Reviews by Canalboy
Two Word Parser
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The Toughest Game Of All?, February 27, 2024Related reviews: Mazes, Time Travel, Difficult, Puzzles, Epic, Topologika, Mainframe, Phoenix, Two Word Parser
Robb Sherwin once observed quite sagely about Zork that the game actively hates its player. That may well be so; in which case Quondam wishes to eviscerate the player, gouge his / her eyes out and wrap one's entrails around one's neck while forcing said player to watch the Father Dowling Mysteries box set plus extras. What we have here is unequivocally the hardest text adventure that I have ever played in my forty years of puzzling. Compared to most of the Phoenix oeuvre it is compact in size but almost every location provides ample scope to die or misuse an item in one's inventory.
This was the third of the seventeen games written on the Phoenix mainframe in 1980 by the author Rod Underwood. It appears to have been his only foray into the world of text adventure creation but he indelibly left his mark with this one. The original mainframe version is sadly lost (like Andrew Lipson's Xerb and Alex Shipp and Steve Tinney's Hezarin) and it only survives thanks to a Peter Killworth port to the BBC. We have no way of knowing how much the original version differed from the BBC Acornsoft version but you can be sure it was ball-breakingly hard as well.
I played this game after finally nailing Acheton, Hezarin and Castle of Riddles from the same Cambridge stable and was fairly convinced that no game could be tougher than that holy trinity of mind exploders. I was wrong.
The game itself is the traditional treasure hunt (up to a maximum of 250 points) with an interesting time travel theme, hence the title which is Latin for former. You need to collect all of the treasures available and deposit them somewhere, but finding out where is like attempting to untie the Gordian Knot. Suffice to say that some puzzles should be attended to in the present day and some in the past. And at least one in the past and also in the present. Exactly. This game has more obscure verbs and off the wall object manipulation than any I have come across in forty years of text adventures. I have currently visited 72 locations and have discovered 28 ways to die, many of which almost lapse into parody. There are also many ways to lock yourself out of winning, both obvious or not. Indeed it is possible to make the game unwinnable in your first move!
All the tropes of early games are here, including massive turn critical mazes and outrageous puns. It's just that in this game, like the giant spiders on the web maze, they come at you in swarms filling just about every location. As if these obstacles didn't make your task difficult enough, the game uses some objects in totally unexpected ways. I found myself desperately trying all kinds of obscure commands to boldly go where no parser has gone before and some of them actually worked. Having played around five hundred text adventures in my time I have successfully used three verbs in this game that I have never used before and I guarantee that you have never utilised a mirror or a harp in the ways necessary in this game. When stuck try anything and it may just work. The knight, the fanged customs official, the Spanish Inquisition (I wasn't expecting that) a man-eating vegetable being and the dragon are all puzzles that require endless experimentation to overcome and the solutions to each are unique in the text adventure canon as far as I know. There are a couple of apparently illogical answers to puzzles as well; one in the apothecary's shop makes no sense to me even though I solved it; I'd tried everything else and found the answer by default. Another oddity is that some objects are deliberately described in a misleading way. One in particular has two different descriptions depending from which direction you came when you found it for the first time. Approach it from the wrong way (which isn't clear) and you have soft locked the game without realising it. Unfair? You bet.
Aside from the incredible toughness of the game and the necessity to perform actions in an exact order you can even die typing save or attempting to use an object. The desert affords you all of two moves before you die of thirst, in fact when you drink water the game responds with "your thirst is removed" then avers "you are thirsty" in the same move. Boy that is one dry desert. There is also an unmappable area of trackless forest in which you must thrash about until finally emerging into familiar territory.
Playing via the BeebEm emulator at least allows you to save without it costing you a move as it did in the original. As I have spent a lot of time racing around a spider's web with the residents only one move behind me this at least has made things slightly easier than it was for those masochistic souls playing on their BBC micros back in the day.
It has the standard T/SAL two word parser and no examine command plus an inventory limit of eight objects. I have come across two items that have multiple uses thus far so discard nothing that you find. Some treasures double up as tools for solving puzzles and all are suffixed by an exclamation mark in the manner of the day. There is an inventory limit of eight objects so you will need to work out how to manipulate the in-game system for leaving items and picking them up later at a different location. Some areas of the game are closed off after your initial visit so you'll need to carefully consider which items you haul around with you in any given area. I have so far discovered 36 takeable items.
This game is described with classic understatement as being for advanced players. That is rather like describing World War 2 as a spot of fistycuffs.
An update: I have now finally completed the game and can quite honestly say that this is the most difficult text adventure game that I have ever played. I make it 35 ways to die in 79 locations. It has the most obscure verbs, the most tortuous inventory manipulation and the most soft and hard locks as well.
All this aside I would recommend it for die hard purists like myself as it has enough clever puzzles to satisfy the most avid dissectologist.
A Large Treasure Hunt From A More Patient Age, January 2, 2024Hermit's Secret was the second of six games written by the science fiction author Dian Crayn (she had several pseudonyms) in 1982 and 1983. They are all of a piece, that is large, puzzle based treasure hunts replete with mazes (a couple of them nasty with random exits) and timed end sequences. As I have always been a fan of old style games these are right up my street, or down my grating if you prefer. The grating reference is apt as all of the games have more than a bottom note of Willie Crowther and Don Woods. Each has its equivalent of the pirate and the axe throwing dwarves and in this game they are an over-stressed salesman, a hooded assassin and an obsequious elf. Keep on the move and you should be okay. There is even an homage to the dragon killing method in the 1976 game in here as is the last lousy point. There are also a number of magic words in the game that transport you instantaneously across its broad canvas and into some secret rooms which are not reachable by conventional means.
Dian's descriptions are mostly well-done and of medium length although the two word parser could have been improved by allowing more location items to be interacted with - "examine" is not included. There is a coding oddity in that the table for the push command appears to be empty. This does not prevent the game from being completed but does affect a later game, Granny's Place from being wrapped up. I also make no apologies in spoiling one particular puzzle which had me flummoxed for ages, namely digging in the mud hole only works if you are holding the pig. It should be predicated upon whether or not you are holding the shovel but there is a dodgy conditional flag here; likewise when attempting to cross the chasm with the pig. I realised it must be possible to dig at the mud hole as the parser hints as much when you essay the action sans porker.
In all there are 22 of the Hermit's treasures to be located and stored in an unlikely place across over 200 locations; these are split roughly between two thirds below ground and one third the other side of the topsoil.
There is a lamp timer at work but the number of moves permitted is so large that this should not be a problem - if it is, a battery vending machine can be located guess where? Yup that's right, thank you Don Woods.
I played via DOSBox-X which is my go to program for playing these old DOS games. I find it gives a better save game experience and a cleaner more customisable display.
An Early Adrift Game Cast Me Adrift, September 17, 2023Cave of Blunders, sorry Wonders was written by Campbell Wild as a demonstration game for his new text adventure creation system Adrift in 1999. As an advertisement, it does for the creation of text adventures what the Titanic did for the sales of holidays on cruise ships.
There are many bugs both lurking and stinging you in the face here. An underwater section can be drained yet reappears as undrained thanks to no conditional flags being set. A bottle can be filled once but never again, despite there being ample quantities of filler left lying around. One section of the game disappears if you enter it and perform a certain action, for no apparent reason. The description of the area is replaced by the letter "x." Hmmmm. Taking a particular object requires "pluck" and does not recognise "pick" or "take" yet another similar object does not respond to "pluck." You get the general idea.
All this is a shame as without the huge amount of bugs (the game can still be finished but it is a pain) a nice medium sized treasure hunt would exist here. The puzzles are often clever and quite tough and there are several ways to soft lock the game if you make a wrong choice.
There are a few static NPCs and one wonderfully dreadful pun which would be quite happy in Quondam.
The two word parser will give you a real battle of "guess the verb" although many objects can be referred to. Very few synonyms are allowed so exact wording is required. The maximum score is 1000 points although I only managed to attain 970 but still found the treasure-filled cave, the object of my quest. The room descriptions are perfunctorily adequate without being memorable. The parser is too picky and very few alternative verbs are catered for which of course creates frustration. As if writing a set sized newspaper column three or four sentences cover most descriptions so it falls far short of a mystical atmosphere; utilitarian reference book rather than mystical novel. There are also plenty of ways to lock yourself out of victory and quite a few illogicalities too. The actual puzzles themselves are the reason to play the game; discovering multiple means of transportation and deciphering maps are done rather cleverly.
All in all if you would like to see what the Adrift environment has to offer try a Larry Horsman game instead.
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