, forcing him to interact with the mermaids in some way, etc. Instead, they told that scene using the same “we’re underwater but it doesn’t matter” joke from the Monkey Island game. They didn’t even bother remembering that Peter’s hands are supposed to be tied at this point.

Insult combat x2!

Insult combat is a second clear inspiration from Monkey Island. Twice in this game, we had to face off against an opponent primarily by using our wits: against Rufio to gain the trust of the Lost Boys and against Hook at the end. Witty banter was a part of the Hook film and Peter insulting Rufio was a big part of him rediscovering his childhood. It was when Peter got angry and started acting on the kids level that he started to remember what it was like to be a kid, so that he could use his imagination to beat Rufio in the food and insult fight. Given the Monkey Island lens, the insult aspect of the sequence was emphasized even though it was far from the only way to bring that scene to life in an adventure. Given that collecting insults seems to happen magically while you explore and there is no tension or way to lose the Hook battle, I feel that highlighting the insults may have been a poor choice. I would gladly have played another adventure/puzzle segment before the final battle.

Save the clock tower!

Some readers have commented that the art looks like Monkey Island’s style, but I have to largely disagree there. It has some similarities, but the former game is heads and shoulders above what this game could do in terms of its location and character design. There are similarities in a few locations and if you squint (and ignore his pants) Peter might look a bit like Guybrush. It’s a good attempt by a small team, but Monkey Island’s artists surpassed the medium.

Let’s Talk About Hook

Where’s the gift shop?

I didn’t plan to talk much about the movie, but having just had this three-part Peter Pan experience (the game, the original novel, and the film), I can’t quite help myself. Hook is, without a doubt, a movie that divides opinions. Aspects of it are absolutely beautiful with special effects that make you believe a middle-aged lawyer can fly. Other parts are cringe-worthy, especially the awful green screen work done with Tinkerbell. That said, having just read the book, I can tell you that this movie is a love letter to Peter Pan. It is exceptionally faithful to the original (except aspects of the book’s epilogue) and seems to understand the source material. But, that’s actually also it’s biggest drawback.

Throughout the film, characters act strange for no explained reason: Jack gradually forgets his father and cozies up to Hook, Peter briefly forgets his kids and becomes a man-child, even his daughter Maggie starts to get confused. Except for one throwaway line, this is not explained. I have to imagine this infuriated the original audience. And yet… it’s exactly as in the book. Neverland in the original work screws with your head. Characters there struggle to keep long-term memories. Peter kept forgetting about Wendy at first and gradually most of the kids came to think that Wendy was their mother, even Peter to some extent. More violently, the book tells us that Lost Boys, pirates, and Indians die all the time. No one stops to mourn because the dead are forgotten almost immediately-- just as Rufio was at the end of the film. When he returned to visit Wendy in her middle-age after their adventures, Peter had already forgotten all about Hook and Tinkerbell (who had, by that point, died of old age) and Wendy needed to tell him his own stories all over again. So while the film was quite attached to the source material, it may have assumed too much and did not explain things that needed to be explained.

Incidentally, there are no Indians in Hook, probably to avoid the offensive stereotypes associated with them in the book and Disney’s animated film. But it’s implied at least, in the book, that Indians and pirates represented a child’s vision of what those antagonists would be rather than a real-to-life depiction. They are playing cowboys-and-Indians but with real people. When the Lost Boys stole the Jolly Roger and dressed up in pirate clothes at the end of the book, they really might have forgotten themselves and become pirates, closing the circle, if not for Wendy. The Hook film ignores all this, of course but it would have been an interesting aspect to explore.

You can walk down this road but you just come right back.

Now that I understand the film, I can comment a bit more on where the game shortened or skipped sections. From the interview I linked to earlier, we know that the developers were first working from the script and design notes and only saw the completed film very late in the development process.

The game that we have is in four sections:

The opening sequence where Peter and Tinkerbell search for pirate clothes.
The Neverforest maze.
The sequence with the Lost Boys where Peter has to prove himself and regain his memories.
The final battle

Compared to the movie, the first segment is quite expanded. In the film, Tinkerbell has no difficulty finding Peter clothes and getting him onto the Jolly Roger. There is a hint of a brothel in the town, but barely a hint, and none of the other locations seem to be from the film. It’s possible that some of the shops are there in the background but I didn’t see them. The second segment is completely absent in the film, but it’s probably a cut scene because it explains a large plot hole: in the film, Peter is saved by the mermaids and is immediately taken to the Lost Boys hideout with no time passing, but when he gets there Tinkerbell is not only all the way back from the ship, she’s also asleep. Having a section where Peter is lost in the woods would have explained the lost time. The game accelerates the third portion the most. In the film, this is a sequence where Peter has to get into shape, followed by Peter returning to Pirate Town to attempt to steal Hook’s hook at a baseball game, and then returning to recapture his memories. We never had that second run through Pirate Town. The final section could also have been divided into two with Peter first saving his kids and trying to leave, then the final battle in the town square. The game moves that battle to the ship for no obvious reason and doesn’t have the ending where Hook is apparently killed when the crocodile falls on him.

There was plenty of space to add more puzzles and adventures and it’s pretty clear that they rushed the ending. There’s even some clues in the Pirate Town art that implies more was planned: the alley into the area behind the laundromat looks like it should be a main road and there’s another road near the Jolly Roger that we can see but the game turns you around if you try to go down it. Could that be where the baseball stadium would have gone? All in all, the film doesn’t seem to help the game in any way. Few of the game’s fetch-quests have anything to do with the film at all.

Final Rating

Like pulling teeth?

Puzzles and Solvability

Hook’s puzzles are standard adventure fare and almost entirely limited to fetch-quests. Some of them were somewhat clever but none of them were exceptionally noteworthy or difficult. Looking back now, I was most frustrated by the cocoa puzzle because we didn’t even get feedback that the “Lazy Pirate” was starting to fall asleep. It also took me too long to realize that I could get another tooth pulled. Tinkerbell’s assistance, once I figured it out, was a nice positive for the first half of the game, ensuring that I always had a clue what I needed to work on next. While that is a plus, the final endgame that consisted solely of dialog options was a major letdown and caused the game to end on a bit of a sour note. Not great but also not bad.

My Score: 4

I swung across by accident.

Interface and Inventory

On the face of it, the interface isn’t terrible. We have five verbs, a serviceable inventory that can display four items at a time, and we find out our exits by mousing over them. It clearly is adapting good things from other engines. Where it falls down is just in how clunky it is. Verbs toggle on and off in inconsistent ways, the right-click dialog menus make it exceptionally easy to say the wrong thing (because you think you need to push the left button to advance the conversation, not realizing you have a selection), and basic things like being able to “look” at something or “talk” to a person is sometimes just not implemented. Finally, the save interface is tremendously weak with five slots you cannot name. (And technically it seems to save directly into the .exe file which is utter lunacy and made backing up saves to get more slots nearly impossible.) I am also disappointed that if they went through all the trouble to make the “save” disk an inventory object, they should at least have found a way to play off that joke in the game. They took a bunch of different ingredients and made an okay interface but not a good one.

One more minor nit: we started the game with three items (the checkbook, phone, and letter), all of which used up a full screen of items and were never once used or referenced later. That just seems wasteful. (In the film, there was no letter and Peter’s phone got tossed into a snowbank before he was flown to Neverland.)

My Score: 3

Bowties are cool.

Story and Setting

I scored this category before watching the film because the game we are playing is inconsistent. When you can tell what is going on, it’s nice, but there’s so little dialog that the story is hardly fleshed out at all. We never get a feel for any of the characters except Tinkerbell. The sequence where Peter discovers the burned out husk of his old stomping grounds was the most affecting part of the game and the flashback (other than the art) was the closest the game came to a sustained narrative. Neverland as a setting is not bad, but I wish we had seen more of it. The game showed us so many places that we could visit and never visited any of them. If you show a map that has a bunch of cool things on it, you’re expected to actually visit those cool things. Chekhov’s map? (Hook the film had the same sin.).

Another nitpick: in the game, Peter says that he wants to kill Hook for kidnapping his children. I even called that out as not being exactly fair. In the film, Peter wants to kill Hook because Hook killed Rufio; Peter even tries very hard in the end not to kill Hook.

My Score: 4

The less said about this, the better.

Sound and Graphics

As you can see from my comparison above, the game does poorly when compared with the games it most seems to idolize. I found the art almost uniformly pedestrian: it was enough to work but nothing was inspired. The mud pit, the crocodile clock, and so many other locations are vividly and uniquely depicted in the film but little of that creativity entered the game. The extended flashback where Peter remembered his childhood has art that is somehow even worse than the rest of the game. As we know from the interview, much of the game was completed before the developers could see how these scenes were depicted in the film; if they had worked directly from Steven Spielberg’s lush visuals, it may have been a different game.

Music is serviceable with a few basic sound effects and background music over many scenes, but I did not pay attention much to the music overall. I’m fairly certain there was at least two pieces (because I remember Round Pond having its own theme), but it does not pass the hum test.

My Score: 4

Treebeard?

Environment and Atmosphere

For this question, I am asking myself how I feel and how well the game captured the spirit of Neverland and honestly… it didn’t. Some specific environments were fun and the extended forest sequence was spooky, even if it didn’t add up to much in the end. It’s difficult to put my finger on it, but I didn’t feel like the game really became more than the sum of its parts. I did have fun working out some specific puzzles, but they didn’t create a mood. While this was scored before I watched the film, I also do not think the designers captured much of the whimsy and wonder of the film either. The film made great use of color and locale to build an atmosphere which is absent here.

My Score: 3

Dialog and Acting

Another way that Hook loses out when we allow it to be compared to Monkey Island is with dialog. In short, there isn’t enough story here and often I felt like you needed to have seen the movie to understand why you were doing something. When we did have text, it was either a direct quote from the film (which isn’t a negative necessarily) or didn’t quite have that literary quality we hope for. The only sequence which managed to elicit a real emotional response from the writing was in Pan’s flashback and so I have to give some credit here. Shame that the rest feels more skeletal than textual.

My Score: 4

Final Tally

That was harder than it seemed. I hope I’m not being too harsh on this game, but I feel comfortable with those scores. Let’s add them up and see what we have: (4+3+4+4+3+4)/.6 = 37!

That seems low somehow, but works out to be better than Cruise for a Corpse (which it certainly was) and worse than Altered Destiny and Codename: Iceman (which also feels about right). It’s not that the game did anything dramatic wrong, but it just didn’t soar in any category at all. It’s not a terrible freshman effort from Mr. Earl and Mr. Oxland and it is a shame that they did not return to adventures after this.

As for our readers, Paul Franzen wins our prize for guessing 36! Paul, drop us an email and let us know if you want the game design book. The average guess from all of our readers was 44 (or 41 if you ignore Niklas’s spiteful dice) and so most of you thought this game would do better than it did. I think a longer or more complete game would have made up that difference easily. As for me, I’m glad this game inspired me to check out Peter and Wendy and the Hook film. Both are quite good and well worth your time, even if you don’t plan on taking an excursion to Pirate Town for some inexpensive dental work. I’ll be back soon with the next Zork game, Enchanter. My next main-line game will be the Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes in a few months. I can’t wait!

CAP Distribution

105 CAPs to Joe Pranevich

Blogger Award - 100 CAPs - for playing Hook
By Hook or by Book Award - 5 CAPs for providing an additional prize for the score guessing game

50 CAPs to Ilmari

Classic Blogger Award - 50 CAPs - for playing Lords of Time

14 CAPs to Voltgloss

Leonard Maltin Award - 10 CAPs - for pointing out the connections between the game and movie
A Scythe for Sore Eyes Award - 4 CAPs - for pointing out why Father Time has a sickle (LOT)

10 CAPs to Paul Franzen

Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPS - for correctly guessing the score for Hook - 10 CAPs

10 CAPs to Alfred

Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPS - for correctly guessing the score for Lords of Time

5 CAPS to Alex Romanov

Config.sys Award - 5 CAPs - for some trivia on what happens when you start Hook without enough memory

5 CAPs to Dehumanizer

Levelling Up Award - 5 CAPs - for information on the different Lords of Time versions

3 CAPs to Greg T:

Shelf-Worth Award - 3 CAPs - for pointing out Hook's hope for an Oscar rather than an Emmy

3 CAPs to Torch

Gotta Move on Now Award - 3 CAPs - for pointing out Joe's pseudo-obscure title reference

Written by Alex

Alright people, let me fire up my computer, have I got a treat for you. You see, I’m finally going to get out of Sierra Land and talk to you all about a cool little game called Lure of the--

Oh brother, who’s at the door now? Maybe they’ll go away if I ignore them. Where was I?

Lure of the Temptress is a point-and-click adventure developed by Revolution Software, a British company also known for—

I guess they won’t go away. Looks like I’m going to have to go give whoever this is a piece of my mind.

Hold on a second.

*gets up to answer door*

Look here pal, I’m trying to do a review oh my God!

“Slight change of plans, buddy!”
Ah! It’s Jim Walls, former California Highway Patrol officer and legendary developer of the Police Quest series of adventure games from Sierra! What are you doing here?! Am I under arrest?!

“You will be if you don’t calm down. Now, what’s this I hear about you trying to review some other game there Alex?”

What, Lure of the Temptress? I mean, it’s the next game on the schedule, and—hey, why is your text in boldface and not mine?

“Because I speak with the full authority of THE LAW. But forget that Lore of the Temptation junk; I’ve got your next game right here.”

What’s this? Is it—oh. I see. Thanks, Jim . . .

Is this my destiny? Am I consigned to play nothing but Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, and Robin Hood-themed games?

*checks list on advgamer.blogspot.com*

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (VGA remake)

Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does A Little Undercover Work

Police Quest III: The Kindred

Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood

Robin of Sherwood: The Touchstones of Rhiannon

Yeah, I guess I am.

Alright, you can’t fight city hall. Or Jim Walls. Whatever. Hey, Jim, are you going to just stand there, or do you want to come in for a cup of coffee or something?

Nope! I’m staying right here until you finish that game . . . and give it a good review. I haven’t forgotten what you said about Police Quest III . . . or me.

*Gulp* Okay, big guy. You just . . . hang out there, which is kind of creepy but hey: you’re the cop here, not me.

So Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel was one of Sierra’s flagship games that kicked off the entire Police Quest series, spawning several sequels and even an entirely different series. Trickster reviewed it way back in 2012, and liked it well enough, rating it a 52 on his PISSED scale. Its sequel, Police Quest II: The Vengeance, upped the stakes, garnering a respectable score of 57 from Tricky.

I reviewed Police Quest III and it didn’t fare so well. A score of 47 is alright, but the game had problems. Lots of them.

Tellingly, Police Quest III was the last game to feature supercop Sonny Bonds and to be designed by Mr. Walls himself. The fourth game, Open Season, turned to former L.A.P.D. police chief Daryl F. Gates to develop a game that—

“Do you really want to bring that up?”

Sorry Jim. I forgot you were there.

Anyway, in the early 90s, Sierra got it into their heads to remake several of their old adventure games using their then-state-of-the-art VGA Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI) to give these games a Clinton-era overhaul. More colors! More music! Better graphics! And because they thought the old parser-based games were completely unplayable to the oh-so sophisticated modern gamer of the day (complete speculation), these titles now had a brand new point-and-click interface.

The first games in the Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and Quest for Glory got this treatment . . . and in 1992, so did Police Quest.

I am very familiar with the original Police Quest, but have only played this remake once close to twenty years ago. So let’s see how it stacks up to the original, as well as the series’ only other point-and-click offering to date, Police Quest III.

“Don’t forget to mention that it’s so realistic, police forces actually used it as a training tool and—”

Yeah, okay Jim: That was like one article in one magazine back in 1987 that you slap on the box of every single game you put out.

“Do not!”

Sure. Anyway, the plans for remakes of the rest of the early games in Sierra’s library was scrapped, leaving the existing VGA overhauls unique curiosities in the Sierra library.

The Police Quest remake comes with a manual in the form of the Lytton Police Gazette, the department’s informational newsletter that doubles as a copy-protection mechanism, as well as containing some hints for the game, such as an explanation of poker hands.

It’s a quick read and pretty entertaining. And it also has a map of Lytton.

Yes, this game will have a driving mechanic. In the original Police Quest, you controlled a speck-sized car on a map that looked similar to the above. In Police Quest II, you just typed “Drive station” or “Drive airport,” which was awesome. And Police Quest III . . . Police Quest III had one of the worst driving interfaces in the history of Western Civilization. I can’t wait (*makes rude gesture with free hand*) to relive the driving interface in this one.

Enough backstory. On with the game! Leave your guesses for the PISSED score in the comments below, and come join me, and wish me God’s blessings, as I return to the mean-streets of Lytton to combat . . . THE DEATH ANGEL!

“This game’s going to get a 100.”

That’s . . . that’s pretty much impossible, Jim.

“. . . is it?”

Oh boy. Looks like this is gonna be a long one . . .

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 50 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

Admin's note: So, we know plenty of you were hoping to get your daily dose of smu... ummm, cultural enlightenment, in form of a review of Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2. It turned out that some peculiar Californian law explicitly forbids reviewing that game before reviewing its even more classic predecessor. Because the source of this information was none other than that trustworthy law enforcement officer, Jim Walls, we felt obliged to review instead the Police Quest remake. But don't worry, rumor says that the original Leather Goddesses is going to be soon reviewed as a Missed Classic on this very same blog! Stay tuned...

What can I tell you about Leather Goddesses of Phobos? Let's check in with wikipedia...

Leather is a durable and flexible material created by tanning animal rawhide and skin

A goddess is a female deity in polytheistic religions

Phobos is the innermost and larger of the two natural satellites of Mars

Well, that explains it.

Leather Goddesses of Phobos are female deities from a moon of Mars who are made from a durable material.

But that's not the image I get in my head when I read the title.

THIS is closer to the image I get in my head, but that's Space Quest IV clearly referencing this game

Read more to find out about the game everyone is talking about

Leather Goddesses of Phobos had an obvious clickbait title decades before clickbait titles existed. It makes you (or me, at least) think of scantily clad (leather-clad obviously) women (perhaps with omnipotent parents) from space.

Going into the game I'm expecting a combination of gratuitous text-based sexual references combined with ridiculous comedy.

Like this but in space

The game was written by Steve Meretzky, whose work as we've seen in Planetfall, Spellcasting 101 and Spellcasting 201, and to a lesser extent in Gateway and Timequest.

The game name existed for many years before the game itself was even thought of – apparently in 1982 Meretzky added the name “Leather Goddesses of Phobos” to a list of the company's games on a chalkboard as a joke. The name was removed before anyone outside the company saw it, but it remained as an in-joke amongst the staff, and was used a few times in other games, including Starcross (did you notice it, Joe?)

The game came with some 'feelies' including a comic of “Lane Mastadon where Lane Battles the Shameless Leather Goddesses, in actual 3D!!!

Nice picture, but there's clearly no leather here

If anyone has a pair of those old red/blue 3d glasses, let me know if this looks cool

Anyway, on with the game.

Getting a few laughs out of me before the game even starts – bravo, game!

OHIO

I start the game in a bar in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, in 1936. I feel an urge.

I do my usual game-starting routine of examining everything in my inventory and everything in the starting location.

Each time I do something my urge gets more urgent.

At some point the urge in my bladder becomes too much and make a mess before two aliens (who speak English) appear and decide I'm worthless and take someone else instead. Three weeks later, the Earth is invaded and everyone is enslaved by the Leather Goddesses of Phobos.

Okay, my first attempt lasted 4 turns and gave me a score of 0 out of 9309. Not a good start. Let's see if I can do any better.

There are only two places I can go from the bar, the ladies room or the gents room. This is an in-game gender selection, which I like – much better than a “What sex are you? Press M or F” Though I could easily imagine a Larry Laffer type immediately checking out the ladies room first.

One of the other 'feelies' in the game box is a scratch n sniff card with 7 smells on it.

I take the stool and am promptly abducted by a tentacled alien.

PHOBOS

I clicked on this picture of Phobos and what I saw left me absolutely speechless!

I wake up in a cell, which contains a painting of a pussy, a flashlight and a blanket. A guard shoves a tray of brown food at me, which I smell (chocolate). I take everything and open the cell door, surprised that it isn't locked.

In the only other cell in the area, I find an occupant, Trent (Tiffany if I play as a woman)

Trent gives me a matchbook with items we'll need for him to create a Super-Duper Anti-Leather Goddesses of Phobos Attack Machine!!!

I'll need:

a common household blender
six feet of rubber hose
a pair of cotton balls
an eighty-two degree angle
a headlight from any 1933 Ford
a white mouse
any size photo of Jean Harlow
a copy of the Cleveland phone book

I also find a seemingly meaningless matrix of letters which I expect to be significantly meaningful

With Trent following along, I do some more exploring and find a closet with a two foot diameter black circle painted on the floor. I enter the circle (I have no idea why I thought it was enterable but it was the first thing I thought of trying)

VENUS

This is what scientists of the 80s thought Venus looked like

I end up in a jungle being followed by a giant Venus flytrap. Trent and I escape and climb into a hole in the forest. Not being able to reach us, the Venus flytrap gave up and left but Trent and I were stuck in the hole as it was too deep to climb out. This was where I got annoyed with the parser. I wanted to climb onto Trent's shoulders, or have him do the same to me. I tried the following options...

Climb Trent
Ask Trent to climb shoulders
Climb shoulders
Go on Trent
Use trent shoulders
Get up
and more...

Frustrated, I checked online for hints and found out the right syntax to do exactly what I'd been trying to do for ages.

You just said you didn't know the word “shoulders', then used it two sentences later - are you screwing with me, text parser?

I'd also previously tried using Trent to reach a high shelf back on Phobos, to no avail, so I went back to a previous save and picked up a wicker basket using the 'Stand on Trent' command, and continued playing until this point.

Having escaped the Venus flytrap and the Walkthrough-inducing hole, I continued on through the jungle, picking up a can of “MarsCo Brand Black Hyperdimensional Transport Circle Stain' on the way, and found a house with both a front and rear entrance.

The rear entrance was besieged by an 'extraordinary number' of door-to-door salesman. One salesman was desperate to barter with me, so I offered him some of my stuff. He rejected all my items apart from the flashlight. I'm not sure I won't regret this later when I go to Planet of the Grues, but I give him the flashlight. He gives me a TEE remover, but doesn't explain what it does.

Before I can ask any questions, the salesman is carried off my a giant Venusian MegaMoth. The game proclaims that 'The other salesmen scatter like frightened salesmen.' I got another good chuckle at this line – the humour's working for me whenever it's not resorting to innuendo.

Once again, I surprise myself by guessing what something in this game does, I use my TRAY with the TEE remover machine, turning it into a RAY, which 'looks a little like Ray whtsisname from second grade'. I also use the blanket, turning it into a blanke, and so on. I restore my game until I know what I want to remove a 'T' from, and try the other door.

There's no T in Team

Knocking on the front door has a mad scientist who (surprisingly for a Venusian) speaks with a German accent. After locking the door and dissolving the key in a vat of acid, he grabs me because I'm just the type he needs for his experiment. I try to push him into the acid, but the game informs me it doesn't know the word 'acid'– get stuffed game, you're the one who brought 'acid' up in the first place.

After unsuccessfully trying a few more things, the scientist forces Trent and I down a chute into his lab, where he has two caged gorillas and two slabs for strapping down human victims, along with a red power switch.

I also notice a rubber hose in the gorilla cage, which excites me because it's on the list we need to create Trent's machine. After a few moves, the scientist straps us down onto the slabs. I wait, then the scientist pulls the switch and I'm inside the cage, and inside the male gorilla. Being that this is the first time I've been in a room with a member of the opposite sex and this is a supposedly raunchy game, I make advances to the other gorilla. I think I solved a puzzle accidentally, because the scientist leaves, stating that 'Der sex drive uf a species resides in der body, not in der brain'.

I know that if I can get out of the cage, I can pull the switch and hopefully get back into my own body. I tried opening the bars of the cage but wasn't quite strong enough. The game points out that the bars almost give. Deciding I just need a little help, I scan the room. Trent and my body are useless on the slabs. I try everything I can think of to get the female gorilla to help me with the bars but can't get the game to understand. Remembering the incident with Trent's shoulders, I turn back to the hint book to work out how to get Miss Gorilla to help me with the cage.

How can I get her to help me?

On checking out the hint book, I found out that the answer isn't to get the female gorilla to help me. I was actually dead-ended because there was something I needed to do before being turned into a gorilla.

Egad! I'm stuck in the cage in the body of a gorilla!

Have you tried to bend the bars as a gorilla?
You need a little more energy...
...like you might get from a sugar rush...
...from eating the chocolate you were given in your cell!
…

Ah. I see. I needed to give the chocolate to the gorilla before getting strapped down. I was a little disappointed in myself for turning to a hint book so early, so apologies for that. My frustration with the parser earlier made me impatient. And I could argue that the parser should have given me better feedback with my attempts to garner assistance from the female gorilla – perhaps a 'she doesn't seem interested in helping you and lays down and goes to sleep' instead of a generic error message would help.

I reload and give the male gorilla the chocolate before the scientist straps me down this time (actually I completely restarted the game because I'd eaten the chocolate earlier on and forgotten to restore my game).

I grab the hose, eat the chocolate and can now open the bars. I untie myself and Trent, drop the hose and pull the switch.

Back in my own body, I leave the slab and take the hos...

Dear Adventure Games: Limited inventory space is NOT FUN!

Having screenshotted the game, I drop the matchbook (Trent refuses to take any of my items), hoping I won't need it again, and pick up the hose. I now have 1 of the 8 items I need to (presumably) win the game. I feel so proud.

We'll stop for now and continue next time when I spend some time on Mars.

Time played: 3 hr 50 mins
Total time: 3 hr 50 mins

Inventory: rubber hose, wicker basket, stool, rule book, brass loincloth (worn), tray, painting, blanket, scrap of paper, matchbook, can of black stain, odd machine, coin

Written by Alex

And so we begin the Police Quest remake. I have to say, right off the bat, it gets points for presentation. I like that the title screen mirrors that of Police Quest III, released one year earlier.

In fact, this remake uses a lot of the same assets from Police Quest III, as though they were intending make sure that the overhaul of the series maintained a certain level of continuity throughout.

Lytton P.D. in Police Quest I…

…and Lytton P.D. in Police Quest III.

Sonny’s street clothes in Police Quest I…

…and in Police Quest III

And lastly, Sonny’s character portrait in Police Quest I…

…and in Police Quest III.

I’m getting ahead of myself here, but these are cool little touches that make me wish that the second game had also been similarly remade to bring it in line with these two.

Back to the intro: over some wailing guitars—well-composed, though the audio quality is a bit grating—we get the game’s credits, as well as some ominous imagery bespeaking the violence facing the city of Lytton.

This is actually animated.

So is this. It turns into a SKULL!

It definitely gives the game that “cop show” vibe I’m sure they were going for, and that I enjoyed so much about the third game . . . at least in the beginning.

But among the credits . . .

. . . we see . . .

. . . a distinct . . .

. . . lack . . .

. . . . of Jim Walls.

“Hey, you say something?”

Gah! Oh whew, it’s just you, Ji—Officer Walls.

“Ah, come on. Jim’s fine. So anyway, what’s up?”

Nothing. I’m just curious as to why you’re not in the game’s credits.

“Are you serious? You must’ve gotten a defective copy or something. One of those pirated discs I think.”

I don’t think so . . . that’d be a strange change to make, don’t you think?

“Oh, you think? Just remember, punk, I made a lot of enemies in my 15 years on the California highway patrol, many of which I put into my games! I mean, it could’ve been Jimmy “Slick” Velazquez, a numbers-runner I used to know down in Chico who . . . wait, I remember now. It’s probably one of Ken Williams’ little gags. Let me tell you, that guy was such a joker! He was always jealous that my mustache was so much better than little strip of fuzz he wore on his lip. He stuck me in at the end of the game, and himself as the very first name. That guy . . . such a crackup.”

Hey, if you say so, Jim. You’re the boss.

“Damn right I am!”

The game begins with a view of Lytton’s skyline and a few text bubbles written in the style of travel guides and newspaper articles, describing Lytton’s growth in prosperity and troubles from the 1960s up through the then-current early 90s. It’s brief, economical, and tells the player all they need to know without bogging down the game’s intro. An excellent framing story that does its job without overstaying its welcome.

“Kind of like me, right?”

R-right. . .

We begin, as does every game in the series, with Sonny Bonds coming to the station one morning. I’m going to try to keep this playthrough from being like a walkthrough, or incessantly chronicling the differences between the original Police Quest and this remake, but some noticeable differences that actually have to do with a simple, initial puzzle are that 1) Sonny starts in his street clothes and 2) the layout of the station is different.

The first door in the screenshot above leads to the evidence lockup. There’s nothing to do there right now, since Sonny’s inventory is completely empty, which is kind of weird for a nitpicky reason I’ll get to later. Cool factoid: The officer running the lockup is named Russ Dinkle, the same Russ Dinkle who, according to the in-box copy of the Gazette, won a 13” color TV in the recent raffle. I love little touches like this.

There is nothing of value on the table, but the hanging file holder on the wall contains transfer request forms. Sonny can’t do anything now, since he’s technically off-duty, but come on! This is a Police Quest game! Paperwork is always on the table!

But this is sort of a puzzle, isn’t it? It’s a pretty good way of tipping the player off to an action they can perform without being too obscure or cryptic.

But wait! There’s more! And it doesn’t devolve into hand-holding! Down the elevator is the narcotics department, home of Lieutenant Morgan. The game goes out of its way to make you realize he’s prissy, overpaid, and a suck-up to the Commissioner, but when you talk to him he offers this little gem of a hint:

I like it. It’s reinforcement for the player to realize that those transfer request forms aren’t just for decoration. I know what I’ll be doing later . . . once Sonny is officially on the clock!

I similarly like the tie-in to the in-box copy of the Gazette, which has an article detailing Sonny’s excellence on the force. Good writing so far!

Also, some of the descriptions in Lt. Morgan’s office are pretty funny.

“Cloun” = “Clown.” Ha ha.

Steelton, an actual location you get to visit in Police Quest II.

Back on the main floor, I come to a lobby with three doors, a table holding radio receivers, and a board replete with patrol car keys. I take a radio and a set of keys and try to go into the first door I see.

Well, it looks like getting uniformed and on-duty is the first of Sonny’s puzzles. Again, it guides the player without being too much of a tutorial.

The door on the lower-left leads to Sgt. Dooley’s office. There’s nothing to do there besides get yelled at for not being changed and in the briefing room. Dooley and his office are messes, the opposite of Lt. Morgan. I’m not sure if there’ll be anything to do in there later, but for now, there are no puzzles, so it’s off to the last accessible door in the station: the locker room!

Sonny’s locker is in the middle of the middle bank of lockers, and it presents us with the game’s first copy protection puzzle. It seems that, as in Police Quest III, super-cop Sonny here forgot his combo, but then remembers that it’s the final football score of last night’s game, conveniently chronicled in the in-box copy of the Gazette! It’s 26-9, and yes, you have to enter it every time you go to open the locker.

Inside is Sonny’s uniform, nightstick, gun, ticket book, pen, a towel, and . . . uh . . . the keys to his personal car.

. . .

How did he get to work if he had neither the keys to a patrol car nor his personal car?!

“He walked! What, are you some kind of wimp afraid of walking?”

But the game showed a squad car driving into the station at the beginning!

“It did not.”

It did too! Here’s photographic evidence depicting the scenario I just described!

As you can clearly see from Exhibit A here, a squad car is very obviously approaching the entrance to the Lytton Police Department’s underground parking garage.

And in Exhibit B, we unequivocally see said squad car making a right turn into the station’s egress and, indeed, enter said underground parking lot. Therefore, it is safe to assume that—

“Cram it, Law Boy. He walked. Who’s to say that’s Sonny’s car?”

But why would the game show it otherwise! It’s Sonny’s car. Q.E.D.

“Oh yeah? Prove it.”

You know what? Let’s just move on . . .

Grabbing the towel, Sonny heads to the shower, washes up, changes into his uniform, takes his stuff, and we’re ready to go!

More items! The inventory in Police Quest I is normal Sierra fare, where clicking on items gives you their descriptions and . . .

Bed . . . posts . . .?

“What? Cops have personal lives too, you know. What’s the big deal?”

Is . . . is this what you mean by saying you designed these games based on your own personal experiences?

“. . . I can neither confirm nor deny.”

*Shudder* Now that the game’s first puzzle is over, Sonny can get to his briefing, where Sgt. Dooley runs down a list of Lytton’s problems with drugs and violence, particularly among the young, compliments Sonny for his recent outstanding work (though warns him not to get a big head), and tells all officers to keep an eye out for a certain stolen vehicle:

Sgt. Dooley looks a little . . . nerdy, doesn’t he? I approve!

I suspect that’s a mission or a puzzle! Again, the game gives a breadcrumb trail without being too obtuse or too on-the-nose. So far, so good!

After the briefing, I click around some boxes built into the wall and find out that they’re called pigeonholes, used for messages between officers and the like. Eventually, I find Sonny’s and learn that his buddy Steve wants to meet for something called an 11-98 at a place called Carol’s later in the shift. In the manual’s list of radio codes I can’t find an 11-98, but I’m going to assume it means a break or something. In any event, it’s another puzzle/quest/objective/event/whatever you want to call it. Cool!

Lastly, there’s an in-game copy of the Gazette lying on one of the tables in the briefing room featuring, among other things, mention of a shadowy figure many think is responsible for Lytton’s troubles . . . a drug kingpin known only as the Death Angel!

Foreshadowing!

Rock and roll! The game’s objectives seem to be getting clearer. The morning routine out of the way, nothing left to do but hit the streets and get patrolling! But first, a little paperwork . . .

Next time, we’ll go over the driving mechanics and see what happens to Sonny on duty. I’ve got a feeling that the remainder of the day is going to be anything other than routine.

Inventory: Loaded gun, pen, radio, squad car keys, ticket book, nightstick, handcuffs, keys to Sonny’s Camaro
Score: 13 out of 225
On a scale of Don Knots to Don Johnson, how much do I feel like a cop?: Will Estes as Officer Jamie Reagan

Play time: 45 minutes
Total time: 45 minutes

When we left off last time I'd just escaped from a gorilla's body in a mad scientist's lab in Venus.

Inside the locked lab is another black teleportation circle, which I enter, ending up outside the scientists' house. A few screens later is another black circle, which I also enter.

After entering the circle I am now in...

MARS

I arrive in a ruined castle where I get told the story of King Mitre – on Earth we've heard a bastardized version about King Midas who turned everything he touched into gold, including his daughter. The real story is about King Mitre, who turned everything he touched into a forty-five degree angle. Next to him is a pile of angles, including one with golden hair and a flowing white gown {HINT! HINT!}

Lebron knows exactly how King Mitre feels

One of the items I need is an 82º angle, but the ones in Mitre's throne room are all 45º. Touching the 'princess' angle just gets King Mitre upset. I try to think of ways to convert them to 82º, but as there's no obvious way to change them, I continue exploring.

What I discover is that Mars is big, like, REALLY big, and unlike last time I was here, when I had a flying car to help me traverse the planet, here I have to do it by foot (or boat, but we'll get to that later)

ANNOYANCE OF THE WEEK

Last time my annoyance of the week (which wasn't actually in the original post, but I did mention it) was the text parser. I knew what I wanted to do, and tried a few ways to make the game understand what I wanted to do. The problem is, if I KNEW I had the right solution, I would have kept changing my wording until I'd succeeded, but that's not how adventure games work. You try something, you fail, you try something else. If nothing works, it's either something that can't be done or something that requires an item I don't yet have.

My annoyance this week is games that deliberately make mapping difficult. It's not hard to map a game if it works the way it should. If I go west, then go east, I should be at the same place. Easy to map – easy to understand. If instead of going east I have to go south, screw you game – stop wasting my time. The worst part is that, while last week's annoyance is caused by limited technology and foresight, the reason mapping is difficult has to be a deliberate design decision to lazily extend play time/difficulty.

Fortunately for me, while in the past I would have had a piece of paper with lots of scribbling out and starting again, these days with my multi-monitor setup I can simply Alt-TAB to a spreadsheet and change where the squares are at will. But even a spreadsheet seemed like too much for me this time, so I found a program (Trizbort) that would let me make a map of an annoyingly designed adventure game world. Here's my map

Despite finding mapping a chore as I did it, I actually do enjoy seeing my final results here - looks somewhat elegant now

BACK TO THE GAME

Apart form King Mitre's Castle, the most useful or interesting things I found on Mars were:

A frog – the frog has a crown, so I try to kiss it – my character won't do it due to the disgusting sight (I try CLOSE EYES, which works until I notice the smell)
A dock with a marsmouse (I need a mouse for my collection)
Some dunes with a dead alien, a coded message and some lip balm (I take the coded message and the balm) – the coded message is gibberish, but we'll attempt to decode it later.
An 'Exit Shop' who wants 1 marsmid in exchange for an 'Exit'– a coin I picked up on Venus is worth 10 marsmids, but he won't give change.
A desert oasis with a rabbit and a white circle. I can take the rabbit, and for a little fun, put him in the TEE remover to turn him into a rabbi, who immediately leaves to find a machine gun. I can also use my can of black stain on the white circle, creating a portal to Cleveland
A Sultan's palace, that I'll get to in detail shortly
And a canal system, which I'll also get to in detail a bit later

THE SULTAN'S PALACE

The Sultan's Palace is an area off one of the docks. Of small interest, it contains:

A laundry room with a clothes pin – I immediately think of using it to block my nose when kissing the frog
A tower with a teleportation circle that takes me back to my cell in Phobos
A garden with a well that teleports me back to the barge at the dock (which I later found out was ANY dock the barge was at)

Of greater interest is the Sultan's Audience Chamber. As soon as I arrive, he tells me that I must answer a riddle. If I answer correctly I may spend one hour with any of his wives. If I answer incorrectly, or do anything else, I will die.

I, of course, save the game.

“Oh, all right,” says the Sultan, “I'll bend the rules a tad. You may SAVE.”

He tells me the riddle, but before I can answer Trent butts in.

No.... Trent... My loyal compan... ah, you know what? I can't even pretend I care. But I will think about you next time I need some shoulders to stand on.

>“I don't understand the word 'shoulders'.”

Get stuffed, game!

Feel free to make your own guess at the riddle before reading on...

Some say I'm pointless,
yet many are obsessed by me.
I have caused heroic gambles
and sown endless frustration.
Uncounted deaths have I caused.
What am I?

I think for a moment, then SAY “TIME”

Wrongo! I get eaten by a very very very very ferocious tiger.

I try a few other options, all of which seem to fit the riddle...

LIFE
DEATH
LOVE
GOLD

I'm dead, each time.

Then I had a thought. I didn't think it would work, but it did fit the clues (as did a whole lot of answers, including the ones I'd already guessed)

>SAY “RIDDLES”

It worked! It didn't seem any more likely than the other answers, but hey, I'm not tiger food, so I'll worry about the lack of clarity in the Sultan's riddle later.

A guard blocks my way to the harem, and after pointing out that I'm not the first to get the riddle – some guy got it last year and now everyone knows, I'm even the twelfth winner this week – she asks me to pick a wife between 1 and 8379.

I figure there has to be a trick to which number I choose, so I start with 8380, then zero. No luck with those. I tried 507 for no reason other than I saw it on TV last night, but she wasn't available. A few others weren't around, including wife #731 (the only recognisable number from the encoded message) but eventually wife #55 was here. She showed up and I got to smell her with scratch 'n' sniff spot 4 (She smells like fine perfume, and if you expected anything else that's on you.)

I slept with her because who wouldn't sleep with wife #55, and I somehow did it without removing my brass loincloth (worn).

I was certain there had to be something else I needed to do with her, but couldn't think of anything. I tried giving her everything from my inventory but she wasn't interested in anything but my (admittedly alluring) body.

Eventually I just left.

THE CANAL SYSTEM

The barge, which starts off at the Royal Docks, where I arrived from Venus, can be controlled somewhat. It follows the current, and its two controls can be used to stop it; an orange button turns the magnetic lock off or on, and the purple button turns the engines on or off. Basically I kept the engines on, and by disengaging the magnetic lock, then re-engaging it a turn later, I could always end up at the next dock. Some of the docks are many screens (or turns) away, but I usually just WAITed until the maglock found the next dock.

Most docks have comedic names (The Hickory and Dickory Dock, made from Earth Hickory wood and Venusian Dickory wood, Donald Dock, Wattz-Upp Dock, and Now THIS is My Kind of Dock

At one point, where the exit to the Wattz-Upp Dock is, there's a buoy with a skull and crossbones on it

I keep going past the skull and crossbones buoy and...

Oh, is that all. I was expecting something dangerous

Further on, the barge stops at the edge of the polar ice cap. I get out here and notice I have a headache. Looks like I won't be able to spend too much time here due to the cold, I thought, and continued exploring.

I found an Allusion Room, which contained another black teleportation circle that takes me back to the Wattz-Up Dock. It has a somewhat amusing description.

Allusion Room

A solitary black circle is the only break in an vaste expanse of whiteness extending to the horizon. Like a dark speck in a sea of white, or a huge piece of typing paper with but a single period typed unon it, this black circle seems to have been placed here entirely as an opportunity for some silly literary allusions. To avoid the danger of accidentally typing an “L” and having to read them again, follow the faint trails to the north or east.

Further on, I find some penguins, one of which wants a donation to the Penguin Retirement Fund of nine marsmids. I give it my coin and get one marsmid back (I recall that I can use that one marsmid coin to buy an exit from the “Exit Store")

I also find a robot gypsy camp. After greeting me, the robot gypsies are immediately destroyed by a meteorite, leaving their baby robot shivering and crying.

Naturally I take it.

At this point I realise that my headache was not caused by the cold, and I'm dead. Turns out my headache was caused by the ion blast from the metal object I passed in the canal, and I was killed by a cataclysmic exothermic reaction.

Like this but more cataclysmic

I try to be a bit more economical with my turns and find that there is an orphanage at the south pole. I try knocking or dropping the crying baby but am treated with the same thing – the matron kicking me out.

I restore to before I passed the danger buoy and try a few more things.

I attempt to kiss the frog, now that I have a clothes pin. I pin my nose and close my eyes, but...

If I wasn't in an adventure game I'd have people wondering why I'm so damn keen to kiss a frog.

I try a few other things – using the loincloth or different ways of using the blanket or basket. One attempt gets me a reference to one of my favourite books.

>Put blanket on head
Where do you think you are, Traal?

Eventually I try "COVER EARS WITH HANDS" which works. I wear the lip balm (after some serious inventory juggling) and can now kiss the frog.

The frog turns into a princess who starts to make love with me until she disappears, leaving behind only a blender and a note of gratitude.

ITEMS FOUND: 2 of 8 – blender, rubber hose

At some point I also have a great idea that I should have had much earlier.

I go back to the scene with the marsmouse and show him the picture of a pussy cat that I have in my overflowing inventory. He freezes in fear and I now have a mouse

ITEMS FOUND: 3 of 8 – mouse, blender, rubber hose

TITS

I searched google for an appropriate picture, but then I got distracted. What was I doing again?

At one point, which seems to be random, I got a warning. The warnings continued for a few turns and... rather than explaining I'll just pop up a summary of the incident...

Possibly my favourite part of the game

THE BOSS KEY

Something I found about online that doesn't appear in the documentation is a BOSS key – it has nothing to do with the puzzle we're solving now, I just thought I'd mention it.

BONUS BLACK CIRCLE

As I was looking at my screenshots to write this post, I found another black teleportation circle I'd missed.

This circle was subtly mentioned so I missed it first time through – I didn't see it on future visits because you don't get the description a second time unless you type LOOK (or change the settings to VERBOSE, which I did after noticing what I'd missed.)

This circle just takes me back to the basement of Phobos. Many of theses circles seemed to be placed deliberately to lessen the chance of dead-ends by allowing you to return to previous locations. This is something else I appreciated. (Take note, Sierra!)

CLEVELAND

I go back to the Martian Oasis and hop into the black circle to Cleveland.

Cleveland is a small area with a house and a yard. I can take a rake, a trellis and a sack of leaves. I can remove the leaves, leaving more room in my inventory for items. I found earlier that I could put items in my wicker basket and carry more. Now I also have my very own sack of holding.

Inside the house is a bedroom with a window overlooking a street. Nothing exciting there, but a car parked on the street is a 1933 Ford and one of its headlights is loose.

Leaving by the window has me promptly in multiple pieces on the pavement, so I try a different method. I take a sheet from the bed, tied it to the bed and throw it out the window. It doesn't go very far. I try to ...

>TIE TRELLIS TO SHEET, only to be told that I've tied the trellis

You've tied the trellis! In the third quarter, with forty seconds on the clock, the score is trellis 17, player 17!!! But seriously, folks, you can't tie the trellis.

DECODING THE MESSAGES

I have two messages I need to decode

Let's try them

MESSAGE FROM TRENT

I had noticed that the crumpled up message from Trent's cell had some of the items I needed written on them. Further investigation showed that all eight items were all listed on the paper. I shoved the letters onto a spreadsheet and coloured them in to see if there was a pattern.

The ones in yellow are letters that appear, green are letters that appear twice and blue is a letter that appears three times.

Most importantly, starting from the top left with the letters that don't appear at all gives me...

HISSING FRIGHTENS FLYTRAPS

This would be of more interest to me if I'd decoded it before passing the Venus flytrap by hiding in the hole, but thanks for the help anyway, Trent's subconscious.

I thought I'd try it anyway and went back to Venus, hissed at the flytrap and watched it immediately die of fright. I also noticed I could now go west, as the creature had been blocking the exit.

I did so, and found a jar of untangling cream

This woke my brain up as I had a 'eureka' moment.

These eureka moments are the moments I love in adventure games. When I get an item, or see something or get told some information and I don't just guess, but I KNOW what puzzle it's used for - it's a puzzle I discovered a while ago and have been unable to solve but as soon as this happens, I have my answer. This was one of those times. And it felt good!

If you've been paying attention you may have worked it out too. I had a jar of untangling cream and a 'T' remover. I also have a room full of angles surrounding a depressed King.

I put the jar into my TEE remover machine and now I have a jar of UNANGLING cream. I went straight to the King, and rubbed the cream on his daughter. She turned back into a princess.

The King was overjoyed, and gave me an 82 degree angle he'd made earlier because he just brushed against it (This makes no sense, but since it's a comedy game I'd forgive it if it was funny – actually it wasn't funny enough for me but it was trying to be and I'm in a good mood from solving a puzzle so I'll forgive it anyway.)

Because I'd saved her, I attempted to kiss the princess. King Mitre didn't let me – let her answer for herself, Mitre. I then attempted to get amorous with the King instead. He slapped me across the face. Oh well. I'll accept my 82 degree angle as full payment instead.

One problem solved and another item found.

ITEMS FOUND: 4 of 8 – 82 degree angle, mouse, blender, rubber hose

As I left the throne room I heard a noise as the King said, "Oh no, not again."

MESSAGE FROM DEAD ALIEN

The message I got from the dead alien reads as follows

VSDFHHQN UXRB VVLN RW UHK JQLNVD BE UHK RW IOHVUXRB BILWQHGL – SDP WHUFHV HKW WHJ GQD QDWOXV HKW IR 731 UHEPXQ HILZ WFDWQRF RW VL QRLVVLP UXRB

This one I solved by reading the documentation – particularly the 3D comic included in the instruction booklet.

You know, if the message had five words, this would be fun, but that's a long-arsed message. Sigh.

Rather than decode the message manually, I decided to shove the letters into a spreadsheet and write a formula to work it out for me (not sure if that makes me lazy or clever)

=CHAR(CODE(A73)-3)

This worked great, except for the Bs, which gave me an error. I considered just doing the Bs manually, but I'd gone this far, so...

=IF(CODE(A73)>69;CHAR(CODE(A73)-3);CHAR(CODE(A73)+23))

Perfect. This gave me SPACEENK RUOY SSIK OT REH GNIKSA YB REH OT FLESRUOY YFITNEDI DD PAM TERCES EHT TEG DNA NATLUS EHT FO (804) REBMUN EFIW TCATNOC OT SI NOISSIM RUOY

Well, it starts off promisingly with SPACE, then continues into gobbledegook. I keep looking at it until the answer hits me - it's also backwards...

YOUR MISSION IS TO CONTACT WIFE NUMBER 408 OF THE SULTAN AND GET THE SECRET MAP – IDENTIFY YOURSELF TO HER BY ASKING HER TO KISS YOUR KNEECAPS

I wasn't sure which number to use. Do the numbers use the same cypher? I had a few options to try. I'd already tried 731 and that didn't work. Other possibilities were 408, 804 or 137.

I ask for wife #137, ask her to kiss my kneecaps, and now that she knows I'm with the rebels she gives me the secret map and a torch and ushers me to a secret entrance to the catacombs. I sleep with her first because, why the hell not, and enter the catacombs

THE CATACOMBS

I should mention that all the adventuring I'd done since my first visit to the palace had been without Trent, as he'd been eaten by the tiger.

When I entered the catacombs, Trent appeared from behind me, mentioning that he was saved by dimension-hopping midgets that had come through at the right moment, and the tiger cage also lead directly to the catacombs.

I was so surprisingly happy to see Trent. I hugged and kissed him.

[I don't know the work “hug.”]

What kind of an emotionless game are you, anyway?

The documentation also comes with a handy? map to the catacombs. The map consists of 2 parts. Here it is.

I THINK I start at the arrow, but this is very confusing.

This catacomb map is copy protection, but it's also annoyingly convoluted. But that's not all. There's three more issues that make it harder.

Some passages are blocked off - the map is old, and the catacombs have changed (seriously?)
There are two items you need to get from the catacombs
I keep getting killed by creatures in the catacombs

To get around number 1, you just have to work your way around the map, marking it appropriately when you find blocked off sections, involving lots of saving and reloading.

To get around number 2, you just need to work out which rooms you need to go to in order to get these items.

To get around number 3, we go back to the comic...

Just don't ask me how many fingers you're holding up - I'm genuinely not sure

Yes. You have to CLAP at least every 5 turns, HOP every 9 turns, and KWEEPA every 11 turns.

This would be hard enough without having to refer to the map and get around backtracking due to blocked passages.

After numerous tries and not really wanting to be bothered with tedious mapping and forgetting to KWEEPA at the right time anymore, I gave up and looked up a walkthrough.

A few times I even screwed up following a walkthrough – not sure if that says something more about me than the game.

Here's one such walkthrough...

NW. N. NE. E. CLAP. NE. NE. SE. HOP. CLAP. KWEEPA. D. NW. NE. CLAP. N. S. HOP. NE. CLAP. U. KWEEPA. NW. GET PHONE BOOK. CLAP. NW. HOP. S. SE. CLAP. SE. D. KWEEPA. NE. CLAP. HOP. W. E. W. CLAP. SW. SW. KWEEPA. HOP. CLAP. GET RAFT. N. NE. E. CLAP. NW. N. UP.

Well, it seems so easy when you write it down like that, but trust me. It's hard and annoying.

ITEMS FOUND: 5 of 8 – Cleveland phone book (I really thought I'd find that in Cleveland instead of Mars), 82 degree angle, mouse, blender, rubber hose

Now I've got the fifth item I need and most importantly, I have my friend Trent back. I didn't really care about Trent until I got him back after thinking he was dead. I think playing so long without him made me appreciate his company more.

BACK TO CLEVELAND

Who'd have thought a game from 1986 that takes place in 1936 could somehow justify TWO pictures of Lebron James in a single post

Trent and I go to Cleveland and try to find out how to get the headlight.

I'd previously tried tying the sheet to the bed and putting it out of the window, but it was too short. I tried tying the blanket to the sheet, but that didn't work. Eventually, I decided to RIP SHEET. I ripped the sheet into strips of cloth and tied them together (TIE SHEET TO SHEET) – now it was long enough. As I looked out the window, Trent decided he was lighter, so he'd go down (I'd actually tried this earlier while Trent was missing and I'd died because the sheet broke)

Trent succeeded and got the headlight, but a speeding truck smashed into him, blowing up moments later. I'd just got him back and he'd died. I grieved for a move, then Trent returned.

What a guy!

ITEMS FOUND: 6 of 8 – Headlight, Cleveland phone book, 82 degree angle, mouse, blender, rubber hose

Time to end for now. Tune in next time when I find the last of the two required items and finally meet a Leather Goddess.

Time played: 6 hr 30 mins
Total time: 10 hr 20 mins

Inventory: I actually have no idea - the things I wrote about in this post were all done out of order and in different saves, so it's hard to determine what I had in my possession after solving these particular puzzles. Suffice to say I have a crapton of stuff, and some more stuff dropped in a few places due to having a full inventory.

Written by Alfred n the Fettuc

Brandon’s journal - entry #3: Caves. Darkness. Floating balls of light talking to me. Monsters moving in the shadow. This is definitely the last night I spend in this night club…

Yay, the fireberries cave! Well it’s a long long maze, and it’s very surprising at first. You’ve been wandering around the game nicely until now and random gem puzzles aside, it’s been somewhat of a breeze. And then the game throws at you a hundred-screen maze with insta-death around every corner! I understand that a lot of players just stopped there dead in their tracks… As for me I kinda like it! I enjoy mapping my old-school games with graph paper and pencil and this is a maze that rewards the player for being thorough.

One of the two kinds of screens we’ll see for a long time…

But first things first. We left Brandon at the entrance of the cave, with no idea of what’s ahead of him. If we go north we find a fireberry bush. We can pick a fireberry and put it in our inventory. From there, every time you change screen, the fireberry becomes darker and darker and disappears on the fourth move. If you go east from the starting screen you find… another fireberry bush…

Oooh it feels like it’s going to be a long day…

The next screen holds a curious contraption involving a grate, a pressure plate, some kind of scale and seems to be directly picked from Eye of the Beholder or Lands of Lore (two games that teach us that heroic fantasy architecture was mainly based on pressure plates for basically every function imaginable). And sure enough, here is what happens:

Give me a “JUMP” key...

Yeah thanks Brandon, nobody saw that one coming…

Ok so now I’m cut from retreating to Timbermist Woods. I certainly hope that dead-man walking scenarios are not an idea that Westwood designers liked because I left a fortune in gemstones on the other side of that gate… There is obviously something to do with the scale, and trying to throw an apple on it tells me it’s not heavy enough to do anything, so I’m on the right track.

Past this point, we enter the labyrinth proper. The idea is simple. Your fireberry lasts four moves. Every room you enter either holds a fireberry bush or doesn’t. If your fourth move lands you in a room without a bush, you’re eaten by a grue… Or several…

Maybe Kyrandia is secretly a Zork remake…

There are two ways to avoid that. The first one involves careful mapping and trial and error. When your fireberry is almost gone, you enter the next room hoping you’ll find another fireberry bush. Save scumming is in the air and it’s quite tedious. However the save/load process is pretty fast and doesn’t weigh too much. With Dark Seed save system, I think I would have thrown my computer by the window after a few hours.

The other way is remarkably tedious and in my opinion removes the fun from the whole thing, but it works. When you put a fireberry on the ground in a room, it never disappear. So you can light up the whole place. However it means you have to go to a fireberry bush, pick a few ones, than go to the new room, drop the berry, go back to pick more berries, etc… I think whoever is employing this technique is bored to death in a few hours...

The nice thing with the “regular” way is that, once you have your map, you just fly through the labyrinth in no time, getting in the next fireberry room just as your light source is disappearing. It’s quite pleasant and you really feel like you’ve mastered the place. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, there were many deaths before getting that feeling.

Many, many deaths…

I’ll spare you the hour I spent mapping the place entirely. Suffice to say the grues in the area feasted quite a lot on lost adventurers. After that, here are my observations about the place :

Right next to the entrance is a large chasm I can’t cross. Getting to the other side will probably lead to a way out, or at least an important item.
The maze can be considered separated in two “parts”, east and west. Two important rooms split the place in two. On the north side is The Pantheon of Moonlight, which holds two weird talking balls of light. They seem to be here for quite a long time and they need a gemstone of some kind to be freed… Oh come on, a gemstone? All my stuff is on the other side of the grate! Let’s not jump to conclusions that I should have taken one of the gemstones with me and keep exploring...

Let me guess… a sapphire? Sunstone? Ruby?
I’m starting to feel like a jewelry dealer in this game…

On the south side of the “split” (which isn’t really a split considering I found there is a middle path too but whatever), you’ll find a room with open sky which shows night sky for some reason (maybe it means Brandon has spent a LOT of time in the maze). On the ground there I find a gold coin, which immediately reminds me of the well in Timbermist for which I couldn’t find a use. Throwing gold coins makes sense in a game like this, but it doesn’t help me for the matter at hand, which is opening the damn gate.

Amusingly, Brandon says “Aaaah I thought I would
never get out” while it’s just the middle of the maze…

In the south-east corner of the maze, I find a room with lava in it and a bridge across it. Trying to cross the bridge leads to another horrible death…

Come on Brandon, you’re always exaggerating… Oh.

This is where the freeze scroll from Darm comes in handy. Using it turns the whole lava to ice and allows me to cross without problem… In the next screen I find… another fireberry bush… sigh. And an iron key which I have absolutely no idea where to use.

Yay

Finally, the last room of interest is a cave full of emeralds! I hungrily pick one of them but considering the form of it, I highly doubt it’ll help me with the talking will’o’wisps.

Okay, now you’re just messing with me.

Littered through the maze I find four rocks that look heavy enough to help me with the scales in the first room!

After this (very long) trek in the depths of earth, I go back to the closed grate. On my way, I make a small detour to try the emerald, the gold coin and the iron key with the wisps, but to no avail. Back to the first room, I try throwing a rock on the scale and it works! The grate moves slightly. I do this again with the other rocks.

Until…

...Brandon…

...does something…

...VERY stupid.

Brandon proceeds to throw the rocks one by one with riskier and riskier moves until he manages to miss the fourth throw and the rock falls down the scale into the abyss underneath while the grate was starting to move! Stupid protagonist! There is something to be said when the character in an adventure game messes up the player’s efforts…

Anyway, thanks to this dumb hero, I’m devoid of rocks and the grate is still closed. I’m now contemplating the idea of returning through the whole labyrinth and see what I missed… but before doing that, I have to check the notable rooms again just in case and I don’t take too long to find it. But come on, you have to give me some slack for missing it in the first place. Let’s do a little game. Go back to the “cavern of twilight” screenshot and find the very important rock that’s obviously in this picture. Go on, really. I’ll wait…

THERE!

Thanks to this little pixel hunting, I now have a precious fifth rock. I go back (again) to the first room and score! The grate is open! Let’s stop for a second there. I spent the better part of two hours in this maze for what? Find a way to exit it by the same way I entered? Granted I got an emerald, a key and a gold coin for my trouble but you have to admit it’s a bit anticlimactic…

Pictured: victory.

I have a good idea where to go though : to the (wishing?) well! It’s a good feeling to be able to get out of the cave and back to the Timbermist environment and music. And sure enough, it works! The gold coin seems to start a weird reaction in the well. It fills itself with water and gives me… a moonstone!

...whatever that is.

Considering the shape and name of the gem, I guess it’s what my new friends the will’o’wisps need. I go back aaaaaall the way to the Pantheon of Moonlight and put the moonstone in the socket! I had a little moment of stress though, when the game suddenly told me that I couldn’t put that in here…

in red letters!

But I just clicked a bit on the side of the socket. The moonstone fits and the wisps surround me to thank me. They shower me in purple sparks and give me another power for my amulet. The power of the will’o’wisp! With that, I turn into a purple ball of light and can glide my way through the darkness of the labyrinth without worrying about the fireberries!

Weeeee! Take that, grues!

With my newfound power I can cross the chasm near the entrance of the labyrinth… and finally find the exit!

For once we agree, Brandon, it was about time!

I try to go a bit further before closing off and on the third screen outside, I get knocked out by a falling branch! This is a great place to stop so we’ll leave Brandon have a good and deserved sleep.

Let him sleep, he had a bad day…

So we successfully exited the infamous fireberry maze. What thoughts have I about the whole thing? Well I kinda liked it to say the truth! I think it worked perfectly with my love for mapping, but I can also understand a lot of people would hate it. The only way to map the place is through trial and error and the few actual puzzles there is are pretty simple. Basically, if you remove the maze, you just have to get the rocks and the coin, then bring the moonstone to the Pantheon in order to exit it. Once you have a functional map, the rest is pretty straightforward. Anyway, it was more pleasant to me than the gemstone puzzle in Timbermist… We’ll come back to this in the Final Rating. I’m very curious now to see what the rest of Kyrandia has in store for us… We’ll find out next week!

Session time: 2 hours
Total time: 4 hours 30

Inventory: 2 apples, flute, magic scroll, tulip, emerald, iron key
Powers: Healing, Will’o’wisp

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 Alex

Sonny’s first in-game day on patrol wastes no time getting to the hardcore stuff! But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here; like I wrote in the last post, we need to talk about the Police Quest remake’s driving interface first.

And . . . it’s good!

Patrolling the Streets

Unlike Police Quest III’s wretched driving simulator, this one manages to retain the charm of the original game’s driving without being tedious. And while the streets don’t seem as full of life as those in the EGA Police Quest, due to the lack of other drivers, the map is bright and colorful, unlike the drab interior of Sonny's car in Police Quest III.

Have I ever mentioned that I really didn’t like Police Quest III?

“Yes. Yes you did. And it’s not like the designer of that game is standing right here in your doorway. Have some respect, Law Boy.”

You know something Jim? You’re right. It’s easy for me to take pot-shots at you from behind the screen. With you right there, it’s a bit different, you know? I’ll try to keep my snarky comments to a minimum. Deal?

“I generally have a rule against trusting punk lawyers, but what the hell. Deal.”

Great!

So one thing I like about this driving interface is that you can click the “Eye” icon on the various buildings on the map and get a description of what they are, some helpful, and some just for added descriptive richness. And as Lytton is divided into four quadrants, it seems like getting lost will be nearly impossible.

Cynical . . . but kind of funny.

I make a note of some locations that seem like places I can visit later. These include:

The courthouse
The jail
Caffeine Carol’s, where I’m supposed to meet Steve later in the shift
Wino Willy’s, a dive bar next to Carol’s
The Blue Room, a cop hangout
Bert’s Park
Cotton Cove
Lytton General Hospital
The Lytton Waldruff-Hilltowne hotel
The tack Hotel Delphoria

And I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss how to drive in Police Quest: There's self-explanatory icons for the gas and brake pedals, and three yellow arrows. The arrows tell Sonny’s car where to turn as he approaches each intersection—just click an arrow and when Sonny gets there, he’ll turn left, right, or go straight depending on which arrow is blinking.

Periodically, a “STOP” icon appears in the left rectangle, next to the helpful description of which road Sonny is on. Simply approach going 15 miles per hour or less, and Sonny will stop automatically. To turn your siren on, click the small red button next to the ignition, and Sonny can both blow through stop signs and pull over other cars who dare break the traffic laws.

Easy as pie, right? I sure think so. And as a bonus, a flashing red square on the map tells you exactly where you are. No guesswork! And I like how the game gives some brief explanatory text boxes when you first get on the streets. It’s quick, economical, and doesn’t disrupt the flow of the game.

Alright, so we’re on patrol! I check the manual and notice that—gulp—I forgot to do something before getting into the squad car.

I forgot the vehicle inspection!

“You what?! What, are you trying to get yourself killed or something? What’s the matter with you!”

Whoa, Jim: Truce. Remember?

“No, this is serious stuff! There’s a reason I put that in the game! Nothing bugs me more than a brother or sister in blue getting hurt, or worse, for something so preventable! How hard is it to walk around your car and check the tires and everything?!”

That’s . . . a really good point. And it’s not hard at all. Quoth the manual:

Vehicle Walk-Around Safety Procedures

Be responsible for the vehicle and be held accountable for the equipment assigned to the vehicle.
Conduct a daily inspection before each tour of duty to insure that the vehicle is safe, properly equipped and in serviceable condition. (Special attention shall be given to checking all four wheels, steering, and brake system.)

I seem to recall that failure to do so in the original Police Quest results in an instant death. Here, I’m still allowed to drive, but I sure hope it doesn’t come back to bite me later in classic Sierra fashion.

Murder

In any event, it doesn’t take too long before dispatch summons Sonny to a reported 11-80 on Fig Street between 4th and 3rd. Checking the manual, I discover that—

“An 11-80? That’s a traffic collision with a major injury!”

Yeah, I was getting to that . . .

So sirens on, I find my way to this spot and Sonny pulls over, getting out of the car to see a crowd of people rubbernecking around a car that’s gotten awfully intimate with a telephone pole.

The car’s a wreck, and so is the driver. I have Sonny call dispatch to let them know he’s on the scene before getting a closer look at what happened. And what Sonny sees isn’t pretty.

A head injury . . . a hole in the jaw . . . bullet holes on the door . . . this wasn’t just a traffic accident. This looks like murder!

It’s weird to not gather evidence, but remember that at this point in the Police Quest continuity, Sonny is not yet a detective; he’s just a lowly beat cop.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold it right there Law Boy. ‘Lowly’ beat cop? Beat cops put their ass on the line every single day, protecting our lives so punks like you can make smarmy jokes on the Internet. They do valuable work, so I highly recommend you keep your condescension to yourself until you do such a risky job day in, day out.”

You know what Jim? You’re absolutely right, and I regretted saying that as soon as I typed it, which begs the question, “Why did I type it, then?” But we’re getting way too meta here. Anyway, I’m just going by the pop-culture impression of beat cops which is, quite frankly, garbage.

“Alright, pal. Apology accepted.”

Sonny may not be in the position to gather physical evidence, but he can at least examine the witnesses. Only one young man is willing to talk to Sonny, but what he says proves quite helpful.

The witness says he was driving and saw two cars coming towards him, including the one presently smashed and holding a dead driver. He heard two shots, and then this car crashed while the other kept, in the witness’ own words, “jammin’.”

But look at that description: A silver Mercedes, not brand new but not too old, with a partial license number of L964 . . . that sure sounds similar to the stolen car Sargent Dooley described at the morning’s briefing, a black 1983 Mercedes with a license plate number of LOP123. Similar, but not exact. Still, it’s a lead, something Dooley and Lt. Morgan are appreciative of when they arrive on the scene, telling Sonny to get back to his beat.

Quite the way to start the morning! No sooner is Sonny back on patrol when he gets a call from dispatch reminding him of his appointment with Steve.

Or was that Keith? I swear, it was Steve, although Keith makes more sense, being Sonny’s partner in Police Quest II.

Going through my screenshots like a real detective, I see that the message in Sonny’s pigeonhole was, in fact, from Steve.

Ah-ha! Either the game is lying to me, there’s been a continuity error, or Steve/Keith is an imposter out to get me!

“Yeah, alright kid, you’re a regular Columbo. Just shut up and play the game, will you?”

But this is important stuff! In a game as otherwise well-written as this, such an error sticks out like a sore thumb! Surely you had nothing to do with this?

“Me? Hell no! I got everything right, including proper police procedure based on my own experiences. Did you know that the crazy guy in the water from Police Quest III was based on a true story!”

Interesting!

Anyway, Steve, Keith, it doesn’t matter. All that matters now is getting Sonny some coffee, so off to Carol’s we go!

The Banter

I make a detour to Willy’s, but there’s nothing to do there now, and as I’ll be heading there later in this session, I’ll save the description for then.

Suffice it to say, it’s Steve that Sonny meets with, not Keith, as if it really matters.

Sonny and Steve don’t do much but bust each other’s balls and talk about the accident scene Sonny saw, trading some morbid humor, the kind that helps cops cope with some of the difficult stuff they see. Steve also accuses Sonny of being someone called “The Gremlin,” who has been playing pranks on Sgt. Dooley lately. While both men think The Gremlin’s work is highly amusing, neither admit to being him.

I’m sure actual cop banter is decidedly more R-rated than what’s presented here, but it still provides a good amount of realism to the “day in the life” feel the game is going for. Other than that, we learn a little more about Sonny: He’s shy and pretty awkward around the ladies. This not only adds verisimilitude to his character, but gives some foreshadowing of the events to come!

Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Eventually, the phone rings, and Sonny informed by Lt. Morgan that the deceased is a low-level drug dealer named Lonny West, confirmed killed by a bullet in the head. Morgan also compliments Sonny on his excellent work, and vows to keep him informed, something Sonny is much appreciative of.

Eventually, the two officers decide that it’s time to get back to work, with Steve reminding Sonny to be at the Blue Room after work for a get-together in honor of their colleague Jack. Another plot-related breadcrumb. I have to say, so far the game doesn’t seem to leave you wandering around, wondering what to do. It’s been a little linear so far, sure, but it beats being lost. And it’s also probably the best way to simulate being a uniformed police officer in these United States.

The Speeder

Back to the streets! This time, it doesn’t take long for stuff to happen. At the first stop sign, Sonny sees a car blow through an intersection way too fast, a sporty red number driven by what he describes as an “incredible honey-blonde.”

Incredible, eh?! Well, we might just need to take a closer look to confirm!

And, uh, issue a citation as warranted. Because realism.

So “incredible” is a matter of taste.

The offender’s name is Tawnee V. Helmut. How do I know? Because Sonny checks the car’s tags and then calls dispatch to run the numbers. Nope, not stalking in the hopes of getting a date, no sir!

This is where Sonny’s awkwardness with women, alluded to in his conversation with Steve comes in. Tawnee makes eyes at him coos, and practically propositions Sonny to get out of this ticket.

Here’s where the element of player choice comes in: I click the pen on the ticket in Sonny’s inventory, which creates a new object, the ticket.

You click the ticket on Tawnee, and a menu comes up, prompting the player to choose between “Warning” and “Ticket.”

I love stuff like this.

Just for fun, I save and then issue a warning. Tawnee is very happy, and gives Sonny her number—555-7588—telling him to call sometimes. It’s not an in-game death, and I suppose I could continue on, but I don’t feel much like playing the rest of the game just to see if this has consequences when all I want to do is give this reckless driver a ticket! Besides, letting someone go with a warning just because they’re pretty feels wrong. The law is THE LAW! It applies to everyone equally, beauty be damned!

So I restore and give Tawnee a ticket. Her reaction is . . . disturbing.

There’s more. So much more. It’s kind of ridiculous, but I’m sure it’s reflective of the abuse cops take from people. And most likely milder.

So I drive on, secure in the knowledge that at least one bad driver will think twice before driving so dangerously again, and get another call over dispatch, this time from Carol’s, calling about a disturbance she needs Sonny’s help with.

The Bikers

Carol has a complaint about the bikers who always park in front of her establishment. While they go to Willy’s, they give Carol’s customers the wrong impression . . . and use up her parking spaces. While, as Sonny notes, the bikers are parked legally, he agrees to talk to them to see if they can come to an agreement.

And . . . the boss of the gang immediately tries to kill Sonny.

I restore and decide to shoot this guy. Predictably, the death screen tells me that killing an unarmed perp is wrong and that Sonny spends his remaining years drunk and miserable. Wow, that got dark fast.

“To be fair, you shot a guy.”

Quiet, you. I use the nightstick on the biker instead. Sonny kneecaps the bastard, and they agree to leave.

This is an odd scenario—bikers park legally, cop beats them up until they leave—but hey, I’m not the realism expert here! Besides, I can use that classic American legal defense: “They started it,” also known as the doctrine of self-defense. The important thing is that Sonny did not react with an inappropriate level of force, something described in the original Police Quest manual, but not in this one. Trial and error . . . I am not a fan.

Next to the jukebox is a “working girl” named “Sweet Cheeks” Marie that Sonny apparently knew from high school. It’s obvious that they have a thing for each other. Indeed, Marie appears in Police Quest II as his girlfriend and Police Quest III as his wife. Here, though, she’s a hooker.

And she’s got info! She claims that she, um, “serviced” someone claiming to be the Death Angel, someone named “Coffman” or “Hoffman” and that he had a rose tattoo over his left nipple. Marie also lets it slip that this Coffman or Hoffman mentioned someone else, a man named Jesse Baines.

A-ha! Clues! Veteran Police Quest players know what all of this means, but let’s not get carried away here. In return for this intel, Sonny tips Marie off about an upcoming police sting called “Operation Trick Trap,” telling her to lie low for a few days. The situation diffused, it’s back to patrol.

The Drunk

Wow! At the first stop sign I come to, some drunk jerk blows through the intersection, weaving and driving around 50 miles per hour in a heavily populated area.

I know what to do: sirens on, I pull the offender over . . . and check my manual!

Intoxicated Driver Procedures

Detect possible intoxication by observing erratic driving
After stopping the suspect, determine his condition by:
a) Detecting the odor of alcoholic beverage.
b) Administering a Field Sobriety Test.

Well, I’ve already done number one. Time to do the rest.

Let me add here that it’s stuff like this which made people criticize the original Police Quest as “Manual: The Game.” Here, with the point-and-click interface, things are a bit streamlined, but you do lose some of the realism that comes from typing things per the manual.

“That’s what we were going for, you know. Not trying to annoy the player, but by making them feel like a cop for a few hours.”

And I think you did a good job of that. I’m sure the other procedures listed in the manual will be a little trickier to adhere to. For now, back to the drunk!

Running his numbers reveals that his name is William J. Barnum, and that he has two previous DUIs on his record. This doesn’t mean that he’s necessarily drunk now, but--

Oh, come on. He’s drunk as a skunk. The game is being a little on-the-nose here, but whatever: let’s get this clown off the streets!

This is where Police Quest VGA loses a little of the realism of the original. In that game, you actually do “smell car” to detect the odor of alcohol. Here, clicking “Talk” makes Sonny 1) get Mr. Barnum’s license and 2) order him out of the car to do a field sobriety test, which happens automatically. Sonny also reads him his Miranda rights (“You have the right to remain silent,” and so on) of his own accord.

Heck, even in Police Quest III you got to use the breathalyzer machine on the drunk driver Sonny encounters there.

Whatever. The important thing is that Mr. Barnum is getting off the streets . . . or is he? Just for “fun,” I click the pen on my ticket book and give him a citation. Things get rather dark from there.

“What is wrong with you? You think this is funny?”

No. I just wanted to see how much choice there actually was in this game. Alternate solutions and such. Though I’d hardly call this a “solution.” With the speeding Ms. Helmut, for example, you can let her go with a warning and the game keeps going. Here, it’s, rightfully, game over if you let Mr. Barnum go.

“I swear, if they’d have let me work on this I’d have—you know what? Never mind. I’m taking off. This is about the time in the game Sonny goes off duty, so I’m doing the same.”

Gee, thanks for the spoiler alert, Jim!

“Oh, grow up Law Boy. Anyway, it’s been an unexpected pleasure. Good luck with the rest of the game. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

Alright Jim, take it easy. And now I can finally leave my apartment. But guess who doesn’t get to leave his place of confinement? That’s right: Drunk old Mr. Barnum. When you follow proper police procedure and bring him in, Sonny automatically performs the search. But Mr. Barnum asks, on account of his not feeling too good, to be handcuffed in the front.

Another choice! But here, its trial and error, as the proper procedure for handcuffing isn’t in the manual. In the original Police Quest (and I know I said I wouldn’t be doing a game-by-game comparison, but bear with me), the manual details this: men get cuffed in the back, and women may be cuffed in the front.

Here, if you cuff Mr. Barnum in the front, he punches you out. Game over. I suppose cuffing him in back is just common sense, but it seems like the kind of adventure game puzzles I despite: guessing!

Another gripe: See those little lockers near the jail entrance? Those are sidearm storage lockers. In each of the first three Police Quest games, Sonny has to leave his gun outside. This is detailed in the manual.

Here? Nope. You’ve got to either die inside when the perp shoots you with your own gun, or luck out and click on everything to discover what you’re supposed to do. It’s not a big deal, but it irks me.

Inside, the booking officer, Paul, is clearly a stand-in for some other Sierra character . . .

. . . but you, sadly, don’t get to see his portrait. At least he helps you book Mr. Barnum with another example of this game’s copy protection. Much like Police Quest III, you need to enter the appropriate five-digit violation codes from the manual.

I book Mr. Barnum for “driving under the influence of intoxicants,” “not being in full control of his faculties,” and “reckless driving.” I got points for each one, which makes me think I could maybe have booked him for more, but none of them seem to fit and I’m not a jerk cop, I’m an honest one, damn it!

So this done, Sonny gets a call to see Sgt. Dooley. And Sarge is mad. Looks like this Gremlin character’s last prank went too far—he put a live chicken in Dooley’s office.

But all Dooley does is rant and rave and tell Sonny to flake off because he’s off duty.

The officers milling about Dooley’s disperse, saying they’ll catch him later at the Blue Room for Jack’s party. Nothing left to do but shower, change, and end this shift!

After putting the keys and the radio extender back, of course.

Next time, we’ll see what cops do for fun, as well as find out what adventures Sonny has on the next day’s patrol.

Inventory: Loaded gun, handcuffs, keys to Sonny’s Camaro
Score: 62 out of 225
On a scale of Don Knots to Don Johnson, how much do I feel like a cop?: Jim Walls

Play time: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Total time: 2 hours, 5 minutes

When last we met, Trent had almost died for the fourth? time in Cleveland. A circle in Cleveland took us back to Phobos, and from there on to Venus and Mars.

South Pole

EDUTAINMENT WARNING < While Mars' north pole is made from water ice, the south pole in Mars is made from CO2 ice. >EDUTAINMENT WARNING

While hanging out near the Sultan's palace last post, I found that one of the teleportation circles takes me to the barge. With that information I (eventually) work out that I can get to the south pole without going past the brain exploding machine.

I get into the barge, put the raft (the one we picked up in the catacombs) into the canal, turn the barge on and then Trent and I jump into the raft before the barge gets too far.

We can now use the raft to travel the canals as needed, picking it up again when we're at a dock.

We make our way back to the royal well, jump in and end up back on the barge – now at the south pole – success!

As we exit the barge Trent falls into the frigid water, and prompty dies... again.

I once again get the robot gypsy baby and give the penguins 9 marsmids – this time I work out that I can stop the baby crying by wrapping it in a blanket. But knocking on the orphanage door still has the same result of the matron throwing me out.

After trying lots of things, I had to turn to the trusty hint book again to pass this part.

It turns out that I have to wrap the baby robot in a blanket to stop it crying, and I have to leave the baby here, but I can't DROP BABY. What I need to do is first, PUT BABY IN BASKET (which required lots of dropping seeing as I'd been keeping a lot of items in the basket since the start of the game) then PUT BASKET ON DOORSTEP, at which point I automatically hide behind a nearby snowdrift. After waiting a few turns the matron takes the baby. Apparently, the matron forgot to lock the door (although the game didn't mention this), and I can now open it. Inside are some cotton balls, which I grab.

ITEMS FOUND: 7 of 8 – cotton balls, headlight, Cleveland phone book, 82 degree angle, mouse, blender, rubber hose

As I go back via the black circle in the Allusion Room, I find Trent popping out of the Oasis “Good thing I'm so good at holding my breath”

Spaceship

One of the black circles in Venus goes to the hold of a spaceship, specifically a Phobosian battlecruiser. It contains a sword, but as I arrive a radium-powered grenade hits and I die if I'm alone. If Trent is with me, he hurls himself on the grenade in my stead. Thanks, Trent. I'm near the end of the game so I'm not sure if this is really the end for poor Trent. I grieve for him again, then move on.

There is also a stallion that I can ride to the other side of the spaceship, where I find a therma suit (which I wear) and a hatch (which I open and leave)

I'm now in space, between the Phobosian battlecruiser and a small space yacht, while a figure in black, who is Thorbast, Chief Assassin for the Leather Goddesses of Phobos, leaves the young woman he's assaulting to attack me with his sword.

I HIT THORBAST WITH SWORD, while a bug-eyed monster attacks the tied-up woman

We go blow to blow for a while while I try other verbs, like STAB, THROW and DECAPITATE.

Like this, but in spa...oh

At one point Thorbast loses his sword and I end up with it.. I try attacking him with both swords, or with his own sword, but he just dodges and gets it back the next turn.

I try telling him to give up or leave. I try giving my sword to him or giving his own sword back to him...

As I give him his own sword, he realises that this gesture is proof that I'm the good guy, and therefore he has no chance of winning. Thorbast kills himself to save us both a lot of time.

The monster, who's been continuing to undress the woman for many turns, flees as I hit it with my sword.

As I untie the woman, she invites me to her space yacht, where she writes her father's address on the back of an old photo, and promises he'll handsomely reward me if I see him on Ganymede.

Looking at the photo, I see it's a photo of Jean Harlow. I take it, then enter her cabin for a bit of rumpy-pumpy. Eventually I go back to Mars

ITEMS FOUND: 8 of 8 – photo of Jean Harlow, cotton balls, headlight, Cleveland phone book, 82 degree angle, mouse, blender, rubber hose

I go back to the battleship, pick up the reconstituted Trent, and hop on a circle to Mars.

Exit to Endgame

With my 1 marsmid coin, I buy an Exit from the Exit shop proprietor, then jump into the black circle he sold me.

I end up in a boudoir next to someone else. I smell (scratch 'n' sniff spot 6) – LEATHER!!!

One of the Leather Goddesses of Phobos calls for guards, and I end up falling through a trapdoor into a plaza.

As a grenade explodes nearby, Trent mentions it's time to start building that Super-Duper Anti-Leather-Goddesses of Phobos Attack Machine! and starts asking for items.

Each turn Trent asks for another of the items. The first time I came here I didn't have all the items I needed.

Oh shit indeed

But this time I have all the items I need so I'll live... I hope.

As I give Trent the blender, the guards are joined by tanks. They are subsequently joined by giant berserk robotic sumo wrestlers, the entire main attack fleet, a massive dematerialization ray (I wonder if it used to be a tray), fifty phobosian chompers, ion bombs and a death ray.

Trent's machine must look something like this

Finally, Trent turns on the machine, we smell scratch 'n' sniff spot 7, and...

Perhaps coming sooner than you think...

Session time: 2 hrs 40 mins
Total time: 13 hrs
Beings slept with: 4.5 - Female gorilla, Wife #137, Frog princess (½), Elysia of Ganymede, Leather Goddess

THE LIVES AND DEATHS OF TRENT

Trent, hero of the people, faced certain death many times. Here they are, in all their glory...

I grew to love Trent after I lost him for a while

LEWD, SUGGESTIVE OR TAME, OH MY!

I didn't mention the lewdness settings earlier. The fact is, I played the entire game in LEWD mode - it asks for your age when you try to play lewd mode - no quiz, no proof, just type a number. When I did a test of the modes earlier, I didn't see any reason to try the other modes

If you were really LEWD, you'd tell me exactly what the yak was doing with the lubricants.

Final Rating

Puzzles and Solvability

My biggest problem with the puzzles is that there is no indication of why I'm doing things.

I'm kissing a frog because it's an adventure game – there's no way of me even guessing that the frog will give me a blender if I kiss it.

Giving the robot baby to the orphanage so I can get in and get some cotton balls is another example. For a while I was actually convinced the cotton balls would somehow come from the rabbit, purely because it was the only thing that was white and fluffy in the game. That would have at least made me attempt to solve a puzzle with a definite result in mind rather than solving them purely because they're there. As a solution the game could have the matron that throws me out have a bunch of cotton balls in her hand - let me know what I'll get for solving the puzzle and I'll have more motivation!

I did mention during my playthrough that I enjoyed solving the 'untangling cream' puzzle. If more puzzles were like this I'd be giving this game a higher score.

As it is, puzzles were acceptable but largely unspectacular - My score: 4

Interface and Inventory

The interface is standard 80s parser fare, with nothing special - it caused me periods of frustration, but much of that can be put down to my current lack of patience with the old technology. The fact that the potential number of inventory items was so large but space is limited is extremely annoying. Particularly when you take into account the number of items I never used, I can't call this decent design. - My score: 3

Story and Setting

The story is deliberately schlocky, and it works for what it is. The settings aren't terribly fleshed out – Mars could have easily (and more believably) been a future Earth, Phobos could have been any place, and Cleveland could have been any house in any suburb in America (or Australia, or Britain for that matter.) For a game that advertises, or at least heavily implies, that it's about sex, there was very little sex in the game. I didn't mind that, as I feel most games that go that way generally suffer in the comedy department by going for 'cheap' sex jokes. This game is much more Space Quest than Leisure Suit Larry.

Nothing special here - My score: 4

Sound and Graphics

My score: 0

Environment and Atmosphere

The atmosphere of this game, largely due to the dialogue that we'll get into next, worked. Each location description threw at least one joke at us and the game as a whole successfully maintained a feeling of light-heartedness throughout - My score: 6

Dialogue and Acting

The dialogue was certainly good. Like any attempt at comedy, some of it worked for me and some of it I found groan-inducing. Like a good Zucker/Abrahams movie, the jokes come fast enough that the ones that miss can be ignored as a hit will come soon enough.

Some of the writing brought thoughts of Douglas Adams to me – the 'tits' joke I mentioned in the last post being one of the best examples. Coming a few years after Steve Meretzky worked with Adams on the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy game has me thinking writing in the Adams style was something Meretzky had become comfortable with.

I'm still wondering if the TEE-remover's existence implied it had been used on Arthur Dent's inventory before the Hitch-Hikers game itself – Arthur starting the game with 'no tea' in his inventory.

Anyway, this is the best part of the game - My score: 7

Final Rating

Final Score: =4+3+4+0+6+7/.6 = 40

A PISSED rating of 40 puts this game behind Dungeon, Zork III, Witness, Deadline and Planetfall, and ahead of Zork I and II and Starcross.

The winner of the score guessing game is... well, nobody got 40 but we have a 39 and a 41. Two winners - Alex Romanov and Alex. 10 CAPs per Alex! Congrats!

Since finishing the game, I've done some more reading on it. If you have an interest in what goes on behind the scenes of making a game, I found some fascinating information in the Infocom Cabinet - info such as design notes, news articles, maps, beta test feedback (a lot of people mentioned the tedious nature of the catacombs) and more.

So, that's it for my first foray into text games. You'll be getting another one soon when Joe Pranevich takes on Enchanter. But for me, I'll soon be tackling the sequel - now with graphics, and a mouse cursor, and a pulsating inconvenience!

6 years later for Infocom, but only a few weeks for Adventure Gamer Blog readers!

Written by Alfred n the Fettuc

Brandon’s journal - entry #3 :After this horrible cave, where to go next? After being knocked out by this branch, I met with Zanthia, another mystic. She seems to tell me I am a prince of some kind and when I ask her more infos, she asks me to bring her some magic water… These mystics and their errands! Could someone just give me actual real help already?

One week later…

We left Brandon having a little nap on the forest ground. He wakes up directly into some kind of witch house, with a blonde woman mixing up a potion in a huge cauldron. She introduces herself as Zanthia, another mystic (and future heroine of Kyrandia 2). She is pissed at the other mystics for basically telling you nothing apart than “go see other mystics” with a slap on the buttocks. Then she tells you you’re the prince...

Oops spoiler alert!

...and then changes the subject and asks to Brandon to go fill a flask in the fountain.

Fetch quest n°75 635

The poor, understandably shaken, Brandon is then directed out of the house towards the fountain. When you consider the attitude of the mystics to Brandon, you can understand if he’s kinda pissed. The guys barely tell him anything, ask him to do an errand for them and then tell him to go away. It’s like it’s all some kind of bad joke, Brandon is one of them and they’re all associated to make an elaborate prank just to make fun of the dim-witted prince. Hey, the more I think about it, the more I like this take on Kyrandia story!

I exit Zanthia’s shack to go find her some magic water. I find the fountain a few screens away… with Malcolm waiting for me!

For an evil mastermind, you seem to have a lot of free time on your hands…

Malcolm steals one of the crystal balls of the fountain, which makes the water disappear. I keep on exploring the rest of the forest. In one screen, I find a chalice floating in the air. Or, as the I-am-not-a-prince Brandon says, “The” Royal Chalice.

I guess he’s just remembering playing with it as a child.

The chalice is unattainable at the moment, flying away when I try to grab it. In the forest I find three other notable spots. Despite a very little closed door in a tree which I can’t seem to find anything to do with, I find a burning tree that’s too hot to touch and a beautiful waterfall with blueberries next to it. I get some water from the waterfall, which doesn’t seem magic enough for Zanthia but might help me with the flaming tree. I also pick some blueberries because if there is something the game has taught me so far is that I need a lot of gemstones and berries. I go back to the flaming tree but the water doesn’t work on it. This is when I remember the scroll, which is starting to be the most used object in the game.

Can I keep the scroll after my quest? It might come in handy for chilling beers.

The tree is extinguished by the scroll and reveals the crystal ball Malcolm had stolen. Score!

I know I do.

I go back to the fountain and put the crystal ball where it belongs. It makes the water flow back and I can secure a flask of it for Zanthia. When I come back to her, she starts talking. It seems that I’m the prince of the kingdom, born from King William and Queen Catherine, who were savagely murdered by Malcolm. I need to restore the Kyragem to defeat Malcolm and I’m the only one able to do so, because of my Royal Blood (with capital letters).

Well, you’re not bad either…

Zanthia then asks me to pick blueberries in order to mix a potion. Ha ha, as you can see, I’m thoughtful and I already have these! When I give her the blueberries, however, she tells me they’re not freshly picked and I need fresh ones. Let me guess, game. You want to go all the way back to the waterfall, which can mean two things. Either Malcolm will be waiting for me at the waterfall, or something will happen to Zanthia while I’m away. 26 screens of forest back and forth later, the game goes with option #2.

Color me surprised.

So of course, Zanthia has disappeared. Now I’m alone once again to try and figure out what the potion she was talking about might be made of. Let me guess : it involves blueberries in some way. I realise that something has changed in here as well because the carpet seems to have been moved. Under it is hidden a trapdoor that leads… to another forest entirely!

Nice basement you have there…

Since what we’ll call the “sunstone incident” in Timbermist, I made a habit to click on anything I see and I find a “rainbowstone” in the stump.

Just how many different kinds of stones is there?

Before exploring I go back to Zanthia’s house and drop all my stuff there except the flask just in case. I’m starting to wonder if the tulip will ever be of any use… I save my game and start trying to put random things in the cauldron to see if something happens. Suddenly, someone knocks at the door!

“What’s going on in here? Brewing illegal substances in your basement? You do know that mixing potions for recreational uses is forbidden?”

Sorry mister Walls, I didn’t mean to. What are you doing here anyway? I think you have the wrong door. Alex is in the next reviewing area.

“Oops, my bad. Keep on the good work.”

Phew, that was strange. Anyway, putting a blueberry in the cauldron makes it turn blue. The tulip (what do you know?) makes it yellow, the emerald also makes it yellow for some reason and putting all the rest of my inventory in there just makes a mess. Despite the color changes though, it doesn’t seem to do anything, so I’m guessing I’ll need some kind of other ingredient or catalyst. Let’s explore the other part of the forest.

Mmmh… behind you?

The rest of the forest, despite being made of a staggering amount of similar looking forest screens, only seem to hold two interesting places :

A place called the “crystals of Alchemy” where I can apparently put two vials and something happens.

That is some crystal of alchemy if I’ve ever seen one.

A beautiful lagoon with some kind of stage with pegasus statues that reek of magic. I also find some red orchids there.

If it’s not magic, it’s a hell of a pier.

So I’m now back in Zanthia’s lab with my orchids and not much else. I stumble completely on what I was looking for while trying another time to put a lot of random stuff in the cauldron. Putting both yellow items (tulip and emerald, which isn’t yellow at all but whatever) turns the potion into a brighter shade of yellow and I can pick the potion up with the flask! Being the daredevil I imagine Brandon is, I try the potion on myself!

Taking huge risks with your health is always made easier by the presence of a save button in your life.

And the yellow potion doesn’t seem to do nothing except tasting like furniture polish. I think I can made at least two other potions : a red one with the orchid and a blue one with the blueberries. Unfortunately I don’t have any gemstone corresponding to these colors (or vaguely corresponding as the emerald proved) and I guess I’ll have to go all the way back to Timbermist to find some.

On my way in this direction, I stumble upon a major facepalm moment. I pick some more water from the magic fountain and drink it (in my mind I was clearing the aftertaste of furniture polish)... What do you know, a third gem lights up on my amulet!!! The blue gem seems to allow me to grab something in the air with a glowing hand, which seems like an awfully precise and convenient solution to my “flying chalice” problem. Who is doing those powers anyway? You’d be guessing the first three powers you put in a magic amulet would be something like “healing, fireball and flight”, not “healing, turn into a purple disco ball and grab magically flying chalices in the air.” Maybe I’m overthinking this.

I’m just glad I remembered to take my “magic glowing magnet hand power’ with me today…

The magic works and the chalice falls on the ground but some kind of leprechaun enters the screen and runs off with the booty! Come back you little…! Exiting the screen right brings me in front of the little door and except yelling at it I can’t really do anything with it. I’m guessing I won’t escape the trip back to Timbermist any longer. Let’s fly through the caves with my will’o’wisp power!

Weeee

Back in Timbermist (which took very less time than I expected), I manage to grab two rubies and a garnet to try for the red potion but can’t seem to find a sapphire anywhere for the blue one. Or I burnt it while trying to solve the gemstone puzzle before and put myself veeeery early into a dead-end scenario, or I can find something else. I grab a purple amethyst, a black onyx and a green peridot (because why not) and go back to Zanthia’s house.

Woooop

The ruby and orchid mixed fine to produce a beautiful red potion, which tastes hot and spicy and does absolutely nothing. I put the blueberry into the pot, quickly followed by the amethyst, the peridot, the onyx, the scroll, the iron key, the flute and a reload. Guess I don’t have what is needed for the blue potion. Desperately trying to put more blueberries into the pot didn’t work either. After a few more tries I had to accept the obvious. I had to go back to Timbermist.

Boooooring

After a long walk in both the starting areas, Timbermist and the forest near Kallak’s house, I finally manage to put my greedy mitts on a sapphire and an aquamarine. This should work. Still I have to wonder if whenever you waste a gem of some kind in a potion or a random well, it spawns somewhere else or if there is a finite quantity of gems, rendering the game unwinnable if you just drop gems everywhere you can. I think it’s the former solution, but I’m unsure if the same applies to key items like the flute, scroll or key that you can ALSO put in the cauldron. Maybe you can always retrieve them somewhere else. Anyway, let’s go aaaall the way back to Zanthia’s house.

Yay! Now where is that damned teleport spell?

After putting the sapphire and blueberries in the cauldron, I now have a syrupy blue potion that makes Brandon hiccup when I drink it. Yeepee. Now what do with all those stupid colored potions? Thankfully the game gives me another flask every time I go back to Zanthia’s house so I can mix a few of them and go find an use somewhere for these useless potions. Probably at the “Crystals of Alchemy” (I think these words sound better when you write them in bold). And sure enough the “Crystals of Alchemy” do some stuff. When you put two flasks into the crystals, it mixes another one from their primary colors. I would have guessed all you needed to do was pour one flask into the other, but what do I know about alchemy.

The more impressive is that the Crystals also create a different shaped flask and a cork.

I now have three new potions to try that will hopefully do something else than taste bad or induce hiccups. It’s save and reload time!

The orange potion tastes “like alfalfa”, which makes me worry I’m missing something here because all the potions in this universe seem useless.
The green one poisons me and kills me instantly without being able to heal. You had to have one of those right?
The purple one allows me to shrink! Finally, something useful here! I reload and it’s time to go pay a visit to the stupid leprechaun thief.

Come on imp, pick someone your own size

I enter the leprechaun house which is astonishingly detailed for a screen with no interaction whatsoever. The leprechaun asks me something for the chalice. I try offering him a few of my items (including the poison with a sardonic laugh, but he doesn’t want it) and he accepts the apple! Yeah, I found an use for the apple and the tulip that were rotting in my inventory for so long!

There is at least half a dozen items here that seem more useful than a chalice but ok.

The imp tells me that the chalice is hidden somewhere outside his house. I exit again and here is the chalice which is so well hidden it would have been funny to have a line said by Brandon in the likes of “oh silly me I didn’t see it five seconds ago”

Pictured : hidden

I now have a chalice I can’t use to take some magic water and accidentally put into the cauldron while trying to grab potion with it… I’m guessing it’s gonna be of some use at some point but not now. I was now without a lead, and after goofing around in the screens around me, I found that drinking the orange potion on the pegasus beach transformed me into a pegasus! Wow! That is so obvious and easy to find!

Yeah, I totally knew THIS would happen

Ok let’s rewind a bit there. I had three different kinds of potions in my hand that were useless except for some stupid taste comment from Brandon, it would have been safe to think that the orange potion was no different. The only thing that made me try the potion here was that the Pegasus stand was orange (to be fair, it might be enough of a clue, even if a very subtle one). But would have it killed you, game developers to just add a very little clue when you try the potion, like “I feel like wings could sprout from me?” But no, you went for “it tastes like alfalfa”. Correct me if I’m wrong but alfalfa is not even horse-related no? It would have been a better clue if it tasted like oat flakes.

Then again, I found the solution to the puzzle so maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe just the fact that I went through complicated stuff to get my hands on the orange potion in the first place would have been enough to drive me to test it on several other places… but it concludes a whole part of the game where I felt once again like stumbling in the dark (I’m not only referring to the cave but to the stupid gemstone puzzle as well) and where I kinda accidentaly found the answers than made any logical path to it…

Malcolm, how nice of you to build this pegasus-pad.

Anyway, let’s stop rambling and wrap this up already. Once again we had a lot of little puzzles that made sense and a big one that didn’t, a few pixel hunts and a few hundred similar forest screens to go through. But the fact that I’m still very much enjoying the game and want to see what’s next is the proof that it’s still good despite all its flaws. The dark island where I landed makes me think that the next post might be the last. Malcolm seems not that far away!

Session time : 1 hour 30’
Total time : 6 hours

Inventory : Green potion, empty flask, Royal Chalice, tulip, iron key, magic shattering flute, magic ice scroll, magic rainbow stone, magic dumb blueberry.
Powers : Healing, Will’o’wisp, Grab some stuff into the air with my hand glowing.

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

It seems like forever since we played Zork III, but we are finally returning to the unambiguous portion of our Great Zork Marathon with Enchanter, the first game in the second trilogy. It seems a waste for Infocom not to have taken advantage of the well-established brand name, but I am sure the marketing team had their reasons for not wanting to do so. Zork IV: The Enchanter would have been a fantastic title! I enjoyed the Zorkisms that we found in Starcross and Planetfall, but it feels good to be back on the main road. Like many of the games in this series, I vaguely remember starting this game (or one of its sequels) more than twenty years ago. I know that it has a magician protagonist and that finding and casting spells will be a key component. I also know that at some point in this series you “meet” your player character from the first Zork trilogy, but it might not be this game. I look forward to finding out!

This game both starts and ends an era for Infocom. This is the final game jointly designed by the team of Marc Blank and Dave Lebling. Marc remained at Infocom until 1986 but did not have time to develop any other games; he would return to produce Battlefield and Journey in 1988 and 1989. Dave will write four more games but we aren’t quite done with him yet. We will be looking at his Spellbreaker, the third game in this trilogy, in a few months. (Steve Meretzky of Planetfall-fame will be given the helm of the second game, Sorcerer.) Enough introduction, let’s play!

Beautiful but tremendously difficult to read.

I know that I have frustrated some of you with my draconian approach to Zork manuals, refusing to read them if they weren’t shipped with the original game. Many of you fell in love with those manuals when you played Zork for the first time so it is entirely understandable. I had said on a post or comment earlier that Enchanter was the game that broke this streak, but this was entirely wrong. Other games at this point in our story (Suspended and Planetfall) had their final documentation at launch, but it really won’t be until after Sorcerer that we reach the end of this strangeness. This time I feel reasonably confident thanks to my discovery of Paul David Doherty’s “Infocom Fact Sheet” which gives the skinny on what documents went with which version of the game. I will hold off discussing all of the manual additions until after Sorcerer; I am trying to track down when the “grey box” releases of Zork came out so I can take about the additions in the right place in the timeline.

Enchanter is perhaps the strangest case of revised documentation because this “folio edition” came with some amazing documentation in the so-called “Guild Directory”. It not only features some fantastic textual layouts and art, it also provides in-universe explanations for the various commands you need to run while text-adventuring. There a sheet on the “Thaumaturgic Guild” which explains how spell-casting works while the “Guild of Cartographers” describes how to move around. The “Orator’s Guild” explains the Infocom parser and there are several others including the Scriveners, Physicians, and Fletchers, all with fun ways to describe playing the game. It’s so charming! If you haven’t seen this original documentation, you can check it out on the Zork Library site.

This may be my favorite manual of all I have reviewed

The most surprising thing about the folio documentation is what it doesn’t include: any reference to the Great Underground Empire. There is not a single trace of Zork in this document. (The replacement, a “Brief History of Magic”, will directly tie the game into Zork history.) I am not sure exactly what is going on here but I am going to keep digging; perhaps there will be clues in the game itself. I could almost buy that Enchanter was intended to be standalone but then why have it be done by the Zork masterminds? There may be some more clues in the game itself.

Like too many Infocom games to date, you cannot successfully play without a thorough reading of the manual. In this case, we have to learn first about the universe’s magic system, a near-direct copy of the system from Dungeons & Dragons: you, a magic user, carry around a spellbook that contains all the spells that you know. But you cannot read spells out of the book. No! You have to memorize the spells first to cast them later. This means juggling a limited number of spell slots and having to deal with things like re-learning spells in the morning. We can also find scrolls which we can be used to cast a spell once or we can copy them into our book. (We’re also told that some spells are too complex to be copied.) This is all very different from the wand-based magic of Zork II, but it seems easy enough to understand.

The plot seems simple enough: a long time ago, there was a prophecy that a Warlock would come and try to take over the world. He would be defeated by an enchanter “promising in magic” but without a full set of skills. The young spellcaster would be beneath the Warlock’s notice; only when he or she gets within striking distance will the Warlock realize the danger he is in. The introduction text when you start the game reveals that the Warlock’s name is Krill. Scrappy novices always manage to win in those sorts of stories and I am looking forward to it!

A point of decision: Zork or not?

The game opens with my character being teleported by the Circle of Enchanters to a location not too far from the Warlock’s lair. I suppose that just teleporting me next to him wouldn’t have been a good idea. We’re at the east end of a long road near a mountain. Just for giggles, I try running away, following the road west. I see a sign with just the word, “Why”. I head west again and this time the sign says “are”. Sensing a clue or at least a joke, I continue west to get the whole message: “Why are you going west when the castle is east?” That’s funny! I only went west because I wanted to see what the signs said! Curiously, if you keep going west the next two signs say “Burma Shave” which I am sure some of you understood immediately but I had to Google for it: in the US before World War II, Burma Shave was a company that advertised their product using rhyming billboards arranged down the highway just like this. I suspect it’s quite funny if you understood the reference, but I did not. The signs further west than that are blank so I return to the start to begin the game for real.

I explore further to find a long circular track around the mountain to the east. I take it clockwise and discover a small shack containing essential adventuring equipment: a brass lantern, a jug, and a loaf of bread. While the lantern looks typically Zorkish, it’s broken and doesn’t turn on. Is it a gag item? Or will I find a way to repair it later? The elvish sword is missing but since I am a spellcaster instead of a fighter, that makes some sense. While exploring, I get a message that the sun is starting to rise. Just like Planetfall, this game seems to have an internal clock. The bread and jug are portentous-- will I need to eat and drink as well? Further around the mountain I find a stream where I can fill the jug followed by a chained and locked gate leading to the castle. I make a note of it and will come back in a bit.

A lonely mountain, but not THE lonely mountain.

The southern side of the mountain features an abandoned village as well as the path up to the top. An old crone just outside the village gives me a scroll for the “rezrov” spell to open doors. That looks convenient! I have to type “gnusto rezrov” to copy it into my spellbook and that must be the strangest useful sentence ever typed into an adventure game. (The “gnusto” spell is the one you use to copy spells.) I make up all the way up the mountain to find absolutely nothing except a view of the castle: it has three towers, two large ones and a smaller one that is giving off some sort of magical fog. I suspect I’ll learn more about those later. While I was exploring, I was also prompted that I was hungry and thirsty and I satisfied both easily with my bread and water. It’s not gourmet, but it will do! Unfortunately, that pretty much confirms that Planetfall’s annoying subsistence mechanic made it into this game too. I blame Steve Meretzky.

With the whole mountain explored, it’s time to head to the locked castle gate. It’s pretty clear that I have to use the “rezrov” spell that the crone gave me, but I take stock anyway to see if any of the others might be of use:

“Blorb” - To protect an object as if in a strong box
“Nitfol” - To talk to animals in their own language
“Frotz” - To cause something to give off light
“Gnusto” - To copy a spell to your spellbook

I did not see any animals that I could talk to in my explorations so far but “frotz” might be useful until I get the lantern fixed. I cast “rezrov” on the door and the chains open. Time to explore the castle.

No key? No problem!

The castle is large and, as you will find out in a second, I didn’t get to explore all of it and much of what I explored was in a rush. Just north of the entrance, I found a dark area and so I cast “frotz” on the lantern. Since it’s broken, making it glow by magic seemed a fairly poetic thing to do. Unfortunately, from there I started to get a message that I was tired. What should I do? I try sleeping and all that wins me is a nocturnal visit by someone that steals my spell book. My remaining exploration was hurried as I tried to find a place to sleep:

There’s a tower in the northwest corner but I just passed it without exploring what was up there.
The north end of the castle is a long hall of mirrors that reflect on “another world”. Sometimes, we can see an adventurer carrying an elvish sword and lantern on the other side of the glass. It’s a view to Zork! I vaguely remember this puzzle from when I played as a kid and I think there is some way to bring the adventurer to your side of the mirror but I don’t have any spell to do it quite yet or any idea why I would want to do it.
The castle’s north gate is just beyond that. It’s rusted shut but “rezrov” works on it to get outside. I find a “krebf” spell (repair willful damage) in the wilderness as well as a swamp filled with frogs. My attempts to talk to the frogs fail because I am too tired to memorize any new spells.
East of that is a massive and excessively guarded door to another tower, perhaps where the Warlock resides? It’s defenses have defenses so I’ll just skip that for now.
South of there is a library where a book burning recently took place. Why would the Warlock burn his own books? There are rat footprints leading to a hole in the wall but I can’t quite seem to find the right words to look in the hole since it’s too dark.

Just south of there, I meet my doom: some strange cultists capture me and send me to a prison cell. I try to escape, but a few turns later they escort me to a sacrificial altar where I get to re-enact my grisly death from Zork III. I’m dead and I think that’s enough for one week.

The start of my map!

Thus far, I am enjoying the experience. The random discovery of scrolls that are exactly the ones you need for puzzles seems strange, but we’ll see how the rest of the game handles this. I’m not quite far enough in to get a feel for the whole effect. Next week, I’ll try find a way to sleep so I can go chat with those frogs outside. After that, the rest of the castle awaits!

Inventory: Spellbook, brass lantern (glowing), bread, jug of water
Spells: blorb, nitfol, frotz, gnusto, rezrov, krebf
Time played: 1 hr 00 min

Written by Alex

Make the bust and make it stick! That’s the goal, right? I mean, it even says that on the box to this game:

At least, on the box of the original game.

So did Sonny bust someone? Did he make it stick? Ah, for that, you will have to read on. Because first, Sonny was off to The Blue Room for a shindig in honor of his buddy Jack Cobb.

(The suspense is killing you, I know. That’s all part of the trick.)

The Blue Room turns out to be a nice eating and drinking establishment founded by former Lytton PD officer Bobby Gomez. I stand outside to admire the environs, clicking around and enjoying the detail that makers of these old games put into nearly every object and description.

Except for this. No one wants to remember this.

Jack is sitting inside. Sonny notes that Officer Cobb has seemed depressed and distracted lately. It could be just the burdens of the job, or it could be something more.

The chat a bit, as friends are wont to do, with Sonny slowly coaxing info out of Jack until Jack drops the bombshell: his daughter is on drugs!

The narrative takes a serious turn here, and I actually start to feel for this digital man. It’s bad enough to realize your child is an addict—imagine being tasked with putting drug-runners away, only to find that the poison you fight has infected your own home.

I wonder if this, too, is a real-life experience that Jim Walls or the other officers he culled stories from in order to craft Police Quest had faced. What do you say Jim. Jim?

Oh right. He left.

This is important, though, because it shows that being a cop isn’t all glamour and donuts, something the game tries to impress upon the player. Miami Vice this is not. It’s a tough life. And whatever issues are surrounding American police departments these days, it’s important to remember that most of them are good people trying to do their best to keep the rest of us safe and sometimes they need help, too. They are human, after all.

Sonny, realizing that he, too, is bad at expressing himself, tries to work up the right words to say before their colleague Keith—yes, this time it is Keith and not a mistake—brings in some cake and a dancing girl named Kayleigh.

Really, Keith? We were just having a heart to heart and—

And . . . uh . . .

Are . . . did she just flash her digital panties at us?

“Now, hold on just a second here! Is this THE DEVIL working through VIDEO GAMES?!”

No! Get out of here, Reverend Jim Bakker! I’ve had enough of people named Jim interrupting my reviews. Begone! Get thee behind me!

*Ahem*

Anyway, so Keith is a bit of a party animal, and insensitive to Jack’s plight. But how would Keith know? Keith isn’t out of surprises either, dropping a bombshell on Sonny: Seems like Sonny traded shifts with Keith last week, so now Sonny is due at the station in 10 minutes.

But not totally empty handed.

You know what that means . . . another shower!

And you have to input the locker combination every . . . single . . . time.

At the briefing, Dooley drops some knowledge on Sonny and the rest of the force regarding the stolen vehicle that may have been repainted and used in the murder of Lonny West earlier in the day. A missing persons report had been filed by the wife of a man named Jose Martinez. Martinez, who has priors for selling narcotics, had been seen getting into this car two days ago and has not been heard from since. And the owner of said car, Malcom Washington, is hot on Dooley to get his vehicle back.

Can you say “foreshadowing”? I’ll bet you can! And apparently, so can the game. So time to hit the streets!

But first, Sonny indulges in a little daydreaming:

Someday . . . someday I’ll be the one giving these briefings . . .

Okay, now it’s time to hit the streets, and this time I do remember to give my vehicle an inspection. Jim Walls would be proud . . . wherever he is.

Uh-oh! Dispatch has something for me! It’s—

—not the stolen Mercedes.

I do not recall a domestic disturbance in the original game. Is this something new added for the remake! Excited, I boogie my way to Lily and 1st, but before I get there . . .

. . . I get word about the stolen Mercedes.

So I’m curious. I know the Mercedes takes precedence, but what if there’s something I missed regarding the previous call?

I restore, but am unable to get there before the second call comes in. And even if I go to where the domestic disturbance is located, nothing happens.

I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, it’s a red herring added just to give a little more flavor to the narrative and the world of being a cop. Obviously, someone will get there to resolve the domestic issue. Also, it’s just a game and no one is really being harmed.

But on the other, it would have been cool for some more stuff to have been added to this remake.

Anyway, Sonny flips on his flashers and pulls over the stolen car. Excitement mounts! Tension builds! Proper police procedures must be followed!

Nice neighborhood.

This smells like a felony, which doesn’t smell good. According to the manual, here’s what Sonny has to do:

Felony Traffic Stop Procedures

You must have good reason to believe a felony has been committed.
Call radio dispatch for back-up unit.
Maintain radio contact with back-up unit.
Bring the suspect’s vehicle to a complete stop. Maintain cover until the suspect is under control.
Command suspect to “halt” or “stop.” Proceed to command suspect to lie face down on the ground.
Handcuff and search suspect.
Read suspect his rights.

I already got the suspect’s vehicle to a complete stop (step 4), so I’m already doing things out of order, but I think that’s a minor concern at this point. The important thing is that I clearly have good reason to believe that a felony has been committed. I also click “Eye” on the car prior to calling dispatch.

It’s the vehicle alright. More importantly, backup is on its way. Getting out before they arrive results in a pretty grim game over.

But what did you think would happen?

When backup arrives in the form of good ol’ Jack Cobb, I have Sonny get out, draw his gun, and command the driver to get out, stop, and lie down, all courtesy of the “Talk” command.

I emphasized drawing Sonny’s gun, because the first time I did not click the “gun” icon on the perp, and this happened:

With the gun drawn, things took a different turn.

Damn it, Sonny! Not like that!

Better.

Cuffed and searched, Sonny finds that .45 Smith & Wesson “automatic.” The game calls it an “automatic,” but I think it meant “semi-automatic.” For starters, an “automatic” usually refers to a “fully automatic” weapon, which is illegal in the United States outside of police and military use. Second, I don’t think Smith & Wesson even makes fully automatic weapons.

Anyway, I get this goon into Sonny’s car and remember to click “Talk” on him as he sits in the back to read him his Miranda rights. The perp is verbally abusive and generally uncooperative, but I don’t want him to walk on a technicality.

“Righteous.” Man, I loved the 90s.

So there’s this stolen car sitting there. Unlike at the Lonny West crash/murder scene, I am able to search this vehicle. Clicking “Eye” on the interior of the car brings up a view of the frame.

As most of us know, this is where VIN—Vehicle Identification Numbers—are located. If this wasn’t important, the game wouldn’t have given us this view. Clicking “eye” reveals that the VIN has been covered with black paint. The “hand” icon lets Sonny scratch the paint away, prompting me to worry about how long he’s been letting his nails get. More importantly, the hidden VIN matches that of the stolen vehicle described at the first briefing at the beginning of the game.

I want to open the trunk, but it’s locked. Oh well. There’s still more stuff to search in the car, and the game is letting me, so why not take a seat and look in the glove box? A friendly click of the “hand” icon on the Mercedes’ seat brings us this screen:

Searching—which the lawyer in me has to point out that Sonny has more than probable cause to do so without a warrant—turns up the following:

A black notebook that Sonny plans to look at in greater detail after it’s been booked into evidence
An Illinois driver’s license for Marvin Hoffman, male, black hair, blue eyes, 6 ft. 00 in., 194 lbs., date of birth 6/2/1961, no restrictions
A California driver’s license for Leroy Pierson, male, black hair, blue eyes, 6 ft. 00 in., 196 lbs., date of birth 4/28/1960, no restrictions
A hidden button that opens the trunk

Hmm . . . I seem to remember “Sweet Cheeks” Marie telling Sonny about a “customer” of hers named Hoffman who claimed to be the Death Angel. Could this be him?

Maybe, maybe not . . . but the drugs in his trunk sure bespeak of a less-than-savory career.

Cocaine and marijuana. All that’s missing is nicotine, valium, Vicodin, ecstasy, and alcohol.

That’s all there is to do here, so Sonny cart’s Hoffman or Pierson’s ass to the lock-up and books him for everything he can . . . in this case, I get him for “Possession of a controlled substance,” “stolen vehicle,” and “evading arrest,” and “possession of a concealed weapon.” Oddly, the code for “possession of cocaine” doesn’t work.

Sonny’s prisoner is heated, claiming that he’ll be out in “15 minutes” and vowing to come after Sonny when he is. Jack then arrives, telling Sonny the evidence has been booked and that he’s wanted in Dooley’s office on the double . . . but seems to be smiling about something.

Well, what do you know?! Sonny’s transfer went through! Dooley, reading the memo, is angry that Sonny is gone and the fact that some joker—The Gremlin, perhaps?—had put mace on the memo.

Mace!

But the important thing is that Sonny is on temporary detail to the Narcotics division, to work with Lt. Morgan and his crew! On to bigger and better things!

I know what you’re wondering though: Did the bust stick? Did it? All I can tell you is: stay tuned!

Inventory: Loaded gun, handcuffs, nightstick, keys to Sonny’s Camaro, key to the patrol car, pen, ticket book
Score: I honestly can’t remember what it was out of 225
On a scale of Don Knots to Don Johnson, how much do I feel like a cop?:Lenny Briscoe

Play time: 1 hour
Total time: 3 hours, 5 minutes

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last week, I started my explorations of Enchanter by breaking into an ancient castle inhabited by an evil warlock. It seemed to be going well at first except I was too tired to memorize any spells, failed to find a safe place to sleep, and then was captured by cultists and sacrificed on an altar to a bloodthirsty god. I did manage to learn two new spells (one to open doors and another to repair damaged objects), found a mirror leading to the original Zork games, and encountered a door so heavily guarded that it’s defenses had defenses. Fort Knox would be easier to enter! The game is a ton of fun so far but I’ve barely cracked the surface. How am I going to find and defeat the Warlock? Will I win by opening a stuck door at him?

I will start this week by saying that I solved the sleeping issue immediately. Not really having any better ideas, I tried sleeping immediately after restoring from my trauma and that worked for some reason without any hassle. I have to assume that it’s a random event and I was just unlucky the last time, but I honestly have no idea. Did I just sleep in the wrong room? At the wrong time? Who knows but at least I can memorize some spells and start a less haphazard exploration of my environment.

“She turned me into a newt! … I got better?”

Northern Part of the Castle

For the rest of this post, I’m going to divide the castle into regions for ease of digestion. There will be a map at the end in case you have difficulty following along. Although I didn’t know it yet, the castle is a square with towers in all four corners plus a temple in the courtyard in the middle. There’s a western exit that I haven’t quite found a way into yet which will have to wait until I solve some more of the mysteries. I’m going to narrate the areas as I found them; unlike in most of the Zork games, I did surprisingly little “puzzle hopping” this week and so this is a more faithful retelling of the events as I experienced them than usual.

My first stop is in the swamp north of the castle. When I briefly paused here last week, I had found a group of frogs sitting on lily pads but I was too tired to learn the “speak to animals spell”. Now that I’m rested, I cast that first and have a chat with my amphibian neighbors. Actually, just standing around hearing them talk is funny enough (apparently, they all used to be princes and enjoy playing games by Infocom) but they also tell me that there is a scroll hidden under a lily pad. I search there and find the “cleesh” shell which turns someone into an amphibian. Well, now I see the source of frogs’ troubles! Why would someone leave that scroll hidden there, I have no idea, but it seems useful and I transcribe it into my spellbook.

In the northeast part of the castle, I darted through a library last time but did not pause to explore it. This time I realize that all of the books have been destroyed, burned in a bonfire in the center of the room. Only one book survived (more on that in a second) but there seems to be a trail of rat footprints that lead from the pile to a hole in the wall. The hole is too dark to look into and feeling around doesn’t seem to help. I try to shine my lamp in the hole but I don’t think the game understands me. Do I need to find a rat to talk to? I try turning myself into a newt and crawling into the hole, but apparently when I do that I die immediately because newts don’t care much about defeating Warlocks. Every now and then, a group of cultists enter the room and I have to leave before they capture me. I can defeat them easily enough by turning them into newts, but all that wins me is a few turns. There seems to be no end of evil cultists.

The Terror that Flaps in the Night

The burned book I found still has two sections legible: a passage on the “Unseen Terror” and one on the “Implementers”. The Terror was a great evil who was lured underground by the promise of a powerful scroll and then left trapped there. That sounds distinctly like a hint. Am I going to have to use one of my scrolls or my spellbook as magic-bait? The Implementers seem to be meta-fiction, probably a callback to the Tomb of the Implementers back in mainframe Zork. Is this the first real Implementer reference since that game? I’m not sure. Does anyone remember? I know they will be quite important in a later game, but I do not recall which one. (Maybe Beyond Zork?) I try to fix the book using the “krebf” spell to find more to read but that does not work.

Just south of the library is the junction where I was captured last time with exits in all cardinal directions. I can’t seem to find a way to go anywhere without being captured; even turning monks into newts doesn’t get me through. I’ll need to find a way past them to explore the eastern annex of the castle. As I head back to the entrance, I pass again through the Hall of Mirrors. I mentioned this last week as the spot where I occasionally see the adventurer from Zork. I can’t seem to talk to him, knock on the glass, or do anything else to get his attention yet and he doesn’t even always appear. I’ll have to come back later.

Northern Towers

By popular request...

Before I finish with the northern part of the castle, I still have to explore the towers in the northwest and northeast corners. The eastern tower, close to the library, has one of the most amazing descriptions we’ve seen in a long while. I can’t give it justice, but it’s essentially a massive door with a lock wrapped in six-inch iron chains, guarded by a five-headed monster, gargoyles, “slimy groping tentacles”, and a sign with a helpful note just to “Don’t Bother”. I included a screenshot above. I tried a “rezrov” spell just in case this was the Zork equivalent of the Colossal Cave dragon (you know the one…), but all that happened is that the sign changed to read “Fat Chance”. Attempts to open it or get past the monsters eventually result in my death. Is this where the Warlock is hiding? Or a particularly awesome piece of treasure? I will have to find another path through there later.

The northwest tower is less imposing, essentially containing only a room with a mechanical golden egg, reminiscent of the one from Zork I. This one has several mechanisms to help you unlock it including a handle, a slide, a knob, a crank, and a button. Expecting a combination lock, I manipulate all of those in random order and the egg opens! With 120 combinations, there is no way I could be that lucky, but when I peer inside all I find is a scroll that has been shredded by the internal mechanism. Do you need to find the right order to open the egg? I try a few more times but each time the scroll is shredded and there does not seem to be any clues that help you narrow down the combination. Just before I give up, I remember that I have a “krebf” spell to “repair willful damage”. Is failing a puzzle considered willful? I don’t know, but I try it and the scroll is restored as good as new! That gets me “zifmia”, a spell to summon a creature. I don’t know what to do with that yet so I add it to my spell book and head south to explore the rest of the castle.

Southern Part of the Castle

The one and only, Lord Dimwit Flathead

With the northern section explored, I arrive back at the courtyard where I entered the first time. There’s a temple complex in there and possibly two more towers (the descriptions are a bit difficult to visualize) but whenever I get too close, I get captured and sacrificed. The only thing of note in that area is a small closet that contains a jeweled treasure chest wrapped with thousands of gold strands. My first instinct is to treat it like a Gordian knot and cut it, but I neither have any cutting implements or spells. I mark it on my map and will come back later.

Just as before, there is a tower in the corner but I pass it for now to explore the southern hall. Roughly parallel to the Hall of Mirrors on the other side of the castle is the Portrait Gallery, a hall containing pictures of familiar faces including Dimwit Flathead (mentioned in Zork I and encountered in III) and the Wizard of Frobozz (from Zork II).These are the first real signs that this game takes place in the Zork universe! I cannot find anything useful I can do with them so I move along. In the east side of the castle, apparently just south of the junction where I keep getting captured, is a banquet room containing a seemingly delicious (but somehow un-filling) spread of food. Is the food an illusion? I’m not sure. Just east of there is a kitchen containing garbage and a rat’s nest. I search for an actual rat so I can talk to it and maybe learn about the library, but there’s none here either. There is also a southern gate out of the castle and that leads to a beach. A rainbow-shelled turtle lives there. I can talk to him using the “nitfol” spell but he doesn’t help me much. This is clearly a puzzle but not one that I think I have the spells or objects to understand yet. I am getting frustrated.

The one in the game is much more colorful.

Southern Towers & Dungeon
Just as in the north, there are towers in each of the southern corners. Actually, now that I think about it, this castle is surprisingly regular and easy to visualize. A nice easy “map” for new adventurers? The top of the southwest tower contains an old-fashioned four-post bed. I don’t do anything with it immediately but I’ll cut to the chase by saying that I came back here right away the next time I was sleepy. When I sleep in the bed, I have a strange dream: a damsel, holding a scroll, is standing nearby fiddling with the bedpost. When I awaken, I search the post where the dream-girl was fiddling and discover a “vaxum” scroll! That spell makes a hostile creature into a nice one. I run back to the library to try it on some of the cultists but that just buys me a little extra time. The eastern tower contains a gigantic engine with hammering pistons that crash down in the center of the room. There’s a doorway to the southeast, but I can’t go down there without being flattened. I’ll mark it on my map to come back to it later.

I might not have mentioned it before, but the southern hallway also featured a stairway down into the castle’s dungeon. There’s a partly blocked hole deeper into the earth, but I explore the dungeon level first and find a single unoccupied cell. Searching carefully, I find a loose brick which I move to reveal a partly-completed secret passageway. Whatever poor soul was digging this passage didn’t quite finish before he or she met their fate… At the end of the incomplete tunnel is a silver spoon and an “exex” scroll which causes things to move at greater speed. Using that scroll, I backtrack to the hammer room and use my newly increased speed to run through the hammers. Crossing the room triggers something of a trap because the hammers actually increase further in speed. I pick up the scroll (“kulkad”, a spell to dispel magic) and try to cross back across the room. I’m able to avoid the hammers! Unfortunately, I’m less successful avoiding a mass of flying spears which shoot out of the walls and kill me. I have the start of a good idea, but there is more to this puzzle…

A nice square castle.

I return to the dungeon and explore the lower recesses of the dungeon. Down there is a set of “Translucent Rooms”, strange cream-colored walls with perfectly round exits which have a black, inky darkness. This is clearly a magical place, or at least a strange one and not a typical castle dungeon. Dave Lebling loves his strange twists on mazes (the baseball maze in Zork II and the village in Starcross come immediately to mind) and I suspect this is another one of those. Mapping it is easy by looking at the unique exits but even in the innermost room, there is nothing to do. I’ll need to work out the trick.

With that, I’ve explored the castle from end to end and found everything I can. I have a few new spells to try in different places and a few new leads, but I’m going to pause my explorations here for now. I should also mention that I’ve been eating and sleeping at regular intervals and am nearly out of bread. I am also getting messages that the days seem to be getting shorter. Infocom is legendary for making you replay games to do them in a fewer number of turns and I may be getting to that point with Enchanter already. My map is filling out nicely but there are still far too many unsolved puzzles marked in red.

Inventory: Spellbook, brass lantern (glowing), bread, jug of water, book, mechanical egg, spoon
Spells: blorb, nitfol, frotz, gnusto, rezrov, krebf, cleesh, zifmia, vaxum

Time played: 3 hr 35 min
Total time: 4 hr 35 min

Missed Classic 41: Lords of Time (1984) - Introduction

Game 82 : Legend of Kyrandia - Introduction (1992)

Hook - (Won’t You Take Me to) Pirate Town

Lords of Time - All caves look alike

Kyrandia - Romancing the Stones

Hook - Island of Misfit Boys

Lords of Time - Won! (With Final Rating)

Kyrandia - Snakes on a Tree

Hook - Won!, Final Rating, and More

Game 87: Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel (VGA Remake) (1992) – Introduction

Missed Classic 42: Leather Goddesses of Phobos (1986) - Introduction

Police Quest 1 (VGA Remake): Morning Routine

Leather Goddesses of Phobos - The Sultan of Schwing

Legend of Kyrandia - The Descent

Police Quest 1 (VGA Remake): Speeders, Drunks, Bikers, and Murder

Leather Goddesses of Phobos - WON! and Final Rating

Kyrandia - Hocus Crocus

Missed Classic 43: Enchanter - Introduction (1983)

Police Quest 1 (VGA Remake): Make the Bust and Make It Stick!

Missed Classic: Enchanter - Magical Mystery Tour