by Alex

Since gender-bending is all the rage these days (though David Bowie was doing it forty years ago), have I got the post for you.

But first, let’s take stock of where Diermot is in his quest to rid Turnvale of the wicked sorceress Selena:

• Captured while on mission with the king 
• Escaped from prison
• Discovered rebellion lead by Luthern the blacksmith 
• Learned that the Goewin, the apothecary, had been kidnapped 
• Found Grub, fellow leader of the resistance 
• Learned that the magician Taidgh had been arrested, but that something in his house may help 

So essentially the first main quest of the game (that is, after escaping from the dungeons), is to rescue Goewin, whom we learned is being held at the Town Hall.

Which is guarded by a Skorl I cannot get past.

There were some other quests in between the points listed above, but the point is—and this is why I’m reiterating them—I actually find myself enjoying Lure of the Temptress’ approach to puzzles. My earlier complaints notwithstanding (and it looks like I’m not the only one experiencing pathfinding issues, though this seems to be more of an issue related to the ScummVM emulator), now that I have more time with the game under my belt, understand the interface and what the developers were trying to do . . . I kind of like it. Commenter Ruy San, who also enjoyed it, described the game as“a nice middlepoint between Sierra and Lucasarts,” and I have to say his assessment is spot on . . . and seems to be intentional on the part of the developers.

But back to the pathfinding . . . look at this screenshot! It’s insane.


Okay, enough background. Here’s how I managed to rescue Goewin from the clutches of Selena. But let me tell you, there was much flailing around at first before the pieces fell into place.

Like I mentioned at the end of the last post, I went around asking everyone about Taidgh. No one had any useful information, and although Grub had given Diermot a lockpick, he apparently had no skills. So in addition to talking to everyone, I tried using every inventory object on every character. The only thing that worked is that Luthern drank the potent liquor in Diermot’s flask that Nellie had given him in thanks for returning her jewel, which was actually made out of paste.

Yeah . . . I just typed that sentence. You have to love adventure games.



Dang, Luthern! You need to get out more!

So now Diermot has an empty flask. I find I can fill it with water from the well at the castle wall, but something bugs me about this. I reload just in case I dead-ended myself. Maybe I need to give the liquor to Luthern later . . . or maybe I need to use it for something else. Still, an empty flask would be helpful, seeing as how the bottle Diermot had shattered in his escape from the dungeons.

Maybe I’m overthinking this. Adventure games will do that to you.

Among other things, I did manage to sneak into the monastery or whatever it is on Blackfriars’ Row by hanging out near the door until one of the monks opened it up. I was . . . underwhelmed.

Every once in a while a monk comes in and tells you that Diermot is interrupting his meditation and that he doesn’t belong there. The only thing I can interact with is the book and, well . . .

I have to say, that’s a pretty funny little gag.

Interesting, but I’m no closer to getting into Taidgh’s house.

So I think back to the manual which was, remember, written by Ratpouch. Something in there tickles my memory . . . in explaining the game’s approach to giving other characters complex commands, Ratpouch uses “giving Ratpouch the sewerage and making him drink the sewerage” as an example. A gross one, but it made me think of the sewerage coming out of the drain Diermot and Ratpouch escaped from. Maybe I need the sewerage?

Bereft of any other ideas, I head back to the drain where Diermot and Ratpouch first embarked on their journey through Turnvale, and guess who I found stuck like a dumb-dumb between screens?

That’s right! Mr. Ratpouch himself!

As an aside, what the hell is a rat pouch? A pouch made of rats? A pouch in which one carries rats? Did Ratpouch get his name by . . . gulp . . . eating rats? Like his stomach is the “rat pouch”?

I . . . need to stop thinking about this so much.

So regarding this issue, commenter Laukku mentioned that he faced a similar issue with Ratpouch getting hung up in the tavern, but that he would find me eventually. Again, this appears to be an emulator issue. BUT, as you can see from the screenshot above, finding the little guy gave me an idea: Diermot might not be handy with a lockpick, but perhaps Ratpouch is!

I “Give” Ratpouch the lockpick, which he accepts. I then “Tell” him to “go to The Market Place” and “Unlock” the “Door.”






And he does! Ratpouch actually gets there before Diermot, so the door is already unlocked, but I want to see it for myself so I reload, find Ratpouch, give him the lockpick and tell him to go to The Market Place, and wait. When I’m there, I give the command to unlock the door.

Alright! Taidgh’s home is open!


Inside is an Alchemist’s apparatus with an oil burner, as described in the diary, and a tap. I futz around with things, but . . .

Oh no . . .

Not again!

That’s right: Although adventure gamers are, to paraphrase commenter Voltgloss’ words, all about OPENING doors, not CLOSING them, the simple solution here is to, once Diermot is in the house, close the damn door! Now I can see what’s going on with the apparatus.

I light the oil burner with the tinderbox, and, although the in-game description makes no mention whatsoever of there actually BEING anything in the burner, a strange mixture starts making its way through the tubing to come out into the flask at the other end of the apparatus.

This end is where the tap is, allowing Diermot to empty the mixture—presumably the potion that let Taidgth change his shape into that of Selena as described in the diary—and save Gowein!

This is really cool puzzle design, actually, and I especially enjoy how the obvious answer—bribing the guard—isn’t what needs to be done. Let’s guzzle this potion and . . .

Oh, wait . . .

The flask is . . . full.

And Diermot can’t just . . . drink the liquor himself or, you know, dump it on the ground.

I have to go and . . . give it to Luthern so he can swig it down.

Bottoms up, Luthern.

Remember what I said about good puzzle design? I have to put an asterisk there, because this is really silly. It’s not quite approaching Sierra levels of moon logic (to be fair, that should be Roberta Williams levels of moon logic), but it’s toeing the line.

I mean, who in their right mind would think that for someone who desperately needs an empty flask to save someone from the clutches of an evil sorceress and her brutal Skorl minions, and who already has a full flask, that the only way to empty said flask would be to give it to a very thirsty (and sweaty) blacksmith.

I mean, it’s just

Anyway, off I went to feed Luthern’s alcohol habit, bring the empty flask back, get a few drops of the red potion, guzzle it down, and voila!

Diermot has a perfect disguise!

The citizens of Turnvale have some . . . interesting reactions.




But the only important thing is that Diermot can get into the Town Hall.



With just a few words to the Skorl, Goewin is free, cleared of all charges per Diermot-as-Selena’s decree.

So here’s where Lure of the Temptress drops the ball in, say, a way that a Quest for Glory game would not. I go back to Luthern, but Diermot makes no mention of the fact that he just rescued Goewin. It’s not a big deal, but it’s a bit silly.

Goewin goes back to her shop as though she hadn’t just escaped a terrible fate. And Diermot is still under the guise of Selena, so Goewin is less-than helpful.




Interestingly, Goewin’s voice makes Diermot’s enchantment shimmer. I had been wondering how to get rid of this disguise. As Diermot can’t talk to Goewin again here, I just walked off-screen and then back into the shop, and it wore off in a poof.

Diermot gets to talk to Goewin now, and falls madly, irreparably in love.


But the first quest is over! Goewin is safe! Let’s see what Luthern has for us next!


Yeah . . . Luthern’s great plans for ridding Turnvale of Selena is to strike symbolic gestures. Scrawling “Selena out!” on the Town Hall sign is what got Goewin arrested and Wulf arrested and tortured to death in the first place. It’s pretty funny, actually, that this is Luthern’s method of resistance, keeping with the game’s relatively light tone. I also like how Luthern discusses this with Diermot with a Skorl right there, as you can see in the screenshot.

Anyway, this opens a new dialogue option when Diermot talks to the various inhabitants of Turnvale: How do we get rid of Selena? And who happens to walk on by but Mallin? And he has another request of Diermot: to return a book to Morkus.

When Diermot asks why Mallin can’t bring it himself, Mallin responds, “I’m being watched! You can’t trust anyone in Turnvale.”

Sounds ominous. Morkus, if you recall, was the guy who sold Goewin out to Selena in the first place. But I don’t know if I can trust Mallin either . . . not that the book is particularly incriminating right now, written in an elegant but indecipherable language.

Anyway, this is the first step in Diermot’s second quest: get rid of Selena. We’ll see how this goes, and if Ratpouch will be of any help yet again.

Inventory: Broken glass, knife, tinderbox, flask of water, book, diary, 6 groats

Session Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Total Time: 3 hours, 55 minutes

Written by Joe Pranevich

Written by Joe Pranevich

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.

After the “fun” that was Infidel, I needed a palate-cleanser. I’ve started looking at Sorcerer already-- and if all goes well, you’ll have the Intro post to that game next week-- but I needed a break. So I hope you will not mind that I use the occasion of my birthday to talk about an important game in my life: Adventure. Ilmari already did a fantastic review of this game (as Missed Classic #2 back in 2014), but he didn’t win in his playthrough. That provides me the flimsiest of excuse to talk about it again, but I’m going to take that excuse!

This story started for me at a different birthday 31 years ago: my mother had given me a copy of Software Country’s Golden Oldies collection for the Commodore 64. Included in that, plus other public domain masterpieces such as Pong and Eliza, was the original 380-point version of Adventure. It may or may not have been the first adventure game I played, but it was certainly the first adventure that I owned legally. I didn’t beat it then-- I still remember my babysitter telling me that no one ever had-- but it remained on my mind. For years, I would pick up the game and play a bit of it. Three years ago, I made a concerted effort to win… but failed. It was time to change that.


Ilmari and others have already retold the history of this game, so I will just recap it in brief: in 1976, Will Crowther created an incomplete prototype of a game which he called Adventure. Although unfinished, it traveled around the nascent ARPANET and inspired some passionate fans. (This original version was rediscovered in 2007 and is playable but not winnable. We may take a deeper look at it at some point in the future.) One such fan was Don Woods who expanded and “completed” the original game-- in order to locate Mr. Crowther to ask his permission and to get the code, he emailed crowther@ every domain name on the internet at that time. Talk about dedication!) This new collaboration would eclipse the original in every way and is now the defacto Adventure.

I cannot possibly narrate this game since I have played so much of it for so long. I am not starting fresh-- in fact prior to picking up the game this time, I already knew how to get the majority of the treasures. The key remaining mysteries were that I never finished mapping the “All Alike” maze or found the Pirate’s treasure. I also had been unable to defeat the dragon before, but some comment along the way spoiled me to that solution. (I wouldn’t have gotten it anyway, I suspect.) I even had to find my old notes because I forgot much of the game so it was a rediscovery.

Introduction to the “Golden Oldies” edition of Adventure

Even though I cannot narrate the game straight through, and I do not want to step on Ilmari’s review from a few years back, I’d like to take some time to talk about some of the parts and the puzzles. This will help to explain the issues that I had trouble with and how I finally solved the game (with a hint).

The opening of the game is classic, but I think that “classic-ness” hides just how amazing it actually is. Adventure sets the ground rules and introduces players to most of the tricks they will need all within the first several rooms. Let’s run it through:

• We begin the game outside near a building, a well-house for a large spring. The introduction and hints tell us that we need to locate the cave and return treasure to the building, so we explore there first. Inside we find all the supplies that we need: a lamp, a set of keys, some food, and a bottle of water. 
• Not far from the building is our first miniature maze, the forest. Only two rooms, but it gives us a flavor of what we might encounter later. 
• When we reach the grate, we have an easy non-puzzle: just unlock it with the keys. By the time we reach here, we should be familiar with the interface and come to understand that we’ll use our inventory objects as tools. We probably have also worked out that we’re going to need to map carefully as going west doesn’t always mean you can return east. 
• Inside the cave is a mostly-linear set of introductory rooms ending at the Hall of the Mountain King, our first “real” puzzle. Along the way, we’ve found everything we need to solve it: a bird, a cage, and a rod with a rusty star on the end. If we’re especially clever, we’ve noticed the magic word “xyzzy” on the wall in the Debris Room and found that it takes us back to the building. That’s not very useful-- it saves only seven steps-- but it clues us in to look for similar magic further in the cave. 
• We might also have found the nugget and realized that we cannot take it up the stairs with us. No way out but forward, right? 
• We know from the introduction that the bird can scare away the snake and that the snake is afraid of the rod. Even though we found the rod first, we have to drop it to collect the bird. Once we do that, we can unleash the bird’s small and feathery fury on the shame. It’s easy and “all in the manual”, but it unlocks the rest of the game for further exploration. Instead of a linear path, we have exits in “all” directions. Time to play! 

The “Cobbles Crawl” (Lynn Brucker, © Cave Research Foundation 2005)

And that, I honestly feel, is a perfect start to the very first adventure ever. In only a handful of rooms and barely more than one puzzle, we know the mechanics of the game and have found our first treasures. It seems easy because there were so many games that came after this, but I can’t think of many that spelled out their own ground rules so well or so quickly, bringing you into the game world and setting you loose. It’s no wonder that mainframe Zork copied the opening recipe almost entirely, including the little forest maze.

I am going to pause here and tell you to please check out ‘Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original "Adventure" in Code and in Kentucky’ by Dennis G. Jerz. Not only is it a fantastic look at the game Adventure, it also features some amazing photographs of locations from the game. I’m not going to link more than this one here because it is much more important for you to go and check out the photos on their site. They really are fantastic.

After the initial section is over, the real heart of the game begins: a massive open-world exploration of more than a hundred confusing rooms and passages. Just mapping what you can access immediately takes forever and there seems to be little rhyme or reason. Like we saw with mainframe Zork, there are a few discrete areas that constitute puzzles on their own, but most of the game is spread quite far around. That means that objects you need for solutions are often far removed from the puzzles that need them. The “trident” that you use to open the clam, for example, is a minimum of ten rooms from the destination. Proximity provides no clues so the game is even more difficult to solve than it might first seem.

Hall of Mists and Long Hall

From here, I’m going to describe more of the puzzles and areas as we come to the end. This isn’t exactly how I solved it since I am decades removed from coming into this game fresh. Instead, consider this something of a simplified description of a line of attack that I followed. Even if you know the answers, the game isn’t necessarily winnable. Many times, I ended up stuck and had to restore because I got myself into a battle with the annoying little dwarves that I just couldn’t win. (The first time to meet them, they throw an axe and run. Every other time, you have to throw the axe back at them with a probability of success. Sometimes you kill them first and sometimes they kill you, but nothing stops an exploration run in its tracks faster than having an army of little dwarves throwing knives at you.

Just to the west and above the Hall of the Mountain King is the first area that some adventurous travelers are likely to explore, where I ended up when I picked up the game again this year. Really clever travelers could have figured out how to get here even before beating the snake, by “waving” the rusty rod at a fissure to create a crystal bridge, but I suspect most new gamers came here by heading west from the snake, pocketing the lovely gold coins on the ground, and exploring.

The main feature of this area is two mazes: the maze of passages All Alike and the maze of passages All Different. Mapping the “all different” maze isn’t terribly difficult if you take good notes with the only secret being a hidden vending machine containing replacement batteries for your brass lantern. The “All Alike” maze is much more difficult to map-- and I only successfully mapped it myself for the first time recently. The maze is huge: 14 “alike” rooms, 11 “dead ends”, and a special “Brink of Pit” room that offers an exit. It’s impossible to get enough items to drop one everywhere but thankfully the “dead ends” are all simple and only connect to a single other room. Once you work that out, you can get away with mapping the rest easily enough.

In addition to diamonds lying near the fissure, the big reward in this section is one you are unlikely to be able to access first. In fact, this is one of the treasures that I missed until just this play through: the pirate’s chest. At random during the game, a pirate will come and steal all your treasure; he tells you that he is taking you to his lair in the maze. Only after that can you find his room in the “All Alike” maze and not only recover any items that you lost, but also pick up his treasure chest. I had a nasty habit of reloading the game every time he stole a treasure from me and so I never found this until well after I had mapped the mazes.

What is a pirate doing underground anyway?

Two Pit Room

Southwest of the Hall of the Mountain King is the next key area, the Two Pit Room and its environs. You can’t really say that this is “next” because you could go just about anywhere else, but I’ll bring it up second because this is where we can explore most profitably without hitting any dead ends that we have to come back to later.

The two pits that the name refers to are an eastern pit containing oil and a western one containing a talking plant right out of Little Shop of Horrors. (The 1986 film that you are thinking of hadn’t come out yet but Crowther and Woods may have been familiar with the original 1960 film.) If you feed the plant water, it grows. The key here is that we have to do it in two trips, coming back when we have located a second source of water. There are more than a few in the labyrinth of tunnels, but a reservoir just to the west and north was my supply of choice. Once you have fed the plant twice, he is large enough that we can climb up to access a new area containing a giant’s golden eggs (from Jack and the Beanstalk) and a rusty iron door. The eggs and their associated magic words (“fee fie foe foo”) will be useful in a later puzzle, but for now we can go back and fetch some oil from the other pit to open the door. Just beyond that is a waterfall and a trident which will also become useful later.

The final curiosity of this section of the maze is trivial: we find a velvet pillow in one room east of the pits and a precious and fragile vase just to the north. We have to return the treasure, of course, but we are clumsy adventurers and would smash the vase if we put it down in the hard ground. Once we find the pillow, we can put it down first and save the vase from an unexpectedly hard landing.

A troll under a bridge.

Troll Bridge

Just beyond and a bit southwest of where we retrieved the trident is the Troll Bridge, another area that is very tricky. I solved this last time I played but I completely forgot and didn’t remember what the solution was until I consulted my old notes. It’s a good one!

When you enter this area, you have to cross a bridge guarded by a troll. He’ll be more than happy to let you through… for a fee. We have to give up one of our treasures! The first time, I used the coins here thinking that it was a choice between the batteries and the troll, but I later learned that the coins are a treasure too. The solution is in a very subtle magic word: “fee fie foe foo”. This incantation doesn’t transport us anywhere, rather it transports the golden eggs back to the giant’s room. How the heck could you discover this by accident? I have no idea. In fact, I have no idea how I figured it out at all since all I had was a note in my map that I did. You’d think I’d remember… In any event, if you give the troll the eggs, we can then fetch them back after we’re done with the section and therefore not lose a treasure. Fantastic!

On the other side of the bridge is an area near a volcano, notable for containing a set of spices (another treasure) and a chained up bear. If we were smart enough to bring the food and some keys along, we can feed the bear to make it friendly and then unchain him with the keys. The golden chain is another treasure. We have to pay another toll on our way back but rather than lose the spices, you can “throw” the bear at the troll to defeat him. I’ve read a number of people complain about this puzzle and while it’s not great, the use of the “throw” verb is in the troll’s dialog and we had to use it earlier to toss him the eggs. Not ideal and it could have been clearer, but I figured it out easily enough. With that, we can defeat the troll to claim two more prizes before using the giant’s magic words to return the lost eggs. We’re making progress!

Don’t trust secondary entrances...

Y2 and Below

Just a bit north of the Hall of the Mountain King is the “Y2” room where we find a rock labeled “Y2” and we hear a voice saying “plugh”. Of course, this is another one of the famous magic words of Adventure and saying that here causes us to warp back and forth to the building. This not only will provide a more convenient exit (I almost always use this one rather than the “xyzzy” one), it also provides us a way out that will allow us to transport the gold nugget that we found in the beginning of the game.

Just below there is a segment in the southeast corner of the maze that contains one of the simpler-but-still-fun puzzles of the game: the clam. We find a series of four sloping rooms where we can vaguely smell seawater. In the third room, we also discover a giant clam but it is closed and we can’t seem to open it. I solved this one by accident: if you try to open it normally, you cannot succeed, but if you have the trident that we discovered, the clam opens easily and a pearl rolls out. It will roll down the ramp and end up two rooms away, but it is easy to head down and pick it up without further difficulty. Other than the connection between the trident (representing Poseidon?) and the clam (representing Venus?), I’m not sure how you’d know to use the items together, but I eventually came across it.

This corner also is home to the “Witt’s End” maze and its Anteroom outside, as well as one of the very unfair puzzles of the game. In the anteroom is a copy of Spelunker Today magazine. It’s not a treasure and we gain nothing by bringing it back to the building; instead, we have to drop the magazine off in Witt’s End. I’m not sure if there is any way to know to do this and the original players supposedly solved this by using a debugger to search through the code. It’s become so well-known now that I knew to do it, but I doubt I could have figured it out on my own-- or even known there was something to find out.

“Witt’s End”, incidentally, is a maze in name only. It’s a single room (which we can easily see when we drop the magazine) and we can’t leave in any direction. If we stay stuck long enough, we will be offered a hint not to go west. I always solved this by going east until I randomly get out but I believe you can do so using other directions as well. This is one of a handful of rooms where random chance plays too much of a role in exploration. (The “Bedquilt” room is another example.) Still, knowing what to do, it’s pretty easy.

This is a plover.

Plover Room

Just to the north of the Two Pit area is a set of puzzles that I had not defeated before but which I conquered now for the first time: the “plover” room. I had learned at some point that “plover” was one of the famous magic words of Adventure, so I cannot claim to have had no help.

Our first interaction with the “plover” area will be when we discover a narrow fissure that is just barely wide enough for us to squeeze through if we drop all of our items. (A second narrow fissure further south cannot be traveled through and I suspect I conflated the two locations mentally.) It sounds like the Coal Mine puzzle from Zork, right? Except here, there is a dim light on the other side and we pick up an emerald. We can even bring the emerald back through the fissure with us! Puzzle solved? Not exactly. There’s also a room to the northeast that is dark and we have no light source. To explore it, we’re going to have to solve the puzzle.

The trick here is that “plover” is a magic word. When used here, it takes us to Y2. Of course, it is very dark so we only hear the voice saying “plugh” to know where we are. I didn’t notice immediately, but it seems that the “plover” magic word has two functions: not only does it take us between the plover room and Y2, it also moves the emerald back to the plover room. (Since I had found the giant’s magic words earlier, I knew that some magic words could affect items but even so this side-effect is obscure and unexpected.) The trick is that we have to do it in two parts: first, using “plover” to access the room while we still have a light source. That lets us into the room just to the northeast to snag a bronze pyramid, another treasure. We can then return that to the building and then head to the plover room the long way to grab the emerald. Since it’s small, we CAN take it back through the fissure with us. This was a fun set of interconnected puzzles, especially as I didn’t realize at first what was making the emerald spring back to its starting position.

Strangely easy to defeat.

The Final Puzzles

If you have been following along, that’s fourteen treasures so far with only one left to go: a rug being guarded by a dragon just southeast of the Hall of the Mountain King. Solving this at first appears to be difficult as none of the weapons we’ve found so far will work. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a cheap joke: we just type “kill dragon” and the narrator asks if we mean with our bear hands. We say “yes” and the dragon is dead. It’s dumb.

But with that, we have defeated the game. Of course, this rapid talking through of the puzzles misses one huge point: this all takes a long time. The map is confusing and while I’ve described areas as being discrete, that’s far from the truth. Getting this far without running out of light is hard even when using the batteries for extra time, it is nigh impossible to do it without using them. The final puzzle in the main game then is the most difficult and requires the most luck: solving the game before the lantern dies the first time.

In my final playthrough, this is the path that I used. I was careful to turn off the lamp each time I returned to the surface because even wasting those turns was too many. Every time I made a mistake or spent too much time getting killed by a dwarf, I restored.

By Deimar

Laura Journal Entry #3" What a day. After just arriving and getting a job I have managed to see the lows and highs of this city in a single day. I have even managed to get into a high class fundraiser party in a fancy museum. Sadly, the party ended when I discovered the corpse of the main guest inside a sarcophagus. Well, sadly and lucky for me, as I have a feeling this story will sell a lot of newspapers and there doesn’t seem to be another reporter here. The only caveat to that plan is that somehow I am now trapped with the other guests in the museum and I think I am starting to smell blood in the air”

I didn’t remember it when changing from chapter 1 to chapter 2, but when starting chapter 3 I got a message telling me “Excellent work. Your father would be proud of you”. That is an encouraging message, as I have previously doubted having gathered all the necessary information. I might not be going that bad (although Ilmari has pointed out some things I missed in chapter I). My only question is if that message is always the same or depends upon a hidden score.

Doing the interrogation with everyone listening surely produces wonderful results

In any case, chapter 3 starts with Laura in the main hall, where the fundraiser party was held, waiting for O’Riley and Wolf to finish interrogating all the staff and guests regarding the murder of Dr. Carter. When all of them leave, Laura is approached by a man called Ernie Leach, who tells her that he and Dr. Carrington have the only keys to the museum and that if we want to leave we just have to ask him. He also warns Laura to not get caught downstairs unless she wants to make Wolf go mad(der).

Afterwards, Laura asks O’Riley what have he learnt about the murder but, keeping on character, neither Wolf nor the detective say anything remotely useful. And so, Laura decides to get her hands dirty and solve the murder herself. Hurrah?

Now we regain control of our protagonist and the first thing I noticed is that there are several characters walking through the museum. Specifically, the countess and Dr. Carrington. None of them have anything interesting to say but to provide an alibi for the murder. We will see about that. But for the moment, following the countess leads to the picture gallery, where the only remarkable thing is that there is a picture with a blinking spot. Closer examination with the magnifying glass shows that there is a key inside the paint. How on earth did they manage to encrust a key inside a painting and why is beyond my comprehension at the moment, as is the possibility of releasing it.

There is a key encrusted in the barrel full of gold. You have to have pixel-perfect precision to click on it. Such fun!

The next room contains a sculpture of Rodin’s The Thinker and four exits. Two galleries up north, with the one on the left leading to the paintings we just left, a door on the right and an exit south. I have to say that I get a little loss with the exits available in any given room. Sometimes there is no indication that there can be an exit in one side of the screen, and the only way of discovering if there is one is because the cursor changes to an arrow. But it doesn’t always change. For example, doors are except to that rule, even considering you don’t have to “use” them. And the graphics not always do a good job indicating that a room has an exit.

Anyway, when Laura walks through the room, she hears some voices from behind the door. I tried to spy through it by looking at the door, using it (it was conveniently closed), speak to it… but to no avail. That’s when I had my Scooby Doo moment and thought of using the glass I picked up at the party tables. Surprisingly, it worked. I guess that is going to be this chapter’s eavesdropping and we will be doing plenty of it. The two voices belong to Yvette and Dr. Mykos, who are having a conversation in Yvette’s office, but when things are getting interesting we suddenly can’t hear them anymore. Because reasons. No, really. We can’t hear it because suddenly they decide to whisper.

Yeah, I have a feeling a reporter might be eavesdropping behind the door using a glass as a magnifier so let’s whisper everything we say

Exiting the room via the other gallery takes us to a giant pillar with a very obvious secret door, but I couldn’t open it at the moment. Taking the south route took me to Dr. Myklos’s office. The office is as interesting as the office of a death-obsessed Egyptologist can be. There is a living cobra; some dissected animals; skeletons; a copy of the rosetta stone, although just half the stone, containing the translation of the letters n to z to hieroglyphics, which Laura writes down into her notebook; and a board with an Egyptian text that I can’t translate as I am missing several symbols. I really hope I won’t have to speak with someone forming words with them or translate the board, as it is 2 pages worth of text. It looks tedious. Also, that is a pretty inaccurate representation of the rosetta stone, but I will give it a pass, as I am glad I won’t have to learn ancient greek to play this game.

Get. Off. My. Steve!!

There is also a snake repellent, but when Laura tries to take it, Dr. Myklos appears to get ahead of her and take it. She says that there are a lot of snakes in the basement and that she uses it so she can work downstairs. This “downstairs” seems to me like the place to be, as the characters keep commenting on it. So when she leaves, Laura follows her. In The Thinker’s room she hears a noise coming from the pillar room, but when we go there there is nothing. I went back to the thinkers and started messing with everything as the pillar room is completely devoid of any objects. And voila, the head can be moved to reveal the a passage in the pillar room. We can see some stairs going down and a lamp. With a broken light bulb, mind you. Not everything is going to be easy around here. I suspected the result, but I tried to get down in the dark anyway.

Our intrepid reporter!! Unable to go down some stairs in the dark!!

Well, one step forward, but now I was stuck with basically nothing to go on. I went back and tried to go into Yvette’s office. She wasn’t there anymore and had conveniently left the door open. The first thing that caught my attention was a desktop lamp. Laura couldn’t take the bulb as it was on. After turning it off, it was too hot. It is all complains with this girl. I decided that the best course of action would probably be to do something else and wait for it to cool down. Nothing else seems interesting in the room, although you can play with a paper guillotine.

Leaving through a door to the right leads to Dr. Carrington’s office. But as soon as Laura enters she hears some voices coming from Yvette’s. And guess what, it is Yvette trying to sack Najeer. Although she does mention something interesting. Apparently, she showed Najeer a secret passage in the museum so he could celebrate some ceremonies.

I wish I can meet such a passionate tour guide at some point in my life

After the conversation, it is time to search the office. Looking at the nearby fireplace provided a piece of coal. Just what I was looking for. Watching McGyver has taught me the value of using carbon based substances to reveal hidden texts. And behold, we can finally read whatever was written in Dr. Carter’s notebook. And it is just his schedule for the evening. An appointment with Yvette at 8 in the Egyptian room, another with Tut at 10 at the same place and a final one with Dr. Carrington at 11 in his office. That would mean that the hour of death should be around 8, as there was a blood mark of a woman’s shoe at the scene, and unless Yvette decided to go back, that would mean that the murder took place before their date. That also probably means that Tut’s ankh is a red herring to throw us off the trail of the real murderer, but maybe I am reading too deep in all of this.

Continuing the search, I found a telephone with the line completely cut; a phone book; Dr. Carrington’s schedule for the night (he has an appointment with the countess and Ziggy at 1 AM at the medieval armor display); a communicator; and a desk clock. There is a communicator in each of the offices we have already visited, but none of the other ones seems to work. However, this one has way more buttons than the others, suggesting this is the master one, but I was not able of making it work.

I went back to Yvette’s and now I was able of taking the bulb, which in turn allowed me to repair the lamb over the stairs and go down. I don’t know what I was expecting but it definitely was not a marble hall with a “break in case of emergency” glass. Well, Laura and I are definitely the kind of humans that consider a murder a case of emergency, and a 60 million years old dinosaur bone as good a hammer as anything else way less valuable. The prize for our uncivilized behaviour is an oil lamp. Ok, I guess we will be visiting someplace dark in the future, but at the moment we don’t have any use for it. As I was considering which exit to take, there are two doors here, a ferret appeared. Yeah, a ferret. Go figure. I couldn’t do anything before it disappeared and left me wondering if this was a King Quest V rat saving instance. I might resort to violence if it is.

Taking the door to the north leads to Wolf’s office. To emphasize his role as the weapon obsessed naz.. german, the room is full of weapons hanging from the walls. There are very few items of notice here. The most obvious one is a mousetrap in the middle of the room, with a cable leading to a picture on the wall. Trying to take the cheese used as bait leads to…

Come on! Not even Wile E. Coyote would make such a trap

The rest of the room can also lead to ludicrous deaths, as touching any of the weapons electrocutes Laura. There is a library behind the desk containing all kinds of books on weapons and violence, and the desk has the sempiternum communicator, which is not working. So, a dead end.

Taking the other exit advances the clock to 10.15. The room behind is a storage for… animals kept in murky liquids? It is kind of creepy, with a complete lab for preservation but nothing much else. There are two doors here, one to the east and one north. The east one is Ernie’s office, but he is busy right now taking a close look at Yvette’s Eiffel tower. A tattoo in her tight. This woman is insatiable. This time around however, there is some juicy information. Apparently, Ernie is a gambling addict and is deep in debt with some guy called the icepick. He is doing some fencing jobs for a Big Al, which allows him to avoid the wrath of the icepick. He is not worried about him, in spite of him leaving threatening messages, as Ernie won’t be able to pay if he is killed. However, he confesses that he is quite afraid because this night he has seen something he wasn’t supposed to. And with that, a character introduced 30 minutes ago gets ahead in the race for having stolen the dagger. It actually makes quite sense, as he is the person who could take the dagger without activating any alarms or breaking anything and also be able of leaving the dagger in the gift shop.

I don’t think this is the kind of game where I can join in but… Can I? Please?

The door at the back leads to a storage room where Dr. Myklos is looking for her ferret, Daisy, to feed her. Cool, a quest!. At last!. She kicks us but now I had a suspicion regarding that missing ferret and the cheese in the mouse trap. Before you say anything, I am completely aware that ferrets are carnivorous, but seeing as this is a Sierra game and the cheese is the only piece of food I have seen, it is probably the right answer. After going back to Wolf’s office, I tried a few things with the mousetrap until using the bone did the trick.

By this point I was thinking about nominating the bone as the most useful item in the game, but after waiting for a while for the ferret to appear again in the first room of the basement and wandering around the museum when I got bored, I was reminded again of the true star of the game. The glass. Yvette is at it in her office again, this time showing her Eiffel tower to detective O’Riley, who seems a little… possessive. The kind of guy with trusting issues, access to a gun, and some interesting opinions regarding the morality of taking bribes and looking the other way. Could the detective have murdered Dr. Carter because he found out he was seeing Yvette? Or is he just a sellout?.

No, thank you. I am not that desperate to get in bed with O’Riley. I will wait for your next conquest, Yvette.

I was so enthralled with the story in this part of the museum that I must confess I couldn’t remember how to reach the area where the Egyptian exhibit was. Even to the point of thinking the game was playing with the map and had barred me from accessing that area. So after several embarrassing minutes of wandering around doing nothing I managed to get to the dinosaur exhibit and…

Come on, Laura. Give me your best surprised yet glamorous look!

Murder! Well, kind of. There is a headless body lying in the middle of the room, but the way he died is a bit… strange. Judge yourself:

This one is easy. The giant winged reptile did it!

Detective work proved to be inconclusive. The only details worth mentioning are that the tuxedo is a rent, that the corpse smells of champagne and has stains smelling of turkey. There is also a loose wire hanging from the pterodactyl but at the moment I couldn’t do anything with it. Close examination of the neck provides details about whatever was used to cut it, as it seems its main purpose was not cutting necks. Here immediately I thought of the paper guillotine but that seems a little impractical. The clock advances to 11.15.

I tried to interrogate the wandering characters, mostly Yvette and the countess. Yvette didn’t have anything useful to say, but the countess acted suspicious after being asked about Ziggy, in a way that made me think that was the corpse with the back ache, making the countess the prime suspect for that murder.

Ziggy’s dea… deceas… sleeping with the fis… a fine person?

I started wandering around the museum myself. While exploring the Egyptian exhibit I discovered the body of Dr. Carter was not there anymore, probably moved by the police between trying to see the Eiffel tower and work a bit for a change, and that I had missed the first half of the rosetta stone. Now I was ready to decypher any Egyptian text. However, after checking the board at Dr. Myklos’s and realizing I would have to make the translation myself, I decided against and keep on wandering, to the next murder.

What is with this game and deaths by desiccated animal?

It seems like this time it is Dr. Carrington the one who has bitten the dust. The clock in his desk is now broken at 12.04, suggesting the death was very recent (I have not been commenting on every time passing event). The letters C.P. are written with blood on the desk, and his index finger is covered in the liquid, so it is safe to assume he wrote them. The only person with those initials is Dr. Pippin Carter, but as he is dead and a P.C. and not C.P. I don’t think that’s what Carrington meant.

It was close to 1.00 and the date of Dr. Carrington with the countess and Ziggy. Seeing as two of the three people meeting are probably dead, I was curious as if the countess would appear, but on the way there I met Tut. He didn’t say much, but admitted to having lost his ankh. When I reached the medieval exhibit, I hid behind the tapestry as before and soon enough the time advanced and the countess appeared carrying something huge.

Are you carrying a painting or are you just happy to see me?

After waiting for a while, the countess decided to leave. I think this proves that Ziggy is the dead man in the dinosaur exhibit. But then, why would his killer still appear at the appointment? Does this mean that she doesn’t know about the murder of Dr. Carrington?

I went back to his office to look for more clues about what the appointment could be about, when Tut and Yvette entered her office. She had asked Tut to help move her desktop to cover an ugly red stain. Apparently, he owes her, as she let him in when he was not allowed and for keeping his secret. Yvette seems like a spider in the middle of a web connecting all guests. Anyhow, he cuts himself while moving the desk and both of them leave to Tut’s place. Wherever that is as he is a traveling Egyptologist. At Yvette’s, the guillotine is full of a suspicious red liquid, and after touching it, the blade falls over the desk. However, before I could do any more investigating, I was interrupted by Dr. Myklos who unceremoniously kicked me off the office.

I think Dr. Myklos is onto something here...

She told me Yvette had gone to see Ernie, so I went down there to see if I could pick up any more information. To my surprise, Yvette was not there so it was the perfect opportunity to finally interrogate the handyman. Apparently, we were trapped inside the museum as the keys were missing, so it is not like he had anything better to do. There are only two interesting things in his conversation. The first of them is that detective O’Riley is constantly dropping grape stems everywhere. He is no the first person to mention that, so I take the hint and write it down. The second is that he is a veteran from the Great War and thus doesn’t like Wolf that much. That piece of information is not that interesting, but if you see what he has to say about the other characters, that is quite a monologue.

Yes. Very peaceful at night. If you ignore the tens of people running around, making love, killing each other… Perfect job for a quiet man!

Dr. Myklos is no longer in the back storage room, so we can finally see what’s there. There is a trunk under a table, with an inscription saying it belongs to Dr. Carrington. So finally, after quite a few hours in, we get to see the famous corpse-filled trunk. Sadly, it is locked. Other things of interest in the room are an empty bottle of oil snake and some meat in a freezer. Maybe I was too hasty with the cheese theory. Time to find the ferret. But first, I decided to fill the bottle with some oil in the preservation room.

I started looking for the ferret until I got bored and then started revisiting locations and clicking on everything. At Dr. Carringtons, I discovered that there is a safe behind a picture. After playing with the combination for a while, I realized that it was a 4 digits number, just like the numbers in Carrington’s phone book. I had discarded the list of names and numbers the first time I saw it because it seemed like a practical joke. The first initial of each name spells the word Tribune and there are names like R. Williams and I. Diditt which are obvious puns. But this time there was a name that caught my attention: B. Sayff. And so the safe was opened. Inside was the diary of the previous owner of the museum, the late count. He was very afraid of the countess, as he suspected her of only marrying for his wealth and now trying to get rid of him, with a passing mention to Yvette saying “Yvette fears her too”.

Well, back to wandering every single room again. The prize this time is finding that Ernie’s is empty, which allows our little kleptomaniac to ransack everything not nailed down. Starting with the snake catcher in the floor, something tells me I will be catching snakes rather sooner than later, and a pair of wire cutters. While we are there, Dr. Myklos uses the communicator to tell Ernie to check on VAT 13, as there seems to be a problem. I was expecting another body, but after poking the container with a net Laura retrieves the dagger of Amon Ra, the real one. Hurrah!

I think they are making mutants here. I fully expect wolverine to be in one of these tanks

But now I was again at a loss at what to do next. Back to walking I guess… While passing through the painting gallery, I decided to try to remove the key from the picture with the dagger, which worked quite well. I am surprised the solution to that was so simple. The only thing locked I have found are a door next to the medieval exhibit and the trunk, so it was time to try both of them. It turned to be the trunk, but nothing in a Sierra game can be as easy as just opening something with its key. As soon as it is open, a group of carnivorous beetles gets out and eats Laura. Now I know where The Mummy writers got the idea. I tried several things until I realized the solution had to be the meat (sorry, Daisy). But the window of opportunity is really small so I had to try several times before managing to give them enough food to forget about the skinny reporter. Inside the trunk, the cleaned bones of a man with clear signs of forceful strangulation (is there any other kind of strangulation?) with a watch dedicated to Dr. Carrington III. Meaning that as we suspected, the now deceased Dr. Carrington was an impostor. 1.45. This night is dark and full of terrors.

That diet really works wonder on your figure...

Going back to the thinkers room, Yvette and O’Riley are having an argument, as he knows she has been shagging some other men (if he only knew the truth, that it is ALL other men) and she knows that he had something to do with the burglary of the dagger, as Ziggy told her. Wandering some more around, I finally discovered how to use the communicator at Carrington’s office. There is one button to turn it on and off, another to change the mode from listening to speaking, and one for each room you want to communicate with. This allowed me to listen to some conversations, but it was just Myklos and Wolf getting along and Yvette and O’Riley doing the same. Got to wonder how many conversation have I missed and if I could have listened every time the characters decided to speak low to avoid eavesdropping.

I managed to track the countess and confront her about the pocketwatch. She was terribly upset and tried to take it, but Laura didn’t let her (should be careful now, she could be the next victim). After going back to the stairs to the basement the clock turned 2.00. At Ernie’s I discovered a button on the wall that opened a secret passage at the back storage room. Of course, going inside produced the expected result.

This darkness is more dangerous than in Zork

After turning on the lamp and going in the passage it led me to the Egyptian room. I think this enforces the theory that it was Ernie the one who took the dagger, in spite of the conversation between Yvette and O’Riley. Maybe he was working for the detective, but it had to be Ernie the one who took it from the case. Not that it matters because when reaching the first screen of the dinosaur exhibit we find him death. But first a look at Laura’s expression:

By this point she is so used to it that it gets boring

And now the corpse:

He should join the gymnastic team. Such flexibility!

Looking at the body, Laura finds some animal hair smelling of alcohol and his shoes are damp, which to me suggest he tried to recover the dagger from VAT 13 and after not finding it, whoever he had a meeting with to hand out the dagger was not very happy. 2.15. Laura immediately encounters Wolf and O’Riley at the gallery and tells them about the murderer. Only the last one, as the other corpses must had not been important to her. Wolf naturally gets a little suspicious about the reporter that keeps finding corpses wherever she goes, but that goes nowhere and Act 4 starts.

After having found three consecutive corpses I would also suspect her. I might even jail her, just in case...

I have mixed feelings about this part to be honest. It seems to me like all I have done is wander through the museum and finding things to do by mere chance. However, it is oddly satisfying finding more and more information about these characters and the questions I have regarding the case. Like for example, why cut Ziggy’s head? Where is it? Did Dr. Carted die because he knew too much or because he saw something he wasn’t supposed to? Will Steve turn out to be the bad guy after taking advantage of Laura? Who will visit Yvette’s Eiffel tower next?

Session Time: 1h30m
Total Time: 6h36m

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

By Deimar

Laura Journal Entry #4 "Ok, ok. I have to get out of this museum. People are dropping like flies. First Dr. Carter, and then everyone else. I am starting to believe I am the murderer as I seem to be the only living soul around here. But I will soldier on and see the end of these murderers or I am not called Laura Bow!”

Who would have thought? It really seems like Yvette cared for Ernie. We start this chapter at her office trying to comfort her. She repeats the bit about Ernie being chased by Icepick, a loan shark, but that’s something we already knew. What surprised me in that conversation is that Laura reprimands Yvette for spending too much time with her Steve. I mean, we have seen her with Ernie, O’Riley, Tut, Najeer… basically the entire male cast but for Steve. I really must have missed something along the way…

And immediately after leaving her to her woes, we find the thought but sensitive stevedore-by-day artist-by-night Steve at The Thinker, talking with Dr. Myklos. He comments that the paintings in the gallery are all fake, but Laura doesn’t want to have any of it and presses on about all the women he has been with tonight. And just when Laura is about to get really mad at him, Yvette comes rushing to cry on his shoulder, taking him inside. That’s a short mourning period. Obviously, I couldn’t let the french blonde to get away with our Steve, so I used the old glass on the door trick™ to listen to them. Well…

Mon dieu! Let’s shout some more easily misinterpreted things so we can provoke a hilarious situation!

Curiously, that IS the same face she used when looking at a dead corpse. Maybe we will find Steve’s soon and we will be pretty sure of who did that

Yes, I will leave you alone so you can keep grasping her neck with your hands. It is not as if there have been several murders this night and Steve hasn’t been seen in a while...

After that I went to the gallery and realized that all of the descriptions explicitly say how fresh the paint looks. So maybe the countess was smuggling the real pictures with the help of Ziggy and the fake Carrington, but then.. why would she want to marry him for his fortune? The reasoning took me nowhere and I was at a loss about what to do next. So I went to do some wandering but after a while I got bored and decided it was as good a time as any other to translate the Egyptian texts in Dr. Myklos:

I.PAY.HOMAGE.TO.THEE.YE.L ORDS.OF.ETERNITY.RA.ST RONG.IS.THY.SAIL.IN.THE.WI ND.AS.THE.LAKE.OF.FIR E.IN.THE.UNDERWORLD.BE HOLD.SHU.THE.MOTHER.C REATNIG.THE.GODS

IN.SILENCE.FROM.HER.WO MB.QUICKER.THAN.GREYH OUNDS.AND.FLEETER.T HAN.LIGHT.LET.ME.NOT BE.BUNRT.LET.ME.NOT.BE CONSUMED.LET.ME.NOT PERISH.AS.MY.MUMMY.LIES.P ROSTRATE.IN.MY.TOMB

That was definitely a good use of my time. Therefore, I decided to keep walking in order to find the next action that would make time pass by. It might seem I am just trying to find those triggers, but I feel like there is a lack of clues to chase in this game that is a bit worrying. Half the time I don’t even know why I do the things I do. For example, the next time jump occurs when reaching the basement room full of tanks with animals. But there is nothing that triggers it, simply walking and nothing seems to have change. But when going back upstairs to Yvette, we find her room completely trashed.

I knew she was not a natural blonde!

There is not that much left in the room. A high-heel and a piece of Yvette’s dress seems to indicate that the poor soul has probably abandoned the realm of the living and trapped in a museum. There are some some ginger hairs in the table, but I seriously doubt Dorian is the guilty part, as he has been pushed too far to be Laura’s love interest and I do not think this is the kind of game that would make him the “baddy”.

I went to explore but it didn’t take me too long to notice a new addition to the picture gallery: a plastered figure of a woman. Suspecting foul play, I decided to make use of the old, literally, glass breaker of a bone I’ve been carrying around and uncover the ugly truth under the plaster.

A girl is dead. Delacroix. Yvette Delacroix. She is covered in plaster. White plaster.

It seems like she was strangled using her own hosiery. Well, tough luck. Life is hard and shit happens. One moment you are chasing our Steve, and the next you are covered in plaster and exposed in a picture gallery as a sculpture, a sure way of drawing attention to the fact that there is a decaying corpse in the middle of the room. Ces’t la vie.

And here I had some problems with saves that I don’t fully understand, but I will try to explain. I went to the medieval exhibit and found one of Steve’s boots, suggesting he has probably gone the way of the dodo too. Na, don’t think so, he has writer’s immunity. In any case, going back to The Thinkers shows a cutscene where we can see the countess going completely blue on top of Dr. Myklos’s desk, and the aforementioned doctor interrogating her about what are her needs. At some point I started to think I had fallen asleep and woken up in them middle of a Looney Toons cartoon.

May I remind you that this is the same death and violence obsessed doctor that has been talking about death all night?

The doctor rushes off the office to seek for detective O’Riley, as those seem to be the last words of the late countess, when she encounters Laura and explains the situation, suggesting that countess presents the symptoms of having been injected with a snake’s poison. Jeez, I wonder which or whose snake could that have been…

Lucky for us, Laura is an expert of finding lost prone-to-kill objects!

When we enter the office, Laura is attacked by Myklos’s cobra. I didn’t know what to do at that moment and got killed. And here is where I lost track of the boot. I was barred from saving once inside the office, so I had to replay a good portion of the game, basically from when I discovered Yvette’s corpse, but when I got back to the medieval exhibit I didn’t find it. I do not know if I encountered a glitch or if I missed a time passing event but the boot was no more. However, while I was there I started to think about how I hadn’t been able of finding Ziggy’s head in the mask room and that it could have been hidden inside one of the suits of armor. And voila!!

Well, not the death man’s head I was looking for, I should probably leave it alone…

Dr. Pippin’s… I wonder if that has been there the whole time and what does it mean. I assumed the body would have been retrieved by the police, but seeing it is here and nobody ever mentioned it being lost… I guess the theory of O’Riley being the killer is right on the money. He is the one that found the corpse after me and the most interested in not involving any other cop. That also would explain Yvette’s dead, as we saw him being a complete and jealous jerk. That would also explain Ernie’s, although if he helped the detective stealing the dagger that could be another motive. Ziggy probably knew his dirty laundry. But why kill the countess (although she did whisper his name before dying)? And Steve? Dr. Carter? The last two probably for jealousy, but I can’t find a motive to kill the countess. Or Carrington…

Well, back to trying to fight the snake. We have been carrying a complete “catch-the-snake”™ kit so it is not that difficult. You have to use the snake oil on her first to scare her and then use the snake-catcher to put her back into her cell, but it took me several tries as you have to use the oil until the bottle is depleted. In any case, now there are no poisonous reptiles (by the way, the reptiles are now winning the death pool by 2 to 1 over everything else) we can try to help the countess…

She looks younger now. Maybe I should try that lifting technique…

The counted died from a snake bit on her ankle. Laura finds some grapes next to the desk, which supports the theory of having been killed by O’Riley, and some smelling salts after looking into her hair… Yes, you heard me right, smelling salts in her hair. I guess that was a thing in the 20s.

Leaving the room now begins Act 5, which teleports Laura to the mammoth room where we found Ernie with a hooded maniac chasing her with a spiked cub. So if you are like me and right now are asking yourself how on earth did we reach this point from leaving Myklos’s office I have only one thing to say. I have no idea. No, really. This is beyond rushed. Why make this jump? Why teleport Laura this way? Does it serve a purpose other than having a chase scene? It is totally disorienting starting the act in a completely different room, with the music running wild and then seeing the hooded figure approach Laura. Not to mention, you are not allowed to save at this moment, and I was allowed in Myklos’ office. So every time I died I had to restart from before dealing with the snake, investigate the countess’ body, and try a new thing to avoid being killed by the murderer. And believe me, it took me too long to realize what I had to do.

The thing is, the murderer chases Laura into the dinosaur exhibit where Ziggy’s body was found, and taking any exit from this room leads to death. It took me a while to realize that, like in Lure of the Temptress, the solution is obvious. Well, a little less obvious than in Temptress, but the same solution nonetheless. Close the door, and tie the knobs together with the wire from the pterodactyl that you can cut with the wire cutters from Ernie’s office. Simple, but not a permanent solution. Although the silver lining is that now we can save. The next room is the medieval exhibit, but what to do here was more straightforward, as the first time I entered this room I noticed the door can be barred. Not that it matters, as Laura seems to be chased by a cybernetical system coming from the future that has no respect for blocked doors.

You always lose at hide-and-seek, don’t you?

In any case, it does give you more time to experiment what to do next. Going to the mask gallery does nothing, and going north leads to the Egyptian exhibit. I tried hiding in a sarcophagus, but Laura just steps out when the killer is near. After trying hiding behind the tapestry again and in a chest, I started to focus my attention at the old locked door with the “Employees only” lettering. You can’t open the door, but you can try and open the transom over it. Well, you have to move a chair next to the door to reach the window but then you can open and close it. I didn’t notice anything changing, nor I could go inside the room through it, but when hiding in the sarcophagus again, the murderer didn’t find Laura. When going outside the sarcophagus, she hears a noise like an angry multiple-murderer hooded figure breaking a door.

So I went back to that door and now was open. I guess the killer thought Laura had sneaked through the transom and broke in to see if she was there, and then left south when he found nothing. In any case, inside the room there is a crane and several boxes. Operating the crane puts a box against the now broken door. I don’t think that will do too much, as you can clearly still go under it, but it is something. A for effort. Behind another box at the far right side there is a hidden door, leading to a lift that takes us to the basement where the museum stores his sarcophaguses. Yes, that right, there is a room full of sarcophaguses in the museum.

But the awesomeness of PU II, the mummy of a teddy bear will make this moment more bearable

As soon as Laura steps off the lift, it goes up for the terminator. I immediately close the door and try to block it with a sarcophagus, but that is not the answer to this riddle. The answer is to open one of them, take the mummy inside and use it to block the door. Which is obviously the sensitive thing to do, as the mummy will hold better than a chunk of wood and metal… But now I was trapped, with no apparent exit at hand. I clicked on everything, looked at everything and even started to wonder if I had dead-ended myself when my pixel hunter provided the answer, as the sarcophagus left of the door has a snake in its forehead that can be moved with the snake catcher to unlock the sarcophagus. Neat. And then we change the movie and suddenly we find ourselves in this.

Now, I know I have said this a lot in this game but this time is for real… can I join in?

Talk about getting out the frying pan… We find Najeer and the cult of Ra, ready to kill the reporter before she can tell the world that there is a cult. I am perfectly happy of belonging to a club whose first rule is not to talk about the club, but they don’t seem to inclined to let me in. But when Laura makes a point saying that ancient Egyptians didn’t make human sacrifices, they reconsider the proposal and let Laura leave as long as she can answer the riddle of Ra. This has been mentioned by some of the characters but I didn’t give them any attention. The riddle is split into two parts, the first is:



Of course, you have to answer using the hieroglyphs. I admit that I didn’t solve the first one by myself, as I had some help from my wife. But once the first one was solved, the second one is pretty obvious and stays on the subject. So with the riddle solved, Najeer let us leave after Laura promises not to tell anyone about the crazy Egyptian cult making sacrifices under the museum in a secret chamber. Thinking about it, kind of makes senses she makes the promise. It is not as if someone is going to believe that...

I knew it wasn’t you!! And even in spite of your complete lack of personality I will always love you!!

The next room takes us to the boiler room, where we find an unconscious Steve. And this is another puzzle that took me way too long to figure out. You can give the salts to Steve to revive him. But after a while he stands up and then falls into the ground, not making a single comment or movement afterwards. Exploring the room reveals that there is a picture of Osiris that could be moved… by two persons. Ok, I get the hint. There is a boot in the floor (which I guess wouldn't be here if I had taken it back at the medieval exhibit) and he is missing a boot. Maybe he can’t walk due to the lack of footing gear. But I can’t give him anything right now. So I reload and try again, but I don’t seem to be fast enough to give him the boot or putting it on him while he is unconscious. Until in one of the tries I managed to give him the boot before he stands up. You see, when you look at the floor, Laura says it is too hot. So my best guess is that he can’t take the hotness and collapses. Or something. I don’t really think this puzzle is very well designed, it seems a bit flimsy. Now I realize that I might have had problems because I was playing at maximum speed, but in any case, that’s a poor excuse for a puzzle.

In any case, with the two of them now capable of working together, they move the mural and discover a hole in the wall. Going inside the darkness surprisingly does not kill you. Not immediately at least, because the tunnel is full of cobras. And not of the kai variety. Laura still keeps some oil, so this one is easy. It is the next screen that proves to be more difficult. The next part of the tunnel is the end, but the tunnel is blocked by a pack of rats. Even more pressing, there are some gunshot noises coming from behind, which proves that you can’t send a cult of Ra to do the work of a reporter. We still keep the cheese from the mousetrap in Wolf’s office, but using it with the rats leads to another glorious dead. Did I mention that after entering the boiler room you can’t save? How I hate this game…

Thank you captain obvious. What tipped you? The gunshots? I bet it was the gunshots!

After a few tries, I finally found the solution, which is to throw the cheese through one of the windows you can see in the image. Taking the other as an exit throws Laura and Steve into the dinosaur exhibit, via the throat of the talking T-Rex. I don’t even know where the other window is supposed to lead. In any case, Steve blocks the exit, so there is just one thing left to do. Push the button and let the T-Rex talk. And boy he does…

I think there is something in your teeth…

And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you meddling kids and your stupid giant talking reptile!

We are actually not shown the face of O’Rile… I mean… the murderer. By this point he is the only character alive but for Tut, and he doesn’t seem to be fit enough, so he has to be the killer. But that’s for the coroner to decide, as Act 5 ends and Act 6 begins, which consist in an interview with the coroner in front of everyone and their mothers so they can laugh at me and my pity attempts at detective work.

The coroner first asks about all of the murderers and although I think I have the killer figured out, he also asks for the motive behind each killing. So my best bet is jealousy for the males and Yvette and to cover another crime for the countess. Then we are asked about the skeleton in the trunk, which is easy as he is definitely the true dr. Carrington. When asked about his killer, there was only a name I didn’t recognize in the list: Watney Little. So that’s one thing for sure I totally missed, but that has to be Dr. Carrington’s killer as shown in the introduction.

The coroner keeps asking questions, but the only one that produced a result was answering the countess when asked about a scheme to steal paintings from the museum. However, when asked about her male associate, I answered Ziggy and got chastised, saying that he was not in fact her collaborator and that I should have confronted her in the medieval exhibit with a prove that her partner had been killed. So I guess the answer to that is to show her the watch or something else from fake Carrington and she will spill the beans about this Watney Little character.

In any case, apparently I failed miserably, as the coroner told me to not ever interfere again with a police investigation and got kicked from the newspaper too. The ending here is a bit dark, to be honest, describing Wolf taking his life for his failure, Myklos taking to solitude, Dr. Carter’s ghost chasing Laura for not recovering the dagger (a lie!!) nor his murder, Tut committing suicide also… Oh, and one night a dark figure enters Laura’s room and guns her down. And this one is actually animated, so you can reflect further on your failures

So… any other suicide that could be attributed to Laura?

Although strictly speaking I have beaten the game, I have decided to replay the game in DosBox to see the differences with the ScummVm version and to see if I can uncover more clues that allow me to beat this coroner senseless!

Session Time: 1h54m
Total Time: 8h30m

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

If you have kept up to date with this playthrough, I have played The Dagger of Amon Ra to completion but failed miserably to answer the coroner’s questions. As I played the version of the game sold by GoG which uses ScummVM, I thought it a good time to replay the game using DosBox to try and beat the game and see the differences between the two versions. In that regard, there are not that many.

The first and most obvious one is, as Laukku pointed out, that there is no option to have both sound and text during the game. You have to choose one of them. Given that the quality of the recordings is not that great, that is more of a feature than something you can really miss but it is an odd option to leave out of the game. In fact, this time I played with only text to shorten the experience and because I don’t really think you are missing that much without the voices. I didn’t notice any other major differences but for a myriad of bugs, but I am not even sure this affects only the DosBox version. But I will get to them while recounting the game.

My plan for this second playthrough was to try and discover what I had missed by being a bit more thoughtful and persistent and not simply accepting time jumps as they come. Also, I just went ahead and read Illmari’s clues and a walkthrough after considering being “done” with every time slot so I don’t have to replay the whole game if I miss something crucial. Let’s see.




Act 1. Laura Bow: A Nose for News

Resume: Laura arrives at New York, gets a job at the Tribune covering the theft of the Dagger of Amon Ra from the Leyendecker Museum. She asks the detective in charge of the burglary, detective O’Riley, who turns out to be an arrogant misogynistic useless man and doesn’t seem to give a damn about the burglary. Also, he is the killer, but you should know that already if you have been paying attention. In any case, we meet other members of the cast such as Ziggy, a man with a shady reputation, and Steve Dorian, a stevedore who I still don’t know why is involved in any of this other than to serve as Laura’s love interest. In any case, the chapter ends when Laura manages to get a dress fit for the fundraiser party that is going to be celebrated at the museum at 7pm.

What I discovered for myself: If you recall my post about chapter 2, I complained about not knowing half the characters nor their occupation. Turns out, you can learn most of it in this chapter. Myklos, Yvette and Wolf are Lofat’s clients so when he is asked about the Leyendecker museum he talks about them and their names are available so you can interrogate other characters about them This yields no result but to know that Rube, your partner at the Tribune knows Yvette. Intimately. And so does Lofat. And the list keeps growing and growing. Also that Myklos and Wolf are involved.

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last week, we started Sorcerer, the fifth canonical Zork game. After a particularly vivid nightmare sequence where I was killed by hellhounds, snakes, locusts, and lightning, I awoke to find the guildhall empty and the Guild Master, Belboz, missing. Thanks to some security nymphs, I cannot leave by the front door to rescue him. Time is passing very quickly and if I fall asleep, I am captured by a demon and subjected to a fate worse than death. They say that even the longest journey begins with a single step; I’m not even making it that far.

Today’s post will be a bit shorter than usual. Several “real life” events conspired to prevent me from writing as much as I had hoped. I have made it farther in the game than I document here and I want to make sure that I’m taking the time to properly discuss the puzzles that I found, rather than rush through them to cover more ground with this post. On the bright side, this is a game worth savoring.

Needs more buttons.

Last week, I ended the session being stuck, so let’s take stock of my problems. There aren’t very many mysteries here left to solve so I expect that my problem is obvious to everyone but me:

• I’m trapped in the guildhall. I only have a finite number of turns to figure out what to do before I become exhausted and fall asleep. As soon as I am asleep, I am captured and taken to the “Chamber of Living Death” 
• If there’s a way out of that chamber, I cannot find it. You can’t even die properly in there and you have to restore to get out. 
• A nymph blocks my exit via the front door because guild rules requires that at least one person be present in the event of an emergency. 
• There is a trunk in the basement with four buttons on it: a black button with a picture of a star, a gray one depicting the moon, a red button with a bloody knife, and a purple button depicting a crown. Pushing them just gives me a clicking sound and the trunk is otherwise impervious to assault, magical or physical. 
• I am carrying around a journal that is locked. The key that I thought went with it doesn’t work. 

The trunk is my best angle, but I’m convinced that it’s part of the copy protection since the same colors appear in the Infotator in the entries about different mythological animals. My magic isn’t helping me here either since the parrot does not have enough of a brain for “yomin” (read minds) and I never properly die in the Chamber of Living Death so my “gaspar” (prevent death) spell is useless. Even “vezza” to see the future just shows me the fort with the flagpole from my dream. I even re-read the whole manual again to see if I find a clue, but I do not.

TIL: Woodchucks and groundhogs are the same thing.

Rather than do a “Request for Assistance”, I start the game over from scratch and play the whole opening sequence again. I search the dreamworld for anything that I might have missed then, when I find nothing new, I try the guildhall.

One lucky break comes pretty quickly: this time around, I put the matchbook in the mailbox earlier in the day. I didn’t count turns, but this time I did it before the doorbell rang and before the Popular Enchanting magazine arrived. Doing that solves a puzzle I didn’t even know I was missing as now a “vilstu” potion comes in the mail along with our magazine. They work fast! The potion claims to reduce the need for breathing and that sounds like it could come in handy later.

Waiting a few days and playing the whole sequence over again was the solution to my other problem as well, though it is (in retrospect) very obvious. As I expected, the trunk is my ultimate objective and opening it is part of the copy protection. The combination to the trunk is the colors in the Infotator, just as I guessed. The specific animal name is given in the journal, but I had to open it first. So, how did I do it? I held the key and typed “open journal”. That simple! As I dig deeper however, I am nearly positive there is a bug here. Even though “open journal” works and the game helpfully says that it assumes you mean with the key, typing “open journal with key” does not work. Last week, I had been trying “unlock journal” and similar which do not work. Voltgloss commented in the last post that his version (older than mine) does not have this bug. Not a huge deal, but it threw me off and now I’m going to be worried about parser issues the whole game. I’m glad I did it all again, but not that glad. At least I got the “vilstu” potion, now!

The journal exposits the major plotline of the game: Belboz has recently become aware of a demon, Jeearr, whose powers could destroy the kingdom. He decided to investigate on his own, but after that the entries in the journal seem to be in a different language and handwriting. Why Jeearr, if he did possess Belboz, would continue writing in his journal, I am not sure. Just force of habit?? The inside cover has the detail that I am looking for: the current code is rotgrub!

Like mad cow disease, but worse.

I look up the entry on rotgrubs and resolve to never again eat uncooked food in the Zork universe. I am violating my rule a bit because I am using the gray box’s manual rather than the original Infotator, but I couldn’t find a replica in time to give me the full experience. I learn that its colors are gray, red, grey, purple, and red. Entering that combination on the trunk opens it and reveals a mouldy scroll: “aimfiz”, transport yourself to someone else’s location. With that, “aimfiz belboz” is now the strangest command I have ever typed into a text adventure. As I was preparing to draft this post, I replayed this section and found that I could not open the trunk even with the right combination. My guess is that there is some other check to ensure that you explored the guildhall before you go…Exactly what it is though, I have no idea.

The “aimfiz” spell lands me right back to where I was in my dream, down to being chased by a hellhound. But where is Belboz? He must be nearby, but I have no idea where. I flee northeast to escape the beast (as before, it refuses to leave its forest) and that room is the same too. I climb down into the snake pit, but here’s where I find my first new thing: I can now enter the dark rooms below. I pass a slimy room and climb down into a crater. There’s a ton of directions to explore, so I pick randomly and discover a few things nearby:

• A room with a chasm just to the west. I die when I try to jump across.
• The entrance to an amusement park to the southwest! It’s called “Bozbarland” and I need one zorkmid to get in. Unfortunately, it seems that enchanters don’t carry wallets and I’m going to have to go in another day. I’m just shocked it’s still open. Didn’t the Empire collapse hundreds of years ago? 
• A hall of carvings to the south with an impressive-looking dragon carving in the center. 

Off to the northeast, the passage connects with a highway and certainly more adventure. Even so, this is where I am going to leave things tonight. Join me next week as we explore this new and different corner of the GUE.

Time played: 1 hr 5 min
Total time: 2 hr 20 min
Inventory: spell book, scribbled note, small key, calendar, amulet, infotator, journal
Spell book: gnusto, vezza, pulver, izyuk, yomin, rezrov, frotz, gaspar, meef

by Alex

Well, I’ve done it. I’ve come to the ignominious end of an ignominious game. Upon getting Diermot smuggled into the castle, it didn’t take long to finish Lure of the Temptress, mainly because there just wasn’t much to do.

Let’s start from where we left off last post: Diermot had hid inside of a barrel, taking Ewan’s place, and was carried by a Skorl into the castle’s wine cellar. TBD helpfully pointed out that having “one’s turn in a barrel” is a rather vulgar Navy joke, and I like to imagine that Diermot did somehow participate in this rather nautical way of relieving tension.

But I digress.

There are a bunch of empty casks in the wine cellar that Diermot can’t do anything with, and a staircase to the right. It doesn’t take too long before a young boy comes downstairs to presumably wander around and bump into Diermot every time he tries to do anything.

It turns out that this boy is Minnow, Morkus’ son, whom Morkus sol to the Skorl for beer money.

That’s right: Morkus’ son is a slave of the Skorl. Gwyn mentioned this during my last play session, but I didn’t note it in my last post. It doesn’t matter, anyway. You’d think this would be a huge plot point, but nope. It’s just dropped, Diermot can’t even bring it up to Morkus, or to anybody else, for that matter. It’s just tossed off as an aside even though we’re talking about child slavery.

Yawn. Child slavery ho-hum.

Diermot can do a few things with Minnow: One is to have him tell the Skorl guarding the tower that Selena wants to see him, which Minnow tells Diermot is a bad idea. See, the Skorl is only interested in one thing: Drinking. And he’s so trashed he won’t be able to make it up the stairs, but Minnow tells the Skorl anyway.

Nothing happens.

Diermot can then have Minnow tell the Skorl that there’s someone in the basement. Minnow agrees and tells Diermot to hide somewhere.

I try to hide where it looks dark, since I can’t move Diermot behind anything, and then this happens:

It’s a visual metaphor, see? Diermot represents the player and the Skorl is the game.

So far, this has been the only way in Lure of the Temptress I’ve found to die. So I restore and try to explore my surroundings a little more before telling Minnow to lure the Skorl into the wine cellar. Clearly I’m missing something.

Upstairs is a kitchen. There’s a carcass of something on the table, but all Diermot can do is grab a disgusting chunk of smelly fat. On the oven to the right, despite being able to look at all the stuff, all Diermot can do is grab the tongs. The description of them indicates that they’re likely used to move hot coals to and from the range, but can Diermot do anything with any of the other objects?

Nope.

Still, inventory items usually bespeak of puzzles, even though I’m lugging around a statue, a flask of water, and a sprig of herb that thus far serve no function whatsoever. But a man can dream, can’t he?

Beyond the kitchen is a hallway with stairs to the left and a door to the right. I head through the door first and end up in the Skorl’s dining area.

Yeah . . . I back out of here and go up the stairs.

The stairs lead to a walkway above the dining hall. I overhear the sole conscious Skorl ordering Minnow to get him some wine. I wonder—could this be a good hiding place? Is this puzzle that simple? Knowing how Lure of the Temptress works, probably.

I explore the rest of this catwalk. It continues for one more screen before leading outside, where a raised drawbridge bars Diermot’s path to the tower beyond.

This is a rather pretty screenshot.

So I have some objectives, at least:

• Find a way past the Skorl guard
• Find a way to lower the drawbridge
• Find Selena and use the Eye of Gethryn on her

Sounds like some actual puzzles!

To solve the first one, yes, the answer really is to just to stand on the catwalk after telling Minnow to alert the Skorl that someone’s in the basement. Once the Skorl leaves, I just walked back downstairs, through the dining hall, to the conveniently located drawbridge operating mechanism beyond.

After finishing the game, I consulted a walkthrough. It turns out I could have used the tongs on a cask in the wine cellar which would have started the wine flowing, even though the game told me that every flask was empty, but what the hell. Then I could have hidden somewhere (Where? Beats me.) and watched the Skorl drink himself into a stupor. But it didn’t matter.

Anyway, in the drawbridge room, there is a lever and a winch attached to the mechanism. Neither will budge, though the rusty lever will be operable once Diermot rubs that disgusting fat all over it.

Still, nothing happens. It didn’t take too long for Minnow to wander into the room. I tell him to pull the lever while Diermot operates the winch. It took a bit of timing, but we eventually lowered the drawbridge.

It’s another example of the “ordering allies around” mechanic that could have been used so much more and to so much greater effect in this game. But nope: this is the fourth and final time it comes into play. By Minnow! See you never!

Upstairs, the drawbridge is down and another man-bear-pig comes at Diermot for Lure of the Temptress’ second go-round at absolutely tension-free combat.

Yawn.

Unlike the first such beast, this one didn’t seem susceptible to head shots. So I poked it in the belly a few times until it too crumbled into dust.

My path was clear, so I moseyed on into the tower and came face to face with the woman who started this whole mess: Selena!

So what do you think happens? Do they trade quips and barbs? Does she try to zap Diermot, for him to need some inventory object and quick thinking to get out of this jam? Does the demon possessing Selena transform her into some foul beast that Diermot has to once again fight off with his axe, all the while not hurting the possessed enchantress so that he can dispel her?

Nah. It’s an automatic sequence that requires no player input whatsoever.



So Selena changes into a scorpion-woman, Diermot dodges her a few times, and then chucks the Eye of Gethryn at her, dispelling the enchantment. Game over.

At least the animation was nice.

Now, this is like if in Quest for Glory I, you don’t have to do anything when you finally reach the enchanted Elsa posing as the brigand leader. In both the original and the VGA remake, you have to first have gathered the ingredients for the healer to have made a dispel potion (you know, a puzzle) and then make sure you use it on Elsa before she runs you through. The Lure of the Temptress approach would be you get the potion after finding one stupid thing, the game doesn’t let you advance until you do this, and then automatically finishing the final confrontation for you.

And now, the ending:


Yup, two paragraphs of text. At least we know that Minnow got out alright, but wait: Goewin ended up with Luthern?

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

You mean this Goewin who had this to say about this Luthern when Diermot asked her about him in the caverns?



And didn’t Goewin, as recently as last post, tell Diermot this?

Who cares? Honestly, what does it matter? Lure of the Temptress is such a rushed, poorly written, unfinished game brimming with unused potential that it makes me want to scream.

Here’s what the developers could have done:

• Created some kind of side-quest where Diermot could have won Goewin’s heart.
• Had there been an endgame sequence where Diermot had to choose the right response to Selena, or even had to dodge her magic spells or whatever, before finding the right time to use the Eye of Gethryn on her.
• Had Selena and Diermot end up falling in love in an unlikely pairing that would have at least been a little entertaining. Maybe they could have seeded references to this throughout, foreshadowing their ultimate union.
• Had the rest of Turnvale’s citizens be involved with an uprising—an uprising Diermot helped Luthern foment—while Diermot was in the castle. I mean, they’re all friends with Ultar the barbarian! Couldn’t he have caused some damage?
• The dragon in the caves could have been used to fight the Skorl, as hinted at in the game itself. Maybe this, coupled with the aforementioned uprising, could have been the distraction Diermot needed to get into the castle.

And these are ideas I literally just came up with off the top of my head with barely a second or two of thought.

But nah. Plot threads dangle like the dangly things on the bottom of a jellyfish like a great big unsatisfying mess. A great big unsatisfying mess that stings.

I do not recommend that anyone play Lure of the Temptress. We’ll see how it fares in the PISSED rating next post, but I can’t imagine it will do too well. The graphics are pretty nice, at least. Beyond that, we’ll see.

And one final thing before I go: what happened to Ratpouch?!

Let’s see this again, because I like watching Diermot get punched.

Inventory: Broken glass, knife, tinderbox, flask of water, diary, statue, Eye of Gethryn, sprig, axe, 4 groats, tongs

Session Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 7 hours, 25 minutes of my life that I will never get back

By Deimar

Re-reading my previous posts about this game, it might seem like I loathe it. You could see me bitching about it from the introduction until the end of my second playthrough. But the truth is not so one-sided. I can say that I have actually enjoyed my trip even in spite of the multiple problems this game has. The game possesses some charm, although it kicks in later in the game, with the first two opening acts being too slow in my opinion. Even on my second playthrough I was delighted when discovering new things. Speaking of which, although my first and longer playthrough was on ScummVM, it is only fair to judge the DosBox version. Let’s begin.

Written by TBD.

Quest for Glory I: So You Want To Be A Hero is a remake of the 1989 game Hero's Quest: So You Want To Be A Hero. If you want to know why the name was changed to Quest for Glory, check out The Trickster's introduction post for the original Hero's Quest.

STAB DRAGON IN THIGH?

Unlike many fans of old Adventure Games, I'm not a fan of the Quest for Glory series. Don't get me wrong, I'm not NOT a fan either. I've just never actually played them. I own them since I bought them a few years ago, but haven't yet given them a go. I originally thought I'd tried this game once, but seeing as Steam's telling me I've played a total of 18 minutes of the series, and that was after I loaded it up to take some screenshots for this Introduction and download the manual, I was probably mistaken.

I likely first heard about the series once I got access to the internet in the mid-late 90s and I know I heard good things, but I was in the mindset of not going out of my way to find Sierra games, having played some of them and not thinking them any better than 'okay games'. If digital distribution were around then, I might have given them a go earlier, but here we are now – a Quest for Glory newbie wading into the waters with the VGA remake of the first Quest For Glory– it seems appropriate, or interesting, or apt, or... something.

I considered re-reading Trickster's posts on the previous games, but felt it would be more interesting to avoid them and see a brand-new-to-the-series person's take on the remake. So here goes...

Like the other Sierra VGA remakes (apart from King's Quest) as well as updating the graphics and sound, this game replaces the text parser with a mouse-driven point and click interface. This makes me happy, as I get frustrated when I try to play with a text parser these days. And I thought you were supposed to get more patient with age

Quest for Glory I was the last of the Sierra games remade in this manner, largely because they weren't as cheap to produce as Sierra had hoped, and didn't make enough money to be worth it.

Having said that, from what I've read this is the only one of the remakes to actually make a profit, so perhaps Sierra axed the remakes too soon.

The Coles

Once again with the Quest for Glory series, chief amongst the developers of this game were 'The Coles” which is apparently a term. They're currently hard at work on the Quest for Glory spiritual successor, Hero-U!

And this title comes with a fortune in gold and a beautiful princess, yes?

Fighter, Magic User or Thief?

Seems a little daunting, but I'm sure a Sierra game won't let me get into an unwinnable situation by making a decision based on limited information

by Alex

Written by Joe Pranevich