Adventure Gamers - Forums

>follow wilderspin
You climb gingerly through the hole at the back of the fireplace. As you step over the lintel, your foot catches and you trip, dropping everything that you’re carrying, and then falling forward onto a hard wooden floor. You must have disturbed some mechanism, because the back of the fireplace swings back into place with an unsettlingly final thud. You are plunged into…

Darkness
It is pitch dark, and you can’t see a thing.

“Don’t panic!” says Wilderspin. You try very hard to resist the temptation to scream.

Somewhere in the distance, the clock of Biblioll College chimes the half-hour.

>scream
Wilderspin fumbles for your hand and squeezes it reassuringly. “Be calm,” he says. “Keep your head and we’ll be out of here in no time.”

[Hush, beating heart of Christabel!
 
  —Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Christabel”]

>wilderspin, help
Wilderspin fumbles for your hand and squeezes it reassuringly. “The best thing we can do is keep calm and think carefully about what to do.”

“I’ve been in worse situations than this,” says Wilderspin. “Like the time when the ceiling collapsed in the antechamber of the tomb of Amenhotep II.”

>n
You fumble your way in that direction, and almost immediately bump into something soft. You start to scream, but then you realise it’s Wilderspin. “Pardon me,” he says.

Wilderspin says, “Luckily for me, I was wedged under a ceiling slab, and that protected me from the rest of the rubble.”

>s
You fumble your way in that direction, but almost immediately you bump into a very solid stone wall. You run your hands over the damp and cold stones, but as high as you can reach there’s no gap in the stonework.

Wilderspin says, “It took them five hours to dig me out.”

>e
You fumble your way in that direction, but almost immediately you bump into a very solid stone wall. You run your hands over the damp and cold stones, but as high as you can reach there’s no gap in the stonework.

>w
You fumble your way in that direction, but almost immediately you bump into a very solid stone wall. You run your hands over the damp and cold stones, but as high as you can reach there’s no gap in the stonework.

“Let’s think about this carefully,” says Wilderspin. “I got a brief look at the room before you shut the entrance on us, but I couldn’t see a way out.”

>feel wall
Which do you mean, the north wall, the south wall, the east wall, the west wall, the northeast wall, the southeast wall, the northwest wall or the southwest wall?

>north
You fumble your way in that direction, but almost immediately you bump into a very solid stone wall. You run your hands over the damp and cold stones, but as high as you can reach there’s no gap in the stonework.

>feel floor
You scratch at the wooden floorboards, but they’re implacably firm.

Wilderspin says, “I think we both need a bit of cheering up, so let me tell you Arkwright’s ideas about Osiris, as I promised you I would.”

“Arkwright had some odd ideas about the Osiris ritual,” says Wilderspin, “based on his interpretation of the temple paintings at Karnak and Abydos. He thought that the ancient Egyptians really believed that their offerings would bring Osiris back to life, and that they worshipped the tamarisk tree. I think he may have over-interpreted some correspondences between the cults of Osiris and of Hermes.

“According to Egyptian myth, Osiris was trapped by the evil god Set and imprisoned in a chest, which floated down the Nile to the papyrus swamps, where a tamarisk tree grew up around it. Later the tree was chopped down by a local king and the trunk, still containing the chest, was used as the central pillar in the king’s palace.

“Osiris’ wife, the goddess Isis, searched for him for many years. When she did find him, Set tore him into many pieces and scattered the parts across Egypt. But Isis’ love was such that she visited every part and built a temple there, and Osiris was brought back to life, and reigned over the gods once more.”

You feel quite moved by Wilderspin’s telling of the story.

Wilderspin adds, “Osiris was later identified with the demigod Hermes Trismegistus, the thrice-mighty, and the tamarisk was known to mediaeval occultists as the wood of Hermes.”

>ask wilderspin about light
Wilderspin fumbles for your hand and squeezes it reassuringly. “The best thing we can do is keep calm and think carefully about what to do.”

>follow wilderspin
You fumble your way in that direction, but almost immediately you bump into a very solid stone wall. You run your hands over the damp and cold stones, but as high as you can reach there’s no gap in the stonework.

You can hear Wilderspin scratching at one of the walls. “There must be some way to open the door again,” he mutters to himself.

>up
The ceiling is beyond your reach.

“Let’s think about this carefully,” says Wilderspin. “The room is about three feet wide and about ten feet long. It’s lined with stone.”

>wilderspin, go n
“I wish I could,” he says.

Wilderspin continues, “The floor is made of wood, distressingly solid, alas.”

>wilderspin, go s
“I wish I could,” he says.

“Come on, man,” Wilderspin says to himself. “Think!”

>get all
Professor Wilderspin: I don’t suppose Professor Wilderspin would care for that.

>stand on wilderspin
“Let me stand on your shoulders,” you say. “All right,” he replies. “We can give it a go… OK, I’m kneeling.” You scramble onto his shoulder and he takes hold of your legs and shakily rises to his feet.

>wilderspin, go n
Wilderspin takes a couple of steps in that direction. You wobble a little, but manage to regain your balance. “That’s it, I can’t go any further,” he says.

>u
The ceiling is beyond your reach.

>wilderspin, go s
Wilderspin takes a couple of steps in that direction. You wobble a little, but manage to regain your balance. “That’s it, I can’t go any further,” he says.

>u
The ceiling is beyond your reach.

>wilderspin, go e
Wilderspin takes a couple of steps in that direction. You wobble a little, but manage to regain your balance. “That’s it, I can’t go any further,” he says.

>u
The ceiling is beyond your reach.

>wilderspin, go w
Wilderspin takes a couple of steps in that direction. You wobble a little, but manage to regain your balance. “That’s it, I can’t go any further,” he says.

>u
The ceiling is beyond your reach.

This game is fucking awful.

Any pretence of telling a structured story vanished long ago: now, we’re just roaming the college randomly, looking for anything that vaguely looks like a puzzle, and trying to solve it for no better reason than puzzles are meant to be solved in adventure games. I mean, to take the most recent example, has the game ever given us a reason to pay attention to some random piece of architecture in some random don’s room, other than the fact that it’s in the room description and therefore must be important?

Also, has the game ever given us any reason to care about any of it? The treasure hunt element felt exciting at first, but the game doesn’t seem to show much interest for it, choosing instead to devote most of its time to the absurd, idiotic tale of Fucky McFuckface and his stupid parrot.

And don’t even get me started on the nonsensical, arbitrary puzzle solutions, from everything involved in getting the key to the college to that thing with the gum and the cat.

Life’s too short; I’m out.

(And yes, I fully realise the hypocrisy of saying this now after asking Karlok not to do the same yesterday evening. What can I say? Cold light of day and everything.)

Kurufinwe - 11 March 2017 03:15 AM

I mean, to take the most recent example, has the game ever given us a reason to pay attention to some random piece of architecture in some random don’s room, other than the fact that it’s in the room description and therefore must be important?

Yes. How about our brother going missing, his room trashed with a message being left for us and something clearly sinister going on at the college?

The Colonel’s Bequest (a game highly rated by yourself, I believe) gave us far less reason to go around pushing bookcases to find secret passages and spy on people before a crime even happened.

Personally, I’m enjoying the game. I think there’s a bit of resentment going around that the puzzles are too hard, but that’s always going to happen if you don’t pay attention to clues. All the puzzles so far have been fair from my point of view, but maybe that’s because I have the game in front of me. And come on - you’re happy to ask NPCs all kinds of things such as “myrrh” and “tears”, but when the game points you to a one-eyed griffin on a fireplace you’re not going to ask about it?

If no one wants to continue, I’ll play by myself and continue to post my progress. It will be a shame, but it’s the price to pay when participants prefer short, simple and easy games. Perhaps Karlok can host Photopia next time or something else that won’t tax the brain too much.

>Wilderspin, go north, +(south, east west)
>Feel wall

>wilderspin, go north
Wilderspin takes a couple of steps in that direction. You wobble a little, but manage to regain your balance. “That’s it, I can’t go any further,” he says.

>feel north wall
You reach out and run your hands over the damp and cold stones of the north wall. There’s no way out here.

>wilderspin, go south
Wilderspin takes a couple of steps in that direction. You wobble a little, but manage to regain your balance. “That’s it, I can’t go any further,” he says.

>feel south wall
You reach out and run your hands over the damp and cold stones of the south wall. Suddenly your hand slips forward, and you almost fall. There’s a hole here, high up in the wall! “Let go of me,” you say, and pull yourself up onto a ledge.

Darkness
It is pitch dark, and you can’t see a thing.

“Well done!” calls Wilderspin. “Can you pull me up?” You reach down, and after some fumbling and a lot of effort, manage to do so. The two of you sit on the floor in the dark until you get your breath back.
 
[Your score has just gone up by one point.]

>south

(or try other directions)