Adventure Gamers - Forums

Recent Text adventures CP made me want to start playing old Infocom games.
Started with Trinity and while the subject is very interesting (going through multiple places in history related to nuclear bombs) the game is kicking my ass. I get through the starting part well and explore Lewis Caroll alternate dimension to map everything. But then when you start going through multiple doors to multiples times and places it gets really hard with all the dead ends.
Also didn’t read the comic in the manual at first and lost some vital clues but that was my inexperience with these games. You truly have to map everything from places to items and potential use of these items in different times.
And I still have not reached the Trinity end zone.
Any thoughts on Trinity? The cover says it’s a stardard level game, so I assume there are much harder Infocom games?

Karlok - 04 October 2016 09:14 AM

I consider Trinity one of the hardest Infocom games. Challenging and like most older games, very unforgiving of mistakes. But as one reviewer said: Strangely, it seems that if you play the game well and solve the puzzles without dying or fumbling about too much, then you may actually miss the significance of a site and thus miss out a chunk of that message. 

No need to worry about because, unless you use a walkthrough, you will fumble and die a lot but I understand what he means with missing a chunk of the game.
It caught off guard me when I realized we were at a Nagasaki school at some point moments before the bomb dropped.
Other good part was going through space attached to a rocket in a bubble.
Only after going through a couple of doord I realized the comic had clues to where each door goes.

I finished Trinity. Ended up cheating a lot in the final part, it’s already hard but the timed aspect makes even more brutal. Also had to restart from the beginning because I had killed the lantern’s batteries

I liked it because of the subject but it is very different from what I’m used to play and that made it extremely hard without the use of a walkthrough. If games now take 10h to get through but you would be stuck for 1h to solve the puzzles, this one takes less than 1h to finish with an walkthrough but you would need 10h or more to solve it.

By the end you undertand the structure and can navigate it easily. THere’s a hub world with all these different doors that connect to different times. Each of these times are pretty small places that you usually have to get one object. One of these dors lead to the final place that ais one big timed sequence that uses most of the objects you got in the other places.

The game doesn’t really give anything and it’s up to the player to figure out just about everything, from where the doors lead to (the comic has clues fot this), to what is needed in each door, to how exactly will the objects be needed in the final world. It’s one big puzzle that expects a lot of hard work and note taking and multiple restarts/restores. The only part when there’s something like a real objective is when a bird starts talking about a recipe, that gives the player something to work on. The problem you don’t really know what is the end result and even you reach you are not really sure what it is for.

I managed to navigate the hub world and solve some of it’s puzzles, also solve most of the little worlds, the problem was when reaching the final part and being completely stuck multiple times… ended up following the walkthrough.

All prams lead to Kensington gardens!

I didn’t quite understand the loop and the talk about “Nature doesn’t know the word paradox” and “blowing New Mexico off the map” but then I’ve read this (you probably have seen it already):

http://www.filfre.net/2015/02/t-plus-6-all-roads-lead-to-the-kensington-gardens/

It says that we actually just reduced the explosion and I think it makes sense

Also was disappointed at first because I’m not really a fan of the “back to start” kind of ending but then I was looking to see if I missed something and saw that analysis and it became better. There’s actually 9 pages about Trinity in there by Jimmy Maher.
Also this post by Andrew Plotkin
http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2015/02/trinity-design-ruminations/

I’m playing Wishbringer now, happy to be close to 60 points without peaking at a walkthrough!

I also consider Trinity one of the harder Infocom games. What were they thinking to label it “standard”? Even AMFV is “advanced”.

Karlok - 06 October 2016 02:33 AM

If you haven’t read it already, here’s Moriarty’s article about his visit to the Trinity site. http://www.resonant.org/games/infocom/Articles/NZT/atomic.html

Nice article. I like that Moriarty seems to have done a ton of research for the game but yet the game is not very “verbose” at all. It spares the player of all little details and what is there is to make it more authentic.

So you like Moriarty. Fun game, very easy, nice ending. Have you noticed that you can solve all problems either by using inventory objects or by magic.

I had a feeling that was the case but was not entirely sure it was for all the problems. It’s a good design. Also restarted to notice better the differences in the town at night

Oscar - 06 October 2016 05:24 AM

I also consider Trinity one of the harder Infocom games. What were they thinking to label it “standard”? Even AMFV is “advanced”.

Now that is confusing! AMFV didin’t seem very advanced from what I played…

Finished Wishbringer. Fun game, this one does seem like introductory level like the cover says. Small map, multiple puzzle solutions, no obscure solutions, no timed sequences and not a lot of dead end possibilities. The story is charming with lots of funny moments with a poodle that transforms into a hellhound, tucking a baby grue or a small mailbox that starts following you around like a rabbit. The ending part was also very good.

Sure, as long as someone else offers to lead. I don’t have a copy.