The Adventurers Guild

Written by Alex

In our last post, we were left hanging as Sonny busted suspected drug dealer, murderer, and driver of that darn stolen Mercedes, Marvin Hoffman aka Leroy Pierson. But did the bust stick?

The bust stuck. Sonny just had to go to court.

But first, Officer Bonds had to get into his street clothes and turn into (duhn-duh-duh-DUUUHN!) DETECTIVE BONDS! And you know what this means!

Another shower!

Entering the combination every . . . damn . . . time . . .

While Sonny’s busy washing up again, I’m going to ~~call a licensed therapist to see if I can get him some help for his OCD~~ take a moment to talk about adventure games. In my experience, there are two types:

Relatively open, where, while there is a set of objectives that need to be accomplished in a more-or-less set order, the player is still able to wander the game world, doing things on their own tie and piecing the disparate elements of the game together. A few games that fall into this category include: most of the King’s Quest series, the Monkey Island series, Quest for Glory I and IV.
On rails, where there are inventory based puzzles that need to be solved in a set order, but the player is taken from scenario to scenario or set-piece to set-piece where, within that scenario, the world is free to explore, but certain events will only occur within that scenario, or at set times. Some may call games like this “linear” or “episodic.” A few games that fall into this category include: Quest for Glory II, III and V, most of the Space Quest series, and, yes, the Police Quest series . . . at least the first three games.

Now, neither type of game is objectively better than the other, all of the ballyhooing amongst gamers about non-linearity being next to Godliness notwithstanding. And there are of course hybrids of these two styles: King’s Quest VI, for example, maybe Space Quest III and VI, Quest for Glory II, III, and V, and the Gabriel Knight series. But Police Quest I stands out as a pure example of style number 2 described above.

I think this is due to the nature of police work that the game is trying to portray. It’s cliché to say that video games make the player “feel” like something or someone—a basketball player, a soldier, Batman, an Italian plumber—but Police Quest DOES make the player “feel” like a cop. Police work is pretty reactionary, after all; cops usually respond to crimes instead of proactively stopping them. This is not a knock on the police. It’s just a fact. They’re often on patrol, waiting for something to happen so they can go help out. In light of this, I find Police Quest to be a fair depiction of the procedure, the stress, the worry, the danger, and yes, the tedium of being a police officer, far more realistic than most other games of its era in this regard. In that, it is groundbreaking, legendary, and my affectionate ribbing of Jim Walls aside, deserves its legendary status.

Oh, and Police Quest has showering. Lots and lots of showering.

Now that Sonny is clean (again) and wearing his detective’s uniform, he’s ready to speak with Lt. Morgan about his first mission: investigate the evidence found in Hoffman/Pierson’s stolen car, namely the black book and the gun. It turns out that the bust is dangerously close to being unstuck, as Hoffman/Pierson is moments away from being released on bail!

But first . . . Sonny is to introduce himself to his new partner, Detective Laura Watts, and get the grand tour of the Narcotics office.

Narcotics . . . office? Where’s that? I explored this whole damn station and didn’t see any Narcotics office. I thought that Lt. Morgan’s office was the Narcotics office.

Nope. It turns out, when you get off of the elevator at Lytton P.D.’s second floor, you walk all the way to the right. Which I swear I did all the way back in my first gameplay post, but I obviously didn’t.

You just . . . walk over there.

Detective Watts seems like a cool person to work with, and shows Sonny his desk, the computers, and the file cabinet. Here, I finally have access to a phone. And I know what number (from a saved game) to call: Tawnee Helmut’s!

Unlike in the original game, this doesn’t result in a “Game Over.”

Back in this timeline, however, I have Sonny poke around on his computer. Other than the “Personnel” section, I’d need some numbers to access any useful information in the “FBI” and “Weapons” databases. And once again, we see shared assets from Police Quest III. As I said in my first post, I love this kind of stuff. And generally, this is a cool shift gameplay-wise: Sonny moves from being on patrol to actively investigating cases. We saw the same thing in Police Quest III. I like this. By contrast, Police Quest II was all detective work, all the time, which was also very fun. But I digress.

Sonny’s computer in Police Quest I . . .

. . . and in Police Quest III. Okay, so this one is only a passing resemblance . . .

I make a few calls, checking in with Jack and trying to prank some of Sonny’s other co-workers, before getting serious.

I realize I could probably call EVERY SINGLE ONE of Sonny’s
colleague and get some kind of silly message, but who has time for that?

In the filing cabinet, I snag Hoffman’s, mainly since it’s the only one I can take. Inside, I learn that Hoffman is one bad hombre and, among other things, has a tattoo of a flower above his left nipple. Didn’t Sweet Cheeks say that her Hoffman had a similar tattoo? Is this guy the Death Angel after all? I need to do more investigation. On the way out, I make sure to take a key to the department’s unmarked car before heading down to Russ at the evidence lockup.

I love how Sonny shuts the filing cabinet with a little kick.

In order to get any damn evidence, clicking “Talk” on Russ isn’t good enough. I have to give him the file. He then brings out the black book and the gun telling Sonny he can look at them all he wants, but he has to do it here.

First, the book. Hoffman/Pierson’s handwriting is awful, and much of it is incomprehensible, but I see two common themes: Gambling and drugs. There are also a lot of initials, which is interesting: “Terminate J.M. and L.W.” could be Jose Martinez (the missing dope pusher) and Lonnie West (the dead dope pusher Sonny found in the first game day). And “J.B.” could be the “Jessie Baines” that Sweet Cheeks said Hoffman had mentioned.

The gun offers another clue: A serial number! I plug it into Sonny’s computer and learn that it’s registered to a Jason Taselli, one of the FBI’s most wanted.

The database also gives an FBI case number. Popping the case number into the FBI’s database reveals that Hoffman/Pierson IS Jason Taselli, a notorious, murdering drug-dealer with a, wait for it, flower tattoo above his left nipple! I print the poster out and rush to Lt. Morgan who . . . has nothing new to say.

As Detective Watts is out doing other business, I grab the poster and rush to court. Our perp, Taselli, cannot be let back out on the streets! The bust must stick!

No, they are not, Sonny. In fact, many look like this:

This is Dudley District Court in Dudley, Massachusetts. As you can see,
it is less “Neoclassical” and more “Squat, Brick, Pizza Hut-looking Thing.”

Going to court gives me flashbacks to my former life as a trial attorney. Just looking at this place makes me shudder. Look at this lobby! Look at this court clerk!

Have you ever dealt with court clerks? Please tell me you haven’t. But if you have, you know that they’re the most unhelpful . . .

Oh. He helped me. Sure, it took some insistent pleading on Sonny’s part, but still: he agreed to interrupt the judge’s session to let Sonny in.

Luckily, Judge Palmer is a reasonable man. I show the evidence and he provides a no-bail warrant for Sonny to serve on Taselli’s ass (metaphorically speaking—warrants tend to be served in somebody’s hand, not on their ass).

Meanwhile, Sonny does some editorializing:

I’m going to interrupt with some editorializing of my own here: I know, I know, it’s easy to trash criminal defense attorneys. I do it too! But I still thank God I live in a country where, if the State is about to deprive me of my life, liberty, or property, I am guaranteed legal representation, whether or not I can afford it. Read the book Gideon’s Trumpetby Anthony Lewis if you’re interested in the case that gave the name to the idea that every criminal defendant is afforded legal representation under the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment, as applied to the States via the Fourteenth Amendment.

Long story short: Until the Civil War, the Bill of Rights (Amendments I – X) did not apply to the individual states, all of which have their own Constitution. After the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, many cases began to apply certain provisions of the Bill of Rights to the States . . . including the Due Process provisions of the Fifth Amendment. So yeah, whichever designer stuck this reference in here seriously needs to reexamine the rights he is afforded as an American, whether he likes them or not. Because someday, YOU might be on the other end—and your trial may be unfair or the case against you untrue!—and you really, really wish you had legal representation . . . where was I?

The jail is conveniently located right next to the courthouse (Is there an underground tunnel from one to the other? A slide?) so it’s nothing for Sonny to rush in and keep Taselli in the metal klink. Take that, scumbag! The bust sticks! No bail for you! You’re staying in the pokey until trial, bitch!

It’s rectangular and it’s paper and it says “No Bail” on it!

Ahem. I must remember that a police officer must maintain a certain level of decorum.

One cool thing about this little scenario is that the game smash-cuts back to the station . . . where Detective Watts informs Sonny that a drug deal is about to go down in Bert’s Park. Time for another bust!

At the park, the plan is for Sonny to hide himself and observe the park bench, while Detective Watts will circle around and watch the park’s other entrance. After that . . . I guess I have to look at the manual.

The steps seem pretty clear:

Have back-up near.
Maintain radio contact with back-up
Observe the crime
Have weapon drawn at the ready
Identify yourself as police to the suspect
Command suspect to keep his hands over his head
Cuff suspect when safe
Search suspect
Read rights
Take to jail

I spend too much time looking around at first and blow my cover, resulting in a game over. Reloading, I hide behind the bushes to the upper-left; the “You’ve got points!” chime lets me know I’m on the right track. I also check in with Detective Watts using the radio and then click the gun icon on Sonny, making him draw his weapon as he observes the deal.

I also love how Sonny keeps moving around and poking his head around like a dope. Way to be inconspicuous there, Sonny.

Anyway, some long-haired dude with a beard (not Jesus) saunters into view, and is soon met by a young kid sporting one of the most 90s-looking character portraits I have ever seen. Talk about righteous.

Tubular, even?

The game then cuts to a FMV scene of not-Jesus roughing up 90s-kid, berating him for being a sniveling punk and all of that. What’s important is 1) I like the way this game pushes the boundaries by incorporating new technology into the mix and 2) Sonny sees the deal go down!

I wonder if these two were Sierra employees?

Drugs and money are exchanged, with 90s-kid purchasing a packet of something from not-Jesus. They start to split the scene, so I click the “Talk” icon on not-Jesus, and . . .

. . . they get away because Sonny doesn’t say “Halt”? I clicked the “Talk” icon on the creep! What else do I have to do?!

It turns out you have to click “Talk” on 90s-kid. Not-Jesus gets away, but at least Sonny (automatically) tells the other perp to halt. Now I can search him (finding cocaine), cuff him (over his objections), read him his rights, cuff him against his protest, and bring him to Detective Watts, who apprehended not-Jesus as he tried to flee.

Now, this isn’t fair. On what planet is the player supposed to know he has to click on one perp and not the other? Planet Sierra, that’s where, a magical land of moon logic, obscure parsers, and trial-and-error. This is the kind of puzzle that, if I think about it, only the Quest for Glory series, and most of the Space Quest games mostly avoided.

But it’s a minor point, and one I’d ask Jim Walls about if he were around . . . say, standing in my front door.

90s-kid is named Victor Simms. He’s scared, and he readily answers Sonny’s questions. Turns out he hangs out and does drugs with Kathy Cobb, Jack’s daughter! They used to buy from Jose Martinez, but he stopped showing up and Colby—that’s not-Jesus’ name—approached him one day and became Simms’ new dealer.

Colby . . . let’s say Colby isn’t nearly as cooperative as Simms.

Nothing left to do but haul their asses to jail.

I book them for “Possession of a controlled substance” and “possession of cocaine.” Another righteous bust under Sonny’s belt! Not bad for his first day as a detective!

Detective Watts congratulates Sonny, and tells him that Jack had called earlier from The Blue Room sounding pretty upset. She recommends Sonny pay him a visit. Which he does.

Jack is not too happy about the fact that Kathy’s dealer is off the streets. This is for the perfectly reasonable reason that his daughter overdosed and is in a coma. How depressing! Drunk, Sonny makes sure that Jack doesn’t get behind the wheel before taking off. But before he leaves, Keith comes running in (Remember him? Does this dude ever work?) telling Sonny that Taselli has escaped!

Already!

Keith also knows (How? Telepathy? He’s off duty!) that Lt. Morgan wants to see him. So I head back and get my new assignment: look at all of the Hoffman/Pierson/Taselli evidence . . . again . . . to clarify the picture . . .

???

What picture? The dude escaped. Shouldn’t we . . . go look for him? Am I stuck in a loop like in Police Quest III?

Feeling like a dummy, I reexamine all of the evidence and then head back to Morgan, who summarily ignores all of this Taselli nonsense—I mean, it’s just a known murderer and drug-dealer on the FBI’s most wanted list who had just escaped jail!—to head back to the jail. It turns out that Sweet Cheeks has been pinched, but given her relationship with Sonny, the Lieutenant thinks she might be convinced to help them infiltrate the narcotics ring at the Hotel Delphoria.

Okay, hold up. THE narcotics ring? What narcotics ring? And Hotel Delphoria? Is this what “H.D.” meant in Taselli’s black book? If so, when did the dots get connected? Who put these pieces together? It sure wasn’t Sonny. What’s going on here?

Is this a case of . . . bad writing?

I don’t know. Maybe the game was rushed. I’d sure like to ask someone about this, though . . . someone like Jim Walls maybe?

Whatever. Sweet Cheeks is willing to comply in order not to go to jail with those scary women in there. You know the type . . . you’ve seen Orange is the New Black.

I hope so! And if so, you can write your own pop-culture reference here, because I’ve never seen it.

Sonny also gives Pervy Paul an epic dressing down for being a filthy jerk.

So! The pieces are in place! Except one just got removed from the board. Seems like a floater has turned up at Cotton Cove. No, not that kind of floater. I mean an 11-44! A fatality! A dead body! And looking under the sheet reveals a flower tattoo above the left nipple.

Taselli. Someone got him too. So it’s pretty obvious that he wasn’t the Death Angel . . . but who is?

I guess that’s what the Hotel Delphoria operation is supposed to suss out. Back in Lt. Morgan’s office, the gang assembles to go over the plan. Here’s how it looks:

Sweet Cheeks will go to the Hotel’s bar and socialize for a few hours, talking to the bartender, her friend Alexandra Parker’
Sonny will then go to the Hotel, get a room, and have a few drinks and chat with the two women in his disguise as Jimmy Lee “Whitey” Banksten.
Sonny will hopefully (And this is kind of a silly part of the sting—relying on hope as a part of your plan? Really?) get invited to a secret backroom poker game in the illegal ring Ms. Parker has been facilitating.
???
Victory!

Actually, this is a recon mission. Sonny is to find out what he can about the Death Angel and report back to Lt. Morgan. But first, his disguise: Bleach-blonde hair and a tacky white suit, hence the name “Whitey.”

But first . . .

I know, you’ve been asking yourself, “What’s missing from this plan?” I’ll tell you what—and I know you’ve been wanting it since you started reading this post. That’s right.

Another shower.

And MORE LOCKER ACTION!

This time, though, the shower has a purpose. Sonny comes out blonde.

And in that suit, my Gawd, look at that! He’s . . .

He’s . . .

…

He’s Let’s Dance-era David Bowie.

I approve of this plan.

Inventory: Wallet, keys to unmarked car
Score: 153 out of 225
On a scale of Don Knots to Don Johnson, how much do I feel like a cop?: David Bowie

Play time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Total time: 4 hours, 35 minutes

Written by Alfred n the Fettuc

Brandon’s journal - entry #5 : Finally. Malcolm’s abode. The fiend is near. I’m gonna avenge my new-found dead parents. This is it. The final showdown. Now if I can just find my way in this huuuuge castle…

Last week we followed the adventures of Brandon straight to Malcolm’s island (or what I can guess is Malcolm’s island, considering the dead plants and scary looking mountains scream “bad guy’s lair”)

Turning into a flying horse also left me with a craving for alfalfa.

I leave to explore the island and the first screen is a cemetery with only one tombstone. Putting a tulip on it makes the ghost of my dead mother appear. (how come I still have a tulip in my inventory? I just randomly picked one up when I was wandering around Timbermist trying to find colored gems for my potions. I consider myself lucky but I can smell a huge dead-end here. What if I left the mainland without any flowers on me?).

I love the light show you’ve put in your grave, mother.

My mother tells me that in order to defeat Malcolm, I’ll need to free the Kyragem. I’d need the Royal Chalice to do that (check) and she gives me another power for my amulet: Invisibility! Woo! I proceed to the next screen (not without checking the two useless autumn-themed screens north and south of the grave that Alex was talking about) and I arrive in front of Malcolm’s castle.

You indeed have to wonder why they went through the effort
to create this screen while not putting anything to do in it…

So that’s where Brandon grew up? Nice place indeed… can’t wait to reclaim it.

The castle is guarded by two scary-looking gargoyles (I’m having painful Bargon Attack flashbacks there) and a locked gate. If I try to get near the gate, I’m toast. Using the Invisibility power, however, allows me to get near the gate and unlock it with the iron key. A side note on that: How did Malcolm lose his keys at the very end of the Fireberry caves? If he wanted to get rid of the key, why didn’t he throw it in the lava in the very next screen where he left it? And if it’s just that he lost it, it seems like an awful lot of bad luck to lose it so far into the cave. But I digress, let’s just blame adventure game logic there.

Ouch

I don’t know if I should consider myself actually lucky not to have missed three very important items I needed to progress there: a flower, the chalice and the key, or if I must be worried to have missed a fourth major item before coming to the last island. Whatever the answer is, it seems pretty obvious that the game can have dead-end scenarios (except maybe if Brandon warns the player should he try to proceed without the necessary items. I’ll have to try this when I get the chance).

Definitely easier to fool than the gargoyles in Bargon Attack...

Anyway, I open the gate to Malcolm’s castle and enter the premises. As soon as I step in, the fiend comes around to tease me one more time. You have to wander something in his James Bond-villain routine. It’s ok to tease the supposedly heroïc figure that’s been chosen by fate to destroy you, but there is a point where you should be starting to worry about him, no? I mean, when the hero is stepping in your castle, I’d assume it’s high time to stop teasing and get rid of him, but maybe that’s just me. Malcolm has seemingly enormous magical powers and should be able to destroy Brandon by snapping fingers but he seems to still enjoy the cat and mouse game even if it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Brandon is about to win. But whatever. So Malcolm teases you, of course, and tells you that our old friend Herman is around, eager to return your saw. I have to admit that’s pretty clever and a nice way to recall something that happened way earlier in the game.

Oh Herman, yay, I love that guy! Why do you sound ominous though?

As for now, Herman is nowhere to be seen so I’m left free to explore the (huge) castle. The structure is simple. Both the first and second floor surround a huge dining hall (the great hall) with corridors leaving in several directions, and an interesting looking locked door. On the first floor, the notable areas are a library with a huge fireplace to the northwest and a kitchen to the northeast.

So great it’s written twice in this picture.

Thorough pixel hunting in the kitchen grants me the Royal Scepter that was apparently used as a poker. Despite the fact that it looks like a place where I could do several other things, I can’t find any other hotspot. I can’t even fill my Royal Chalice at the tap. Shame we’re not in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

I could really go for a fine German beer right now…

In the library room, I find several books that I can move in and out of place. The fact that Brandon insists on the first letter of each title makes me think I can create words out of them and probably make something happen. Touching the fireplace makes it turn around and brings me to some kind of secret passage. However, I can see some kind of interesting object in the fireplace when it turns around. I go back to the library (I’ll explore the secret passage later) and proceed to see what kind of words I can form with the books.

The letters are P, G, A, M, E, N, R and O. Ramen and Gnome aren’t working so I go for the more obvious (but less funny) OPEN. The fireplace revolves once again and let me access the object that turns out to be… the Royal Crown!

And Brandon proves himself as quick-witted as ever…

With my new shiny collection of Royal Items in tow, I proceed to explore the secret passage. This is another short labyrinth of similar-looking dark passageways that make me wonder where the fireberries are when you need them. Turning into a Will-o-Wisp helps tremendously as it not only lightens up the place but makes me move faster. One of the passageway is blocked by some kind of green magic wall. I try all my items on it to no avail and (after a long wait for Brandon to revert into its normal form and for my amulet to reload), I try the “magic catching hand” spell.

Ok, so it’s some kind of “Dispel Magic” spell. It makes sense but I
prefer the term “ultra cyborg mutant glowing magic catching hand”

Behind the force field I find nothing but empty rooms until I look more closely and find a golden key hidden under a rock. I go back out of the secret passage and run to the great hall in order to try it on the locked door. It works, but seems to be needing something else before opening. Maybe a switch of some kind? I’m left with nothing to do but explore the second floor.

Immediately after climbing the stairs, I finally encounter my old friend Herman. He has a nicely-tinted green screen, crazy eyes and a grin not unlike Malcolm’s, but thankfully he seems to be only there for guarding one of the rooms. Trying to approach him head on grants the expected result.

Ouch #2

I leave Herman there and go on to explore the rest of the floor. The floor is only holding a few bedrooms, which apparently are the mystics’. I find Darm turned to stone in her room, as well as Brynn. A third empty bedroom seems to be Zanthia’s but she’s nowhere to be seen. I find some kind of fish in Brynn’s bedroom and a green glowing ankh in Zanthia’s. I try to heal the mystics but to no avail.

Was worth a shot. Can we use it on the fish as well?

All of this was a bit anticlimactic. There is nothing particularly interesting in these rooms and I’m back to square one. The fact that I used the healing power on the mystics, however, made me realise I didn’t even try that on Herman. I go back to him and it works! The healing power just puts him to sleep for some reason, but I can explore the room behind him!

So I guess this is a healing/sleep spell? These magic powers sure are complex…

The last room is apparently Kallak’s, judging by a portrait of him on the wall. Interestingly enough, turned-to-stone-Zanthia is there. Could it be a subtle clue about a saucy story between Zanthia and Kallak? Grandfather, you dog! Brandon even adds to this theory by saying that “this room must be grandfather’s… or maybe Zanthia’s?” Maybe I’m overthinking it but I’m sure there is something going on between those two…

Does that make you my step grandmother?

In the room I find some kind of hourglass and a series of bells with a mallet next to it. I try to play the bells in a few different orders but it doesn’t seem to do anything. I’m obviously lacking a clue there. I go back to the rest of the castle and go round in circles for a pretty long time before accepting the fact that I didn’t seem to have missed anything! I was stuck…

I’d think having a dragon as a bodyguard would be more efficient.

After trying a lot of things on a lot of other things (resulting notably in me eating the raw fish), I had to come to the conclusion that I had to brute-force the bells puzzle. The game asked me for four notes so I tried everything methodically. It didn’t take too long to do this because the answer didn’t require any double-notes, but it’s still bothering. DO-FA-MI-RE doesn’t seem to even make sense retrospectively… DFMR? Don’t Flatten My Roses? Darm’s Feet Move Rarely? I get another gold key for solving this “puzzle” but it doesn’t feel right. Please dear readers with previous knowledge of the game, tell me there is a clue somewhere that I missed? If not, this puzzle joins the series of poorly-thought puzzles of the game. Having this kind of roadblock requiring you to brute-force your way out of it is just bad puzzle-design! This is the kind of things that could remove an entire point in the PISSED rating…

Door For Malcolm’s Realm? Dodos Fight Manatees Randomly?

Anyway, whatever the means, I finally have another gold key and probably a way to the last section of the castle. I go downstairs and proceed to the great hall. Behind the locked door, I find three cushions that seem like a perfect fit for the Royal Treasures. It takes me a few tries to find the (once again seemingly random) order and I put the Scepter, the Crown and the Chalice on the cushions. The door to the Kyragem Vault opens!

What about the Royal Ankh? The Royal Hourglass? The Royal Fishbone?

Once the door is opened, Malcolm appears to taunt you one last time. Brandon warns him repeatedly that Malcolm shouldn’t push him and the confrontation ends with possibly the most satisfying moment of the game:

BAM! Right in the kisser!

After Brandon has finally punched Malcolm in the face, the final battle begins in the Kyragem Vault. All your items are destroyed at this moment so your options are limited. Malcolm enters the room pretty fast and throws a magic ball at you that turns you into stone. I tried a lot of things that didn’t seem to work : turn into a Will’o Wisp, use the Glowing Hand to try to catch the ball, turn invisible… nothing seems to work.

Play catch with me?

The conspicuous mirror behind me made me think that turning invisible was the way to go, so I insisted in this direction. Turns out you have to turn invisible before Malcolm enters the room and go in front of the mirror without actually clicking on it. I’m pretty sure a lot of people stumbled on the correct solution pretty easily but it took me a lot of tries to make it work. The result is that Malcolm misses his shot and the ball bounces back to him, turning him into stone! The little red bird from the beginning of the game comes in and adds insult to injury by pushing the Malcolm statue on the floor.

Brandon comes back to Kallak and they congratulate each other. King Brandon makes his first royal proclamation by making sandals the official footwear of Kyrandia.

For real

Kyrandia is freed from the evil genius Malcolm! King Brandon is now free to rule a benevolent reign, which, as we’ll see in Kyrandia 3, is not as great as it might seem right now. This is what happens when a dim-witted son takes the throne after his father (insert Geoffrey Baratheon, Kim Jong-Il or George W. Bush joke here).

Here are two questions for you Kyrandia veterans out there :

Alex Romanov made the remark that the rainbowstone was used in the waterfall to create an useless pegasus statue. Do anyone has an idea of the uses of the fish (or fishbone), ankh and hourglass? They seem like useful enough items in the course of an adventure game about magic, but I couldn’t seem to find any use for them…
What about this stupid bell puzzle? Did anyone find a hint about this?

Meet us next week and we’ll see if the perfect graphics and sounds overwhelm the bad and random puzzles in our beloved PISSED rating! Long Live King Brandon!

Session time: 2 hours
Total time: 8 hours

Final Inventory: Tragically empty
Final Powers: Healing, Will’o’wisp, Bionic Mutant Dispel Powerhand, Invisibility

Written by TBD

Since Maniac Mansion, Green Tentacle's become hungry for something else

After completing the original Leather Goddesses of Phobos, I was very much looking forward to the sequel, not so much for the opportunity of seeing the aforementioned goddesses in all their VGA graphical glory (Mmmmm, pixelated boobies...), but because of a point-and-click mouse interface - no more parser problems

{I don't understand the word 'point-and-click'}

Screw you, 1980s Intercom.

{I don't see any 'you' here}

Infocom struck me as the adventure game equivalent to what Nokia were in the mobile phone world before smartphones became a thing. When graphics came along, Infocom seemed secure in being the best at the text parser adventure game rather than investing in all the fancy GUI and features.

Well, Infocom was bought by/merged with Activision in 1986, effectively shut down in 1989 and repurposed as a brand name for re-releases of old games in 1992. According to Mobygames, Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 was the last game showing Infocom as developer, though Infocom was just a name at that point.

Steve Meretzky, after Infocom's demise, had been freelancing, largely with Legend Entertainment, as we've seen in the Spellcasting series. He worked with Activision on this game, which makes sense as the original was one of his babies.

The manual has something to say about Mr. Meretzky

I like the touch of fake animosity where they show Steve's credits for other publishers in a much smaller font.

As with many games of the era, Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 was entering the world of digitized speech for the first time – the manual proudly mentions over an hour of recorded speech. The game actually came with some hardware that you plugged into the parallel port (and then plugged into your TV/Monitor/Audio system) for music/sound without having a sound card.

Arguably the most useful of Intercom's 'feelies'

Lane Mastodon and the Blubbermen

Before this game Infocom had created an Infocomic that was tangentially related to Leather Goddesses of Phobos: Lane Mastodon and the Blubbermen.

It was released in 1988 and was, to put it simply, terrible. It wasn't actually a game, it was a graphic novel with CGA graphics and the only choice of interaction being able to at certain points swap view with some other character and see the story played out in their location. I 'played' it - it took about 30 minutes to watch and was just an unimpressive story. If you went to the trouble of rewinding to see the other character's views you'd get an hour out of it, but with no way to affect the story it doesn't have much replayability. The Commodore 64 version looks a bit better - or at least more colourful, but I can't imagine anyone putting this amongst their favourites.

The relationship to Leather Goddesses was that the character of Lane Mastodon was the hero in the 3d comic that came with the original Leather Goddesses of Phobos game - Lane Battles the Shameless Leather Goddesses.

Joe Pranevich will be likely delving into Infocom's Infocomics in the future as two of their other titles were ZorkQuest games, but for now it's time to get back to the game at hand.

I think we've spent enough time on this for now

Preface to the Story

The year is 1956. It's an election year in the United States, and Eisenhower and Nixon are running for re-election; Elvis Presley appears on the Ed Sullivan show, Rock & Roll is starting to shake things up and the Leather Goddesses of Phobos are once again formulating plans to invade the Earth and turn it into their private pleasure world.

The first time, twenty years ago, the Leather Goddesses were thwarted by an ordinary Earthman named Zarmen, who nobody believed.

Earth scientists suspect the existence of a tenth planet in the Solar System, called Planet X. As it turns out, Planet X is inhabited by a peaceful and technologically advanced society who are pawns in the Leather Goddesses' gameplan.

And on this night in 1956, a lone spacecraft crashes on the outskirts of town...

Before getting past the preface, it's worth pointing out that the existence of a tenth planet is unlikely seeing as we actually lost the ninth planet in 2006 when Pluto was found to not be doing its duty and was therefore no longer worthy of being called a planet. And even if there was a planet X, the 1956 scientists can't find it because it actually won't be discovered until the 24th and a half century...

...by Duck Dodgers

The Game

The interface is a simple point-and-click one. The cursor changes based on what you hover over. If the cursor is an arrow, it shows the direction you'll move if you click, if it's a hand you take or examine, a mouth talks, an atom means there's nothing there and the Infocom logo means the computer is thinking

You have an inventory box in the bottom left corner, where you keep items and can use them on the environment.

When you talk to people icons on the left indicate the subjects you can talk about.

One of the titular 'Gas Pump Girls'

The manual contains a section on 'radiointeractive fiction' where it describes an adventure game as if this is the first adventure game ever made and these developers invented the concept of puzzle solving because they call it something different – weird.

One thing that makes me very happy is this part of the manual...

“Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 has been specifically designed so that you can never paint yourself into a corner. You won't get killed, and you can't create a situation that necessitates quitting and restarting the game from the beginning.”

Thank you game. No... seriously... thank you!

I'm very glad to see other companies are starting to follow Monkey Island's lead on this one.

The save game screen is a novel one -

You don't get to name your own saves, but you have 20 slots. I wouldn't be surprised if the save names are involved in a puzzle at some point so I might as well list them here:

Looking for My Baby
My Baby Done Left Me
Stuck on Earth
The Key to My Baby's Heart
I Can't Get No Radiation
We're Searchin' Around
P.I. Blues
Everybody's Mad at Me
Gotta Get Off This Planet
186,281 Miles from Earth
My Baby From Planet X
Bad Moon Horizon
Locked In Your Heart
Evil Women
My Home Planet
Gotta Get That Thing
Need That Other Thing Too
I'm Hungry Baby
Heal Me Baby
Back on Earth Again

Preface to the Preface

The game's opening cutscene shows me highlights of my adventure in the previous game.

So, it seems the character I played in the original game was canonically a man (not surprising) whose name was Zarmen (first name or surname, I'm not sure) who ended up having a son who's in this game (perhaps Zeke, one of the possible protagonists of this sequel)

I at first thought it might be possible the character in question isn't me, but Trent and that Trent Zarmen's son will be involved in this game. But on reflection, I recall Trent telling me he came from Alaska, while I definitely started the game in Joe's Bar in Upper Sandusky.

Who Will I Be?

This B-movie looking, small-desert-town, pulp-fictiony, things-crashing-from-space thing is sounding eerily familiar... why do I feel I've done this before... and before that...

Oh well, it seems I'm the one we go to for this kind of game - might as well enjoy it.

As for the game, as soon as it starts I'm given the option of who to play with.

I'm including a poll along with this post as part of Adventure Gamer's patented ChoiceClicker (TM) technology so YOU can decide who I play with. The poll should be at the top left of your screen.

Here's what the characters have to say when I hover the cursor over them...

Lydia: "Greetings. I am Lydia Sandler of Earth"
Zeke: "I fix cars, I hunt rattlesnakes, I watch shooting stars... I drink bourbon"
Barth: "I'm just an ordinary pulsating inconvenience" (I at first thought he was saying ball-breaking instead of pulsating - his alien accent and the background music combined to made it unclear)

I'll be playing as all three for comparison purposes and posting interesting differences as I go, but the poll results will determine who I am for the main playthrough. So get ChoiceClicking (TM).

And don't forget to get your score guesses and any possible bets in. Here goes...

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 or some other appropriate cipher 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.

Example Bet - what's the final word?:

ZH'YH VROYHG SXCCOHV EDQDO
URGH D PDUWLDQ FDQDO
DQG GHIHDWHG D IOBWUDS LQ YHQXV.
ZKHQ ZH PHW BRX ZHUH NHHQ
WR EXLOG VRPH ZHLUG PDFKLQH
WKHQ ZH VKRZHG WKH JRGGHVVHV RXU ................

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last week, I finished exploring nearly all of the Warlock’s castle but left many mysteries unsolved. We found a deathtrap with hammers and spears, a mysterious rainbow turtle, a man in a mirror, an excessively guarded door, and many other little mysteries. I’m going to have to put some of these puzzles to bed if I want to fight my way to the Warlock. You may have noticed that this isn’t a “Won!” post. Except for the original Dungeon (which was enormous), this is the first game in our marathon to require a fourth post. I’m still going to push to have each game done in three or less, but it seemed better to let this game breathe as much as it needed to. There are a lot of puzzles!

Just as with last week, my big break happened almost immediately after I stopped scrawling my notes for the last section. I put the game down, came back, and figured out a huge trick: napping. I have said this before, but when I write about these games, sometimes I sound smarter than I am. For every correct choice, I can spend enormous amounts of time wandering around or trying randomly stupid things which I do not always mention. Keep in mind that for every solved problem there is a strange man yelling at his computer screen about a thirty-four-year old game. Finding the clue I needed while napping was one example of said screaming.

Nothing says “pompous Warlock” like a tasteful portrait gallery.

Dreams and Visions

I started this week just fooling around, trying new things, and seeing what clicked. Along the way, I got tired so I settled down for a hallway-nap, like you often do while exploring castles owned by evil magic-users. This time, maybe for the first time or just the first time that I noticed, I had a dream. I dreamed that I had no possessions but that I was surrounded by many faces in the dark. Could that be a clue about the portrait gallery? I restored back a bit and slept again and this time received a different vision, that of a “cartoonish” man who opens a door and ascends a wooden staircase. Admittedly, that clue isn’t quite as useful!

I start with the portrait gallery first and drop all my stuff off just to the west, including my trusty broken-but-magically-glowing lamp. I walk into the gallery and find that there is light: one of the paintings is back-lit! I remove it from the wall to recover a black scroll and a lit black candle. It’s the “ozmoo” scroll which is supposed to allow me to “survive unnatural death”. Well, that will come in handy here! I copy it into my spell book. I’m not sure about the candle but since who knows how long it has been lit back there, it might be my first real permanent (non-magical) light source… not that I need one right now, but it could come in handy.

Next up, I’ll try for the cartoonish man, whom I assume is the adventurer in the mirror. I search and find him in one of the mirror rooms and cast “zifmia” to summon him through. He’s not very happy about it! He is certainly “me” from the Zork series, down to the elvish sword and trusty lamp, but he doesn’t like “me” from the Enchanter series one bit. With some experimentation, I find that I can cast “vaxum” on him to get him to like me, but even then he just wanders aimlessly around the castle picking up random odds and ends. I think I’m on the right track, but what do I do next? I have no idea. (Incidentally, where does this game have to fall on the Zork timeline? My guess is somehow between Zork II and III since he knows about the Wizard of Frobozz but he still has his sword with him. It can’t be after III because then he’d be transformed into the Dungeon Master. I probably am not supposed to think too hard about this.)

Hero in a half-shell.

Turtle Power!

I spend a little time futzing around, but the next break isn’t too long in coming: I can cast the “exex” spell on the turtle! Remember that there was a rainbow-shelled turtle on the beach that I could not find anything to do with. If I cast “nitfol” to talk to him and “exex” to speed him up, I can get him to follow me up to the hammer room in the castle. He is able to speed off into the other room and dodge the hammers if I ask! Unfortunately, once he gets there he just stays because he can’t hear me over the din of all the engines. That’s disappointing. But, wait! I work out that you can give him multiple commands. We’ve done this “command someone to do work for you” puzzle in a few games before this (most notably the robot in Dungeon/Zork II) and this is the first time that you can give him a queue of commands to run. I do that, telling the turtle to cross the room, get the scroll, then come back. He does, first dodging the hammers along the way and then avoiding the spears thanks to his hard shell. He makes it all the way back in one piece and gives me the scroll before heading back to a well-deserved rest at the beach. Score! This finally wins me the “kulcad” spell to dispel magic but unfortunately it’s too complicated to copy into the spell book. I can use it once and only once so I better get it right.

While I am wandering around, I manage to get captured every now and then and each time I have been trying new things against the monk-creatures to escape the sacrifice. I had just assumed that’s it’s a guaranteed death like the prison in Planetfall, but on one of the attempts I get the idea to cast the “ozmoo” spell on myself to “survive an unnatural death”. Each time I die, I am hauled up to an altar and sacrificed with a very real dagger by very real people. That did not strike me as “unnatural” in any way… and yet when I try that spell (more out of just trying things than a real expectation it would do anything), I somehow survive. The cultists leave me alone, uninjured on the altar and holding a sacrificial dagger. All of my stuff is gone, but I survived! I climb down the altar and into the temple while all of the cultists just seem to ignore me. They aren’t the least bit surprised that their blood sacrifice is walking out the door? Or is this part of the spell? In the base of the temple, I discover both my prison cell (now empty) and a second cell that contains all of my old stuff. I pick it all back up again and walk out. (Actually, I eventually notice that the “kulcad” scroll is missing but I restore back and do it all over again to get the scroll after evading capture.) Even with whatever is magically protecting me from being noticed, I still cannot travel east from the “Junction” without getting captured. There must be something else I need to do to explore that part of the castle.

In the old tongue, it reads “bibbity bobbity boo”

Something Wicked This Way Comes

At this point, I am stuck again. Although I have the solved a few puzzles, I don’t have much of a way forward except for using the “kulcad” spell. Since that one is in scroll form and can only be cast once, that’s a big decision! Without any better ideas, I decide to cast it on the heavily guarded door to the northeast tower (the one that had defenses for its defenses, not to mention gargoyles and tentacles). When I cast it, I am given a warning by the Circle of Magic that the use of such a powerful spell will surely draw the Warlock’s attention to me. That is foreboding… All of the locks and enchantments gradually fall away revealing only a plain wooden door which I have no problem opening.

At the top of the tower is the “Map Room”, so named because it contains both a map and a rune-covered pencil, plus a “filfre” spell scroll which creates gratuitous fireworks. Like the “kulcad” spell before it, I cannot copy that one into my spellbook either so it will be one-shot. The map on the floor is reproduced below but you will probably notice (as I did) that it exactly describes the strange cream-colored maze that I explored at the end of last week’s post, with one exception: there is a room labeled “P” that there is no access to. Does it contain a treasure? I draw a line using the magic pencil from “F” to “P” and start heading there to check out what is in the room, but I die nearly immediately. The “Terror” has been released by my foolish scribbling and the whole world is doomed.

ASCII art!

I head down to the maze with the map and play with it some more. I try erasing the line from “M” to “V” and then adding another one from “P” to “F”. I wait a bit and then remove that line and add a new one to “P”. In short, I’m trying to get the Terror out of his room into a spur and then close him off. Well, that didn’t work because he didn’t leave so I freed him again. No good. I try again, this time placing myself in room “F”, disconnecting it from the network, and then drawing a line to “P”. That lets me access the Terror’s room without him being able to get out, but as soon as I arrive I am trapped by his evil presence. If I try to leave, I just run in place. There is a “guncho” spell scroll in his room to banish someone to another dimension. With no other options, I use it on the Terror and he is defeated… but I gained exactly nothing and lost two powerful spells. I also received no points for the ordeal which is a pretty big clue that I did not go down the right paths for either solution. I restore back and will have to figure this out later.

Making progress!

Bits and Pieces
With that little experiment completed, I’m back to being fairly stuck. I was going to end my efforts for this post while I work out what to do next but I do have some housekeeping of other puzzles to catch you up on:

I returned to the banquet hall and kitchen and found their situations reversed. Instead of a luscious (but ultimately unfilling) spread of food in the hall, I find the room dark and trashed. The kitchen, in contrast, seems clean and “freshly used”. Did I miss a timed event?
The cultists are getting more aggressive the longer I play and they now can follow me throughout the castle instead of giving up as soon as I leave the library area.
I summon the adventurer and follow him around. He seems to always take a fixed path around the castle at first, passing through the temple and the hallway junction without incident. After that, he seems to go aimlessly. If he sees any of my stuff lying around, he annoyingly picks it up. He seems single-mindedly in pursuit of treasures like in the first two Zork games.
In the library, I am still convinced there is something in the rat hole but I can’t work out how to get it. I try making the spoon glow and shoving it in and lots of other tricks but nothing I do seems to work and I’m not sure if it’s a vocabulary problem or I’m really just experimenting on nothing.
Because I am running out of food and the increased viciousness of the cultists (plus the event in the kitchen I may have missed), I replay the whole game from scratch to try to minimize turns. I manage to get back in only 584 turns so no change for you but it’s a ton earlier for me.

While re-playing, I realized that I completely forgot about the locked chest in the closet outside the courtyard. It was wrapped in a tangle of gold thread which I had said reminded me of a “Gordian knot”. My hunch was correct! I was able to cut the wires with the sacrificial dagger to reveal a “melbor” scroll which will protect me from harm by evil beings. That will be a fun spell to play with when I pick up the game again in a few days.

Inventory: Spellbook, brass lantern (glowing), bread, jug of water, book, mechanical egg, spoon, black candle, “kulkad” scroll, sacrificial dagger (not all being carried).
Spells: blorb, nitfol, frotz, gnusto, rezrov, krebf, cleesh, zifmia, vaxum, ozmoo, melbor

Time played: 3 hr 25 min
Total time: 8 hr 00 min

Written by Alex

The reign of the Death Angel is at an end. The city of Lytton is safe once more. And Sonny Bonds—Detective Sonny Bonds—is the most beloved man in the city.

How did we get here? What happened in between Sonny disguising himself *snort* as a gangster *snicker* in order to infiltrate the illegal gambling ring at the Hotel Delphoria?

Oh come on!

There were hiccups on the way. For starters, before Sonny leaves, Sgt. Dooley pops into Lt. Morgan’s office with some sad news: Officer Jack Cobb’s daughter, Kathy, died in the hospital from her drug overdose. This is more than a hiccup. This is tragic. And though Lt. Morgan tells Sonny not to let it distract him, Sonny wants to give Jack a call…

…except the game won’t let Sonny sit at his desk, telling him he has more important things to do. More important than wishing his friend whose daughter just died his condolences, offering to help, and providing a friendly, sympathetic ear? You know, the kinds of things that might help stave off suicide? Okay…

But enough of that. Here’s how the Hotel Delphoria operation went down.

The Scene

If you recall from last post, Sonny is to head over to the Hotel Delphoria and start drinking with Sweet Cheeks, who will have already been there, schmoozing with her friend, the bartender Alexandra Parker. Sonny will start talking with her and hopefully convince her to invite him to the secret illegal gambling ring she facilitates.

But first Sonny has to get a room.

No, not like that.

Easy enough. No puzzles here.This gets Sonny a room key. Nothing left to do now but explore. Sadly, the hotel is bereft of things to do. To the left is a manager’s office he can’t get into, and the only thing to do on any other floor is go to Sonny’s room, as there’s an inaccessible penthouse. Nothing left to do but head to the bar through the archway in the hotel lobby’s right.

Contact

Step two: Act the part of the gangster Jimmy Lee “Whitey” Banksten, get in good with Alexandra Parker, and infiltrate the gambling ring. This involves some vital components of police procedure, something that may not be taught at police academies around the nation.

Drinking.

Flirting.

And womanizing.

For a moment, Sonny thinks he’s wandered into a Larry game.

This stuff is not in the manual. It is Advanced Policing, known only to the masters.

But drinking with Sweet Cheeks is fun. Sonny knocks down a few and enjoys Sweet Cheeks’ overdone banter, which makes it clear that her hots for Sonny—I mean Whitey—are no mere act.

She tells Sonny that she has seen the “same three guys” going back and forth to the storeroom (in the screenshot, it’s in the upper-middle of the screen) where they stay for hours before coming out. But when she peeked in there one time right after they went in, she saw nobody.

Smells like a secret door! Or maybe the plumbing is backed up back there; I don’t know.

Whatever the source of the stench, I need to get back there and check it out. For his second drink, Sonny pays with a $100 bill and leaves $20 for a tip. This piques Ms. Parker’s interest, prompting Sweet Cheeks to formally introduce her to Sonny before taking off to use something called the “lejuois.”

(French readers, help a Yankee out! I’m assuming it means “toilet,” but the closest word I can find anywhere is le jouis, which means “the enjoyment,” which would be a pretty freaky slang term for the bathroom . . .)

Sonny and Alex get to chatting, with Sonny spinning a yarn that he had just gotten out of jail for embezzlement, which Alex finds interesting. When Sweet Cheeks returns, Sonny drops a line about wanting to take her to Vegas for some gambling, and they abscond to Sonny’s room for, presumably, a romp in the hay.

But before Sonny goes Alex, who apparently found his story interesting enough to trust him, reckons that Whitey is a man with lots of money, and a man who likes to wager it in games of chance: “If you were to come back later tonight,” she says, “alone except for a couple of C notes, I might be able to get you into a little private party.”

Sonny’s in. Things are looking good. But they’re also about to get dangerous.

Reporting In

If this post is sounding like a recitation of fact, it’s because it kind of is. The game is firmly on rails at this point, and so far there hasn’t been much to do in the way of puzzle-solving. That will change, sort of, very soon, including one very rant-worthy situation.

But I’ll keep it clean, because this is a family blog.

Aaaaaand there goes that promise.

In the hotel room, Sweet Cheeks is ready to go. But Sonny is supposedly supposed to call a cab to extract her from the situation before checking in with Lt. Morgan. I say “supposedly” because this is a part of the plan described nowhere by Lt. Morgan or Detective Watts, and yes, I checked my screenshots, which I took of every conversation (this will become more important in a few paragraphs).

But what the hell. As Sweet Cheeks says, the department is footing the bill . . . and they have a few moments to kill . . . what harm could there possibly be in a little fun?

SEVERAL HOURS? Damn, Sonny!

Wouldn’t, like, a quickie have been enough? SEVERAL HOURS?!

Yeah, I guess SEVERAL HOURS of sex may be fatal . . .

Let’s try this again.

That’s more like it!

So, in order to call a cab in the pre-Internet, pre-smartphone days, you would actually have to, get this, know the number and dial it in on an ancient device known only as a “land line” digit by digit. And if you didn’t know the number, you used this thing called a “phone book” with the numbers of people and business and stuff printed in it to figure it out.

Being in a hotel room circa 1992, you’d expect there to be a phone book somewhere, say, maybe in the drawer with the Gideon’s Bible, right?

I mean, the game even tells you that the nightstand probably has a phonebook in it. Easy puzzle, right?

Proof that I am not making this up.

Nope. The game makes you call 411, known to us old-timers as “Information.”

I have no real complaint about this puzzle, seeing as how calling information was a common thing to do back then (I’m 36, so I vividly remember using this service). But why tell the player that there’s likely to be a phonebook in the drawer, and then not let them open the drawer, especially when they need to know a particular phone number in order to advance with the game?

Anyway, with Sweet Cheeks out of harm’s way, it’s time for Sonny to check in with Lt. Morgan and . . .

. . . uh . . .

What’s his number?

I have no clue. And checking all of my screen shots, I do not see it anywhere. So I do the only logical thing.

I call 911.

They can’t help Sonny, and Sonny feels like a dope for doing this. And then the game drops this bomb on the player:

Now listen, game: Nobody mentioned this phone number. Nobody hinted it would be needed. Nothing in the manual, relied upon so heavily in the game for police procedure, mentions “Step 75.4: Make sure you find your Lieutenant’s telephone number prior to beginning a sting.” The only way the majority of players would know that they needed this number is getting to this point, trying to call Lt. Morgan, and realizing, “Oh dang, I don’t know his number!” and then getting this snarky message, forcing them to restore to an earlier point, or use a hint book, or call a hint line (remember those?) or spend 75 years punching in every possible permutation one-by-one.

You can’t dial 411 to solve this puzzle either. You can’t just dial the station. And you can’t use the phone book that’s in the nightstand!

But it wouldn’t be a Police Quest game without an infuriatingly obscure puzzle that dead-ends you way later in the game, would it? In Police Quest II, we had the whole recalibrating your gun’s sights thing. And while Police Quest III’s map-plotting puzzle from hell was more of an interface issue than anything, that game also had the whole “don’t actually book all the crime scene evidence you got according to proper police procedure, because you can never get it back, and you need it to get the search warrant” in addition to needing to perform just the right steps in just the right sequence to make sure that Marie doesn’t die at the end of the game!

Because I didn’t kiss her at the right time.

Yes, I’m still bitter.

So how does one get the number? Glad you asked! After defenestrating my police manual, I consulted a walkthrough. But I was still curious, so I loaded back to when Sonny could use his computer and checked the personnel records.

Okay, so the number is there in the game. But I still call extreme double shenanigans in the 1st degree on this puzzle, and am using police code 666 to book it to the fiery depths of Hell itself.

Morgan tells Sonny to be careful and check in after the poker game. “Will do!” I say to the computer screen as I play. “Thanks for making such an integral puzzle [More on that later] require the player to have read the designers’ mind!” I don’t recall if the number is given in the original version, or if anything or anyone mentions that Sonny better know it, but that’s neither here nor there. All I know is that this is bad puzzle design.

Anyway, on with the mission.

The First Poker Game

Sonny is in. After slipping the lovely Ms. Parker a few bills, she brings him to the back room, pats him down, and lets him into the secret back room at the back of the back room (the backer room?) where the illicit high-stakes gambling is going on!

I think she’s enjoying this a wee bit too much.

Yeah, baby! Cards! Gambling! Thrills! Chills!

Mini-games!

As with many Sierra titles, particularly the early ones (Space Quest I and Leisure Suit Larry I come to mind, though there is also, inexplicably, mandatory gambling in Leisure Suit Larry V and Codename: Iceman), Police Quest I features a poker game that you have to play.

Oh, I’m sorry: Did I say poker game? I meant poker games.

And look, I appreciate the idea here: Going undercover . . . infiltrating a gambling ring . . . getting in good with the bad guys in order to get the evidence to make the bust and make it stick!

It’s just that video poker is, quite frankly, boring. At least, to me. And slow. And you never win.

But what’s this?

This, alone, is going to save the “Puzzles” rating for this game after the debacle that is The Case of the Missing Phone Number.

I also love that it gives you the chance to see what happens if Sonny totally blows it at the card table. Let’s click that one first!

And maybe YOU should have brushed up on your
game-design skills before you—you know what? Forget it.

I’d much rather see what happens when you win!

But first, an introduction to the players: Sonny is playing against three bad dudes—Otto Lipschitz to his left, Gene “The Bambino” Bamboni (who can’t stop laughing at everything) to his right, and across from Sonny, the dangerous-looking (according to the game’s description) Mr. Frank Magpie.

Nice Bond villain-esque quip there.

In the interests of time and sanity (mostly sanity), I skip the game. After consulting the walkthrough, it turns out that you have to win $1,000 in order to move on. $1,000! You start with $300. Yeah, screw that.

Oh yeah: you can’t Save and Restore during the poker game either.

The Second Poker Game

No, not really . . .

Victory brings with it an invite to come back later and play an even higher high stakes game of poker. Oh joy. Once wasn’t enough, game?

Mr. Magpie gives the password—“Frank sent me”—and tells Sonny to come back later. Time to check in with Lt. Morgan, but first, let’s see what’s up with Alex?

Wait! Not yet!

I’m screwed, aren’t I?

Yep.

I think I sequence-broke the game, but I just roll with it.

Alex leads Sonny to a secret, garishly decorated back room where . . .

Lovely use of green, guys . . .

. . . Frank Magpie comes out of the elevator and seats himself at the head of the table.

Yes, I know the table is round. Just go with it.

Mr. Magpie invites Sonny to talk “business” after the game, presuming that Sonny wins. In lieu of trying again to make $1,000, or whatever ludicrous amount is required now, I click the handy cheat button like so:

And go on my way to the penthouse of the Hotel Delphoria to talk business with the dangerous-looking Frank Magpie.

What could possibly go wrong!

End Game

A lot.

You see, at the penthouse, Magpie provides the Big Reveal. He is actually none other than Jesse Bains, the Death Angel himself!

That you love me and that I’m all of your wildest dreams come true?!

Oh.

Mr. The Death Angel is then distracted by a telephone call, telling Sonny to have a drink and think about the “lucrative” business Bains hinted at.

Come on game! The man told me to have a drink! Let me have a drink!

I see a phone—looking at it tells Sonny it’s suite 401 and gives the “points” chime, letting me know I’m doing something right . . . but I can’t call for backup.

True, but my ass is on the line here!

When Bains gets off of his phone call, he informs Sonny that one of their card-playing friends recognized him from the newspaper (Another tie-in with the newspaper! I love stuff like this!), and proceeds to blow him into Kingdom Come.

You know, that deep-throated laugh that accompanies this screen really adds insult to injury.

But I deserved this one. I know I did things out of order. I was, quite frankly, surprised that it let me go into the second game right after the first; I figured that I’d have to do something else to trigger that dialogue option with Alex. Nope.

Oh well. Now I know what to do! Let’s hop into our police-issued Way-Back Machine, also called “The Restore Function,” and give Lt. Morgan another buzz after the first poker game.

Reporting In Again

Lt. Morgan is happy to hear that things are going well. He’s going to have a backup team come by with money and a wire for Sonny.

A wire? Hmm . . . hasn’t Alex been patting Sonny down (and loving every minute of it) before each poker game? Is this going to be a puzzle? We’ll see!

Anyway, after a little bit, Detective Danny Anglin comes by, giving Sonny the cash and the transmitter, disguised in true 007 style as a fountain pen.

“Deluxe” or “secret”? Pick one, game!

Now, I’m ready to ~~play poker~~ click the “Win” button and finally take down Bains!

The Second Poker Game and the End Game, Done Right

Poker, blah blah blah . . . and no, there was no
puzzle involved with sneaking the transmitter by Alex.

Business, blah blah blah . . .

Phone call . . . come on game, let’s move things along!

Now I know the reason to know the room number: it’s kind of hard to let backup know where you are when you don’t know where you are.

I think it’d have been cooler if the transmitter was in his shoe.

Now, if Bains’ phone call had lasted 4 minutes and 59 seconds, Sonny would be in big, big trouble.

Seriously, how did they get in there?

This time, when Bains comes by telling Sonny to plant his protruding labia oris on his own posterior and give it a kiss, things turn out a wee bit different.

Yeah! That’ll show Bains what happens when you mess with Sonny Bonds, aka Whitey, and the City of Lytton! Take that, punk. One more dead drug dealer. Another bust in the books. And this one . . . this one will stick! It’s hard for a dead perp to beat the rap!

So? It could just be the wind. Leave him be, Sonny. Just walk away.

Walk away, Sonny . . .

That ambulance was for Sonny, not for Bains . . .

I know, I know. Compassion, caring for all human life, et cetera, et cetera. But letting Bains go to that big garishly decorated secret hotel backroom in the sky would save Sonny and Sweet Cheeks-indeed, the entire city of Lytton—a lot of trouble later on in Police Quest II.

Oh well. Sonny did it! He got the Death Angel. This dude is going to be going to jail for a long, long time . . .

The End

Look at this! Sonny gets feted by the Mayor on the steps of the courthouse (not City Hall, which is kind of weird, but whatever), being promoted to Detective and getting the Lytton Police Department’s highest honor, the Commendation for Valor . . . plus he’s got a hot date with Sweet Cheeks later that night!

All in all, not a bad way to wrap up his first few days (or was it one day?) as a Narcotics detective! We’ll give the denouement and wrap things up with the PISSED rating in the next post. Until then, the streets are safe, things are looking up for Sonny, and somewhere, standing in somebody else’s doorway, Jim Walls is smiling . . .

Caption Contest: Celebrity Lookalike Edition—extra CAPs for the funniest entries. GO!

Final Inventory: Wallet, keys to unmarked car, hotel room key, transmitter pen
Final Score: 189 out of 225
On a scale of Don Knots to Don Johnson, how much do I feel like a cop?: Ricardo TubbsTotal Number of Showers Taken: Five.

Play time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Final time: 5 hours, 45 minutes

Written by Alfred n the Fettuc

It is time for King Brandon’s adventures to be tested and thoroughly examined through the PISSED rating system. Will the beautiful universe crafted by Westwood be enough to forgive some lacklustre puzzle design or will Kyrandia disappear into the depths of our leaderboard? Let’s find out!

Puzzles and Solvability

Ok so let’s get this out of the way : some of the puzzles in this game are rubbish! Let’s examine them in further details :

The Birthstone puzzle : The point here is to make you believe you can solve this puzzle with brainpower. The clues given by Darm tend to point to the fact that each stone is represented by a season and that the first one is summer. You turn around dozens of similar looking screen in order to “farm” gemstones and have as many as possible at your disposal, then you try them all in and… none works! The reason for that is that the first gem is the only one that’s so hidden it resorts to pure luck to find it (or, you know, just clicking everywhere until something happens, which was never good puzzle design in the first place). Then, once you’ve passed this roadblock, you just randomly put a lot of different gems until something works. Rubbish.

Yay I’ve randomly put random color gems in a random order!

The potions puzzle : A little less aggravating, the alchemy puzzle still resorts too much on trial and error. You have to understand that the potions need a flower or fruit and a gemstone to work, and then you have to go back aaaaall the way to Timbermist in order to get the gemstones you think might work with your limited inventory space… Then you have to mix them in order to finally get the potion you need. Don’t get me started on the fact that the Emerald is needed in the yellow potion… The worst part is that Brandon is teasing you by complaining there is no magic recipe book while Zanthia’s lab seems to be full of them… Meh. A few clues would not have been luxury.
Finally the contestant that single-handedly removes one point in this category : the bell puzzle. Four bells to ring. One order to find. No clue. Enough said.

The rest of the puzzles are pretty nice. I know a lot of people hated the maze but I kinda liked it. At least it makes sense and consistent mapping is the answer. A few areas requiring pixel hunting are bothersome and there are a few possible dead-ends. However, the magic powers and a few simple puzzles are pleasant. The final fight is also kinda anticlimactic.

Final Score: 3. Alternating between okey and meh. Would have gotten a 4 if not for some bells.

Interface and Inventory

The interface is extremely simple to say the least. One click does it all. Click on a character to talk to him, click on an item to take it, click in your inventory to take an item and then click it on something else to interact. Put your mouse on the side of the screen and it changes to a nice white arrow if you can move this way or a mean crossed red circle if you can’t. The magic powers settle comfortably in the bottom-right of your screen once you get them and everything is kept as straightforward as possible. The only complaint I have is that there is no “look” option which could have been useful once in a while.

You can identify exits pretty quickly while entering a room. Good for all the labyrinths out there.

The inventory is great. When you grab an item, it goes nicely into one of the little boxes and dropping an item somewhere makes it bounce on the screen. That’s something that will be perfectly realized in the sequel, where the inventory has a real “physical” feeling, but there is already something satisfying in managing items that feel like they have some kind of weight. The only complaint I might have would be with the limited inventory space (only ten items) but it avoids the feeling of being cluttered by items you can sometimes have in the sequel. All in all, very nice streamlined work there.

Final Score: 7

Story and Setting
The story itself is your classic “castaway prince in search of his parents/princess/heirloom”. As you guys noted it, it bears many similarities to King’s Quest and it’s aware of that. It goes with the “let’s take someone else’s idea and perfect it” that goes with many of Westwood games (Eye of the Beholder is a more advanced copy of Dungeon Master while Command & Conquer is a new take on Dune 2, which is itself inspired by Herzog Zwei) and it’s alright. I mean, Blizzard has been doing the same thing for years...

I’m sure I can see Daventry from there...

Kyrandia has yet to find its complete silliness that will permeate the two sequels and is more akin to a classic fantasy world, even with a few touches of silly here and there. The fact that nearly everybody you meet knows Brandon and his destiny is a nice touch as well that gives backstory to the world. Malcolm is a great villain, and if anything, he doesn’t get enough screen time. I wanted to see him blow other squirrels up! The perfect graphics and sounds (more on that later) add to the atmosphere and round up Kyrandia as a very loveable setting.

Final Score: 6. Too much classicism for its own good, but classicism done right.

Sound and Graphics

Well you have seen that one coming. As you already know or as you can see from the screenshots, this game is gorgeous. It’s a testament of how fantastic 2D graphics hold the test of time. Compare this game to 3D games of the same era, and the difference is astonishing. This game was released the same year than Alone in the Dark…

Graphics of the past

Graphics of the future

The art style is top notch and is one of the main reasons the game is still highly regarded as one of the great classics of adventure gaming. Getting lost in Kyrandia really feels like an adventure and you never know what fantastic sight awaits you behind the next corner. The sequel would keep on improving in this area but the third episode will be marred by the beginning of 3D effects and doesn’t look as great in comparison...

And the music… Oh wow the music. It’s the perfect blend of adventuring and mystery. It oozes “magic” with its tunes only. It’s hard to imagine Frank Klepacki, the composer, was only 18 at the time! It’s saying something about the talent of the guy. He would later go on to compose the Command & Conquer soundtrack including the fabulous “Hell March” for Red Alert. This guy is my new hero. Anyway, I can’t tell enough good things about the music. Just listen to the Timbermist theme and you’ll understand what I’m talking about…

Final Note: 9. I don’t like the idea of putting a 10 there in 1992, but let’s all assume it’s a 9.5

Environment and Atmosphere

The environments of Kyrandia, being served by such a great art style, are top notch. Brandon evolves in lovely forests, mystery caves, and a frankly frightening derelict castle. All of these places ooze style and magic. Add to this that every environment has its own music theme, and you’re always evolving into fabulous environments.

You have to wonder though : was this fireplace already here in
Brandon’s childhood? Nice way to keep baby Brandon far from the fire.

Despite its classicism, Kyrandia is wonderful. What the sequels will gain in silliness, they will lose in coherence. Zanthia and Malcolm’s future adventures will bring them to all kind of weird places but at least this first vision of Kyrandia makes sense. Dragons, imps and magic are common things and everybody is living their quiet lives in this world until some maniac jester decides it should be otherwise.

The only criticism I have to make is that, by the time you’re done with a specific environment, like the forest or the cave, this one has started to overstay its welcome. By the end of the game, you don’t want to see another generic forest screen and the idea of returning into the caves can make you shiver. Other than that, this is another area where Kyrandia shines.

Final Score: 7. Classic, but coherent, this vision of the world of Kyrandia is the more to the point, despite being a bit too serious or repetitive sometimes.

Dialog and Acting

The dialog in the game is mostly funny. Be it the crazy old Darm bickering with his dragon Brandywine, or the perfectly grim jokes made by Malcolm, they do much to flesh out the game. They are quite short and to the point, even a little too much sometimes. Once a character has said his lines, there is no getting back for further questioning. No dialogue choices either, which is not necessarily a bad point, but you can sometimes feel a little lost due to lack of instructions.

Darm the senile wizard is a personal favorite of mine.

All the characters exist in some manner. Malcolm is dangerously mad. Zanthia is tired to be the only semi-competent wizard around. Darm is completely senile. Herman is absent-minded, etc… the only sour point being Brandon. He spends his time moaning and complaining to the point where the routine starts to be tiring instead of funny. And his voice actor is not doing anything to help there (see the perfect transition to the voice acting…)

So voice acting, hey? Well, the voice actors are mostly competent, with everyone doing their jobs. Malcolm tends to stand out, but it’s always easier to act the part of the crazed clown with a few great lines. The voice actor for Kane/Brandon, though, is always whining and ends up being just irritating, which is a shame, considering he is the voice you’ll hear the most during the course of your adventure. Nothing worth cutting the voices though. And Brandon as a character totally redeems himself by punching Malcolm in the nose.

Final Score: 5. Nice lines and to the point, but lacking somehow. And Brandon needs to stop whining all the time!

Final Score

Hence, the final score is (3+7+6+9+7+5)/0.6 = 62! Just a few points short of entering the leaderboard. I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s a great game, great ambiance and good memories, but in the meantime, its shortcomings in the puzzle department more than justify this score. Take the exact same puzzle design with graphics and sound a little less memorable and Kyrandia would have disappeared from adventure game history with a lot of his competitors. Now it sits there, firmly in the 20-something best games of our blog, but below Space Quest IV or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and it feels like this spots suits it.

Raifield and Fry, congratz, you get CAPs! Also worth noting is that Charles nailed the second Straight of the year.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all the followers and Kyrandia fans out there, proving that this game still has a bright future among retro adventure gamers. Let’s hope there will be many more people yelling at the Birthstones or the Bells puzzle in the next 50 years!

Here are some CAPs for your troubles, now:

CAP Distribution

100 CAPs for Alfred n the Fettuc

Blogger Award - 100 CAPs - For blogging through Legend of Kyrandia for our enjoyment

50 CAPs for TBD

Classic Blogger Award - 50 CAPs - For blogging through Leather Goddesses of Phobos for our enjoyment

32 CAPs to Andy Panthro

True Companion Award - 25 CAPs - For playing along Kyrandia with Alfred and recording the tale in his own blog
Helping Hand Award - 5 CAPs - For giving hints to other people playing Kyrandia
Eye of the Beholder Award - 2 CAPs - for identifying the ankh from EOB

28 CAPs for Alex Romanov

Kyrandia Trivia Wizard Award - 15 CAPs - For voluminous information about Kyrandia
Le Hareng Rouge Award - 3 CAPs - For translating Red Herring from Latin
Slightly Low Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for guessing within one point the score of Leather Goddesses of Phobos

25 CAPs to Laukku

Box Archivist Award - 5 CAPs - For linking to some photos of the floppy version of Kyrandia
Helping Hand Award - 5 CAPs - For helping people find Kyrandia in GOG and pointing out a patch to its floppy version
Google User Award - 1 CAPs - For finding the reference to pseudobushia
Zombie Award - 4 CAPs - For pointing out some possible dead ends in Kyrandia
King Graham Award - 5 CAPs - For finding an obvious nod to another adventure game series
Cruelty Scale Award - 5 CAPs - For starting an interesting discussion about dead ends in adventure games

10 CAPs for Alex

Slightly High Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for guessing within one point the score of Leather Goddesses of Phobos

10 CAPs for Fry

Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing the correct score for Legend of Kyrandia

10 CAPs for Raifield

Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing the correct score for Legend of Kyrandia

10 CAPs to Charles

Perfectly Straight - 10 CAPs - For nailing the second Straight of the year

8 CAPs to Joe Pranevich

Fair Use Award – 8 CAPs – for having his Starcross “Like this but in space” joke blatantly stolen by TBD during Leather Goddesses of Phobos - - TWICE!

5 CAPs for Reiko

Twisty, All Alike Award - 5 CAPs - For giving a hint about a maze section in Kyrandia

3 CAPs for Voltgloss

Horse Feeder Award - 3 CAPs - For pointing out an use for alfalfa

3 CAPs for Seabadger

American Gem Society Award - 3 CAPs - For giving us insight on birthstones

-10 CAPs for Jim Walls

Harassment Award - - 10 CAPs - For picking the wrong door in The Adventure Gamer -dungeon

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last time out, I inched closer to discovering the Warlock’s inner sanctum and figuring out how to defeat him. In the process, I survived being sacrificed, watched a turtle be a ninja a full year before that would become a thing, and completely screwed up the Zork timeline by teleporting my character from the first games into an adventure that he wasn’t expecting. It’s been a great ride, if a bit frustrating at times. I’m not sure how I should think of a Warlock who leaves so many useful scrolls hidden all around his castle for a novice adventurer to come and defeat him with…

The first thing that I did in this session is to experiment with “melbor”, the protection from evil spell that I picked up at the end of last week. It doesn’t help one iota getting through the guarded door, but it does seem to prevent the cultists from finding me. With that, I have been finally able to access the eastern exit from the Junction… yay! This leads me to a landing and then a winding stairwell going infinitely up and down in both directions. I try to see if it repeats by dropping an object and seeing if I see it again later, but it really does seem to go on forever. With nothing up and nothing down and no spells that seem right for this occasion, I’ll have to come back later.

Our adventuring friend (image from the Zork I hints)

RuiningZork

First up for this session, I need to work on the adventurer and the guarded door. Since the last post, I’m fairly convinced that these are one and the same puzzle: my dream (from two posts ago) showed a cartoonish man opening a plain door. When I dispelled all of the magic on the guarded door, it looked just as plain. It could be a coincidence, but I doubt they would throw in such a great hint and not have it be the correct solution. Each time I’ve cast that spell before, I did it while I could see the adventurer in the mirror; this time, I go to the guarded door and try the summoning spell from there except that doesn’t work. It says that I can summon a powerful magic-user without seeing him, but everyday people can only be called if you can see them. That’s good to know! Just to see what happens, I save my game and summon Belboz (the leader of the Circle of Enchanters) but he just scolds me and leaves immediately. I can also summon the Warlock, Krill, but when I do that he just kills me immediately. How can I get the adventurer to the door? I spent a while following him last post and he never came to this room on his own.

The solution requires me to play off his (and, I suppose, my) inherent greed: I show him the silver spoon and he starts to follow me around. (Of course, I have to use “vaxum” to get him to like me first.) I lure him to the guarded door and he doesn’t seem to notice any of the insanity there. I ask him to open the door and he looks at me like I’ve grown a second head; he just walks over and opens it (ignoring boiling lead poured on his head, attacking tentacles, and other magics which do not seem to be real for him). When he’s done, the illusions disappear and I can see the plain door clearly. I follow the adventurer up the stairs to reclaim the pencil, map, and “filfre” scroll. Since I didn’t use “kulcad” to get in here, unlike the last time, I have it to use someplace else. As I leave, the adventurer wanders off to explore the castle on his own. Did I just break the Zork timeline? Do I need to un-summon him somehow? Am I still thinking too hard about this?

Krill, from “The Forces of Krill”. Review coming soon...

Falling Free

What’s left? I don’t want to use “kulcad” too quickly because I only get one shot. I nearly dead-ended myself on that door! After another round of experimentation, I manage to finally get the scroll out of the hole in the library. You are going to laugh at me, but the command was just “reach in”. Every other command that I tried, every attempt to put a light in there, and every moment that I searched for a rat to talk to was wasted. We haven’t had a parser problem like this in a while, but I am glad I managed to get my point across eventually. Just like every other nook and cranny around the castle, there’s a scroll in there-- in this case containing the “gondor” spell to put out an open flame. That doesn’t seem useful for any of the puzzles that I am working on, unfortunately. I know the comparison is unfair, but I am most reminded of the “*gems” from the Adventure International games; if this game put me in the middle of a desert and I had to dig in the sand, I’d probably find a spell scroll.

An hour or so of wandering later, I cannot find anything else to do or any way to climb the tower to the Warlock. I decide that I need to use my “kulcad” spell there after all, for no other reason than it may give me an idea of the real solution. I head to the stairs, cast the spell, and find myself falling down a bottomless pit. The game depicts us as scrambling for a bannister that is disappearing, in the process dropping just about everything else in our inventory. As I fall (and fall and fall and fall), I can see my dropped stuff just a few meters ahead, but that doesn’t seem to do me any good. Conveniently falling next to me is a scroll for an “izyuk” spell to allow me to fly. That seems stupidly coincidental, but I grab it and cast it and manage to stop my fall. From here, I can go either east or west.

I head east to discover Krill’s secret chamber. He is busy casting some infernal magic but he pauses for a moment to summon a dragon at me. I die but I restore back and memorize the “gondar” spell first. Armed with that and replaying the flying sequence, I defeat the dragon easily. Krill next sends a guy wielding an axe at me next. I don’t have any obvious spells for that so I try the “filfre” spell just to see what it does. It… shows the game’s credits in a shower of gratuitous fireworks. Very nice, but I still die. I restore back and this time also memorize the spell to turn him into a newt. With that, dragon and axe-guy are both defeated, the latter comically slicing himself in half with his own axe when he transforms. What’s next? Instead of conjuring another minion, Krill takes care of the problem (me!) himself by banishing me to another dimension to be stranded for all time. There is exactly one turn while he’s casting that I can counterattack, but I don’t have any spells that do the trick. I’m going to give up on this for now.

Only Thing to Fear is Fear Itself

I take stock of my unsolved puzzles and I’m pretty sure the only thing left is to figure out the Terror in the maze. (That assumes that the stairway is the right place to use the “kulcad” spell, of course.) I spent a considerable amount of time on this and I won’t bore you with every twist and turn. The big issues are that if you let the Terror out, he destroys the world. If you are in the same room as the Terror, you are stuck and can’t move. We only have a handful of lines we can draw or erase before the pencil runs out so what we have to do whatever we are doing with a very small number of moves.

I’m not going to claim too much intelligence because I’m not sure exactly sure why what I did worked but I was experimenting with trying to lure the Terror out of his room and to time it so that I’d get him out, prevent him from leaving the dungeon completely, and still have a path to his starting room to get the scroll out. To that end, here’s what I did:

I dropped the “filfre” scroll in the deadend at “F” and placed myself in “M”. Both “F” and “M” are only a single line-segment from the Terror’s room, “P”.
I add a line from “P” to “F”, letting the Terror go. We can sense that Krill has sensed his emergence and Belboz appears and warns me that I must not let them join forces.
I wait one turn and feel my mind probed by a force.
I erase from “M” to “V”. My mind is probed again.
I erase from “P” to “F” and the eraser has run out. No mind probes this time and this should have disconnected the Terror’s original room from the network
I draw from “M” to “P” giving me a direct passage to the Terror’s room. Unlike so many times before, he moved so I’m not trapped in place.
I head there and grab “guncho” and leave the maze. Victory is mine!

If it was that easy, you’d think the wizards that trapped the Terror in the first place would have not needed to waste such a powerful spell on him. “Guncho” banishes someone to another plane of existence and, now that I think about it, probably the same spell that Krill used on me. Using it on him would be poetic revenge, no?

I play through the ending sequence again: removing the stairs, flying to the Warlock’s secret lair, and defeating his two henchmen. This time during that one turn that I have while he’s casting a spell at me, I “guncho” him to and send him to wherever it is that spell takes you. I am summoned by a beam of light directly back to the Circle of Enchanters. They are thrilled that their ploy of sending someone completely unqualified for the job worked and officially make me an Enchanter. I win the game and never even pause to consider the poor adventurer that I’ve left stranded in a Warlock’s castle, very far from where he was supposed to be.

To be continued!

Time played: 2 hr 25 min
Total time: 10 hr 25 min
Total Zork Marathon Time: 87 hr 55 min

Is This a Zork Game?

I did not expect to be asking this question with Enchanter which is “obviously” a Zork game, but this has been nagging at me for days and I can’t seem to let it go. It doesn’t seem quite important enough for me to try to get in touch with Dave Lebling or Marc Blank about (although I hope we can eventually interview them for this blog once we get through their respective game careers), but it still nags at me.

My theory is that Enchanter was intended to be a “parallel universe” from Zork and not have all of the GUE backstory but it was adjusted at the last minute, possibly because of the work that Steve Meretzky was doing with the Zork books. (These books were intended at least in part as advertising for the Zork games and the first book-- which I will be reviewing soon-- directly links Enchanter with Zork-universe locations.)

Evidence in favor:

The original Enchanter manual with the folio edition is absolutely beautiful, easily the most beautiful manual we have seen so far from Infocom. And yet, it doesn't make a single reference to Zork or the GUE. The history it alludes to doesn't seem like GUE-history. When they grey box releases came out a year or two later, the whole thing was axed in favor of a completely rewritten one which explicitly ties the two together.
There are no grues. Not one. There are even grues in Planetfall and Starcross, but not in Enchanter, so their absence seems more meaningful than it should.
We pull the adventurer through a “mirror to another world” rather than a mirror to another place.
The narrator says that a “Frobozz Magic Pencil” must be some sort of joke implying that our character is unaware of the assortment of Frobozz products that were available.

I’m anguished and bewildered, too.

Evidence against:

The Zork books, as mentioned, have them in the same universe. Their “canon” status is debatable but that suggests some kind of intent.
There are references to the Wizard of Frobozz and Dimwit Flathead in the Portrait Gallery.

Having written this, I was able to confirm a few of these guesses thanks to some assistance from Jason Scott, the director of Get Lamp, the text adventure documentary. If you haven’t bought a copy yet, buy one. I haven’t seen it, but only because I’m trying to keep from being overly spoiled on the games I am playing. He confirmed for me that the original Enchanter design notes were both very clear that this was “Zork IV” but also that it was its own thing, disconnected from the mythology of the previous series. The early design notes suggested that the only connection to the original series would be the sacrifice scene from Zork III; as we know now, more connections were added on in the final product. I will pay extra attention to Sorcerer to see how it approaches this problem.

Final Rating

Well, I’ve reached the end of what I can say about this game. Enchanter has been fun but it’s time to codify the rating and move on.

Puzzles and Solvability - I am conflicted. On one hand, the use of spells rather than inventory items to solve puzzles is fairly unique; this game feels completely unlike any other in the Infocom canon so far. On the other hand, there are a few missteps. We can largely forgive the game’s habit of leaving critical scrolls just lying around all over the place, but as a result the puzzles do not feel as organic to the experience as Planetfall or as deliberately-contrived as Zork or Starcross. The final on-rails sequence with the magician’s duel was great except for the fact that you had to die each time to learn what spells you had to memorize to advance. I still haven’t figured out exactly how I defeated the parchment maze. That said, calling over our character from Zork was great fun and a welcome commentary on the protagonist of that game. Luring him from room to room with a silver spoon will be a highlight that stays with me for some time. My score: 5.

Interface and Inventory - There’s not too much to say here that I haven’t said before: Infocom still has a best of breed parser. More than usual, inventory management was annoying as we now had to manage spell slots and forgetfulness, plus the constant need to eat and drink. Not enough to drive this category down but they could have done better. I haven’t decided whether the “reach in” challenge of the Library is my issue or the game’s. My score: 4.

Story and Setting - It’s amazing to see (and experience!) the improvements Infocom is making to storytelling. We still have a fairly generic protagonist, but there is more backstory and an actual antagonist. We’re not quite to the point where this game is much more than a shell around interesting puzzles. The setting was generic Dungeons and Dragons-style high-fantasy and not even as vibrant (and mischievous) as the Great Underground Empire of previous games. My score: 4.

The final configuration of the parchment maze.

Sound and Graphics - While we had some ASCII art in the parchment maze, there wasn’t enough here to warrant rounding up. We’ve had ASCII-assisted mazes before (in Dungeon/Zork III) and while this is handled better, it’s just one detail in an otherwise text game. My score: 0.

Environment and Atmosphere - As the days grew shorter and the cultists grew more aggressive, there was a palpable sense of tension and dread. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that this was handled as well as in Planetfall and most of the time the game seemed more whimsical than scary. The human sacrifice was a jarring addition and I wonder if they threw that in because of being boxed in by Zork III rather than it actually fitting into the game they were trying to create. My score: 4.

Dialog and Acting - As usual in an Infocom game, the text was outstanding and one of the best parts. Two of the NPCs, the “ninja” turtle and the treasure-hunting adventurer, were particularly well realized. The well-guarded tower is one of the greatest single room descriptions so far. There’s a lot to like here but it’s also not as consistently awesome as I might hope. My score: 5.

Final Tally

Let’s add up the points and see what we get: (5+4+4+0+4+5)/.6 = 37 points!

That places this game exactly equal to Starcross but less than Zork III and Planetfall. Thinking about it, that feels about right. This is a great game, very consistent across all the categories, but it is not as evocative as Zork III or as innovative as Planetfall. Like Starcross, it adds a great creative twist to an established formula. The score seems quite fitting.

Your average guess was 42 so clearly a bit higher than I expected. With an on-the-money guess, GregT wins our CAPs for this game! Congratulations! We will do a CAP distribution with the next mainline game.

Up next for me will be a side-trip to Infidel, Infocom’s last release of 1983 and Mike Berlyn’s second game with them. Before we get to that, Voltgloss will be stepping up to the plate to review 1981’s Oo-topos (and its re-release), Mr. Berlyn’s first ever game. The Zork Marathon will continue with a post on the three choose-your-own-adventure-style Infocom books released in 1983 before continuing to Sorcerer.

The decision is made – YOU voted, and Lydia beat both Barth and Zeke as protagonist for this playthrough. You chose the character with the most boring thing to say in all you've read about so far, just giving us her name and planet of origin. Let's see if that lack of anything interesting to say continues throughout the game. If it does, I know who to blame. On with the show...

Lydia Sandler journal entry 1:Nothing much interesting ever happens in the sleepy town of Atom City, Nevada. Maybe tonight will change all that. My father, an astronomer (or possibly just a telescope enthusiast) asked me to check out a meteor that hit the ground near here. I seek help from my friend Zeke, as well as his employees at the gas station, and do some exploring. While checking out near a dried up canal, you won't believe what I found...

The game starts in outer space. We follow a meteor as it travels towards Earth. We keep zooming in to follow the meteor as it hones in on the small town of Atom City, Nevada.

This picture actually could actually serve as a bit of a map to the city for navigation purposes.

Later that evening, my Dad, who wears a suit in his own home, asks me to have a look at the meteorite as he suspects there's more to it than meets the eye.

I also talk to my brother, who shows me he's a big nerd by telling me something about New Zealand and the Aurora Borealis in response to my “Hi, Jim!”

I can ask Jim about himself, Zeke, an Alien (Barth) and Lips. When I get to the alien, Zeke tells me something that I'm sure no kid could know, and seems to break the plot.

Wait? What???

After throwing random information at me that I can't see how either of us could possibly know to be relevant yet, I now have two more items to ask him about: so I do.

He tells me that Germanium-based lifeforms eat radioactive isotopes and fix wounds with sulfurized liquefied rubber. He also mentions that the only isotopes near here would be at the Army base, and nobody could get in without super high clearance.

He also tells me that if I got the ingredients to repair wounds in a Germanium-based lifeform, he could make a cure: I'll need rubber, distilled corn-based ethyl and sulfur.

Okay, apart from knowing that my brother is a super-genius and can also somehow tell the future, I can surmise from this that I'll need to feed and heal an alien and to do so I'll have to find my way into the army base and retrieve these items for my brother.

I go downstairs and play around with a radio and some kind of machine of Dad's. One of the radio stations has an ad for something taking place on Saturn's moon of Titan - Dad's got one hell of an antenna!

In Dad's observatory I use his telescope. His telescope has buttons to show me three places: Planet X, Phobos and Earth.

I can also magnify the zoom to get closeups. Magnification of Planet X shows a city, while Phobos shows some lounging Leather Goddesses with a hunky man.

That slave man could have been me from the last game if I hadn't escaped. I'm lucky I escaped! Yes, escape was exactly the thing to do. No regrets here...

Earth's closeup shows the inside of the local brothel, with Lydia confidently stating “I just KNOW Daddy wouldn't intentionally point the telescope here...” I suspect I'll be needing that close up of the brothel to solve a puzzle later.

I spoke to Dad, who'd already had a close encounter of the third kind

A mystery to you? How does the young son of a scientist know more about science than his scientist father who is so good at science that he's being highly paid to science?

He also suggests I should be socializing with Zeke Zarmen, who seems like a decent chap. This is more evidence that Zeke is the son of my character from the previous game.

I kiss Dad (on the cheek, before anyone gets any ideas) and leave.

Near our home is a Native American reservation. The Tribesman generally speaks with a stereotypical accent while he talks, but with every final sentence he switches to a simple American accent as he says something non-stereotypical.

Is this game's main purpose a politically serious message?

Nope!

With some people, after kissing them, the kiss icon changes to a screw icon. I screw the tribesman (I'll be doing this any chance I get, just to warn you) After a few lines of dialogue, I'm treated to a short black-and-white video of a rocket taking off. I click SCREW again, and am shown a video of a monument being quickly erected with an appropriate cartoon sound-effect. These short films appear to be random. I'll be disappointed if I don't see a train entering a tunnel at some point.

In his souvenir store I do something I've done in many an adventure game. I press the coin-return slot on a drinks machine.

I wonder how this puzzle fares against the paper under a door puzzle for adventure game frequency

I then explore the rest of the town, starting with the barber shop, where three of the residents are playing cards. The alien had been here earlier

Movie reference 1

Movie reference 2

Is this a movie reference?

I met Selma at the diner. The alien had attacked her with its tentacles, but she had nothing interesting to say. I took a bowl from one of her tables, and left.

I went to the movie house, where my game crashed

The movie IS actually in 3-d if you have red/green glasses

At the brothel, I can press any of the buttons and get the same scene with different ladies.

While the women look different, and are in different poses, they all have the same voice.

The 'lady of the streets' (can you be called that if you actually work in a house?) also mentions that I have to leave before she calls one of their best customers, the sheriff. He comes after I press the button three times or so.

Rumours? You just told me about the alien you arrested a few hours ago?

One of the ladies, Snuggly Sophie, is different to the others.

I go back to the movie hall, where the game doesn't crash this time and from a new angle, see someone has dropped their glasses on the way out. I now have 3d glasses in my inventory.

At the bar, I find Butch. Lydia hates his brain, but likes his muscles. After spending some quality time with Butch, I saw a video of a zeppelin. I can change the song on the jukebox, which changes the background music for the scene. I also find a pool table

Dun. Dun. Duuuuunnnnnnnn!

I leave the bar with a bottle of liquor I didn't pay for, and checked out some more of the town.

At the church, I find the reverend. The church seems to worship the atom.

This guy's either predicting the Fallout series or he thought It Came From the Desert was a documentary

I took my first step towards redemption. You can probaby guess what happened next

Yep! You guessed.

I also visit the local fortune teller, who for $2 tells me that tonight is a moment of many choices and one I meet tonight will be my ally, tonight and for years to come. She's probably referring to the pulsating convenience that has also been travelling about town meeting people. She leaves me with the disturbing thought that while the alien will not attack us (she used her psychic power to cure it of its warlike thoughts) the dangerous monster from within ourselves – OUR FEAR - will consume us.

I take a room key from the fortune teller's house. I think she might also own the hotel.

I then visit the general's house, but I can't get into his locked drawer.

I go to the doctor's house (we met the doctor earlier, playing poker in the barber shop) and steal all his medicine.

Convenient!

I enter another one of the houses to see if, OH MY GOD!

Return to Zork, coming to the Adventure Gamer in, oh, let's say a year!

I visit the hard of hearing Dave, who runs the general store, and grab one of his newspapers

That's a really up to date newspaper.

I visit the police station, where a cell is locked but has a big hole in the wall leading to the car dealership. I go straight to the dealership next door, where I meet the stereotypical used car salesman, Dealer Dan is the only character where the 'screw' icon appears without having already used the lips icon. Let's see what happens if I try to screw Dan.

I suspect most people who played this game saw this joke coming

I can't find anything at the dealership, despite the hole in the police station leading here, and Dan hadn't seen the alien, so I move on.

There's a radio station, where I can play records (i.e. different music from the game)

And I finally go to the gas station, where I see the man of my dreams...

...assuming my dreams smell like bourbon and engine oil

Zeke was on his way to check out the meteor, but when I told him that was what I was doing, he instead suggested we meet up at the diner later instead.

Yep. He's definitely the son of me from the frist game

I tried to kiss Zeke, but we were interrupted by a car horn. If I know my tropes, that means we'll definitely fall in love during this game.

I also talk to the Gas Pump Girls: Flo..

Movie reference 3

... Doe, who was in the office where I took a staple remover...

By taking this, do I become a staple remover remover?

... and Zoe (pronounced Zo), who has just gotten a frobizmus hose out of the General's engine, which I take...

Movie reference 4

I leave the gas station and go towards the site of the 'meteor' crash.

GASP!

But let's back up for a while. I know you're all wondering what Zeke and Barth were doing while I was traipsing around town, sleeping with any man who'd let me (three, so far.) So let's find out how they've been faring.

Zeke Zarmen journal entry 1: Echo three to echo seven... A meteorite just hit the ground near here... I'm going to check it out... won't take long.

Zeke starts his day with Lydia outside his gas station. She mentions that her father thinks the meteor wasn't just a meteor and asks Zeke to check it out because her new shoes are killing her.

I hate to break it to you, Zeke, but an Indian, a Preacher and a Bartender isn't just the start of a bad joke

Exploring the town goes much the same way as with Lydia, but the conversations are different based on how the townspeople react differently to Zeke and Lydia, which is a nice touch.

I started the day by kissing my three employees and having sex with one of them because, hey, it's the 50s and I can fire them if they complain.

I'm more concerned that this is a customer's car

Unlike Lydia, I don't get to sleep with the Tribesman, Reverend or Barman, but I DO get to sleep with Madame Chavez (the fortune teller) and Zoe.

At Lydia's house, Jimmy tells me the alien was just there and her father mentions that he looked injured and malnourished.

Maybe this alien has the same weakness as the aliens from Signs

The 50s – when a father was expected to get his daughter married as soon as she was of age so some other man could pay for her upkeep.

This billboard would be ironic if the game actually came out in 1956.

Barth: Journal entry 1:

After crashing to Earth, Barth explores, looking for food, medical care, and spaceship parts. Barth's reactions to Earth are definitely more amusing than Zeke's or Lydia's

Doe translated to 'female deer' but Barth is unable to deciper Zoe.

While in the gas station, I pick up a device that is likely used to pick off parasitic insects (staple remover) and try to greet the gas pump girls. They all scream, but Doe attacks.

At the police station, Sherrif Andy attacks me with a gun and locks me in a room.

I assume my translator has put the word 'irony' on the soap, but I don't get the joke.

Looking in my inventory shows that, along with the things I've picked up, I have a blaster. I use it to shoot a hole in the wall and leave the police station.

I explore the rest of the town, scaring most people. The only option I have with the humans is 'Greet' which scares most of them, usually in comical ways.

In the bar I find an oracle, which I take

Now I know why Lydia and Zeke found the 8-ball missing

The barman sprays me with seltzer, so I leave.

I continued to explore to get the items I found as Lydia

I got a palm...er, tentacle reading from the fortune teller, who told me to beware the 'fat one'.

I meet the Reverend, who thinks I work for Satan.

Most of the comedy while playing as Barth comes from misinterpreting clothing's purpose and social clues

Only three people aren't afraid of my greeting: the Professor, his child, Jim and the Mesquito Tribesman

I assume the Mesquito Tribesman is a recent visitor to this continent as he is dressed differently from the dominant branch in the region. I take the 'dime' which I assume has religious significance, as the translator showed that the front of the disk proclaimed itself to be a trusted deity. I also take a glass bottle from the souvenir store, which I didn't notice as Lydia or Zeke, but will look for next time I continue their games.

I take some grapes from the diner, which reminds me of something I've seen on my spaceship, but I'll get to that next time.

At Lydia's house, the boy objects when I try to take the primitive technology belonging to his 'sis' (an iron) so I assume a technology exchange is in order. I try to give him my blaster, but apparently that would be irresponsible. I know I need the iron, largely because Jim told Zeke the alien took the iron. Jim won't take anything else I have so this is one puzzle I can't solve yet.

I go to the movie theater where an alien that looks remarkably like me is scaring the audience. My arrival just makes them think I'm part of the movie.

Copying jokes from old Tom Hanks movies now?

So far, I'm having fun with the game. While some of the jokes aren't working, there's enough fun there that I'm enjoying hearing/reading them. I'm particularly enjoying Barth's take on the things he sees and misinterprets.

The puzzles are so far close to non-existent, but that may change as the game moves forward. I need a key to the general's drawer and need to get into the army base as Lydia or Zeke, and I need to get an iron as Barth.

I'm liking that playing as different people doesn't change the story. Each character exists in each other's stories and, largely, does the same things they do when I'm playing as them. And it's fun to see how the characters treat Lydia and Zeke differently.

Time played: 3 hours 0 minutes
Total time: 3 hours
Inventory (Lydia's) : 3d glasses, dime, rubbing alcohol, sulfur, iodine, newspaper, room key, bowl, bottle of liquor, staple remover, rubber hose

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!

POEM CONTEST WINNERS:

The introduction post ended with a coded poem, and an invitation to guess the final word. The poem was coded in the same cypher used in a puzzle in the first Leather Goddesses of Phobos game, but I'm not sure if either winner worked it out that way. Here is the decoded poem...

ODE TO TRENT

WE'VE SOLVED PUZZLES BANAL
RODE A MARTIAN CANAL
AND DEFEATED A FLYTRAP IN VENUS.
WHEN WE MET YOU WERE KEEN
TO BUILD SOME WEIRD MACHINE
THEN WE SHOWED THE GODDESSES OUR ................

The final word that I originally envisioned was FREENESS. But Andy_Panthro's guess of GENIUS and Aperama's guess of MEANEST both fit the poem and are appropriate to what happened in the story so CAPs for Andy and Aperama! Andy_Panthro also claimed to come up with another possible answer, but I have no idea what that could be, particularly for a family-friendly blog such as this.

So tune in next time, when I'll post about whatever happens next in the game, and you never know, I might even be feeling risque enough to use the word penis!

Written by Alex

Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel is an interesting piece of adventure-gaming history. It might not have been the first to simulate a more realistic occupation in the sea of dragon-slayers, space-farers, and superheroes it found itself in when it first arrived on the scene in 1987, but it was the most successful, famous, and arguably unique. Say what you want about Jim Walls’ and company’s approach to game design, especially in later titles likePolice Quest III and Codename: Iceman, but he and Sierra truly captured magic.

However, Mr. Walls had left Sierra at some point after the release of Police Quest III, and as such was not involved with this remake. Given that Walls was the father of Police Quest, and his experiences on the force helped give the original game, and the series as a whole, its realistic tone, it’s interesting to note that the remake does not mess with what made the original so groundbreaking. Other than the obvious cosmetic changes and the new interface which necessitates new ways to perform the same puzzle solutions, Police Quest remains intact.

In addition to its subject matter, the Police Quest remake is also curious, as it belongs to that family of Sierra classics updated from the original EGA parser version into the VGA, 256-color point-and-click interface. Like Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, King’s Quest, and Quest for Glory, only the first installment of Police Quest got this treatment. While there seems to be big money in remakes now (hi Square Enix), at the time these remakes weren’t profitable enough for Sierra to overhaul all of the non-point-and-click games in their respective franchises. Alas, what could have been.

And now it’s time to subject this remake of a groundbreaking game to Trickster’s also groundbreaking PISSED rating system and find out how it fares, Jim Walls or no Jim Walls! As I did when I rated the Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards remake, I’ll also include Trickster’s original ratings to see how things have changed in the transition from parser-driven EGA to point-and-click VGA.

Puzzles and Solvability

You know something? After reading Trickster’s ratings for the original Police Quest, I realize that the same issues he had with the parser interface, and the game’s predilection for either being uber-procedure driven (in other words, do what the manual says), too easy, or too obtuse, are the same ones I had. The thing is, swap out the parser for point-and-click, and the problems are analogous.

For example, clicking “Talk” on the wrong perp in the Bert’s Park drug bust should not lead to Sonny issuing the wrong command . . . especially when the game gave no indication as to which of the criminals he should be addressing. That’s just plain bad puzzle design. And then there’s the whole needing Lt. Morgan’s phone number thing which nobody told Sonny about before his undercover operation began (why, oh why could Sonny not have just used the damned phone book?).

And yet despite all of this, none of the puzzles felt that unfair. In fact, for the most part, Police Quest did a rather good job of guiding the player to the proper solution . . . almost too good. And if the game didn’t do it, then the manual did. I would go even further and say that the game is a little bit easy. It’s rather linear and on-rails, in that scenarios happen to Sonny (that is, the player) and Sonny has to react to them. There is no real exploring Lytton or searching out things to do. Which makes sense, since that’s the nature of police work, which this game was trying to simulate.

And it did a good job of it, ridiculous Hotel Delphoria sting operation plan notwithstanding. But a 4 does make sense, parser or mouse.

Original Rating: 4
Remake Rating: 4

Interface and Inventory

The interface is standard, mouse-driven Sierra early 90’s SCI stuff: You right-click to scroll through commands like “Walk, “Look,” “Get/Use,” “Talk,” and whatever your chosen inventory item is, and then left-click to perform the action. I have no complaints, nor does it stand out. Even better, it doesn’t do that annoying early-SCI game red X if you click on something you can’t interact with; instead, you just get a (usually) generic bit of flavor text. And there was only one situation where the interface worked against me: the bust in Bert’s park. That said, there are some rooms where it seems like the programmers got lazy and included no flavor text or funny hidden messages, whereas others, like the back room in the Hotel Delphoria, are chock full of them.

And I have to say, the driving interface is not bad at all! It’s tedious, yes, the way all driving is in Police Quest games, save for Police Quest II. And although tedious, and really superfluous, as there are limited locations you need to visit and no real ability to explore, it at least makes Lytton feel like a real city that the player is really patrolling the streets of. It’s not as good as the interface in the original game, but it gets the job done and doesn’t get in the way like the one in Police Quest III does.

The worst part of driving, though is that if you miss a turn you have to go all the way around the block to approach your desired destination again. And some destinations, like the police department itself, can only be entered from one direction. Annoying.

Regarding the poker-game interface, I found it slow and boring, but you can skip playing poker entirely, so it’s really inconsequential.

As far as the inventory goes, yep. It’s an inventory. You see a picture of your item and clicking “Look” on the picture gives you a little bit of text describing the thing. The descriptions are nothing of note, but they get the job done. There isn’t much to do in the inventory, either. The only items I could combine were the pen on the ticket book, which you only have to do once in the entire game. Seeing as how the EGA interface rated a 5 on the PISSED scale, I’d feel silly giving the remake’s anything lower . . . but I also don’t think it deserves anything higher either. The interface and inventory in the Police Quest remake is a workhorse: Solid, dependable, and it gets the job done . . . without being annoying. In light of this, how could it be anything other than a 5?

Original Rating: 5
Remake Rating: 5

Story and Setting

Police Quest makes the player piece together what is happening through bits gleaned from the manual, clues picked up during Sonny’s investigation, and from what other characters reveal through conversation and interrogation. The plot does its job: The city is in the throes of a death-and-drugs epidemic traced back to a shadowy, dangerous figure known only as The Death Angel. Sonny’s routine is shaken up by events set in motion by this crime kingpin, and he eventually becomes a narcotics detective and plays an instrumental role in taking him down. It’s not Earth-shaking, but it sets a perfect frame for the events of Police Quest: it gives the player an overarching goal as the game throws more mundane police situations at you, like a speeder, a drunk driver, and rowdy behavior interrupting a local business.

The domestic violence event dispatch calls Sonny about prior to the showdown with Taselli is disappointing—this incident isn’t in the original game, but here it’s just for verisimilitude as there is sadly no way for the player to actually do anything at the address provided. A shame; it seems like a missed opportunity to add an additional puzzle to the game, which could have made the remake really stand out on its own merits.

The setting, the sleepy though growing town of Lytton, California, really worked. The overhead map when you drive is colorful, and I like the way that the game lets you click on the building and streets and get a description. It brings the town to life, despite the lack of any other traffic . . . and it also kind of looks like the original SimCity.

And its citizens are well-written, each with distinct personalities, a point that we’ll elaborate on further when we get to the “Dialogue and Action” portion of our rating. Suffice it to say, the original received a 5 here, and seeing as how we have the exact same story and setting, I’m going to keep my rating a 5.

Original Rating: 5
Remake Rating: 5

Sound and Graphics

Here’s where you would expect the score for a remake of an older game to diverge, and Police Quest doesn’t disappoint. Although it’s nothing spectacular compared to today’s fare, this is a damn fine-looking game.

The graphics are bright, detailed, and everybody and everything looks like what it’s supposed to look like. The background details bring each scene to life, and although the character portraits might be a weak point, they’re honestly not that bad.

How can you not love 90s kid here?

The FMV-type scene during the drug bust in Bert’s Park showcases some of the then-hot, new technology, integrated in a way that isn’t obnoxious and actually serves the purposes of the game, since the proper procedure before arresting somebody is to observe than an actual crime has been committed (imagine that!). This close-up scene helps Sonny—and the player—see the crime.

The game’s sound design is really good as well, not just the tunes but how they are used. First, the songs themselves are good, giving off an appropriately cop-show vibe, especially during the introduction and while Sonny is driving. Speaking of which, the driving music changes from guitar-rock to a mid-tempo, kind of sleazy funk at certain points. And I like how the music gets softer and louder, and even changes, depending on where Sonny is on the screen and what he is walking towards. It’s a minor point, but it’s cool.

The sound-effects are also quality, with everything sounding like it should sound like. All told, I can’t give this anything less than a 7.

Original Rating: 5
Remake Rating: 7

Environment and Atmosphere

I’ve already waxed poetic about how Lytton feels like an actual city, but the individual locales also do a great job of setting an appropriately urban environment. From seedy bars to diners, fancy hotels to back alleys, and even the police station itself, every scene combines graphics, music, and sound to create great settings for Sonny to explore.

The entire package really pulls the player into this world, making each scene interesting and exciting. Even places that the player is only required to visit once, like Cotton Cove or the Courthouse, are memorable.

All of this goes towards the game’s atmosphere. It’s a city, and it feels like one. More importantly, the crimes Sonny investigates and the baddies he arrests all go towards creating the feeling of a city under siege. The drug problem is out of control, even killing Sonny’s colleague’s daughter. It’s dark and grim without getting too depressing. I think this darkness works too because when the original game was made—1987—America was still a good half-decade or more from reversing its crime problem in its major cities, so lots of what Police Quest depicted felt all too real. Good stuff. As with the original, this one gets a 7.

Original Rating: 7
Remake Rating: 7

Dialog and Acting

There’s dialog here, there’s a lot of it . . . and it’s really good! I have to say, the quality of the writing here impressed me. It’s not quite on Conquests of the Longbow or Secret of Monkey Island level, but it’s obvious that the writers put a lot of time into this.

The banter zips along, the bad guys are appropriately cheesy, the women are flirty, and the most important litmus test has been passed when it comes to dialog and characters: Do they speak and act the way an actual human being would in a similar situation? Here in Police Quest, I have to say that yes they do. Everyone has their own distinct personality, from Taselli to Judge Palmer to even bit characters like Alex the bartender and the two goons playing cards with Sonny and Bains—er, I mean, Mr. Frank Magpie. It’s cop-show fare and it knows it. Indeed, Police Quest seems to revel in it, blending actual police procedure with the bombastic kind of dialogue that wouldn’t be out-of-place on a police procedural TV show in the early 90s.

There’s no “acting” to speak of, not counting whoever it was they got to play not-Jesus and 90s kid during the drug bust FMV scene, but here’s another instance where the Police Quest remake scores HIGHER than the original. A 6 it is.

Original Rating: 6
Remake Rating: 7

Alright, it’s math-time. Let me fire up the latest in computational technology and . . .

4 + 5 + 5 + 7 + 7 + 6 = 35
35/.6 = 58

58! Considering that the original Police Quest scored a 52, this isn’t as big of a gap as one would think. Which, when you think of it, is testament to how good the original game was.

Still, it feels a little too high. Though the game improves upon some aspects of the original, and indeed tries to use new technology like the quasi-FMV scene in Bert’s Park, I can’t say that it’s groundbreaking. Maybe it’s not fair to hold the remake up to the same standard as the original, which truly broke the mold, but I’m not happy with this score. So I shall use my discretionary point to drop it down to a 57, the same as Police Quest II, coincidentally, and still far higher than Police Quest III’s score of 47.

57 sounds about right. It’s a solid, entertaining game that does what it sets out to do—make you feel like a cop—and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Good stuff.

The only contemporary reviews of the Police Quest remake I could find of the game come from non-English publications, two from Germany and one from Finland. So while I am unable to get into the details of the reviews, they seemed to enjoy the game well enough: in July, 1992, Finnish magazine Pelit gave the game a score of 80, while in February, 1993, two German magazines gave Police Quest a 78 (Play Time) and a 77 (PC Games (Germany)). These scores sound about right.

I hope everyone enjoyed this playthrough as much as I enjoyed writing it, and if you haven’t played either version of the first Police Quest game, I really do recommend that you give them a shot.

Thanks everyone. I think I’ll be putting my badge down for a while and finally leaving the world of Sierra for my next game. See you then.

CAP Distribution

100 CAPs for Alex

Blogger Award - 100 CAPs - For blogging through Police Quest remake for our enjoyment

50 CAPs for Joe Pranevich

Classic Blogger Award - 50 CAPs - For blogging through Enchanter for our enjoyment

35 CAPs for TBD

True Companion Award - 25 CAPs - For playing along Police Quest remake with Alex and recording the tale in comments
Jumped the Shark Award - 10 CAPs - For an excellent candidate in the caption contest

28 CAPs for Ilmari

Slightly High Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing within one point the score of Police Quest remake
The Wild Night of Sonny Bonds Award - 3 CAPs - For telling the true story how Sonny got to the police apartment at the start of the game
I Found My Thrill Award - 15 CAPs - For a Happy Days themed candidate in the caption contest

25 CAPs for Andy Panthro

True Companion Award - 25 CAPs - For playing along Police Quest remake with Alex and recording the tale in his own blog

20 CAPs for Jim Walls

Stop It While You Can Award - 20 CAPs - For finally leaving the front door in Alex's home

17 CAPs for MarkE

EGA Trivia Award - 7 CAPs - For sharing some information about the original Police Quest
Saturday Night Live Award - 10 CAPs - For a death inducing candidate in the caption contest

10 CAPs for Lupus Yonderboy

Slightly Low Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing within one point the score of Police Quest remake

10 CAPs for GregT

Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing correctly the score for Enchanter

8 CAPs for Voltgloss

Trivia Wizard Award - 8 CAPs - For some tidbits of information about Enchanter

5 CAPs for Kirinn

Broken Continuity Award - 5 CAPs - For pointing out that the bartender must have switched genders between the remake and the second game

4 CAPs for Rowan Lipkowits

King's Quest Did It Too Award - 4 CAPs - For pointing out that Alex had omitted one Sierra remake

4 CAPs for Raifield

The Dead Kickstarter Award - 4 CAPs - For reminding us about the sad fate of Precinct

3 CAPs for Alfred n the Fettuc

Chicken Equals Police Award - 3 CAPs - For teaching us French slang

3 CAPs for Jason

Out of the Closet Award - 3 CAPs - For bravely coming out of the lurker zone

Written by Voltgloss

The Great Zork Marathon has graced this blog with many (and, in the future, many more) adventures crafted by the Implementors - Infocom’s cadre of game designers. With Oo-Topos, we’re taking a semi-detour to explore an Implementor’s work before he became an Implementor. That Implementor is Mike Berlyn, whose work we’ve seen showcased in Joe Pranevich’s playthrough of Suspended and will shortly be coming up again in Infidel. But those were not Mr. Berlyn’s first adventure games. Those honors go to Oo-Topos and Cyborg.

According to his Infocom bio, by 1979 Berlyn had completed two tasks keenly suited to a future career in adventure game writing: (i) he had written two novels; and (ii) he had purchased an Apple II and, like so many other game designers, found and enjoyed the original Adventure. By 1981 Berlyn converged those interests to found his own company, Sentient Software, and publish his first two, pure text adventure games: Oo-Topos (co-written with his wife, Muffy Berlyn) and Cyborg. What about those offerings may have appealed to the folks at Infocom to offer Berlyn a job? Let’s find out!...

That doesn’t look like an all-text adventure.
(Only screenshot I could get from Apple II version. Brace for 4-color CGA here on out.)

...but seeing as how this is a blog primarily for graphical adventure games, let’s do this using the 1986 re-release by Polarware. How’d this come about? According to the company’s archive site, Polarware was launched in 1980 offering programs for drawing, manipulating, and animating graphics. Starting in 1982 they began offering their own graphical adventures, and by 1984 they had developed their own adventure programming language, dubbed “Comprehend.” Their third Comprehend publication, in 1986, was an updated re-release of Berlyn’s Oo-Topos - apparently the result of a friendship between Berlyn and the Polarware folks with its roots in Berlyn’s use of their graphics software while at Sentient.

Enough history, let’s get on with the game! I’m using the IBM PC version as the most stable one I could consistently keep running. After completing the re-release I’ll round out the posts with a quick run through the original 1981 version to check out any differences.

The 1986 re-release story - which, as we’ll see later on, differs from the 1981 original.

The back of the box sets up the story: it’s 1995 A.D., and an alien interstellar transport’s crash with a meteor has launched a cloud of deadly “power transfusion waste” heading straight for Earth. Earth, being a “restricted travel zone,” is wholly unaware of and unprepared to deal with this pending catastrophe. But some kindly alien governing body has sent us on a mission to “deliver the chemical seeds of a protective compound” to a planet just outside Earth’s solar system, to be synthesized and seeded into the planet’s atmosphere with Earthlings none the wiser. Disaster struck en route in the form of space pirates: snared by their tractor beam, we were forced to land on the planetoid Oo-Topos, where the pirates boarded and looted our ship and tossed us in a prison cell. Now we need to escape, recover our ship and its cargo, and complete our mission. No problem!

Plop

Checking out our starting cell, our captors have at least been decent enough to leave us with food (described as looking like “old herrings” - an odd descriptive choice for my supposedly alien protagonist) and a bottle of clear liquid. Water? It tastes like it when I take a sip, so maybe it is; there’s writing on the bottle but I can’t read it. Through the window I can see my ship - so close and yet so far! Looking at the door I note that while the door is sturdy, the lock is not - “the kind you find in your local sawbuck store.” I hit the lock a few times and it breaks. Freedom!

Unfortunately, freedom is complicated by a siren wailing as soon as I open by cell door, along with a “swampy odor very close by” similar to my alien captors, along with periodic laser blasts from unseen sources. Emerging into a four-direction hallway to the west from my cell, I find to the south a dark room where I can’t see anything, and to the west a “sentinel scanner” guarding a “language translator.” Will that let me read my bottle? Maybe, but the scanner won’t let me near it and just raises its own alarm. Shortly thereafter I’m nabbed from behind by “several scaly hands,” tased, and dragged back to my cell. This is effectively a forced restart, right down to the food and bottle being replaced in the cell and the cell door lock replaced (but still just as bashable as before).

These being stored right by my cell suggests my captors aren’t too bright.

Trying again and heading north instead, I find a panel with three buttons: red, blue, and green. With no clue what they do, I experiment; and am relieved to see the red button turn off the alarms (but I’m still getting messages about a nearby alien presence and periodic laser blasts). Blue starts the alarm up again, and green opens the panel to reveal… a laser and a pair of goggles that will let me “see under unusual conditions.” I try them on and…

...I’m suddenly playing Wizardry I.

The goggles make everything go wire-frame. That’s a neat touch! Not immediately helpful, but a neat touch! I take them off and go looking for whatever alien is still lurking in the area. I don’t have to look far (they’re one room to the east). One laser blast (from me) later and immediate threats are defused!

Violence IS the answer to this one.

I can now explore in relative safety, although the sentinel scanner laughs off my laser and will get me re-captured if I hang around near it too long. Poking around further, I find about 17 locations accessible without solving any puzzles - locations that suggest I’m not in any sort of dedicated prison complex, but rather an eclectic facility of unknown purpose. Key discoveries include:

Four pitch dark rooms where I can’t see to do anything (and where the goggles are no help), putting “find a light source” at the top of my short-term goal list.
A “lounge” where some complicated board game (or the Oo-Topan equivalent) was apparently abandoned in mid-progress, with various levers to move the pieces. I steel myself for a mini-game, but all I need to do is “pull lever” and I win the prize: a silver block of “Vegan silver,” with 200 times the strength of titanium steel at less than one-fiftieth the weight. The game tells me “Vegans use it to make paper clips that never rust or tarnish.” Seems legit.

The block in the image doesn’t appear until the lever is pulled, and disappears when taken. Items that “start” in each room are shown in the graphics, but if you drop other items in the room you don’t see them - only the text scroll mentions them.

A tunnel that leads to a precipitous vertical drop - too steep to proceed down.
An alien mosaic pattern with writing beneath it - which, again, I can’t read; further driving my interest in getting that translator.
A “gravtube” that I can enter, which sounds like an elevator and has two buttons inside - one red and one blue. But pushing them does nothing. Perhaps I need to activate this somehow?

Outside the gravtube. Have I missed something here?

A room “filled with strange radiation,” taking the form of a blazing beam. My ship’s “Navchip” is here, which is presumably important, but it’s too irradiated for me to take. And hanging out in the room for a few turns leaves me dead from radiation sickness.
A room that is too bright to see, rather than too dark. The goggles are the answer, shielding my eyes enough to see a “plasma sphere” shining bright light that is amplified off of the reflecting walls. I take it and, examining it, learn that it’s a “gift for the researchers at Labport 5V,” my ultimate destination planet from which the seeds to save Earth will be cultivated. So apparently I was carrying more cargo than just those seeds.
A room with mirrored walls, with another mirror in the middle of the room, which “disorient” me. This is far worse than it sounds as I’m so disoriented I can’t find or use any exits! I tinker around in here for a bit but am unable to figure out how to escape. Fortunately it’s quick work to get back to here after restarting, and I make sure to save before re-entering. (The game supports 3 save slots.) Presumably this is more than just a trap; I’ll return here with more tools.

The mirror crack’d from side to side
“Restart has come upon me,” cried
The Protagonist of Oo-Topos

A couple of exits lead to a bizarre room with multiple unidentified floating shapes, a “strange floor,” and exits in each direction including up and down. This screams “maze,” confirmed when wandering around just produces a series of similarly-described rooms. I’ll be back here with a full inventory of stuff to drop.
Finally, a “vast chamber” that appears to be an auditorium, complete with lecturer’s podium. Climbing up to the podium reveals - a light rod! Task #1, “find a light source,” is now complete.

My map so far, using cutting-edge 1986 mapping “hardware” (right down to the paper).

So now I’ve a light source. The light rod’s label claims it will last for 200 “standard time units” and is easily turned on and off with its switch. Saving its charge by only turning it on to check out dark rooms, I soon have quite a few more inventory items to play with and conundrums to consider:

Two dark rooms are a “bio lab” and a “chem lab.” The bio lab contains a flask and a wire box (apparently designed for holding small animals), both of which I take. The chem lab doesn’t have any interesting items, but does have a sink and dispenser that produces acid when I pull a lever. Some Planetfall vibes later and I’ve filled up my flask with acid.
Another is a library with a holographic projector, a crystal, and (in an adjoining room) a bookshelf with exactly one book - conveniently, a manual that “describes my ship” that I’ll presumably need once I’m finally back at the ship. The crystal, a “gift from the Galactic council,” supposedly “holds all human knowledge, including that of the hokey-pokey.” I pop it into the projector and am… not exactly illuminated.

These aren’t the movie references you’re looking for.

A “pillar room,” boasting a strange pillar with an orb on top of it, bearing more writing that I can’t read. There’s also another entrance to the gravtube here, which I still can’t seem to operate.

I appreciate the logical progression of short-term goals so far. First: “escape your cell.” Second: “eliminate the immediate threats of the alarm and the alien guard.” Third: “find a light source to explore all those dark rooms.” And now fourth, with the pillar discovery, I’m putting a third underline under my fourth goal: “get that translator that’s guarded by the sentinel.” My laser wouldn’t do the trick earlier, bouncing off of its reflective casing. But perhaps now I’m equipped to get through that.

As Mary Poppins never sang: “A thrown flask of acid makes the sentinel go down”

Success! Throwing the flask of acid eats through the sentinel’s armor, and one more laser shot disables it completely. The translator now in hand, I can read what I couldn’t before… but the results are underwhelming. The bottle simply says “Save for emergencies.” The mosaic says “Battle of Androli Kalaptus,” which means nothing to me. And the pillar reads “taka ele leva,” which the game tells me “must be something in the Oo-Topan dialect.” Is this similar to Planetfall’s phonetic galacti-speek, and just telling me to “take the elevator” - i.e., the gravtube? That’s all well and good but I still can’t get the damn thing to operate!

Well, that was kind of a bust. Lacking other clear options, I grit my teeth and tackle that ubiquitous adventure game challenge: the maze.

A maze of twisty floating polyhedra, some alike, some different.

Fortunately, I can map the maze the old-fashioned way, with dropping items in each room to mark them. I also note that several of the rooms have different graphical images - could it be mapped that way? But I discover ultimately that is a fool’s errand: while some of the maze rooms have different graphical images, some also repeat those images… so going solely by the images would leave you with an incomplete and inaccurate map. All in all, the maze isn’t too large - only 6 locations - and each maze room’s “down” exit leads to a non-maze location. So this could have been far worse.

My “map” of the maze, along with the couple of new areas accessed therefrom.
I find this “matrix” approach to be simpler than a messy network of boxes and twisty lines.

Four maze exits lead to areas I’ve already visited. Annoyingly, one proves to be the mirror room that I still can’t escape, necessitating yet another restore of my saved game. Two exits lead to new areas. One is a “solarium” that appears to be on the complex’s roof, with yet another gravtube exit and a small animal called a “snarl” that looks like a puffball with big googly eyes. It seems wholly non-threatening, and since I have a box for holding small animals, I try to catch it - but it shies away. Fortunately, giving it the food from my cell endears it to me, and I soon have a snarl-in-the-box!

Cute!

There’s also an airlock in the solarium. This must be the way to get out of the complex and access my ship! Unfortunately, opening the airlock and going outside subjects me to a swift death - apparently the planet’s atmosphere is pure ammonia, which I cannot breathe. I’ll need some protection before getting out that way.

The other new area accessible from the maze is a “medical amphitheatre” with steps down to a “dome-covered stage” and no other exits (other than back into the maze). Heading down I see an “energy converter” on a table, guarded by “the Grix.”

Not so cute.

The Grix is huge and threatening but seems content to watch me blunder around for a few turns - though it won’t let me take the converter. And I want that converter, not only because it’s from my ship (apparently the Oo-Topans stripped it for parts), but its descriptions says that it converts radioactivity to “usable light-drive energy.” So perhaps this is the solution to getting my Navchip out of the uncontrolled radiation beam. But the Grix is a problem, and after several turns uses its impressive lung capacity to blow me out of the room, all the way back to the other side of the maze. (Pretty mild “attack” all told. I was prepared for a messy flattening.)

I return to the Grix to try out my various items. The laser does nothing and it’s not interested in trade. The answer turns out to be my just-acquired Snarl. Apparently operating on the “small creature distracts large creature” theory, opening the box to free the Snarl in the Grix’s room leaves the two focused on each other - the Grix keeps blowing the Snarl out of the room, and the Snarl thinks it’s a game and keeps running back in. That leaves me free to nab the converter (after first dropping the cage - I’ve now hit the game’s inventory limit).

Heading back to the radiation room, I put the converter in the radiation and it converts into “simple light energy,” rendering it no longer lethal. I can now get my Navchip! But… that doesn’t really help me now, and I’m still carrying too much stuff to take my converter back with me. I leave the converter here for now, but pretty soon I’m going to have to start storing items in a central location (the Gravtube seems a good choice if I can ever get it working).

Radiation room with the goggles on. They allow me to see the Navchip in the radiation beam; without the goggles it’s hidden, but the room description still mentions the Navchip’s presence.

So now I don’t have any obvious leads. I can’t get down the steep drop of the one tunnel I discovered early on; I can’t go out the airlock safely; I don’t know what to do with the “taka ele lava” pillar; I don’t know what’s up with the mirror room; and I can’t get the gravtube working. I’ve seen several gravtube exits so far (not just where I first saw it, but also in the pillar room and the solarium), so I’m really thinking I should be able to use it by this time. I return to the first gravtube room, type “look gravtube,” and have a real facepalm moment: “The main tube is round and squat and has a little button on one side.” I push the button and the “system comes to life!” Argh, I really should have thought to try that earlier (and the in-room graphics clearly show a button on the outside of the gravtube). That’s all on me. Well, let’s see where the gravtube takes me.

Once inside, the blue and red buttons take me up and down floors, respectively. Up from the “main” gravtube room is the solarium; down from it is the pillar room. Down again from the pillar room takes me to a new place, from which “an incredible odor assaults [my] nose.” Exiting I find myself in the garbage disposal. Lovely!

Garbage chute. Really wonderful idea. What an incredible smell I’ve discovered.

Finding the garbage disposal is both a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that searching through the garbage here reveals a key prize: my spacesuit! Along with helmet and gloves, which are implemented as separate items. This must be what I need to survive outside the airlock. Unfortunately, survival outside the airlock will have to wait; the terrible stench, coupled with that “faint hiss” of “escaping gas,” rapidly gives me a throbbing headache that overtakes my faculties and leaves me dead in a few turns. Putting on the spacesuit doesn’t help; and the gravtube seems to be stuck on this floor, so I can’t even get back. Digging through this trash is clearly vital, but how to do so and survive remains a puzzler.

And with that, I’ll leave things off until the next post. We’ve covered a lot of ground but still have numerous challenges to solve. Next time we’ll figure out how to dumpster dive safely, uncork the mysteries of “taka ele leva,” reach and explore the planet’s surface outside this facility, and perhaps even locate our downed ship!

Inventory: Light-rod, energy converter (left in radiation room), Navchip, language translator, repair manual, laser, pair of blue goggles, plastic bottle, hologram crystal, plasma sphere, block of Vegan silver, wire box (left in Grix room)

Time played: 1 hr 15 min

And of course, please don't forget to get your score guesses in! Note that I’ve already played the game through to completion, so bets that I won’t solve a particular puzzle would just be a waste of CAPs at this point.

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 or some other appropriate cipher 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.

When we last met our heroine, Lydia, she had just explored the town of Atom City, and had found a spaceship (that she really could have found straight away, because she saw where it landed, and that was where she was told to go)

Lydia Sandler Journal Entry 2: Today was the most exciting day of my life. I met an alien and rode on a spaceship! It was amazing!

I checked out the spaceship, but it needed repairs and I had no idea how to do that, so I moved on. Just past the spaceship is an old dried out canal.

Oh. okay then. I caused a rainstorm. Why do I not remember causing a rainstorm?

I checked out my old screenshots, thinking maybe turning on Dad's machine caused a rainstorm and found out that it did, although it wasn't clear at the time.

Ah. I get it now. By turning on the strange machine, I created a rainstorm that flooded the dry canal that for some reason had a moored boat waiting.

Not one to punch a gift river in the mouth, I rode the boat and it took me to an area behind the army base, which I'd previously been unable to get into due to a guard doing his job.

I couldn't go back the way I came, and the water had apparently dried up again, so I was stuck unless...

...unless I found a convenient hole in the fence of the 'guarded' army base.

Well, ignoring the extremely lax security that allowed this to happen, I entered the base through the hole in the fence, then entered the barracks. I opened MacLoud’s locker and found just what I needed to act like I belong here

This barracks looks like it holds at least 24 soldiers. Surely if I explore the base I won't find that the only soldier working tonight is the guy guarding the front gate.

I enter the General's office, and take the key that appears to have been drawn at the wrong perspective.

Maybe the General isn't here because he just got a call from Commissioner Gordon.

Apart from the barracks and the General's office, I can go to two more buildings. One of them contains five monitors – three of the monitors containing jokes about killing commies, and two of them have likely useful numbers on them.

Add 69 to all 4-DIGIT CODES
MORE NUKES, LESS KOOKS
CODE: 419
COMMIES: NUKE EM TILL THEY GLOW, THEN SHOOT EM IN THE DARK
PURITY OF ESSENCE

The final building contains a weird array of items

This is clearly the architecture, science, radioactive waste storage, office desk room?

The nuclear waste storage bin had a code to it. I thought perhaps by combining the two numbers I had found in the previous room (419+69) I might be able to open it, but no luck. I probably need another number.

So, armed with the General's key, I left the army base and went to his house, removing my army uniform on the way. I could now open the General's desk. In his desk, I found two letters.

Dear Bill (or Frank, if that's who you prefer to be), I refuse to acknowledge the 'informed' opinion of someone who can spell neither 'radiation' nor 'invasion'

My next step was obvious. I went to the brothel and called on 'Big Belinda'

You could have just handed it to me – did you have to drop it on the floor? It's now all covered in <REDACTED FOR NATIONAL SECURITY>

The folder contained a small piece of paper. The paper contained a single word – FALLOUT. Lydia, breaking the fourth wall, thought “Where had I seen this word before? Perhaps in the instruction manual for this game..." I didn't remember seeing the word in the manual, and didn't see how a word could help me at this point so I went looking for the General in order to give him the folder. I'd been to his office and his house recently, but I thought perhaps he'd gone to the gas station to pick up his car.

I noticed a new location in the gas station – inside the car itself. I'd been in there as Zeke (with Zoe) but hadn't been there alone before. I noticed that the General, whose ability to be in charge of any kind of national security must have been an accident based on what I've noticed in this post, had left his transmitter on the passenger seat when he left his car here. The transmitter has three digits on it, so I set it to the three digits from the code I'd found on the screen at the base.

This joke was also used in the original Leather Goddesses of Phobos, but if I hadn't played that game a few weeks ago, I probably wouldn't have remembered it

While at the gas station, the gas pump girls all told me that they'd seen the alien

Movie reference 5

Movie reference 6 (Not a gas pump girl, but I forgot to mention this reference in my first post)

Out of ideas, I followed the game's advice about the General's folder, and looked for the word FALLOUT in the manual.

It's COPY PROTECTION TIME!

Simple enough. At the top of each page of the manual is a word and a number. I noticed that most/all of the words were related to either nuclear weapons, the first Leather Goddesses game, or The Day the Earth Stood Still

The number next to FALLOUT was 0595. I added 69 to the number and attempted to go back to the army base. I had a small problem doing this. The river I'd created had dried up, and when I used Dad's machine to bring it back, the boat wasn't there (because I'd already rode it to the base I assume). Lydia refused to walk all the way down the dry gulch because it would be too dangerous. I tried to wear the army uniform again to get past the guard but Lydia decided it was a 'dumb idea'.

Eventually I found that I COULD wear the uniform, but only when I was standing at the army base entrance, looking directly at the guard. This didn't make sense to me, but the game told me I went into the bushes to get changed - why I couldn't get changed in the previous screen where nobody was watching will have to be put down to 'developers didn't consider it.' I went into the architect's office, and tried my new number on the radioactive storage bin. It opened

Yes, that looks like exactly the kind of thing that's safe to touch!

I now had food for the alien (radioactive isotopes.) I also had all the ingredients my brother needed to make food for the alien: rubber - the rubber hose Zoe had taken from the General's car; distilled corn-based ethyl - the bottle of liquor I'd taken from the bar; and sulfur - the bottle of... sulfur... I'd taken from the doctor's cabinet.

I went back home but Jim just told me the same things he always says, apart from that he'd seen the alien, tried to give him water and that the alien had taken our iron. I already knew all that from when I played as Zeke last time.

I kept exploring, and found Zeke at the bar. I told him everything I'd found and he suggested we tell my father. Bur first I decided to kiss him – this time with no interruptions.

Butch then threw us out of his bar, as Zeke suggested we go somewhere more private. I was wondering where we should go, and thought about the hotel room I'd taken a key for, but then my stupid brother arrived.

I hate you, Jim. I hope you know that.

We go back to my house, where Dad is listening to a message on the radio.

The old radio also shows anaglyph 3d video chats? How did that happen?

Zeke and I were finally going to have sex and now we get invaded from outer space! That's terrible timing. The only way this could be worse would be if Hitler as an old man walked into my house right now.

Caption contest?

Old man Hitler, who turned out the be General Wedgefellow (Wedgypoo to his friends) threw us out of our house for reasons of national security.

When you can't even keep your business letters, personal letters from your prostitute, classified radioactive opening codes, or radio transmitter secure from an average citizen, I weep for our country, sir.

With Zeke now following me, I used the key I'd taken from Madame Chavez's office and went to the hotel.

I'm just realising that Zeke doesn't have a house in town. Does he just sleep in the back seat of his client's cars every night?

With that simmering sexual attention out of the way, we went around looking for aliens.

We found one at the used car lot. This was where the clues had lead, but the clues that led here I got a VERY long time ago gamewise

Barth, after we spoke to him for a bit, replied in English from the black device he carried (a translator.) He explained that he had been hiding until he noticed we had food and medicine.

From green Jedi master, learned English did I.

Barth told us about his damaged ship, and mentioned that he had all the items he needed but was too weak to go back to his ship to repair it himself.

He took the food (isotope) and I looked at my inventory to see if I could feed him.

I used all the required ingredients on the bowl I'd stolen from the diner.

Now that he was fed and healed, Barth said that he would be better at operating the translator, and told us how his planet had been attacked by the Leather Goddesses, they'd taken humanoid slaves, and he'd come to Earth to ask for our help.

Zeke and I told him that the Goddesses had lied to us and that our General had fallen for their lies, but before we could react an angry mob appeared.

This reminds me of a Simpsons angry mob, with characters in their work clothes all appearing in the background

Wait... is that my brother Jim next to the barber? The little bastard probably wants his iron back.

Anyway, the townspeople take turns telling me, Zeke or Barth off.

Is it 3:30 already? Time flies when you're looking for aliens.

Didn't we already have this movie reference?

I snuck away from the mob (that is, I pressed my mouse button while the 'turn around' icon was visible) while they were focussing on my friends and, looking at my inventory, used the General's transmitter, having no idea what it would do.

Ah. It apparently lets off a scramble klaxon that tells everyone the nuclear reactor's about to blow. And this guy left it in his car????

After tricking American Hitler, who only actually looks anything like Hitler in the long shots, we go to Barth's ship. But he's too weak to make the repairs. He gives me the items he's collected and asked me to repair the ship.

LYDIA: I am sworn to bear your burdens

I now have items matching all the shapes missing from Barth's ship, including an iron (which will annoy me later on), so I use them and the ship's systems gradually come back to life.

The ship automatically takes off and, after travelling through hyperspace, we land on...

PLANET X

The small, less detailed people and inconveniences move across the screen, giving the appearance of a bustling area.

We can enter a library, where we can do nothing except look at the librarian. We can also enter a hotel, where as soon as I click on the only clickable item in the room, someone appears.

Planet X has two intelligent species coexisting: The pulsating inconveniences and the tanned annoyances.

We go to the council meeting, where we are told off by the chairman, Brandoner-7

Only the council members may speak, but you're asking Barth to speak?

The council deliberated, and came to the conclusion that they would help us defeat the Leather Goddesses of Phobos. They gave us a recording device and an invisibility shield, and told us that Barth's ship had been repaired. We were to go to Phobos to save both our planets.

Phobos

But before we go to Phobos, let's check back in on Zeke and Barth

Zeke Zarmen Journal Entry 2: Today was the most exciting day of my life. I did it with Lydia Sandler! And I gave it to her good!

Again, the main difference between Zeke and Lydia's game are the conversations. The codes I got for Zeke were also different to the ones I got for Lydia. In Zeke's game, the transmitter code was different, General Wedgypoo's prostitute was different (Lucious Lorilei) and the copy protection word was different (TRENT this time – I still love you Trent)

I did like how they referred to things differently. When taking the liquor from the bar, Zeke takes a slug and sends a silent prayer to the fine people of Kentucky whereas Lydia refused to drink it because the fumes alone made her head spin.

Looking at items also shows their different knowledge and opinions, with Lydia seeing “just a car part” in the gas station, while Zeke sees “just a piston” and so on.

So I did exactly the same things with Zeke as I did with Lydia, except I met Lydia at the diner instead of the bar, and when we started to get amorous Selma threw us out.

Again, we helped Barth, had a moment of bliss in the cheap hotel, and went to Planet X, where instead of Brandoner-7, the council member who spoke to us was Largonna-9

Ummm... Zeke... You DO know there are other places on Earth rather than America, right???

And again, we took Barth's spaceship and made our way to Phobos

Melylp

Barth, however, did things differently...

Barthgub el Nikki-Nikki son of Jelgobar el Zayda-Zayda Journal Entry 2:Today was the most exciting day of my life. I met some new friends, and I got invited to the Great Council of Planet X!

Now, something I didn't mention last time, but that I touched on when Lydia had to repair the ship, was that when looking at the back of my spaceship, I saw various holes.

It was only when I saw the grapes at the diner that I realised what I needed to do.

So I worked out I'd need to find items to fill each of these holes. Last time I had found grapes at the diner, an 8-ball at the bar, a rectangular shaped bar of soap at the prison, and a glass bottle at the reservation. I had mentioned I'd look for this bottle with Lydia and Zeke, but it wasn't there in their games.

The items I still needed are fairly easy to work out – a stop sign, a traffic cone, an iron and a pumpkin. Let's see how I found these items

Stop sign – while playing as Lydia and Zeke, when I had clicked on a bent pole near the church they had both commented “Didn't there used to be a stop sign here” so I knew where to go here. I used my blaster on the stop sign, and it fell to the ground. One more ship repair item found.

Luckily, only one person in the entire town owns a car, so the loss of the stop sign won't cause many problems

Traffic cone – this one was easy. It was just lying around next to the caved in tunnel entrance near the crash site
Iron – this was much harder so I'll get into this later
Pumpkin – another easy one. This one was in the general store. Unlike most people, Dave wasn't afraid of me, but that's only because he thought I was a small boy.

I offered him the metallic disk I'd found by pressing the coin return slot on the vending machine and he allowed me to take one of the strange alien eggs. I now had a pumpkin!

Now, all I needed was the iron.

I figured the most likely place to get something Jim would take in exchange for the iron was the military base, so I attempted to get there. I turned on the Professor's rain machine and went back to the dry gulch

Damn. If anything, I've made it harder for myself.

I couldn't get into the base through the front door either, as the guard just attempts to shoot me if I either talk to him or attempt to go past him.

I was totally stuck here. For a very, very long time.

Refusing to let myself give in to temptation and ask for assistance, I went back to every location and tried everything I had (I had my blaster, the staple remover, the newspaper and the 3d glasses at this point) on everything I could see.

If not for the manual mentioning that this game didn't have dead-ends, I'd have restarted the game in case there was something I needed to do before solving other puzzles. I thanked you for that in the introduction, game, but I'll thank you again now. THANK YOU!

I still couldn't work it out, and it was only after going everywhere multiple times that I did what most of us have probably done when frustrated with someone in a game not being helpful. I tried to murder a young boy.

I said, GIVE... ME... THE... IRON!

Wait... what... how???

I check my old screenshots to see what it said when I'd tried using the gun on the child before

Okay. So the gun became discharged.

Now, bear in mind I'd tried shooting everyone in the game during my 'try everything' phase, and I always get this message...

I may not be able to kill them, but I can still ruin their game by telling them all what cards the doctor has.

I hadn't done any shooting lately – the only times I'd used the gun were to escape prison and destroy a stop sign. I reloaded my game to see if there was any mention of my blaster being discharged when shooting the stop sign. There wasn't. I checked to see if there was any indication that my blaster was discharged when I tried to shoot inanimate objects.

Not only is there no indication that my blaster is discharged, but it's clear from the message that Barth believes that it IS charged

The closest I could find to a clue was this comment after shooting a hole in the prison wall

Wouldn't last forever is not the same as 'exactly one more shot'

Getting over the fact that I spent a long time unnecessarily repeating actions because the game never gave me the vital information that my blaster was now discharged, I continued playing. We'll deal with this again during the Final Rating. DON'T THINK IT'S OVER, INFOCOM!

While going back to my ship with the last repair part, I felt too weak to go on but could sense the presence of food and medicine in the area with the small spaceship-like vehicles. I made my way to the caryard and met Lydia and Zeke

Again, Lydia and Zeke fed me and gave me the medicine before an angry mob appeared. This time, I couldn't leave like Lydia and Zeke could, but after unsuccessfully trying a few things, Zeke and Lydia had solved my problem for me.

Where were my 'clever Earth friends' when I was looking for a damn iron earlier?

We went back to my ship and I used the iron on the last hole, fixing it and blasting us off. Zeke wanted to drive.

As someone who's recently played as Zeke, I object to being condescended to in this manner

We did exactly the same thing on Planet X as before, with different dialogue and descriptions.

The fact that Planet X is 50% populated with these Tanned Annoyances, makes it weird that Barth seemed unfamiliar and surprised at the physical attributes of Earth humans

Phobos!... It's only a model... ... shh!

Tune in next time where we'll get down and dirty with the titular Leather Goddesses of Phobos...2!

TIme played: 4 hours 35 minutes
Total time: 7 hours 35 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. But seeing as I've already finished the game before this post will come out, I really won't care in the slightest if you post spoilers so ignore the rules at will this time.

by Alex

Lure of the Temptress, the debut game from British developer Revolution Software—founded in 1990 and still making games—promises to be an interesting piece of adventure gaming history. If Revolution Software sounds familiar to you, that’s because these fine chaps (that’s what they like to be called in England, I’ve heard) went on to create the acclaimed Beneath a Steel Sky, as well as the Broken Sword series. Having played none of these games, I am very excited to embark upon something for The Adventure Gamer that is not a Police Quest game, is not a Leisure Suit Larry game, and is not a Robin Hood game.

Written by Dave Cummins, designed and programmed by Tony Warriner and David Sykes, produced by Dan Marchant, and directed by Charles Cecil, Lure of the Temptress is a point-and-click, inventory-puzzle-based adventure game of the kind familiar to fans of games by Lucasarts and Sierra. It was very well-received upon release and is still hailed as a classic worth playing, though it looks like not all contemporary reviews have been quite so kind.

The game features Revolution’s Virtual Theater engine, used in the aforementioned Beneath a Steel Sky and Broken Sword games, at least the first two, in which NPCs follow their own schedules independent of the player. Think of it like a proto-Radiant AI, seen in games by Bethesda like recent entries in the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series, but with fewer arrows in the knee.

I’m looking forward to this one. With the exception of Robin Hood: The Touchstones of Rhiannon, Lure of the Temptress will be only my second non-Sierra game for the site. And after playing through the Police Quest I remake, which I had played before, but many moons ago, I’m going into Lure of the Temptress blind, which I’m sure will make for some exciting—and frustrating—playing . . . and reading.

What better place to start, then, than with the game manual?

I take it back: What better place to start, then, than with the box art? I mean, look at that! Damn, now that’s a cover that screams “Play me!” The alluring enchantress, those morose red demons, those heads on pikes (including a jester’s), all done in a classic comic book art style. It just tickles me right in the aesthetic zone (you don’t want to know where that is). I don’t know who’s responsible for this, but damned if they didn’t do a fine job.

Okay, back to the manual. It’s written from the perspective of some dude named Ratpouch, a loutish sort who explains the game, its interface, and the plot to you, the reader. We’ll get into the interface in the first gameplay post, but there’s no reason we can’t get into a rundown of the plot right now.

Mr. Ratpouch, ladies and gentlemen.

There’s a king, there’s a town called Turnvale in some unruly province that’s revolting against said king, and the revolt is spearheaded by an apprentice sorceress named Selena. How an apprentice sorceress is able to pull this off makes me think maybe she should be admitted to the ranks of the full-fledged sorceresses, but I’m no expert on magical rankings so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Still, the king takes Selena seriously enough to visit Turnvale himself with a whole bunch of horsemen, including Diermot, the player character, in tow. The king doesn’t meet a regular bunch of rag-tag resistance fighters, but “an army of grotesque creatures, the likes of which have never been seen before” which are “hellish mercenary monsters known as the Skorl.”

The battle against the Skorl is apparently a “massacre,” in which the king’s horsemen are destroyed . . . and so is the king! Diermot, however, falls off of his horse and bangs his head—our hero, ladies and gentlemen!—waking up in a prison cell, where the game begins.

It’s important to note that, based on the tone of the manual, I don’t expect this game to take itself too seriously, despite the relatively straight nature of the plot. In actuality, this is intentional, as described by Charles Cecil in a 2012 interview with Edge:

“While I enjoyed Sierra games, I felt that there had to be more than yet again saving King Graham of Daventry from a – let’s be frank – fairly unlikely series of events. It was all a little bit twee. So we came up with the idea of writing an adventure game that didn’t take itself too seriously, but did have a serious story – something in-between Lucasarts and Sierra . . . Humor’s a very clever way of creating rhythm, rather than a monotone gameplay pace which can soon grate . . . “
So there you go: The first game by a top-tier adventure game studio responsible for many beloved classics in the genre, featuring an all new game engine with an intriguing NPC AI hitherto unknown in the genre that aims to fall in that sweet spot between Sierra and Lucasarts. Will it pull off that difficult balance of a serious story with funny bits, exemplified so masterfully in the Quest for Glory series? Or will Lure of the Temptress fall flat, failing to appropriately nail those contrasting tones resulting in a campy, cringe-worthy experience?

STAY TUNED TO FIND OUT!

I’ll be playing the DOS version on DOSBox, though the game was also released for the Amiga. And maybe I should take this as an omen of things to come, but according to MobyGames, there is a game-breaking bug that would ensure an unbeatable experience . . . that is, “unbeatable” in the literal sense of the term:’

There is a bug in the game which prevents you from completing it. To fix this, you have to choose the 'Restart Game' option, as soon as the game begins. If you don't do this, then at least one vital item (the tinderbox) will not appear.

Oh boy. I’d really appreciate it if anyone with knowledge of other bugs in this game could share them with me in the comments section below, before I really embark on my journey through the Skorl-infested town of Turnvale.

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.

Lydia Sandler, Zeke Zarmen and Barthgub el Nikki-Nikki son of Jelgobar el Zayda-Zayda Journal Entry #3:The three of us went on our mission to Phobos to stop the Leather Goddesses' evil plans. To stop them we'll have to sabotage their plans both on their home planet and Earth. It'll be hard, but that's how we like it.

Zeke Zarmen Journal Entry Addendum:That's what she said!

In this episode we'll finally rescue the tanned annoyances from the peril they face at the thighs of the vile Leather Goddesses of Phobos

We're coming to save you. You are in great peril!

When we left off last time our heroes were in the spaceship about to land on the moon of Phobos. Due to Phobos' defenses, our landing wasn't exactly smooth

PHOBOS

The Leather Goddesses' palace reminds me of Jabba's Palace on Tatooine

At this point, there is very little difference between which character we're playing, as the game plays out exactly the same, so instead of doing Barth and Zeke's playthrough at the end, we're just going to be doing it all in one go as Lydia, with one small exception where Zeke's line was funnier. Now, back to the game!

Barth's ship is destroyed, so we'll have to find another way off the planet when we leave. There were two places we could go to: the rocket field and the palace. The rocket field looks like it might be our way out of here, so we check that out first.

I predict two puzzles here – remove guards and decipher security panel

The palace consists of five screens. The outer door, kitchen and antechamber just take us to the two rooms we can do something in: the dungeon and the harem.

THE DUNGEON

Does two constitute a legion now?

We release the legion of prisoners and Barth explains our mission. Prisoner #1 and Prisoner #2 (actual names) promise to create a diversion if we are pursued on the way to the shipyard. Looks like we may have solved the 'remove guards' part of our escape plan.

THE HAREM

The harem is the place Professor Sandler's telescope zooms into.

That guy with the lotion has been rubbing the leather goddess' thigh since the start of the game – no wonder it's getting red

Lydia noticed that the leader of the Leather Goddesses was a beauty, but with an obvious dark soul and wicked heart and that she despised her as her enemy. So naturally, I made sure she tried to kiss her.

After this, Melcinda gets jealous of any of the other goddesses I kiss

After kissing a few goddesses (or doing anything else in this room for five turns or so) Melcinda sends me to the dungeon, where they'll kill me after they get back from conquering Earth.

Thanks for spoiling one of the few puzzles in this game, Zeke! Like I couldn't have worked that out by myself!

Activating the invisibility doohickey that the Planet X council had given me, I once again went to the harem, where I could overhear the Leather Goddesses' plans. I used the Planet X recording device, which looks like a green vinyl record. I'm not sure how I was supposed to use the record, but I couldn't continue if I didn't use it, so I just waved it around clicking it on various goddesses hoping it would do something. My random waving worked though, so... yay!

At least they can't see me so they aren't deliberately telling their plans to the heroes before killing them

Balfurra also mentioned that she had changed the access codes for the invasion fleet flagship, so we also had a way past the security system for the guarded ship we'd seen earlier. Now our escape plan was on the way.

After going through their plans, Melcinda is interrupted by Lubanna, who wasn't paying attention and asks for the plan to be repeated. This is a game device that simply avoids the possible dead-end of us not correctly using the recording device the first time we hear the plan, and is used in many games to allow us to hear important conversations if we missed them the first time. Once again, I appreciated the game not allowing me to get stuck and have to reload because I did things out of order.

Attempting to talk to the goddesses while invisible doesn't get us thrown back in the dungeon, but instead has one of our companions hold us back

I'm right with you Zeke, but also agree with Barth – you're an idiot!

So, armed with a recording of their evil plans, we now need to get back to Earth to warn our people. We return to the rocket field, where the prisoners we released earlier 'made a show' which caused the guards to take chase. That's all the game tells us, so what kind of show they made is left up to us. I expect some kind of cirque de soleil thing is likely.

Inside the spaceship, which looks a lot more roomy than the outside suggests (maybe it's a TARDIS), the only thing we can do is go into a closet.

Actually I'm calling it a bathroom. Since when do broom closets contain sinks?

Soon after we enter the closet, we hear voices outside the room, and the ship takes off. From now, for the trip back to Earth, we can't do anything except listen to the goddesses talking outside the room, or turn the sink on and off for no reason.

I fail to see how pre-space-flight Earth can be in any way relevant to taking over the Cosmos, but sure, whatever you say.

UNLIMITED POWER!!!!!

This goes on for a few minutes before the ship lands on Earth. After the Goddesses have left, we leave the closet, and then the ship.

BACK ON EARTH

We're back at the caryard, where we find the angry mob is still there, and they've been joined by some Leather Goddesses.

General Wedgypoo welcomes our new leather-clad overlords as saviours, and notices Barth has returned, likely with his armies close behind.

Zeke objects and tells everyone that it's actually the Leather Goddesses who plan to invade the Earth, but nobody listens to Zeke.

I'm still unclear about how convincing the General in any way helps you conquer Earth. His army consists of four people with guns and a handful of townspeople.

Surely with your superior technology (particularly in the anti-chafing department, one would think) one small town General laying down his weapons would make no noticeable difference to your invasion plans.

Anyway, in an effort to warn him, I tried using the recording device on the General and everybody else in the scene, with no luck.

A little bit of thought made the answer obvious to me, so I left the caryard and made my way to the radio station, where I've been previously to play various music from the game with the provided records.

A perfect fit – what a crazy random happenstance

After I started playing the recording, Zeke came in and told me that the mob had turned on the Leather Goddesses, and they had fled back to Phobos, abandoning most of their spaceships.

As for how they fled without their spaceships, I have no idea – perhaps they all crammed themselves into the same ship - I'm sure three of them would have fit in the broom closet. Anyway, we were heroes and Barth was chaired down main street like an extremely slimy sports star

Um, Doctor – after finishing work you've played a game of poker and been a part of three angry mobs – I think it's time to remove the stethoscope now, don't you.

Professor Sandler apologizes to Barth on behalf of his species, and Barth gladly predicts many future relations between our two civilizations before Lydia becomes a party-pooper and points out that with Barth's spaceship being a wrecked heap on Phobos, he has no way home.

Dealer Dan obviously subscribes to the 'Finders Keepers" law of acquisistion

The Professor then goes on and on about the future of humanity and the infinite possiblilities and how together ... ... ...

Then Zeke and Lydia kiss on the front porch as the camera zooms out from Lydia's house to end up in outer space, mirroring the beginning of the game.

After fading to black, we finally check in on the fate of the Leather Goddesses of Phobos themselves.

Well, at least they didn't come home completely empty-handed from their trip to Earth

The game then hints at a third and final chapter of the series, which never got made, and based on the last shot would probably have involved them discovering a new fabric and becoming the Woolen Goddesses of Phobos

Time played: 1 hour 15 minutes
Total time: 8 hours 50 minutes

Considering it took me less than 9 hours to complete the game three times, this has been a very short game that certainly didn't overstay its welcome (Barth's child-shooting puzzle notwithstanding).

Thus ends the only full game I've played for this blog without asking for assistance. I enjoyed the game, though I would never call it 'great' or even 'good'. It's ... 'fun enough'.

Stay tuned in a week or so for the Final Rating. I for one am extremely interested to see how this game fares.

Written by Deimar

Deimar, there is a game that falls right up your alley, they said. And so I have come back to you, ready with my insatiable love for death animations and low budget unipersonal projects. And what is this game that will suit my tastes? A murder mystery that promises to mix the intense thriller ofHugo II: Whodunit with the gruesome deaths of any Elvira game: The Dagger of Amon Ra.

Where Laura needs to investigate her own murder!! Who saw that coming?

The Dagger of Amon Ra is the sequel to 1989 The Colonel’s Bequest, which is basically a game of Clue but with more deaths. In spite of not being a huge seller by any measure of success compared to the other titles in Sierra’s library, they deemed profitable to create a sequel for Laura Bow, as The Colonel’s Bequest had the distinction of being the game with most positive reception at that moment, measured by the amount of mail received praising the game. Specifically, among a public that wasn’t being specifically targeted: women. As stated by Roberta Williams herself in issue 95 of Computer Gaming World (CGW), “her theory was that women were more inclined to snoop around and piece things together a little at a time, while men wanted to be in control”. Without entering to consider the truthfulness of that statement, I can almost picture Ken Williams analysing the data and dreaming about dollars in an untapped market before greenlighting the sequel.

I guess women are also more interested in guessing the right time to feed the dog?

I must confess I am not a big fan of Roberta Williams’ work. It has something to do with King Quest V and the hate towards mice, snakes and pies that it filled me with. Trickster’s experience with The Colonel’s Bequest didn’t help make me change my point of view. Just reading about the often unfair deaths and possible dead ends, which are a staple of Sierra style, together with the tediousness of having to know what every character is doing at any given time to complete the game made me decide that I was good without having played it. So here I am with my fingers crossed hoping the sequel is not as its predecessor.

Lucky for me, Roberta took a step down in this game and let others do the designer job, keeping a producer role in the game to make sure the game keeps the same style and attracts the same public. So, who would be the one in charge of getting behind one of Roberta’s most beloved projects? None other than Bruce J. Balfour who… erm… made that thing… you know, that famous thing… (checks mobygames quickly)... oh… Neuromancer. Erm… maybe I spoke too soon about being lucky. In any case, playing The Dagger of Amon Ra should prove a completely different experience from playing The Colonel’s Bequest, as Balfour’s take on the game is described as a more traditional point and click style, whatever that means. I hope it means that there will be less of missing key dialogue from not feeding the parrot, but it seems to me that this departing from the original formula made the game less attractive to its target audience and so the reason there is no Laura Bow III. Well, that and that the game won a CGW award as the seventh “Least Rewarding Ending of All Time” in 1996. Boy, we are in for a ride.

The game came out on floppy and CD, with the CD adding voice acting from the development team or any other person that just walked by them. The cast includes Balfour himself as well as Josh Mandel (which depending on your sources had some involvement with the development, but this is quite unclear), Scott Murphy or Jane Jensen. This is the version I will play, not only because I want to listen to the acting of the Sierra staff but also because is the version GoG is selling. Interestingly, the “manual” that comes with this version seems to be a description of the Leyendecker Museum, which I guess will be the main location for this game, wrote as an actual museum guide. I found the manual somewhat interesting and boring at the same time. Some digging brought me to the conclusion that this document came in fact with the floppy disk version as an anti-pirate measure but I haven’t been able to locate the proper original manual. You know, the one where you are told what the game is about and how to play it. So, I will leave the story so far for the first post. Without further ado, let’s play The Dagger of Amon Ra (and guess who will be the guilty part in the murder/robbery/whatever we are going to uncover!!!)

I bet it will be Dick. He is kind of a d… bad person.

Written by Voltgloss

Explaining the title, courtesy of an 8th grade school project.
Also, “eu-topos” sounds similar but means “good place.” Thomas More was a punny guy.

When we last left off exploring our space prison/complex on Oo-Topos, we’d found an airlock to the surface and a decidedly non-breathable atmosphere; we’d found our spacesuit in the trash disposal but couldn’t escape the deadly garbage fumes; and we had no idea how to parse “taka ela leva.” There’s also the continuing oddity of the mirror room, from which I still haven’t been able to find any escape once trapped inside. Wandering around the rest of the complex didn’t come up with any other exits, so some of these problems are going to have to give. Onward!

First, I returned to the “taka ele leva” room. Maybe there’s more to this than just suggesting we “take the elevator?” In the spirit of Adventure’s “xyzzy” I try typing “taka ele leva” and…

Forget it! No more beaming! This time I’m gonna walk!

...ah. This is apparently a teleporter, and speaking the “magic words” in its presence sends me to a new place. Weirdly though, after getting this message and new screen, I’m immediately (with no time to type another command) warped right back to where I started. Huh? It took some experimentation to figure out what’s going on here… apparently “taka” means “teleport to new room” and “leva” means “teleport back,” and typing “taka ele leva” processes both commands in succession. OK, that’s a bit of a headscratcher, but hey, new place! I can do a lot here, right?

Unfortunately, not as such. The only exit from this “other side” of the teleporter is to a north-south catwalk, with an east-west catwalk suspended above it. I can move between the two with “up” and “down,” but if I try to walk to either end of either catwalk, my progress is blocked by force fields. Three of them warp me around this small three-location area; the last is behind a closed door, which opens easily enough but the force field still blocks my progress. None of my items seem to be of use here, nor do “taka” or “leva” produce any other effect. It’s a discovery, sure, but I’ll have to come back later to make any headway here.

So do I have to figure out the trash room puzzle now and get my space suit? Or have I still missed something in the complex? One thought that comes to mind is those goggles that make everything go wire-frame - so far they helped me in the bright room, but other than that they haven’t had more than a cosmetic use. But I haven’t worn them everywhere. Might they reveal a secret door somewhere? I take a tour with them on and…

...wind up stumbling on the solution to my other problem instead.

With the goggles on in the trash disposal, I don’t see the garbage, but instead see a button on the far wall. Pressing that opens a vent or something (the game isn’t precisely clear) and releases the gas that had been killing me on previous visits. Now I can get the space suit (and helmet and gloves), and the gravtube works again to bring me back up to the rest of the complex. Finally I can escape the airlock and reach the surface of Oo-Topos!

But this is the first puzzle in the game that I’m feeling iffy about. There don’t seem to be any clues to wear the goggles here, where every other challenge so far has been - I think - more fairly hinted at. I literally only discovered this by trying the goggles in every room. I can’t imagine that brute force approach is intended here, and find myself wondering if the original pure-text version of the game handled this better.

In any event, the airlock awaits! Properly equipped, I emerge on the roof of the complex. There’s a gold ring here I can pick up, which appears to be another valuable looted by the pirates from my ship. There’s also a sign on the north edge of the roof reading “Emergency Exit” (which I couldn’t read without the translator), but no ladder or other obvious means of egress. How to get down to what’s described as a “wild jungle” below?

I can kill a dragon with my bare hands, of course I want to go that way!

Trying to go “north” from the roof provides what appears to be a rhetorical question. Remembering “Adventure” as the game’s inspiration, I respond “yes” and am treated to a comfy ride down to the surface courtesy of a suddenly-appearing ramp. Having saved just before trying this (that’s the “choose 1, 2, or 3” you see above), I get curious and reload, then try exiting the roof to the east or south. Doing so produces the same rhetorical question - but if you answer “yes,” you fall and die with an ignominious splat. I guess you really need to recognize where the “Emergency Exit” is located!

You just know any place described as “shifting” is going to be hell to map.

The ramp retracts after I land - I guess this was a one-way trip - and now I’m in a “lush, shifting jungle.” Exploring around quickly reveals this to be a pseudo-maze; every room is different with a different description and picture, but the room connections make very little sense. Aborting my first attempt at a regular boxes-and-lines map, I reload and start mapping the place systematically with dropping items like a regular maze. The place is 12 locations total - twice the size of the other “maze” - and just over half of the locations have something interesting:

A “Huja,” which seems to be another indigenous life-form like the Snarl from earlier, sitting by a “stablizing gyro” from my ship. It doesn’t attack or otherwise threaten me, but it won’t let me take the gyro or otherwise pester it - such attempts are rebuffed by a “spray of mace.” Self-defense protocols are well understood by the Oo-Topan natives.
A patch of reeds growing in a swamp, from which I can take one (the game won’t let me take more, saying that one is enough).
A “collector robot” on a beach at the edge of a green sea, guarding a shield unit from my ship. (These alien pirates are a clumsy lot to just litter so much of my ship’s parts all over the planet.) The robot won’t let me take the shield, won’t let me pass by in one specific direction, and doesn’t seem interested in trade - in fact, it zooms over to snatch any other items I drop, to add to its “collection.” Laser blasts do nothing. And I want that shield unit because a look at it reveals that it will shield me from force fields! This seems to be the key needed to unlock that catwalk area on the other side of the teleporter!

Also, the sea is a deathtrap. Swimming not recommended.

A Meso-American style step pyramid, which sounds incredibly intriguing, but ultimately offers much less than I expected; I can climb the top and pick up a “moon jewel” that’s apparently worth a small fortune and, and I can try but fail to enter the interior thanks to yet another force field. My interest in getting that shield unit further intensifies.

Roof of the pyramid, moon jewel included. The exterior just shows a bunch of steps.
A subtle hint I just noticed when writing this post: that’s my ship in the distance on the beach!

A tunnel leading to a “gravcar,” which looks like a wide scooter with up/down pushbuttons. Hopping aboard and pushing “up” twice brings us back into the main complex - specifically, to that tunnel with a steep drop we found very early in the game. Fortunately the gravcar stays where you leave it, so I now have an easy means of transitioning between the complex and the jungle without leaping off the roof. (Also, I discover you can get yourself permanently stuck if you take the gravcar into the complex and then leave via the roof again - the gravcar doesn’t come back.)
Another beach area with a “ruby seashell” and an aggressive crab. Hanging around too long, or taking the ruby, results in a nasty crab bite. It doesn’t kill me immediately, but seems to poison me and gives me a few turns of getting excessively more “thirsty” until I finally expire. If the garbage disposal/goggles puzzle was insufficiently clued, this one seems to be too on-the-nose - a quick drink of liquid from that “for emergencies” bottle I’ve been toting around since game start, and I’m cured!

Alternate answer to the puzzle: violence.
Not shown: crab, due to acute case of protonic reduction.

Heading north from the crab beach leads to the ultimate prize - my ship! This also seems to be the location blocked off by the collector robot (although you can just navigate around it via crab beach - the crab doesn’t stop you). Finally I have the means to get off this rock and resume my mission - right?

I wonder if the sea was always green, or if that was a CGA-graphics-driven change.

Entering my ship, I find a standard set of sci-fi adventure game ship locations - bridge, computer, cargo hold, life support station, engine rooms, airlock. But I’m oddly jarred by these areas having extremely brief descriptions - literally just a few words naming each location. No description of items, no description of room features or ship controls, nothing. None of the rest of the game has been this blandly described. Why now, when I’m finally at a place that my character should understand how to use, am I receiving the least information of all about my environment?

At this point I’d been playing for a while and decided to take a break. I was worried I’d missed something fundamental with regards to my ship. And indeed I had! The answer came while I was doing more research on the game for these posts. As is so often the case, it was all there in the manual.

Not gonna lie, it’s just a bit nicer than my hand-drawn maps.
Also, that’s a suspiciously human-shaped spacesuit for a supposedly non-human protagonist.

Full disclosure: when I started playing, I had only found and read the original manual, for the 1981 pure-text version, which was three pages and extremely bare bones. What I should have read at the start was the manual for this re-released Comprehend version - which includes a really nice, 12-page, Infocom-feelies-level-of-quality manual specifically dedicated to my ship. It’s worth a read on its own, with subtle humor (sporting a 50 billion mile/5 year warranty, for example) and plenty of world-building. More importantly for the game, it not only gives a map of your ship’s interior but also explains where the various “ship parts” I’ve been finding need to be installed - my energy converter goes in the Port Engine Room, for example, while the navchip goes in the computer. And I also learn that to start up the ship’s computer I need to provide “audio input of the MISSION CODE.” Where’s the mission code? From more feelies, of course.

My orders and mission code, straight from J. Castor Nebulus him/her/itself.

Typing my mission code in the computer room finally kicks things off and provides me with a full data dump (literally) of the situation: not only did the pirates steal a bunch of ship parts, but they also took most of the ship’s fuel, leaving us without enough to reach our destination. Installing the Navchip into the computer fixes that partway: the computer identifies a trading post that we can reach with our remaining fuel (should the rest of the ship get fixed), but wants a “Data Evaluation Card” (that I don’t have) to be able to value our cargo and see if we have enough to sell to be able to purchase the fuel we need. And aside from that, we’re still missing quite a few ship parts that need to be installed before we take off. In addition to the Navchip, we need:

The energy converter left inside the complex;
The stablizing gyro guarded by the Huja in the jungle;
The shield unit guarded by the collector robot on the beach;
My light rod, which I’ll install last when I know I’m done using it;
And four items I haven’t seen - the Data Evaluation Card, a power cylinder, a cryon purifier, and a recirculator.

Typing “STATUS” at the computer lets me check what’s left to install. I think I see where this is going: a two-prong “treasure” hunt. I need to find the rest of the ship parts before I can take off, but I also will need to gather up enough valuable goods (like the moon jewel, ruby seashell, etc.) to be able to buy enough fuel after we’ve left.

Looks like I’ve still quite a bit of work to do. I dump all my “treasure” objects in the cargo hold - except the moon jewel, for reasons I’ll get into soon - to free up carrying space, and then back to the jungle!

One of the jungle scenes that doesn’t seem to have anything in it.
“Music-like sounds” gives me an idea, though

I was first planning to return to the complex to pick up the energy converter I’d left there, but on the way I saw this screen and had a thought. I couldn’t get the gyro from the Huja, and none of my items seemed to help there, but almost immediately after finding that I also found that patch of reeds mentioned above. Following up, I made my way back to the Huja and tried “blow reed.” I produce some lovely music and the Huja smiles at me! Having made a friend, I can now take the gyro. More progress already!

The Huja’s face literally changes to a smile when this happens. Another nice graphical touch.

That side trip done and the gyro installed back at the ship, I return to my original plan. Back in the complex via gravcar I pick up the energy converter from where I left it at the radiation room. I then save my game and head over to what’s been a thorn in my side since the game began - that mysterious mirror room.

Wearing goggles doesn’t help solve the mirror puzzle, but does reveal another joke.

When I found the moon jewel on the pyramid, its description mentioned that such jewels are said to be “windows into other dimensions, but no one knows for sure.” The mirror room had a “4-dimensional mirror in the center of the room.” Perhaps bringing the two together will be profitable? As it turns out, no, the moon jewel has no effect there… but just by dint of trying that, I stumble yet again upon the solution. And it’s a real face-palm moment: simply typing “look 4-dimensional mirror” somehow allows me to see the exits! There are three - south and west (which I knew about) and north (which I didn’t) - as well as being able to enter the 4-dimensional mirror itself, which I learn leads me back into the six-area maze mapped in the first post. Man, I could have solved this from the very beginning! Ah well.

Going north now that the mirrors are decoded reveals another key prize: the Evaluation Data Card that the computer wants! It’s in a dead-end room with a “viewscreen” and red and blue buttons. Nabbing the card, I toy with the buttons and find that the blue button changes the area shown in the viewscreen, and the red button has an effect therein (which varies by room). Most of the areas seen through the screen are unfamiliar:

The default view is to the “bright room” where I’d used the goggles to find the plasma orb. The red button has no effect (maybe because I’d already solved that puzzle).
Second view is of an unfamiliar “frozen room.” The red button opens a chest that I didn’t realize was there. I feel like I solved a puzzle I didn’t know about yet.
Third view is of outer space, where I can see the pirate fleet! No wonder I haven’t run into any others since the alien I shot in the beginning - they’re all off in space. The red button “fixes” this by sending a signal to call them back to the planet! Uh-oh.

Like an Alpha Centauri/Pirates!! Crossover, with a lot less Sid Meier.

Fourth view is of a massive “domed room.” Looks like an alien city? The red button does nothing here and I can’t discern any other details.
Fifth and final view is of a tractor beam. This is what snared my ship in the first place! The red button turns it off. I’m guessing this is a needed step before I can make my escape.

The views cycle after this. I feel like I’ve made a mistake calling the fleet back, especially as warning messages start blaring over the loudspeaker of their arrival in “60 chrono-units.” That means turns, of course. I decide to wait around and, sure enough, when the pirates arrive they immediately find me an unceremoniously dump me back in my cell, resetting everything to the game’s initial state. I reload and vow to leave those guys in space this time!

Returning the Evaluation Data Card to my ship’s computer, I can now use the “VALUE” command to assess the worth of each “treasure” item I’ve collected. The computer explains we need 497.9 “frod” worth of treasure so we can buy enough fuel at the trading post nearby. Between the gold ring, the ruby seashell, the plasma sphere, the silver block, and the moon jewel, we’re already up to 441 frod. I’m a bit disappointed the hologram crystal with “all human knowledge” isn’t worth anything - I guess that’s not easily fenced at a backwater trading post.

Wrapping up this post, here’s my jungle “map.”
If someone can make sense of this with boxes-and-lines, be my guest.

Believe it or not, we’re getting very close to finishing this game. Next time we’ll get the shield unit from the collector robot to access all the force-field-blocked areas, find a “last lousy treasure” which hiding style I seriously question, and maybe even save Earth!

Inventory: Space suit (worn), helmet (worn), gloves (worn), light-rod, energy converter (installed), Navchip (installed), language translator, repair manual, laser, pair of blue goggles, plastic bottle, hologram crystal, plasma sphere (in cargo hold), block of Vegan silver (in cargo hold), Evaluation Data Card (installed), gyro (installed), gold ring (in cargo hold), ruby seashell (in cargo hold), moon jewel (in cargo hold), reed

Ship status: 4 parts installed, 2 parts seen, 3 parts unknown
Worth in frods: 441 out of 479.9 needed
Seeds to save Earth: undiscovered and almost forgotten about entirely

Time played: 3 hr 15 min

by Alex

Lure of the Temptress opens with a very good looking cinematic, expanding a bit upon the story from the manual—as explained by Ratpouch—that we talked about last post. This time, though, we get a view of events from Diermot’s perspective:
The Kingdom was at peace; after decades of unrest the King had united his quarrelsome subjects. Now, under his just rule, protected by the sea and the mountains, the people prospered and the crops flourished.

The King and his companions had visited our village while hunting, which gave me, Diermot, the chance of a few days easy pickings as a beater. I should have known something was amiss when the messenger arrived . . .

An uprising in the far off town of Turnvale, a beautiful young enchantress named Selena; it all sounded very exciting – but far too dangerous! I saddled my pony and made haste to slip away unseen, but the stupid beast had sensed the mounting tension and, despite my protests, the next I knew we were riding with the King’s guard!

As dan’s cold fingers reached into the sky we drew close to Turnvale. Through the morning mist we could hear the howls and bellows of the approaching army, but it was not until their vague forms drew near that we realized Selena had rallied an inhuman horde. It was my first encounter with the Skorl.

There on a small hill above the town the King fell, and there he was buried by those few companions who survived the battle. The town fell victim to Selena and the Skorl; I was knocked unconscious when I fell from my terrified mount. When I came to my senses I found myself a prisoner in Turnvale’s squalid dungeons. This is my tale . . .

And so we begin with Diermot, the player character, standing in his jail cell with his back to the player. And unless we want to play the world’s most boring game, we need to find a way out of this cell!

But first, let’s talk about the interface.

The cursor looks like a regular mouse pointer when there is nothing for Diermot to do, and left-clicking makes him move. Right clicking in this mode brings up a menu where Diermot can “Drink” anything he has available to drink, “Examine” any items he has in more detail, “Status,” which displays Diermot’s inventory (why it wasn’t just called “Inventory” is beyond me), and “Look,” which gives a description of the room, along with its name, sort of like how typing “Look” in a Sierra game brought up a general overview of where the player was.

Note well the line, “The illumination from a tiny window and the feeble glow from a torch fail to pierce the farthest shadows of the cell.”

As far as people and objects, when the cursor is over something you can interact with, the pointer turns into a crosshair reminiscent of the cursor in LucasArts games like Loomand The Secret of Monkey Island. Here, a left-click will have Diermot look at the item or person or thing, and if there is more to do, right-clicking will bring up a menu with options such as “Use,” “Get,” “Push,” “Pull,” etc. There are further options when you talk to people or Skorl, such as dialogue options and the ability to give stuff, bribe, and tell other characters to do certain things in what the manual promises is a complex chain of commands. There is also a combat interface, if the manual is to be believed, but I did not get to any fights in this play session.

Okay, enough about the interface. Let’s get Diermot out of jail!

But first . . . I restart, on account of that game-breaking bug I read about on MobyGames.

Tonight There’s Going to Be a Jailbreak

Okay guys, I fully admit that this sequence took me way longer than it should have. In fact, it’s kind of embarrassing even talking about it here. But since we’re a community here at The Adventure Gamer, what fear have I?

In the cell, there is a bed of straw, a window Diermot can’t reach, a door that is locked, and a torch stuck to the wall. A series of heavy thrumming notes signifies when the Skorl guard is going to come in—Virtual Theater and all that, with NPCs on their own regular schedules, remember?—but Diermot can’t really get any useful information out of him, other than that his ultimate fate is to be cooked and eaten.

There’s also a crack in the wall, giving Diermot a view of the adjacent room. In it, he sees as serf stretched out on a rack, which does not look that fun at all.

You can move the mouse around to see the Serf, the fire, and a leather cord attached to the little guy’s leg, but clicking anything gets out of the view.

Something interesting happens when Diermot tries to take the torch . . .

With the straw on fire, the Skorl guard comes in and . . . punches Diermot’s lights out. Game over man.

I saw this a lot . . .

But when the Skorl guard came in, he did leave the cell door open. Hm . . .

I restart and burn the straw again, this time hiding out in one of the corners of the room. Sure enough, the guard walks right by Diermot and over to the burning straw, fretting that the “stupid ‘uman’s on fire!” With the guard’s back turned, I slip out of the cell . . .

. . . and into my first real puzzle. It’s a puzzle whose answer is so easy and so obvious, I’m still kicking myself for wasting like a half hour trying to figure it out.

See, the next room has a door and a prisoner. The prisoner asks for water, and has a pouch on his belt. Having neither water nor a way to get the pouch off of his belt (kind of ridiculous, but whatever).

I go to the next room to look around there. Or try to, because if I dally too long, the guard comes and punches me out again.

I restart and do the sequence again, thinking that maybe I can push the guard into the fire?

Nope.

Maybe I need to be quicker?

In the guard room, I find a sack I cannot cut open. Moving on, I come to the torture room I espied from Diermot’s cell, and see none other than Ratpouch—THE Ratpouch of the manual fame—on the rack!

Alas, I cannot free him with my bare hands and, well . . . you know what happened next.

Okay, I think you get the idea.

Back to square one. I think I’m going too slowly, especially since I pixel hunt a bit on in the guardroom and find a knife on the barrel in the upper-left corner. With this, I can also cut the sack in the upper-right corner. It turns out to be the Skorl’s trash, but looking at it again reveals a shiny coin. Unfortunately, the currency of the realm is called a “groat,” which is kind of gross, but on well.

I also find a bottle, which I pick up.

With the knife, I can cut the Serf’s cord, and now I have a companion, Ratpouch, who will follow Diermot around. Yay!

But I still can’t open the door in the torture room, nor can I do anything without the Skorl guard finding me and playing some sweet chin music.

Again, I think that it’s a timing thing. Or maybe I’m doing something out of sequence. I try to see if I can “Bribe” the Skorl guard, or use the knife on him to fight, but nothing works.

And then I notice something.

In the guard room, Diermot can take a look through a grate to see his cell.

The fire is still raging. The guard is pacing angrily. And the door is open.

The guard is in the cell . . . and the door . . . is still open . . .

After the guard enters the cell in response to Diermot burning the straw, you walk out the door and just . . . close and lock it behind the Skorl.

Now, I’m no adventure game novice, but there’s no reason that this should have taken me so long to figure out. I’ll take your abuse in the comments, people: I do believe I’ve earned it fair and square.

Anyway, I am now free to investigate more fully and at my leisure. So once again, I grab the dagger, the bottle, I cut the sack and get the groat, and then I free Ratpouch. Now, with the guard safely confined in the burning cell, which is kind of sociopathic but screw it, I can turn my attention to getting the hell out of this place.

So the prisoner in the other room wants water, right? There’s a barrel in the guard room. You’d think I could “Use” the bottle on the barrel, but that does nothing.

There was water dripping in Diermot’s cell. Do I have to go back in and catch some in the bottle? If so, that’d be a pretty clever puzzle! Maybe if I stick to the shadows, I can—

Nope!

Okay. The barrel has to be the answer. At wit’s end, I look at the damn thing again and, well, would you look at that. You have to “Look” at the barrel first for the game to tell you about the tap that is clearly visible on said barrel. And then, you’re able to interact with the tap, letting Diermot fill the bottle with some disgusting Skorl alcohol.

Well, the dying man was begging for water, but literal beggars can’t be choosers.

Oh alright, game. You’re going to be one of those. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, as the prisoner’s pouch doesn’t show up until you examine the man. But still, this level of being finicky promises to annoy me even more into the future. Still, this is basically the “tutorial” puzzle of the game, so from here on in I can’t say I haven’t been warned.

Dude didn’t complain, either.

Talking to the prisoner reveals that his name is Wulf. He has a mission for Diermot . . . and he knows how to escape!

Diermot: What is your name?

Wulf: I am Wulf, a humble trader. I was arrested for my part in a plot against the Skorl!

Diermot: How can I help you?

Wulf: Find the blacksmith! Tell him I sent you!

Diermot: What should I say?

Wulf: Tell him the girl is in danger! There is a traitor in the village!

Diermot: But how can we escape?

Wulf: There is a passage behind the loose bricks in the far . . .

But then he dies.

Anyway, I try cutting his pouch, but I get a bad feeling about it, so I restore and don’t cut it. Maybe I can come back later and find some way to properly take its contents. I don’t want to dead-end myself either way, so I will accept spoilers on this one in the comments below.

I got a bad feeling about this . . .

I restore and restrain Diermot’s kleptomaniacal instincts, and instead just try to push the loose bricks in the wall, which now come up when I pass the cursor over it.

Alas, Diermot is too weak to do so.

I know! I’ll use the game’s much-vaunted interface to tell Ratpouch to help me! Yeah! That’s the ticket!

Or . . . Ratpouch—who had just been tortured for God-knows how long on the rack just pushes the loose bricks himself.

Look, I get it: This is a “tutorial” sequence, designed for the player to grow accustomed to the interface—which really isn’t that bad, actually—but come on.

Not that it matters, really. This is a 25-year-old computer game that isn’t going to listen to me anyway. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

A little Metallica humor for all you metalheads out there.

The passage immediately dumps Diermot and Ratpouch, via the castle sewers, to the town of Turnvale, which we’ll explore more next post!

INTERLUDE: Can I tell you something really weird and kind of annoying about this game?

(Answer: Yes. Yes I can. I’m the one writing this post).

It involves talking to NPCs. Whenever you do, Diermot wanders around the room like a dope for no good reason while the “Video Camer” icon replaces the cursor. This icon denotes when something is happening and you can’t control the player. Diermot does this, back-and-forth, back-and-forth, for a good five seconds or so before going up to the NPC and either talking to them or issuing his commands. And sometimes the action just won’t take anyway! I really hope this doesn’t bite me in the you-know-where later on in the game.

Okay, rant over. Back to our regularly scheduled jailbreak:

Whee.

Alright! Diermot and Ratpouch did it! Out of the jails at last! And not a moment too soon: We’ve got a blacksmith to find and a message to deliver! Until then, my fellow Adventure Gaming Lords and Ladies, may your puzzles always be easily solved, and your face always be punched.

Inventory: Broken glass, knife, 1 groat

Session Time: 45 minutes
Total Time: 45 minutes

Written by TBD

I was going to ask Madame Chavez what the final rating should be, but got distracted by a hand that she somehow raised without moving her shoulder

Time to rate the game. Before we get started, I'd like to mention why I think this game went down the path it did.

Since point-and-click interfaces became a thing a few years earlier, the companies that made parser-based games had to make an adjustment when they moved to this new type of adventure game. From what I recall of the time, there was a perception that all the challenge would be taken away if you could just click on everything instead of having to write exactly what you wanted to do.

Sierra tried a few strategies to attempt to cope with this – from King's Quest V's dead-ends galore and nonsensical solutions to Leisure Suit Larry 5's tactic of just taking out most of the puzzles and telling a funny (and sexy) story. Infocom clearly went the same way as Leisure Suite Larry 5 with this game. The only puzzle I had a problem with was Barth's 'get the iron' puzzle, which was only hard because the game gave me the wrong information.

Let's get to the ratings!

Puzzles and Solvability

The puzzles in this game are almost non-existant. I'm now going to list all puzzles that don't consist of “Go places and click on things” during Lydia's playthrough

Use Dad's machine to cause a rainstorm, flooding the dried up canal and giving me a way into the army base (which I unintentionally did by clicking on the obviously clickable lever in that room)
Get key from General's office in the army base to open the drawer in his house (not sure if this counts as a puzzle, but let's be generous)
Use code found in army base with the transmitter found in the General's car to trick the General into evacuating the town (which doesn't last long as the angry mob ends up in the same place when we get back from our interplanetary excursion)
Add 69 to the 4-digit copy protection code to get the radioactive isotope (this is the only one that really can't be argued is an actual puzzle)
Go to the correct strumpet's room in the brothel after reading the General's letter, in order to get his folder
Use (wear) the army uniform in order to get in or out of the army base
Use the ingredients Jim told us we needed in a bowl to make alien medicine, and give that and the food (isotope) to Barth
Click on the shackles of the Goddesses' prisoners (Does clicking constitute puzzle solving?)
Use invisibility shield before entering Goddesses' boudoir (Thanks for spoiling that solution, Zeke)
Use recording device on Goddesses
Use recording device on record player in radio station

Hm. So, 11 puzzles solved, if we're being generous. And none of them particularly taxing on the brain. Barth has to solve a few more, including the dreaded 'use gun on child' puzzle and the cliched 'get a coin from a vending machine' puzzle.

I can't give a good score to this section, as the puzzles were too easy and unexciting. Let's go with... 2 for this category.

Rating: 2

Interface and Inventory

The interface is clear enough. The cursor changes when it's over something that can be interacted with. This avoids the possible pitfall of pixel hunting. There are no verbs to choose and no need for the right mouse button at all. The inventory is a simple graphical one. Each character has their own style: Lydia with her handbag, Zeke with a toolbox and Barth with a... slime sac?

None of my three playthroughs had me using the 3d glasses

One small problem with the interface is the navigation mechanic. In most games, after I enter a room, to exit I assume I must turn around. In this game it's inconsistent. Often when I enter a room my character must have turned around as the door I came in from is in front of me – but not always. This makes navigating difficult at first, particularly for locations that have multiple exits. In one particular place the way to get somewhere that's 90 degrees to your left is to press the 'turn around' button three times - weird.

Luckily, this navigation quirk isn't too bad because the number of locations are fairly limited and you get a good feel for where everything in town is by the end of the game.

Functional inventory, simple interface and sometime confusing navigation interface. Hmm. How about a 4 for this category.

Rating: 4

Story and Setting

The setting of the small Nevada town in the 1950s actually works quite well, in a cartoony way – there aren't enough people to make it realistic (there are twelve prostitues servicing the other eighteen people who live in town) but there's enough to make your suspension of disbelief kick in. It reminds me a lot of the town in It Came from the Desert actually, with many of the locations being the same, though the latter also has a few farms and mines to better justify the existence of a town.

The non-Earth locations are less coherent. Planet X has a few locations, but really only one that serves any purpose (which is to hold a meeting we don't get to interact with)

Phobos is also underdone, with the entire moon seemingly a small palace and a rocket field.

As for the story, it's appropriately schlocky, but not interesting: The Leather Goddesses of Phobos are trying to take over the Earth in order to take over the rest of the galaxy! That makes no sense whatsoever, and isn't played off in a funny way to make up for its lack of sensibility.

The story from Barth's perspective is a little more interesting, with him deliberately deciding to contact humans to help his peaceful planet stop the evil Leather Goddesses, but there's still no reason for any of it.

The entire story seems like an excuse to show lots of cleavage (which in general I'm all for.) I mentioned in the Final Rating for the previous game that it was more Space Quest than Leisure Suit Larry – I think this game reversed that completely to its detriment.

So, the first part of the game has a decent setting but the other planets and the story itself are all ridiculous and most importantly, uninteresting.

Rating: 3

Sound and Graphics

The graphics are excellent. It's going for a kind of realistic-cartoon style and does it well. The dialogue screens look good and are well detailed. The only failing this game has compared to its contemporaries is in animation. There just isn't much of it. Most of the screens are static, with perhaps a few sections moving (people's arms mainly.) Barth has animation when he meets people, which is quite funny as his tentacles wrap themselves around people while the text makes it clear he's trying to politely greet the person in the same way he does at home.

The sound is a mixed bag. The music is okay, with some of the tunes being quite catchy (I particularly like the Gas Pump Girls theme, which seems appropriate for the time period and location). The sound quality of the voice acting is a bit off – not unusual for this early in voice-acted games history, but the noticeable pop at the start and end of each sound bite is a little annoying at first. It becomes less of an issue as you play the game and get used to it though – it wasn't long before I stopped noticing it.

I found this song particularly catchy

Hmmm. Great still pictures, little animation but some funny ones, unspectacular sound effects, decent music, subpar voice quality but having full voice acting which is still unusual for this time. I'm torn between a 7 and a 6 here..

Rating: 7

Environment and Atmosphere

Like its predecessor, the game tries to give the atmosphere of a low-budget 50s sci-fi movie. It fails more than it succeeds here, largely because of the uninteresting story I mentioned earlier.

Coming after a game that attempts the same small desert town with science fiction enemy atmosphere, It Came From the Desert, it's a disappointment on that front.

The alien locations seem... not really alien enough... as well, but that's not too different to the movies the game emulates so it'd not a total fail there.

Again, any of this would end up working if the situations and locations had enough comedy to sustain them, but they didn't – apart from Barth's misunderstanding of Earth's items and people, I can't remember too many jokes that weren't based on the 'it'll be funny because it's naughty' principle.

The 'sexy' atmosphere works well though, assuming the intended audience was a bunch of 13 year old boys. I do assume that's the case.

The problem with the game as a whole and this category in particular is just that it was so bare-boned. From playing I get the feeling that a lot of the situations were based off the writer having an idea and then just doing it without refining the idea too much or expanding on the basic – 'wouldn't it be funny if...” first thought. It strikes me as something that had to be put together quickly by some, admittedly talented developers, who did their best to take the the throwaway joke at the end of the first game and quickly make a sequel from it.

Rating: 3 (I'd probably have given it an 8 if I reviewed it back when I WAS a 13 year old boy)

Dialogue and acting

This is one thing the game does fairly well.

While the dialogue isn't particularly exceptional, the consistency of characters is done very well. The fact that descriptions and conversations differ depending on who you're playing as is done well, and the three playthroughs add to the 'realism' of the characters.

Here's a simple example.

Selma and Lydia, passive aggressive rivals

Selma and Zeke, occasional drinking and dating partners

Selma and Barth, tribal shaman and trespasser

The dialogue is funny, but not uproarishly so. I got a few good laughs out of it in each play session, so that's a plus.

One potential negative is that the dialogue is totally non-interactive – there are never any choices to make in dialogue and I'm pretty sure you could complete the entire game without talking to most of the characters. But as for adding to the flavour of the world and the comedy, the dialogue did its job for me.

As for voice acting, it's okay for the period. Nothing special, but decent. And again, as at this point full voice acting was still somewhat of a novelty, worth noting the extra effort.

A good score's in order for this category. Let's go with 7!

Rating: 7

FINAL RATING

Before I get to the fiinal rating, I'd like to revisit something I threatened to revisit about one particular puzzle solution - Barth getting an iron. Feel free to skip ahead if you prefer not to read my rant...

RANT OVER SOMETHING TRIVIAL THAT QUICKLY DEVOLVES INTO INVOKING GODWIN'S LAW AND SPOILING MOVIES FROM THE 1990s:

Now, Infocom. Let's have a discussion. You constantly make it clear when I attempt to use the blaster with people that the reason I can't use my blaster is because murder wouldn't ingratiate me to the local people. Fair and valid, one would think. But the only way to continue the game at this point is to use the blaster on a child. What the hell is wrong with you, Infocom? At first I just thought it was bad puzzle design, but now I'm seeing your ulterior motive. You're trying to desensitise gamers to killing children. How dare you?

I'm sure if I invented a time machine and went back to your offices in 1991 you'd probably counter that, while I had a point and you'd put some evidence of the blaster being discharged by shooting the stop sign into the game, that perhaps my time machine would be better spent going back to the early 20th century and killing a young Hitler rather than filling a stupid plot hole in an obscure computer game.

Bravo, Infocom. You bring up a good point, but allow me to again counter that WHAT IS YOUR OBSESSION WITH TRYING TO GET ME TO KILL CHILDREN?

If I do invent a time machine and go back to the time of a baby Hitler, I would, despite your murderous advice, kidnap the child and leave him with a nice Jewish family so he can grow up without hatred in his heart.

So, if I assume that time travel works like that movie where Bruce Willis dies at the beginning but nobody notices that he dies because he's in the whole movie but then you realise at the end that, oh wow... that was Bruce Willis dying at the start of this movie – MIND... BLOWN! No, no. I'm talking about the OTHER movie where that happens that came out four years before the one you're thinking of... Anyway. assuming time travel works like that movie and everything that I could change has already happened so I can't change anything, then that would mean that the family I gave baby Hitler to was actually just pretending to be a nice family and are actually practicing multiple forms of child abuse and... oh my God, I just created Hitler!

Point taken. I'll be quiet now. Back to the rating.

Now, our final rating will be... 2+4+3+7+3+7/.6, which equals... 43. Seems about right. Not a terribly good game, but fun enough to spend a few hours with and enough differences that it's worth playing thrice.

If I'd spent $90 on the game at full price I'd probably be annoyed at the short playtime but as I got the game from...<REDACTED FOR NATIONAL SECURITY> without paying for it I wasn't worried. If this game was available for digital download for a few bucks I'd say it'd be worth buying if you're after a few laughs and a game you can finish in a single evening. Get onto it Infocom, or whoever owns the rights to this game now – probably Activision.

If I was suggesting anyone play the game, I'd definitely suggest playing through as all three characters, or at least playing as one of the humans and Barth. Barth's playthrough was the funniest, so if you're going to play the game once, I'd say choose Barth, unless you're in it to have lots of implied sex, in which case choose Zeke or Lydia!

CAP Distribution

102 CAPs to TBD

Blogger Award - 100 CAPs - for playing through this game for his own perverse enjoyment
Grim Tales Award - 2 CAPs - for pointing out an adventure game sale

17 CAPs to Alfred n the Fettuc

Tom Cruise Award - 4 CAPs - for guessing the movie Doc Skelton was unintentionally referencing
Kurt Russell Award - 4 CAPs - for guessing the movie Tony Barber was unintentionally referencing
Shawnee Smith Award - 4 CAPs - for guessing the movie Flo was unintentionally referencing
Rowdy Award - 4 CAPs - for guessing the movie Zoe was unintentionally referencing
Facebook Award - 1 CAP - for liking one of my titles - yes, I give free CAPs to anyone who says they like something I've written

19 CAPs to Andy_Panthro

You're A Genius Award - 8 CAPs - for a fitting and valid guess as to what word was missing in the 'Ode To Trent'
You're A Penis Award - 3 CAPs - for thinking of a different fitting and valid guess but not telling us what word he was thinking of
Kiefer's Dad Award - 4 CAPs - for guessing the movie Zoe was unintentionally referencing
Damn You All To Hell Award - 4 CAPs - for pointing out what Reverend Layberry's church is likely referencing

14 CAPs to Ilmari

Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - for guessing that this game would be exactly one point better than Fascination
Some 1950s British Actor Award - 4 CAPs - for guessing the TV show Sheriff Andy was unintentionally referencing

11 CAPs to Joe Pranevich

The Quest for Peace Award - 6 CAPs - for guessing what movie was being referenced, and pointing out that it was all downhill from there (like skiing off a building)
Meanwhile... Award - 5 CAPs - for noticing an eerie similarity between the council building on Planet X and the place where the Wonder Twins work.

8 CAPs to Aperama

You're The Meanest Award - 8 CAPs - for a fitting and valid guess as to what word was missing in the 'Ode To Trent'

7 CAPs to Niklas

Anachronistic Audiophile Award - 7 CAPs - for working out that the save game titles are references to songs and that the songs they reference are from the future

6 CAPs - to Voltgloss

A Nice Hot Barth Award - 6 CAPs - for leading the charge in trying to get Barth to be our main protagonist, only to lose out to Lydia. In hindsight, Barth was the funniest playthrough.

5 CAPs to Raifield

The Thing That Speaks Award - 5 CAPs - for letting us know a little more about the printer/sound thingie that came with the game

5 CAPs to nemryn

Isn't It Ironic Award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out that the soap name was less likely a translation joke, and more likely a brand name joke

By Deimar

Laura’s Journal Entry #1:"I just haven’t started off on my right foot in the Big Apple. I have been mugged, robbed and almost killed by a car. But I am not going to let that stop the daughter of John Bow. No, sir. This New Orleans girl is going to crack an important case, the theft of the dagger of Amon Ra from the Leyendecker museum, and impress Mr. Augustini, my new boss at the New York Tribune."

The introduction video shows us a murder taking place in a ship. An unknown man is sleeping in his room when a shadowy figure emerges, strangles him and proceeds to store his corpse in a trunk. Next we are presented with the arrival of a ship, presumably the same, to the docks of New York and see some of the passengers get off the ship.

Sweet dreams, my beautiful prince

First, we attend to a discussion between a fez-wearing Egyptian-looking guy and another fellow. If I had to tell from the voice acting I would say it is a conversation between Apu, the Quickie-Mart owner in The Simpsons and Snooby McSnob, the most pompous Englishman this side of the Atlantic. Really, you should play this game just to hear these two discuss about the dagger of Amon Ra. Because you see, the English prick (honorary title) just came back from discovering the dagger and taking it from its home land to his pocket. That doesn’t suit the Egyptian guy who insists the dagger should be in Egypt. The conversation gets heated to the point where the Englishman threatens the life of the Egyptian so he drops the subject.

It should be in a museu… erm… think fast, think fast… in Egypt!!

Next we have a red-headed stevedore getting a trunk off the ship, probably the same we saw earlier as he complains about the weight. Must be an important character as he has his own portrait. In any case, the owner of the trunk comes rushing to chastise the stevedore and tell him to hurry up as he has to meet a countess.

I would advice calling the stevedore union and make him sleep with the fish… solve this peacefully

And finally we get to our young and clever Laura Bow. Last time we saw our protagonist she had just cracked the case of the murders at colonel Dijon’s state. As an aspiring journalist, that is the kind of case a career is built on. So obviously all of that is ignored at the beginning of this game because what fun there would be if Laura was known because of that incident instead of just by virtue of being the daughter of John Bow. And here we are, with Laura just graduated from Tulane university and giving her farewell to her loving father, ready to start her life in the Big Apple.

I must say that even seeing it coming from a mile, I find this part of the introduction hilarious. You see, Laura’s father warns her about the dangers of the big city, including a strange advice about keeping money in your shoe that gets repeated several times by other characters and which I don’t know if it is an American cultural thing because I haven’t heard anything similar (although at some point during a week-long school trip my parents made me wear a pouch tied to my waist inside the trousers to keep the money safe). In any case, inside the train, a lady sitting next to Laura also warns her about all the thievery and dangers awaiting in New York. And of course, the first thing that happens after getting of the train is that Laura’s case is stolen, then she is mugged and has to get to the newspaper walking. And at the same time keeping a glowing attitude with something that I think resembles a New Orleans’ accent. Or at least to my foreign non-native listening ears sounds like a not very natural accent.

The sun will come out, tomorrow...

And we are almost reaching the starting point of the game. Laura enters the New York Tribune, her new job, where she is greeted by Sam Augustini, the editor of the newspaper. He tells her that she got the job because of his relationship with his father (he helped him with the story that launched his career) and that Laura’s first job is to cover the burglary of a “fancy knife”, the titular dagger, from the Leyendecker museum. Somehow that involves going to a fundraiser party that is going to take place at the museum that evening masquerading as a society reporter instead of investigating, talking to the police and the like. Well, what do we know, we are just a little girl, something that it's kind of hammered through this section.

To be honest, outside of this image Laura is never that short
compared to the other characters. I would say she is average at worst

Finally, we can now take control of the game as act 1 begins. We start at the newspaper taking charge of our new job with our own desk. Searching it yields a press pass after some hide-and-seek with the key to the desk’s drawer. Well, kind of a press pass actually...

We can also collect a baseball from a bin nearby and nothing else in the whole office. So it’s time to start chatting and get some information. Next to Laura’s desk sits Crodfoller T. Rhubard (the only explanation for the name I’ve found is this one) who is the person previously assigned to investigate the robbery. Consequently, he is kind of hurt if asked about the issue but in general he is a good guy. There are two ways of speaking to characters in the game. The first one is through the all mighty bubble icon as in every other Sierra game of this generation, which leads to greeting the person you are talking to. If you want to ask about something in particular, you have to use another bubble icon which brings up our notebook. This is actually Crodfoller’s notebook, where he started gathering information about the burglary, but as now we are in charge of the investigation he generously passed it onto us. There are several categories in the notebook, characters, places, things and misc.. The only not self-describing is misc. which contains several topics such as the burglary, egyptology and little else.

I guess Laura feels the need to write down the name of the city she
is in in case she forgets… And this is our young smart detective...

Crodfellah has little to say about anything really. Just introduces some characters like the director of the museum, the guy who discovered the dagger, the main detective working on the case and a shady character named Ziggy, a stoolie which can be usually found in a local speakeasy disguised as a flower shop. I have to say that I am learning a lot of 20’s slang from this game.

With nothing else to do, I decided to explore the city. And the city explored my inners as the first thing that happened was that I was ran over by a car for not looking both sides before crossing the street. Classic Sierra, how much I loathe you. Anyway, just crossing the street from the newspaper we reach the police station, conveniently placed so young reporters don’t have to walk too far to other non-plot-relevant stations. A homeless man is sleeping under a newspaper, a copy of the Tribune for sure, next to the door but when I try to take a look at the newspaper he simply rolls over and hides it. Inside we meet the sergeant who could provide some information except he is too hungry to talk with us. However, he allows (or just doesn’t mind) us to see detective O’Irish… erm… O’Riley, the one in charge of the investigation of the burglary of the dagger. As the Egyptian and the Britton, O’Riley is a complete stereotype and simply dismisses us as soon as we tell him we want to take a look at the file.

I have looked a lot at this image to find a four-leaf clover, a leprechaun and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but I haven't had any luck. I hope there is at least a scene where while running from the police we lose them in the middle of a St. Patrick’s day parade...

When leaving the station, the homeless is no more there, but he left the paper which contains a coupon for a sandwich at some place called Luigi’s. So that’s must be the solution to the hungry sergeant. Now off to find Luigi’s… which is just a vendor that now appears outside the tribune. That was easy… too easy… In any case the sergeant doesn’t know that much, but tells us the password for the speakeasy.

One of the pieces of information Crodfocker told us was that to use a taxi we simply need to show the cabbie the press pass and he will take us whenever we want to go. Another convenience for a girl with 0 dollars to her name. Outside every location there is taxi stop so I simply call one and tell him to go to the flower shop which serves as front for the speakeasy by simply opening my notebook.

The zone outside the shop is not very fancy, and I couldn’t find anything useful to do there but for the side entrance to the shop. After knocking, someone asks me for the password which we duly wrote down in the notebook. Inside we can find Cabaret minus Liza Minnelli and nothing of interest but Ziggy, a bald man sitting alone who talks about “The Sun Also Rises”, apparently a novel. I don’t seem to be able to get anything from him and I have no clue what he is talking about, so I leave the zone and decide to cross the street risking my life to see what’s at the other end.

I have no idea why any of that is relevant but someone
should detain this guy before he becomes Dr. Evil

And at the other end we simply find the infamous Lofat’s laundry. There are some boys burning ants with a magnifying glass just outside the shop. I just knew that should be ours, as we were lacking some tooling in the detective department. After talking with all of them, the eldest, Biff, seems to be fond of baseball players, and I manage to exchange the baseball for the magnifying glass. Lofat however seems to be quite less useful so I simply move.

I decided to hop on a cab and go to the next place on the list, the docks. The cabbie drives me while telling me how he uses to drive a kid called Isaac Asimov… Which I simply mention because as soon as we get off the car we meet Dorian, the stevedore from the introduction and he begins to drop some interesting facts about 1926, the year the game takes place.

Dorian has some interesting things to say about Dr. Archibald Carrington III, the director of the museum. Or more specifically about his trunk. The heaviest trunk he has ever carried and with a very disgusting smell. And he seems to be a connoisseur in trunks, having operated so many. He also mentions the good Mr. Carrington left with a woman who was waiting for him, the countess Waldorf-Carlton.

You could try playing through some 25 year old games and
sharing your experience from a modern perspective. Just saying.

When I got back to the cab, the driver is different. This one has a very loose sense of hygiene. And being an adventure gamer, I have a very loose sense of private property. So after realizing that I can move the trash around, I discover a ticket for Lofat’s. Before going there I stop at the Tribune to ask Crodfunding about the countess and Dorian but he is of no help. Way to research, mate. The ticket gets us a formal dress which could be used in a variety of occasions… such as a fundraising party. There is actually a board in the newspaper that advises employees to wear appropriate clothes to the events they are covering, so I guess I accidentally have solved that riddle. I decide to go to the museum to prove this theory but apparently it is not 7pm yet so I can’t enter.

I spent some time wandering from place talking to people about the new topics discovered but and trying to guess what to do now until I realize I missed something at the speakeasy. There is a door at the back of the room which leads to the women lounge. There is a woman here waiting for countess Lavinia Waldorf-Carlton, although why a countess would visit such a place to meet with a woman in the lounge is a mystery to me that I will probably have to unravel at some point. She also tries to hit on Laura but in spite of my best efforts there doesn’t seem to be a way of accepting her offer. I notice that there is a screen here that could allow me to change into the new dress.

So that’s what happens in the women’s lounge. I have always wondered...

And with that, we advance to act 2. I feel like I’m missing a lot of things and that I should probably know more about Ziggy and the countess, but I have decided to keep going with what I discover to see how I end the game (probably knowing nothing) and then replay it being more systematic before advancing acts.

Session Time: 2 hours 10 minutes
Total Time: 2 hours 10 minutes

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

by Alex

Whew, lads.

Lure of the Temptress is one of those games, those kind of games that makes mapping fun by using all sorts of tricks to distort the laws of physics and good game design.

See that screenshot up top? In a game like, say Quest for Glory, walking off screen to the right would move the player to another screen, approaching from the left. This would not only make mental navigation easier, but would also help the player make a paper map that makes sense.

Not so in Lure of the Temptress.

You see, leaving that idyllic-looking town square to the right could bring me to a screen that looks like this:

Which in turn could bring me here:

One of Turnvale’s many alleys. They aren’t Shapier-level annoying, but they’re close.

Yeah. Needless to say, my map is a complete mess of boxes and lines flowing hither and yon, resembling nothing so much as a giant jellyfish. Let’s just say that its usefulness is marginal, at best. I suppose I could eliminate the alleys—which sometimes appear two to three screens in a row—but I don’t yet know if I’ll need to do anything there yet.

So this session was spent mostly getting my bearings in the Skorl-occupied town of Turnvale, and picking up a few quests that finally get the main plot started. And I talked to a bunch of people.

First, Turnvale. I like the way that Lure of the Temptress gives the player a rundown of each room when the “Look” command is selected. I’ll go through the points of interest in Turnvale, as well as the people wandering around pursuant to Revolution’s “Virtual Theater”—sorry, “Theatre,” before I begin with the chain of talk and fetch quests that Diermot was thrust into.

Turnvale

For an occupied town, Turnvale doesn’t seem too bad, unless you count the boarded-up buildings, the Skorl wandering about, and the general atmosphere of paranoia and distrust! It’s a regular 1960s Berlin here!

Town Hall

As your tour guide, allow me to share with you the sights, the sounds, and the smells, of scenic Turnvale:

The Sewer Outlet: Where Diermot and Ratpouch emerge from the castle after they escape from the prison. The only thing of note is that the bottle Diermot is carrying breaks, leaving him with naught but broken glass in his inventory. I sure hope he’s careful carrying that around in his pocket . . .
The Castle Gate: The Castle is guarded by two “grotesque guardian statues,” and the gate is impenetrable . . . at least for now.

Not that I’m really itching to go back in there, mind.

Apothecary Lane: There is an Herb Shop that is all locked up with no way to get in. A shame, since Diermot could likely use some soap to clean off the raw sewerage he bathed in during his escape from the dungeons.
Magpie Courtyard: A cobble-stoned square with a weird discolored well. Leaning upon it is an Old Man who speaks in weird poetry. There is the Magpie Tavern—indicated by the sign painted with a magpie holding a chain with a blue gem attached to it from its beak (this is important later). There’s also a boarded-up building.

Diermot suddenly feels like he’s wandered into San Francisco

Magpie Tavern: A drinking establishment run by Nellie, the flirtatious and seductive middle-aged barmaid. There’s also a rude drunk named Morkus who is kind of a jerk to Diermot, answering each of his polite inquiries with snark befitting a 21st century denizen of the Internet raised on satire and third-hand echoes of what used to be called wisdom (no, I’m not cynical or anything).

SICK BURN, BRO!!!

Blackfriars Row: There’s nothing here but a weird old building with a statue of something that looks like a cross between a horned humanoid and a centaur. These monks I’m unable to talk to keep going in and out of it, but never when Diermot is close enough to sneak into the front door. I’m assuming I’ll have to come back here later.

WHAT IS IN THERE?!

The Castle Wall: There’s a well of fresh water and a goat. And . . . that’s it, really.
Middle Street: There’s a big building here, which is the Town Hall. It’s guarded by a Skorl. There’s a sign with the words “SELENA OUT” spraypainted on it. I don’t know if that means “Selena is not here,” in which case it’s kind of weird to use a permanent medium of writing like spraypaint—even weirder, considering what an anachronism spraypaint is in a quasi-medieval fantasy setting that Lure of the Temptress seems to take place in—or if it means Selena just delivered some sick burn and was like “Selena, out!” before she dropped her mic and walked away. We may never know. The game makes a point of noting that the Skorl guarding Town Hall is younger than “the rest of his breed.”
The Weregates: A weird, impenetrable door guarded by two statues that seem to follow Diermot’s movement “with a baleful stare.”

The Weregates

West Street: How the game can calculate that this is west compared to the rest of its moon-physics is beyond me. Seriously, even M.C. Escher would be like, “That’s it, I give up” after wandering around Turnvale for 20 minutes or so. Regardless, there’s a large, well-kept tavern here called The Severed Arms, which is both an incredibly obvious pun, and incredibly stupid. Of course, I like it.
The Severed Arms: An inn that, according to the game, is “clean, quiet, and entirely without character.” Alrighty then! Inside are the barbarian Ultar, the attractive knitting woman Edwina, and the proprietor Gereint who is—surprise, surprise!—a sarcastic, condescending dick. This was the 90s, after all.
The Market Place: Another town square. Of note is the Village Shop and a boarded-up house, like the building in Magpie Courtyard. Looking at the door reveals that there’s a lock, which, as with the tap on the barrel and Wulf’s pouch in the dungeon, reveals the lock into an object Diermot can interact with. I can’t do anything with it yet.
The Village Shop: The Village Shop is run by Ewan, a man with a prominent, twisted nose. The game makes a point of mentioning that Diermot doesn’t see any foodstuffs on the shelves.

Smithy Street: A street dominated, predictably, by The Forge.
The Forge: Self-explanatory. Here we find Luthern, the blacksmith and an old woman named Catriona who rambles on and on and tells Diermot old stories. More on Luthern later.

Notable People

In addition to the people inside Turnvale’s various buildings are some that wander about according to their own schedule based on Revolution’s Virtual Theater. Basically, these folks go to and fro, wandering in and out of shops. Luthern is one, but he at least has a home in his forge. Here are some of the others I’ve encountered walking Turnvale’s streets.

Gwyn: A woman who seems like the town gossip. She has something to say about nearly everyone.
Mallin: A shifty sort in a green coat involved in the business of “buying and selling.” He gives Diermot a large, heavy metal bar and tells him to bring it to Ewan the shopkeeper. Apparently there is some law against the willful mistreatment of metals, decreed by someone named the grand Wizard, and Mallin is involved in getting around it somehow? I don’t know. I just know enough to the extent that it’s a fetch quest.

Yeah, yeah, just tell me the guy to whom I have to give the thing
in order to get the stuff to give to the other person to give to the . .

Monks: Diermot cannot talk to them, but there sure seem like a lot of Brothers, sometimes walking into the building on Blackfriars Row. I can never seem to sneak in after them, though.
Skorl: Yes, Skorl wander the streets, going into buildings, and generally getting Diermot’s way. They offer nothing useful in terms of dialogue or interaction. Is it one Skorl walking around? A bunch of different Skorl who all look alike? I am ignorant and indifferent at this point.

So that’s Turnvale. And now, a little about what I actually did there.

Fetch Quest: Activate!

According to Wulf, Diermot’s first task is to find the blacksmith and talk to him about a supposed resistance to Selena. I ask around, and am even told by Ewan that there is no blacksmith after the grand Wizard’s weird law about abusing metals.

Yeah, I don’t get it either.

In any event, I keep asking around and am told by others to go to the forge. Alrighty, then.

Along the way, Mallin gives me a metal bar to give to Ewan. I do this, and Ewan gives me a chain attached to a blue jewel. The jewel, apparently, is not real. It is made of “paste,” according to the game.

Sigh. It’s going to be one of these games.

But I guess it makes sense, because of the law against mistreating metal. The whole thing is pretty dumb and I sure hope this plot thread pays dividends later on in the game.

Anyway, Ewan also gives me seven groats, which is kind of a gross name for currency, isn’t it? Just what is a “groat,” anyway?

Checking with my friend Mr. Wikipedia, I learn that groats, also called “berries,” are the “hulled kernel of various cereal grains such as oat, wheat, rye, and barley.” Groats are also “whole grains that include the cereal germ and fiber-rich bran portion of the grain, as well as the endosperm (which is the usual product of milling).”

Okay then, everyone is using this stuff as currency. Fine, whatever. I really don’t care as long as I can buy stuff with it.

Remember the sign outside of the Magpie Tavern? That’s right: the bird was painted holding a blue jewel. With nothing else to do, and not having found the forge yet, I head to the Magpie and give the jewel to Nellie.

Apparently, it’s the Turnvale Jewel, which had been stolen at some point. Nellie is so happy, she gives me a flask of some potent liquor that makes Diermot start to see things. I have a feeling I can use it to bribe someone or other in this God-forsaken town. But first, I need to find the blacksmith.

I catch Luthern wandering around near the Town Hall, of all places. He tells me to meet him in his forge, which I do . . . and where I grab the tinderbox that appeared only because I restarted the game right after beginning. Gotta love potentially game-breaking bugs . . .

I tell Luthern the message from Wulf: that the girl is in danger. Luthern knows what it means:

Luthern: “He means Goewin, the girl who keeps the herb shop. She has disappeared! If you want to help us, search the town for news. We must find her!

Diermot: Where was Goewin last seen?

Luthern: I met her last night outside the Magpie. I asked her to help me with a little job. I haven’t seen her since, and it’s all my fault!”

Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself, Luthern, even though it kind of was your fault. But at least now I have another mission.

By the way, Ratpouch vanished at some point, and I haven’t seen him since. I sure hope he wasn’t important to keep around . . .

So it’s time, once again, to interrogate the citizens of Turnvale. Some are, shall we say, less than helpful. Ultar claims that he is Goewin. Edwina tells Diermot to butt out, and that Goewin deserves whatever punishment she gets.

Nellie is at least more helpful. She tells Diermot that a Skorl was in her tavern last night asking for her. The Skorl then spoke to Morkus and left.

Morkus, for his part, is an unhelpful tool, telling me that, since he doesn’t know Diermot, he’s not talking. Which I guess does kind of make sense as Diermot is a stranger and all of this business sounds dangerous. But I still don’t like the guy.

I use the “Bribe” command and fork over a groat. Morkus is less-than appreciative . . . but he does end up talking.

Goewin has been imprisoned in the Town Hall, accused of being a member of the conspiracy!

Thinking the direct approach may be in order, I head to the Town Hall to talk to the Skorl guard. I try to bribe him with the flask, but he just tells me that Selena doesn’t want any of the Skorl consorting with humans. Useless, just like all the other Skorl in this game.

Especially this one.

I get ready to go talk to everyone in town again, when who wanders by but good old Luthern!

Let me interrupt here to tell you how Virtual Theatre really works. In theory, it sounds cool. In practice, you can have upwards of four dummies wandering about on the screen, knocking into each other like idiots and spouting random bits of conversation. But in this instance, it was actually convenient.

Luthern tells me to talk to someone named Grub, “a resourceful rogue,” and ask him about the Black Goat. That’s some kind of signal to let Grub know Luthern sent me.

You know what this means! More asking around Turnvale!

By happenstance, the first place I end up at is The Severed Arms. Gereint is unhelpful, asking if I came to drink or gossip, but I ignore him and talk to Edwina instead. She . . . is actually helpful, telling Diermot that Grub will “be somewhere around the town, watching the world go by and contemplating the folly of mankind.” When Diermot asks if Grub is a great philosopher (Can you imagine? “Behold, the great philosopher . . . Grub!”), Edwina replies that Grub is actually “a lazy old sod.”

Ah ha! I know one of those!

On the way, I ask Ewan about Grub. He tells me to as Gereint at The Severed Arms, as he and Grub are “great pals.” I supposed if I bought a drink from Gereint, he would have shared some intelligence. Oh well. Edwina was helpful enough as it was.

When asked about the Black Goat, the Old Man at Magpie Courtyard reveals himself as Grub. He drops the poetical ramblings and tells me I need to find Taidgh, the magician. He gives Diermot a lockpick and tells Diermot that his house is in the marketplace but is “well guarded by the Skorl.”

Back at the Market Place, I check the lock on the abandoned house and “Use” the lockpick on it. Diermot is unable to do so.

I guess . . . I guess I have to start going around asking everyone if they’ve seen Taidgh.

No one knows, and no one seems to miss him. Taidgh apparently vanished when the Skorl rolled in to town. I try paying Gereint this time, and he just tells Diermot that he’s an “idiot” and that his house in the Market Place is abandoned.

So bereft of ideas, I talk to Edwina who . . . had ransacked Taidgh’s house and stole his diary. Which she forks over to Diermot.

O . . . okay.

The diary mentions that Taidgh got a recipe from Gwyn, but otherwise chronicles, in bits and pieces, his plan to disguise himself as “their mistress” and make a potion, presumably, to make himself look like Selena.

Gwyn is unhelpful, as is everyone else, even Luthern. With nothing else to do, I end this session to rest up and steel myself for another exciting round of . . . talking to each and every one of Turnvale’s citizens and trying every inventory item on everything and everyone.

Adventure games, folks! That’s what we’re here for!

Inventory: Broken glass, knife, lockpick, tinderbox, flask, diary, 6 groats

Session Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Total Time: 2 hours, 25 minutes

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

Written by Voltgloss

When we left off last time in our attempt to escape Oo-Topos, we still needed to find 3 missing ship parts; the special seeds to save Earth; and 56.9 frod worth of treasure for lunch, gas, and tolls. Sounds like a lot, right?

Turns out we were only two puzzles away from accomplishing all of that.
Of course, they were the two puzzles that took me the longest to figure out.

My sentiments exactly.

The first puzzle: how to deal with the “collector robot” that was blocking access to the shield unit. Not only do we need that for our ship, but it also promises to be the answer to get us through the forcefield at the pyramid and catwalk areas. But the robot won’t let us take it - or anything else we try to offer to or throw at it; it just snatches whatever it is up and adds to its stash. Lasers do nothing. What’s the answer here? It’s… actually one of the more satisfying solutions in the whole game, in my opinion.

The second puzzle: turns out there’s a treasure item in one of the locations I’d visited (and screenshotted in one of my previous posts). How’d I miss it? Because the game pulls a trick here that it pulls nowhere else in the game: finding that treasure involves investigating a room element that is only in the picture - it is NOT in the room’s textual description. Making this my least favorite conundrum in the game.

Everything needed to solve these puzzles has been shown in my second post. In case you, the reader, want to pause and consider what those solutions might be before I reveal them, here’s some spoiler space.

...I regret nothing.

OK, so after about a half hour of trying different items and commands against the robot with little success, I finally realized the answer was to use the robot’s behavior against it. It always dashes over to grab whatever I drop or throw in the room. So what if I throw something into a dangerous place?

Like, say, the nearby sea of molten mineral?

Toasty!

Whatever item I use for this purpose is gone forever. The reed is an obvious choice because I can always go pluck another one (though how a reed can be thrown is an exercise left to the reader). I found it cathartic to use the hologram crystal of all human knowledge. Hey, my ship computer says it’s of zero value anyway.

With the shield unit in hand, I can walk through the force fields unimpeded. One, at the pyramid, leads to a lone interior room with a “psi cube.” This is another treasure to be sold for frods - 30 of them to be exact, the lowest value item I’ve found so far. I’m now at 471 frods, 26.9 short.

The other force fields are all at back at the “taka ela leva” catwalk area accessed through the teleporter inside the complex. With the shield unit in hand, I find three new rooms in that area (the fourth force field leads back to the teleporter):

The cold room I saw through the viewscreen beyond the 4-D mirror, where I pressed a button that opened a chest. Inside that is the vial I need to save Earth! ...Yes, a vial. Not seeds. I suspect the original 1981 storyline is rearing its head again here.
A food processing room, where my oxygen recirculator sits on the floor.
A storage room, where both my cryon purifier and my power cylinder sit on the floor.

In one fell swoop, and without solving any more puzzles (because we’d already opened the chest remotely), I suddenly have everything I need to finish fixing my ship! And the seeds - er, vial - needed to save Earth! Now, where’s that last treasure I need to have gas money to get where I’m going?

Figures it was something green.

Yep, that green flower in one of the nondescript jungle areas held a secret: if you try to get or touch it, its “emerald center” falls out. Which is a straight-up emerald worth 56 frods, more than enough to satisfy my computerized bean counter. This flower is not mentioned at all in the room description, and is the only instance in the whole game where a progress-critical room feature can be discerned only from the graphics. Dirty pool, game. Dirty pool.

Also, turns out the whole “treasures are worth different amounts” mechanic doesn’t amount to anything of substance. The lowest-worth treasure - the psi cube - is worth 30 frods; but if you get all of the treasures except the psi cube, you’ll be at 497 frods. You need 497.9 frods. So you need every single treasure. None are optional.

But hey, we finally got everything we need to win! After returning to my ship, having the computer value all the treasures, stowing the vial and treasures in the cargo hold, installing all of the missing parts, and closing the airlock… the computer agrees to blast us off!

Turns out it was also important to turn off the tractor beam.
Without doing that, the computer won’t blast us off (and won’t explain the problem).

And that’s it! The rest of the game is literally on autopilot: we reach the nearby station, sell our accumulated junk for gas money, and reach Labport V in time for the folks there to use the seeds (vial) somehow to protect the Earth. Mission accomplished!

And there was much rejoicing!

Time played: 1 hr 30 min
Total time played: 4 hr 45 min

Looking back, I feel this last chapter of my tale (really, half-chapter) suggests a more negative view of Oo-Topos then I had for most of my time with it. Overall I enjoyed the game and was glad to have a chance to play and blog about it. We’ll get to Final Ratings in a minute, but first there’s a loose end I need to tie up (at least in part)...

So What About The Original?

Cutting-edge 1981 Apple graphics. I want my four-color CGA back.

Full disclosure: as of this writing I haven’t completed the original 1981 version yet. This is mainly due to technical issues: the only emulator I’ve gotten to work so far is frustratingly slow to process commands, isn’t saving/loading games properly, and doesn’t let me backspace to correct typos in my commands. (This last issue might be an Apple II-specific oddity that I’ll just have to bear.) I plan to play and blog Berlyn’s Cyborg next, which only exists in its 1981 incarnation, so I’ll need to get these technical problems figured out by then. If there’s more to say on the 1981 version of Oo-Topos I’ll address it then as a quick side feature within the Cyborg posts.

But for now, what I’ve observed of 1981’s Oo-Topos is quite a different experience from its updated rerelease.

The map is completely different. Many of the locations are the same, but are shuffled around in a manner that in no way resembles my completed map.
There are puzzle differences as well. For example, while you still need acid to deal with the sentinel, but to collect it you need to find a flask of oil and empty out the oil so you have an empty flask. Even the very beginning is different: the prison door is pre-kicked-in for your convenience, the game simply telling you that you just finished bashing it in before giving you control.
The game is frustratingly vague sometimes with room exits. I was stymied for a while early on because I’d missed some exits in a “panoramic room” - turns out you can move twice both north and south from where you enter that room, but the descriptions don’t tell you this. The game also supports intercardinal directions (NE, SE, SW, NW), which unfortunately just doubles the number of exits you need to test.
Death and dead-ends seem more prevalent. I died multiple times in dark areas before finding the light rod, and most recently found an “alcove” off the game’s mirror room equivalent that seals shut behind me with no apparent way out. Without a working save/reload functionality, this makes game progress unworkably slow.

I’m shelving this for now until I get my emulation issues worked out and after playing/blogging Cyborg. Hopefully I’ll have a better experience then.

The one plus that is apparent even from the raw 1981 version is Berlyn’s prose. Both versions feature eloquent, well-crafted descriptions of the protagonist’s adventures, along with clear attention to world-building and the occasional wry wit. I suspect this quality was one that caught Infocom’s attention before they offered Berlyn a job. Perhaps we’ll see more of this, and maybe other qualities besides, once we turn our attention to Cyborg.

In any event, on to the final rating! I’m not scoring the 1981 version for obvious reasons, but the 1987 version awaits judgment!

My final map and notes. Not the last hand-drawn map you’ll see from me.

Final Rating

Puzzles and Solvability - Most of the game’s challenges were pleasingly logical and I did not need to consult hints. The early game makes a strong showing of giving you short-term goals to complete: finding a light source for dark rooms, finding a translator for alien writing, finding a space suit to survive outside the airlock, and figuring out the various transport mechanisms available (the gravtube, the teleporter, and the maze). Dealing with the sentinel and the collector robot, and getting down from the roof, were memorable standouts. However, there are some insufficiently clued puzzles (like using the goggles in the garbage room and finding the emerald) that keep the score from rising above average. My score: 4.

Interface and Inventory - The parser may not be as strong as Infocom’s, but if so, I really didn’t notice it while playing. Multiple synonyms for both nouns and verbs are recognized and complex multi-part commands are accepted. Polarware was clearly aiming to compete with Infocom with this “Comprehend” system and parser, and at least in Oo-Topos it seems to work. It doesn’t rise to the level of an innovative Infocom parser, but it certainly reaches the level of a workable one. Also there are some inventory juggling issues mid-game (until you find the ship and a clear place to store treasures/ship parts) that drag the score down just a bit. My score: 4.

Story and Setting - Much of this score comes from the manual and associated feelies, which rival those of Infocom games (and in my opinion surpass a few of them). Frankly, I’d be interested to read a novel that runs the full length of the story - not just the vignette that is our protagonist’s time on Oo-Topos. It’s a shame then that the game itself has some odd disconnects with that story - like the “seed” vs. “vial” weirdness, or that our protagonist is clearly meant to be human despite the backstory’s insistence to the contrary. I attribute this to the game’s being rooted in the original 1981 storyline instead of being adjusted to fit its new story/feelies. Also, while the backstory is intriguing and the complex-with-jungle setting makes a nice playground for the adventure, it does in the end devolve into a two-pronged treasure hunt; one for ship parts, one for valuable items. (Three prongs if you count the vial/seeds.) My score: 4.

Sound and Graphics - There are no sounds. The graphics are a resounding “fine” in my book; I understood what I was looking at at pretty much all times (and when I didn’t that was more my failing then the game’s), but all in all they’re still CGA. I’ve checked out some of the other systems’ graphics online and, while they show off more colors, they also run a bit garish for my tastes. I’m adding a point here for the neat graphical changes reflected by gameplay (like using the goggles)... but then I’m taking a point away because the graphics take a considerable time to draw in with every command entered. This didn’t impede my playthrough with emulator speed cranked up, but back in 1987 it would have significantly slowed the pace. My score: 3.

Environment and Atmosphere - The game starts off well in this category but then dips and never recovers. The key issue for me is the lack of any real urgency or threat. After shooting the alien threatening to re-imprison you (which happens in the first 10 minutes of gameplay), you never encounter the alien pirate “antagonists” again unless you screw up by recalling them to the planet. Without an active antagonistic force and without any time pressure, the game just doesn’t keep up the tension suggested by its opening act. Honestly, I’d have welcomed a time limit in this game (and it would be in keeping with the story) as adding the challenge of putting together a “winning run.” My score: 3.

Dialog and Acting - The prose is strong and the written world-building runs throughout. No surprise given Berlyn’s already having achieved published author status. I appreciated the occasional wry humor, which wasn’t around so much as to overstay its welcome. But that’s all the game has in this category; if there were more characters for some actual dialog beyond the narration (the ship computer sort of counts but only barely), I could see rating this higher. My score: 4.

Final Tally

The total score? (4+4+4+3+3+4)/.6 = 37 points!

This puts 1987’s Oo-Topos on par with Starcross and Enchanter. This feels right to me - where those outscore this game slightly in other categories, 1987’s Oo-Topos catches up with its use of graphics. Overall I enjoyed it and am looking forward to Berlyn’s other pre-Infocom offering in Cyborg (even if I’ll be struggling with a less friendly interface). And who knows… perhaps some playthroughs of Polarware’s other adventure offerings may await in the future!

Average score guess was 36.17, so you all were collectively almost right on the mark. Kus of the Valley was individually exactly right on the mark, with their first guess ever of 37. Well done!

Thanks all for the opportunity to play and blog through Oo-Topos. I’ve enjoyed it and I hope you all did as well. For now, I’ll sit back (and work on my Apple II emulation issues) while eagerly awaiting the next installments of Joe Pranevich’s Great Zork Marathon - including his playthrough of what may be Berlyn’s most infi~~del~~amous work.

Police Quest 1 (VGA Remake): That’s DETECTIVE Bonds to You!

Legend of Kyrandia - WON!

Game 86: Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2: Gas Pump Girls Meet the Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet X - Introduction (1992)

Missed Classic: Enchanter - The Terror that Flaps in the Night

Police Quest 1 (VGA Remake): Won!

Kyrandia - Final Rating

Missed Classic: Enchanter - Won! and Final Rating

Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 - From A Time when Men were Real Men, Women were Real Women and Small Pulsating Creatures from Planet X were Real Small Pulsating Creatures From Planet X

Police Quest 1 (VGA Remake): Final Rating

Missed Classic 44: Oo-Topos - Introduction (1981 original; 1986 re-release)

Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 - The X Trials

Game 88: Lure of the Temptress (1992) – Introduction

Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 - WON!

Game 89: The Dagger of Amon Ra - Introduction

Missed Classic: Oo-Topos - No Place, And Not Like Home

Lure of the Temptress: Tonight There’s Going to Be a Jailbreak

Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2: Final Rating

The Dagger of Amon Ra - Thoroughly Modern Millie

Lure of the Temptress: Talking To People: The Game

Missed Classic: Oo-Topos - Won! (And Final Rating)