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Saturday, March 28, 2020
The CollectorVision Phoenix - An FPGA Console Behind The Times?
The ColecoVision has a very driven fan community. I did not own one and really do not share the love that those who do or did have, but nonetheless it is a classic gaming system that has new products and peripherals released for it. The idea of recreating the Coleco in a modern, updated console, has long been talked about. Currently, no less than three different groups have announced some kind of FPGA-based Coleco. One of those project, called the CollectorVision Phoenix, is now accepting funding on kickstarter. Let's look into the Phoenix's campaign and features and I will explain why I think you should give this FPGA console a pass.
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Journeyman Project - Final Rating
Written by Reiko
All the way back on gameplay post 1, one of our intrepid commenters managed to neatly summarize my final sense of the game. Ross said, "This is one of my favorite series of games, but man is this first one clunky." That's exactly it. It was a cool ride, but...clunky. Like a budget rollercoaster that clanks and bumps around every turn, and its top speed never quite manages to feel fast. And then there's the place where you'll hit your head if you don't remember to duck.
I am actually thinking of a particular kiddie rollercoaster I've ridden with my young son. Yes, it was clanky and bumpy, fast enough to be fun but not fast enough to feel fast for long. No, I never actually bumped my head, but there's one point where the track dives below an overhead loop that you reach later in the ride. I'm very short, but as an adult on a kids' ride, it felt like a near miss every time I went through that part, to the point where I would usually duck a bit even though I didn't have to.
Puzzles and Solvability
Most of the puzzles were very solvable, but rather on the obvious side. Use the oxygen mask to breathe while in the depressurized tunnels. Disarm the bomb before taking it. Use the right biochip in the right situation. It's really not a hard game. There were only two tricky timing puzzles, and one was only tricky because of the interface (the silo deactivation minigame with the awkward cursor), and the other was the ore crusher. Some of the puzzles were very derivative, like the stunted Mastermind variation. And there was a real maze, which fortunately was rendered rather trivial with the Mapping biochip. There are also no alternate solutions except for the final choice of how to deal with each robot, whether "peacefully" or not.
Then there's the walking dead situation. The problem is, the game doesn't allow any possibility of returning to time periods that have been won. Oddly enough, it's possible to fail the Mars level without dying and start over again, as if the robot didn't succeed. But once you've defeated a robot, then the level is won and becomes inaccessible. If you fail to take all of the biochips from the robots, then they are lost. Some are duplicates, but I managed to lock myself out of completing the game my first time through solely because I failed to get the Retinal biochip, which is unique. It's also possible to miss the wire cutters, but this would only lock the player out of the best score, not prevent winning the game entirely.
Score: 4
Interface and Inventory
In my opinion, the entire interface could have used a redesign. It's typical of the time that the viewing window was very small, with an interface frame around it. I don't mind that so much, but the inventory in particular was not designed well.
First, there was no good reason to mix biochips and regular inventory items in the same list, particularly when the chips can also be accessed from the pull-out list at the bottom. All that does is make it harder to get to a particular inventory item when you need it, and given a few times where you need to get to an item fairly quickly, it's really awkward. Plus the list itself is really small, with only five items visible at a time, and the scroll buttons are very slow. It's a good thing the time limits on those moments that require a response are very generous.
Second, that pull-out list should have just been a permanent frame at the bottom with all of the spaces (full or empty) always visible. That way every biochip would have been a single click away. The interface chip in particular needed to be more accessible because of the scoring being tied to the time limit: every time you have to fumble through the inventory to get to the interface chip, energy and points are slipping away. So most of the time I left the interface chip activated so I could get to it without delay. Note that even with the pull-out list open, there's still enough room that the inventory list could have displayed more than five items.
To be honest, I think it's a bad sign when you have an inventory item called "interface". The interface should never get in the way of inventory or be represented as inventory. In this sort of high-tech future, it might sometimes make sense to have a sort of digital interface item that the player uses, but the interface biochip isn't even the same thing as the eyescreen object that Agent 5 clearly picks up and wears in the opening video, which then becomes the entire visible viewing screen plus surrounding interface. The biochip only performs the meta functions of saving, loading, and displaying score, which should generally not have anything to do with physical objects in the protagonist's world. (Probably games exist that successfully and cleverly break the fourth wall in this way, but this isn't one of them.) In other words, this is clearly the design of an inexperienced studio that hasn't yet figured out that meta functions should never interfere with gameplay. By contrast, Sierra games early on already were designed to pause gameplay by default when you access the menu screen.
I also didn't like that certain places had unskippable animations that would play every time you moved there. Sometimes the repetition was merely implausible. In the distant past, the same dinosaur would appear every time you stood in the right spot, but at least that was a short animation. Other times the repetition was really annoying, like the rather lengthy sequence that would play when entering the transporter at the beginning. The Pegasus device also had an animation for displaying the timeline every single time you entered it, warped back from a time period, or loaded a saved game there. Overall, the game just wasn't very responsive, and that made replaying sections less fun than it could have been.
This was almost entirely a mouse-driven game, except that moving around could also be done with the keyboard, which I very much appreciate. That minigame with the cursor really should have had some sort of keyboard controls as well, though. The mouse control was very imprecise, which added artificial difficulty to the task.
Score: 3
Story and Setting
The plot involved fairly typical time-travel shenanigans, which boiled down to "villain who invented time travel hates aliens, so he sends robots back in time to mess up history and make everyone else hate aliens too." Cue the time agents to set things right. The interesting part is seeing what the future is like and observing the effects that just a few changes have on history. It's not terribly realistic, but then time travel generally isn't. On the other hand, the change in the political climate when suddenly everyone has a reason to believe that aliens have attacked Mars is rather understandable.
I asked early on why attacking Castillo at the rally in 2310 was one of the choices to change when the initial contact with the Cyrollans, where they offered Earth Symbiotry membership in ten years, was two years before that, in 2308. After playing the whole game, I suppose that the first two events (destroying the alien ship and the Mars colony, and attacking the small country with nukes) were meant to turn the world's governments against aliens and each other, while the rally event was meant to prevent Earth from wanting to accept the Cyrollan offer once it was made. You'd think the third event wouldn't be necessary if the first two succeeded, but I guess Sinclair was hedging his bets, especially since he was prepared to assassinate the Cyrollan delegate at the crucial moment if none of the changes succeeded.
I liked the setting, but I generally like science fiction. The Mars base was done particularly well: I enjoyed walking around the base with Japanese signs and watching the shuttle fly over the Martian surface. The distant past was very brief, although the vista with the volcano was pretty neat, and the other two past levels were mostly just internal corridors. The biomechanical doors in the rally level were intriguing, though.
Score: 5
Sound and Graphics
Sound effects were evocative and appropriate: doors swished, footsteps clanged on metal floors, the robot voices sounded suitably menacing, and so forth. The music was really fun too. You can find the soundtrack on Youtube here if you want to check it out. "Mars Maze" is the neat song that plays while you're wandering around the maze of ore tunnels on Mars. That one is my favorite track. I also like the ending theme, which is a smoother and longer version of the music that plays on the main menu.
I also noticed that there's a slower version of the Mars Maze song that's labeled "Airless" with breathing and a heartbeat overlaid on it. I originally assumed (and was correct) that it isn't possible to enter the tunnels without the oxygen mask, just like it isn't possible to enter them from the other direction, but this track implies that it is possible to run out of air while in the tunnels. The description of the oxygen mask does say it's only supposed to work for eight minutes. So I went back and entered the tunnels and tried waiting around. Sure enough, after about five or six minutes, the theme switched to the slower version and I started hearing the breathing, which sped up along with the heartbeat, and eventually the air did run out. So that's another way to get the Suffocation ending. I had just always used the Mapping chip and sped through that section so fast that I never noticed that the air could run out. That's also interesting because I can wear the oxygen mask for the entire NORAD level with no issues, but I think there it's only filtering out the sleeping gas, so it doesn't use up its oxygen.
At any rate, the alternate maze theme is a fantastic audio cue. I often play games without sound, but I think this game would be very hard to play without sound because so many of the puzzle cues are audio only. Nothing appears on screen to tell you that you're running out of air. Another example: the security radio alerts tell you where the robot in the Mars colony has gone when it takes off in the shuttle, so you can take the other one and follow it. I would have really liked a subtitle option, as I just really prefer to read text rather than listen to voices (or ideally, do both, but have the option to skip ahead).
In the NORAD level, most of the corridors had an annoying alert repeating in the background about the sleeping gas. Sure, it helps the immersion a bit, but it's very distracting. Probably it would have been just as effective and a fraction as annoying if the alert only played in the first main corridor. It's not like you can get very far without having the oxygen mask anyway.
One of the places where the FMV was less than helpful was with the videos of the timeline differences. I don't mind a voice-over, but it would have been so much more efficient to show a still image of the speaker (because she looked different in the different timelines) with the text of the description, rather than playing those unskippable videos. The objective videos needed to be videos, though, because Sinclair's menace and instability wouldn't have come through with just text or even text with voice. But all of those videos that are triggered by the player should have been pausable and skippable.
The graphics were clear and even quite lovely in places, such as the volcano vista I mentioned, the views out the apartment windows over the city of Caldoria, and the views out the colony windows over the surface of Mars. Much of the game took place in relatively repetitive corridors, though. Plus, most of the animations were videos that took up very little of the game's screen area: the visible area was already only part of the screen, and the parts that moved were often only a fraction of that.
Score: 6
Environment and Atmosphere
The atmosphere is quite good. I felt like the robots were really menacing, for instance. Every time I encountered the robot in the Mars level, I wondered if I was going to get blown up. The Mars level was the longest and best of the three major time periods (and because it's supposed to be played first, I have to wonder if the other levels were intended to be longer but development was cut short).
Spelling errors bug me, especially in a game like this that hangs together quite well. I encountered no bugs aside from the one oddity of having the tranquilizer dart show up again when I restored inside the lab. Clearly the gameplay was tested, but nobody bothered to read through the text and check it? It really makes it seem like the video and audio content was considered more important, as if nobody reads in the future, but just watches videos instead. It's a huge contrast to something like Myst with its copious journals and letters.
As I've mentioned, the game actively discourages exploration beyond what's needed to solve the puzzles and advance. Sinclair's lab at the rally has some extra research archives that explore what the man had been working on, which is great background material, but it's totally irrelevant to stopping the robot. Naturally, the optimal playthrough entirely skips it. Any video is simply wasted time when the energy is ticking down, but it's a shame that there wasn't more of this sort of thing to be found in the other time periods for a playthrough that isn't focused on optimization (especially the NORAD level, which felt particularly empty).
Aside from brief encounters with the robots (and Sinclair at the end), there just isn't much dialogue. The acting is well done, but there are no conversations, only one-sided remarks, and they are all very brief. The minigames did have significant written descriptions. But most of that merely duplicated the spoken content, which was unskippable. I mentioned earlier that I wanted subtitles for the videos. Here it seemed redundant to have both, since the purpose was only to explain how to play the minigames, not convey complex character information. The videos should have had subtitles, and the minigame explanations should have been text only.
Score: 4
That adds up to a final score of 4+3+5+6+5+4 = 27/60*100 = 45. Sixteen people made guesses ranging from 41 to 65, but this time, ShaddamIVth has nailed it.
CAP Distribution
100 points to Reiko
38 points to MorpheusKitami
7 points to Biscuit
All the way back on gameplay post 1, one of our intrepid commenters managed to neatly summarize my final sense of the game. Ross said, "This is one of my favorite series of games, but man is this first one clunky." That's exactly it. It was a cool ride, but...clunky. Like a budget rollercoaster that clanks and bumps around every turn, and its top speed never quite manages to feel fast. And then there's the place where you'll hit your head if you don't remember to duck.
I am actually thinking of a particular kiddie rollercoaster I've ridden with my young son. Yes, it was clanky and bumpy, fast enough to be fun but not fast enough to feel fast for long. No, I never actually bumped my head, but there's one point where the track dives below an overhead loop that you reach later in the ride. I'm very short, but as an adult on a kids' ride, it felt like a near miss every time I went through that part, to the point where I would usually duck a bit even though I didn't have to.
Puzzles and Solvability
Most of the puzzles were very solvable, but rather on the obvious side. Use the oxygen mask to breathe while in the depressurized tunnels. Disarm the bomb before taking it. Use the right biochip in the right situation. It's really not a hard game. There were only two tricky timing puzzles, and one was only tricky because of the interface (the silo deactivation minigame with the awkward cursor), and the other was the ore crusher. Some of the puzzles were very derivative, like the stunted Mastermind variation. And there was a real maze, which fortunately was rendered rather trivial with the Mapping biochip. There are also no alternate solutions except for the final choice of how to deal with each robot, whether "peacefully" or not.
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| How many chips can I grab from the robot before it self-destructs? |
Then there's the walking dead situation. The problem is, the game doesn't allow any possibility of returning to time periods that have been won. Oddly enough, it's possible to fail the Mars level without dying and start over again, as if the robot didn't succeed. But once you've defeated a robot, then the level is won and becomes inaccessible. If you fail to take all of the biochips from the robots, then they are lost. Some are duplicates, but I managed to lock myself out of completing the game my first time through solely because I failed to get the Retinal biochip, which is unique. It's also possible to miss the wire cutters, but this would only lock the player out of the best score, not prevent winning the game entirely.
Score: 4
Interface and Inventory
In my opinion, the entire interface could have used a redesign. It's typical of the time that the viewing window was very small, with an interface frame around it. I don't mind that so much, but the inventory in particular was not designed well.
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| I have to go from the Access Card Bomb at the top of the list to the Stun Gun, nearly at the bottom of the list. |
First, there was no good reason to mix biochips and regular inventory items in the same list, particularly when the chips can also be accessed from the pull-out list at the bottom. All that does is make it harder to get to a particular inventory item when you need it, and given a few times where you need to get to an item fairly quickly, it's really awkward. Plus the list itself is really small, with only five items visible at a time, and the scroll buttons are very slow. It's a good thing the time limits on those moments that require a response are very generous.
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| Plenty of room for the pull-out list to stay open at the bottom. |
Second, that pull-out list should have just been a permanent frame at the bottom with all of the spaces (full or empty) always visible. That way every biochip would have been a single click away. The interface chip in particular needed to be more accessible because of the scoring being tied to the time limit: every time you have to fumble through the inventory to get to the interface chip, energy and points are slipping away. So most of the time I left the interface chip activated so I could get to it without delay. Note that even with the pull-out list open, there's still enough room that the inventory list could have displayed more than five items.
To be honest, I think it's a bad sign when you have an inventory item called "interface". The interface should never get in the way of inventory or be represented as inventory. In this sort of high-tech future, it might sometimes make sense to have a sort of digital interface item that the player uses, but the interface biochip isn't even the same thing as the eyescreen object that Agent 5 clearly picks up and wears in the opening video, which then becomes the entire visible viewing screen plus surrounding interface. The biochip only performs the meta functions of saving, loading, and displaying score, which should generally not have anything to do with physical objects in the protagonist's world. (Probably games exist that successfully and cleverly break the fourth wall in this way, but this isn't one of them.) In other words, this is clearly the design of an inexperienced studio that hasn't yet figured out that meta functions should never interfere with gameplay. By contrast, Sierra games early on already were designed to pause gameplay by default when you access the menu screen.
 |
| Pressure plate triggers T-rex shadow? |
I also didn't like that certain places had unskippable animations that would play every time you moved there. Sometimes the repetition was merely implausible. In the distant past, the same dinosaur would appear every time you stood in the right spot, but at least that was a short animation. Other times the repetition was really annoying, like the rather lengthy sequence that would play when entering the transporter at the beginning. The Pegasus device also had an animation for displaying the timeline every single time you entered it, warped back from a time period, or loaded a saved game there. Overall, the game just wasn't very responsive, and that made replaying sections less fun than it could have been.
This was almost entirely a mouse-driven game, except that moving around could also be done with the keyboard, which I very much appreciate. That minigame with the cursor really should have had some sort of keyboard controls as well, though. The mouse control was very imprecise, which added artificial difficulty to the task.
Score: 3
Story and Setting
The plot involved fairly typical time-travel shenanigans, which boiled down to "villain who invented time travel hates aliens, so he sends robots back in time to mess up history and make everyone else hate aliens too." Cue the time agents to set things right. The interesting part is seeing what the future is like and observing the effects that just a few changes have on history. It's not terribly realistic, but then time travel generally isn't. On the other hand, the change in the political climate when suddenly everyone has a reason to believe that aliens have attacked Mars is rather understandable.
I asked early on why attacking Castillo at the rally in 2310 was one of the choices to change when the initial contact with the Cyrollans, where they offered Earth Symbiotry membership in ten years, was two years before that, in 2308. After playing the whole game, I suppose that the first two events (destroying the alien ship and the Mars colony, and attacking the small country with nukes) were meant to turn the world's governments against aliens and each other, while the rally event was meant to prevent Earth from wanting to accept the Cyrollan offer once it was made. You'd think the third event wouldn't be necessary if the first two succeeded, but I guess Sinclair was hedging his bets, especially since he was prepared to assassinate the Cyrollan delegate at the crucial moment if none of the changes succeeded.
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| Neat sequence of flying the shuttle over Mars |
I liked the setting, but I generally like science fiction. The Mars base was done particularly well: I enjoyed walking around the base with Japanese signs and watching the shuttle fly over the Martian surface. The distant past was very brief, although the vista with the volcano was pretty neat, and the other two past levels were mostly just internal corridors. The biomechanical doors in the rally level were intriguing, though.
Score: 5
Sound and Graphics
Sound effects were evocative and appropriate: doors swished, footsteps clanged on metal floors, the robot voices sounded suitably menacing, and so forth. The music was really fun too. You can find the soundtrack on Youtube here if you want to check it out. "Mars Maze" is the neat song that plays while you're wandering around the maze of ore tunnels on Mars. That one is my favorite track. I also like the ending theme, which is a smoother and longer version of the music that plays on the main menu.
I also noticed that there's a slower version of the Mars Maze song that's labeled "Airless" with breathing and a heartbeat overlaid on it. I originally assumed (and was correct) that it isn't possible to enter the tunnels without the oxygen mask, just like it isn't possible to enter them from the other direction, but this track implies that it is possible to run out of air while in the tunnels. The description of the oxygen mask does say it's only supposed to work for eight minutes. So I went back and entered the tunnels and tried waiting around. Sure enough, after about five or six minutes, the theme switched to the slower version and I started hearing the breathing, which sped up along with the heartbeat, and eventually the air did run out. So that's another way to get the Suffocation ending. I had just always used the Mapping chip and sped through that section so fast that I never noticed that the air could run out. That's also interesting because I can wear the oxygen mask for the entire NORAD level with no issues, but I think there it's only filtering out the sleeping gas, so it doesn't use up its oxygen.
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| Full tunnel map. I could be starting to run out of air here, but you'd never know it just by the screenshot. |
At any rate, the alternate maze theme is a fantastic audio cue. I often play games without sound, but I think this game would be very hard to play without sound because so many of the puzzle cues are audio only. Nothing appears on screen to tell you that you're running out of air. Another example: the security radio alerts tell you where the robot in the Mars colony has gone when it takes off in the shuttle, so you can take the other one and follow it. I would have really liked a subtitle option, as I just really prefer to read text rather than listen to voices (or ideally, do both, but have the option to skip ahead).
In the NORAD level, most of the corridors had an annoying alert repeating in the background about the sleeping gas. Sure, it helps the immersion a bit, but it's very distracting. Probably it would have been just as effective and a fraction as annoying if the alert only played in the first main corridor. It's not like you can get very far without having the oxygen mask anyway.
 |
| I really wanted text summaries of these videos... |
One of the places where the FMV was less than helpful was with the videos of the timeline differences. I don't mind a voice-over, but it would have been so much more efficient to show a still image of the speaker (because she looked different in the different timelines) with the text of the description, rather than playing those unskippable videos. The objective videos needed to be videos, though, because Sinclair's menace and instability wouldn't have come through with just text or even text with voice. But all of those videos that are triggered by the player should have been pausable and skippable.
 |
| The erupting volcano scene looks almost photorealistic, although low resolution. |
The graphics were clear and even quite lovely in places, such as the volcano vista I mentioned, the views out the apartment windows over the city of Caldoria, and the views out the colony windows over the surface of Mars. Much of the game took place in relatively repetitive corridors, though. Plus, most of the animations were videos that took up very little of the game's screen area: the visible area was already only part of the screen, and the parts that moved were often only a fraction of that.
Score: 6
Environment and Atmosphere
The atmosphere is quite good. I felt like the robots were really menacing, for instance. Every time I encountered the robot in the Mars level, I wondered if I was going to get blown up. The Mars level was the longest and best of the three major time periods (and because it's supposed to be played first, I have to wonder if the other levels were intended to be longer but development was cut short).
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| The surface of Mars and more of the colony structure. |
While the areas that are playable are sharply constrained, external views help make the worlds seem much larger. Outside the colony corridors is the surface of Mars. Outside the apartment is the rest of Caldoria. Outside the lab corridors is...well, we don't really see it, but we do periodically hear stage announcements and people talking, which helps the illusion that we're near a stage with a large audience. Again, the sound effects are fantastic. Much of the atmosphere comes from the sound.
Outside NORAD, though...? Who knows? All we see are corridors and all we hear is that horrid announcement about the sleeping gas. There are a lot of locked doors, though, which I guess is supposed to imply a larger base.
Score: 5
Dialog and Acting
I'm going to have to rate this category down for three reasons: there just isn't all that much dialogue in the game to start with; most of the interesting bits are completely optional and even have to be skipped in a high-scoring run; and the written content has numerous typos/spelling errors. I'll say more about each of these in reverse order.
Outside NORAD, though...? Who knows? All we see are corridors and all we hear is that horrid announcement about the sleeping gas. There are a lot of locked doors, though, which I guess is supposed to imply a larger base.
Score: 5
Dialog and Acting
I'm going to have to rate this category down for three reasons: there just isn't all that much dialogue in the game to start with; most of the interesting bits are completely optional and even have to be skipped in a high-scoring run; and the written content has numerous typos/spelling errors. I'll say more about each of these in reverse order.
 |
| Nobody ever checked this screen during development or testing? |
Spelling errors bug me, especially in a game like this that hangs together quite well. I encountered no bugs aside from the one oddity of having the tranquilizer dart show up again when I restored inside the lab. Clearly the gameplay was tested, but nobody bothered to read through the text and check it? It really makes it seem like the video and audio content was considered more important, as if nobody reads in the future, but just watches videos instead. It's a huge contrast to something like Myst with its copious journals and letters.
As I've mentioned, the game actively discourages exploration beyond what's needed to solve the puzzles and advance. Sinclair's lab at the rally has some extra research archives that explore what the man had been working on, which is great background material, but it's totally irrelevant to stopping the robot. Naturally, the optimal playthrough entirely skips it. Any video is simply wasted time when the energy is ticking down, but it's a shame that there wasn't more of this sort of thing to be found in the other time periods for a playthrough that isn't focused on optimization (especially the NORAD level, which felt particularly empty).
 |
| The voice reads all this as well as having it displayed on-screen. |
Aside from brief encounters with the robots (and Sinclair at the end), there just isn't much dialogue. The acting is well done, but there are no conversations, only one-sided remarks, and they are all very brief. The minigames did have significant written descriptions. But most of that merely duplicated the spoken content, which was unskippable. I mentioned earlier that I wanted subtitles for the videos. Here it seemed redundant to have both, since the purpose was only to explain how to play the minigames, not convey complex character information. The videos should have had subtitles, and the minigame explanations should have been text only.
Score: 4
That adds up to a final score of 4+3+5+6+5+4 = 27/60*100 = 45. Sixteen people made guesses ranging from 41 to 65, but this time, ShaddamIVth has nailed it.
CAP Distribution
100 points to Reiko
- Blogger award - 100 CAPs - For blogging through this game for our enjoyment
50 point to Joe Pranevich
- Classic Blogger Award - 50 CAPs - For blogging through Trinity for our enjoyment
- True Companion Award - 25 CAPs - For playing along with most of the game and providing amusing commentary
- Spellchecker Award - 10 CAPs - For finding the repeated "dicovery" typo and the "nuclear missle" typo in the screenshots
- Sudden Death Award - 3 CAPs - For alerting me to a death I'd missed: entering the mining tunnels without disabling the bomb
- Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing the final rating for Journeyman Project
- Walking Dead Award - 2 CAPs - For sensing there would be a walking dead situation (but not how it would happen)
- Cognitive Dissonance Award - 2 CAPs - For recognizing that the Mars robot should have been more violent
10 points to Adam Thornton
- Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing the final rating of Trinity
- Music Research Award - 5 CAPs - For determining that the post titles are all songs by Two-Mix
- Pegasus Variation Award - 2 CAPs - For describing differences in the NORAD level in the Pegasus Prime remake
- Psychic Summary Award - 5 CAPs - For echoing my conclusion of Journeyman Project back on the first post
- Genre Evolution Award - 2 CAPs - For reflecting on how the JP games shifted their approach to exploration as the series progressed
- (Not-so) Sudden Death Award - 3 CAPs - For alerting me to a death I'd missed: letting energy run out in the prehistoric era
- Historical Geography Award - 2 CAPs - For reminding us that Bonn was a capital while Germany was divided
Normality (MS-DOS)
| Developer: | Gremlin | | | Release Date: | 1996 | | | Systems: | DOS |
This week on Super Adventures, I've reached my last proper game post of the year. I mean it's not the last thing I'll be writing for the site, there's another article coming next week, but this is the last time I'll be going through the first hour or so of one game, showing off screenshots along the way. Until next year anyway.
Oh, I'm playing Normality by the way, in case the title stamped up there didn't give it away. The logo jitters around in game and I was tempted to make my image animated to show it off, but then I realised I didn't need another ugly distracting GIF on my front page for weeks. I learned that lesson back when I did that Amiga Fighting Games article.
My GOG orders history page claims that I bought Normality two years ago and I'm sure it's probably right, though what it doesn't know is that I only got the game so that I could write about it here... and then I forgot. Until now! I've only got a vague idea of what the game even is, but the love I've seen it get online put it on my radar and I have a feeling that even if it pisses me off I'm going to get some good screenshots out of it.
The game has a story and puzzles, and if you keep reading you're going to find SPOILERS for the first couple of hours of both. Just so you know.
Read on »
Monday, March 23, 2020
Game 362: OrbQuest (1981)
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| I'm playing the second edition of the game. The first is not available anywhere. |
OrbQuest
United States
Alternate World Simulations
Alternate World Simulations
Released in 1981 for CP/M
Date Started: 10 March 2020
Date Finished: 15 March 2020
Total Hours: 25
Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)
Digital Research's CP/M operating system only boasted two original RPGs, and it turns out that both of them were adapted directly from games on the PLATO mainframe. A year ago, I covered how Nemesis (1981) was just a microcomputer version of Oubliette (1977), and now it's clear that OrbQuest is nothing more than a microcomputer version of The Game of Dungeons (1975), more popularly known by its file name, "DND." Specifically, it is a direct adaption of the game's fifth edition.
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| Finding a treasure chest in the OrbQuest dungeon offers the same options as The Game of Dungeons. |
We've discussed at length how Daniel Lawrence based his own DND (c. 1976) on The Game of Dungeons, but OrbQuest is a far more literal porting of the code than Lawrence's. Indeed, if I'd known about it when I won The Game of Dungeons, I might have been content to discuss OrbQuest in an addendum rather than playing it as a separate game. Among the things it shares in common:
- A goal to recover an Orb, held by a powerful guardian (a dragon in Game, a "dragon wizard" here)
- Twenty 9 x 9 levels with the same system of movement (e.g., SHIFT to go through a door), secret doors, and one-way doors
- No staircases, just "teleporters" that take you to the next and previous levels, and the teleporters are oddly spaced between squares rather than in them
- The same attributes, with "piety" substituted for "wisdom"
- Experience based on monsters killed and gold retrieved
- Most of the same spells, divided into cleric and mage, with slots given to the character upon leveling
- The same combat options, including minimized importance of "fighting" and each enemy having a particular weakness to a particular spell
- The same commands and results for opening chests, drinking potions, and reading books
- Most of the same items of magical equipment to find
- Most of the same monsters
- On dungeon Level 1, monsters are never higher than Level 1
- Options to toggle on or off automatic collection of gold and automatic fighting of enemies below a certain level
I'm assuming that Dirk Pellet and the other Game authors didn't know about this attempt to monetize their work, or certainly they would have objected as strongly as they did to Lawrence's. Relative obscurity must have helped: OrbQuest appeared only for a dying platform, and the creator notes on a message board that he only ever sold about 100 copies.
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| The Game of Dungeons' cleric spells were, in contrast, "Light Candle," "Holy Water, "Exorcise," "Pray," "Hold," "Dispell," and "Datspell." |
As to that creator, his name was Walter E. Donovan, and his company--existing only for this game, it seems--has an address in Milpitas, California. So far, I have not been able to tie Donovan directly to a PLATO campus (unlike Lawrence and the author of Nemesis), so I'm not sure how he was exposed to it, but it's clear that somehow he got the source code or otherwise thorough documentation of its elements and mechanics.
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| A nice cover leads the game manual, which is otherwise typewritten and photocopied. |
As usual, this is not to say that Donovan added nothing to the game. In fact, he smoothed away some of Game's most egregious imbalances and made the game less random. Gold is less plentiful, particularly on earlier levels, chests (and thus magic items) rarer, and traps less deadly. A player can no longer spend half the game just wandering the same corridors of Level 1 and picking up nearly every magic item along the way. Chests have only about 10 times the gold as random loot on their levels, not 1000 times. Chests aren't trapped as often, and when they are, they rarely kill you unless you've delved too far too fast. Magic items are never trapped. Books and potions help more than they hurt, so it's worth taking the chance on them.
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| Potions and books are less deadly here than in the source game. |
The result is a game that is, even with permadeath, far more survivable than The Game of Dungeons but also less "gameable." There aren't any tricks to help you get rich quick (unlike in Game, you can't cache gold, either) or otherwise bypass the long and tedious process of grinding yourself senseless for several dozen hours. I've been doing it while clearing out my Netflix queue, but I can't imagine that even back in the day, when it was the only game for my platform, I would have had a lot of fun with it.
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| Collecting gold to raise my level. I have a pretty good set of equipment here. |
The game begins with random rolls of 3-18 for strength, dexterity, intelligence, and piety. After that, you begin on Level 1 of the dungeon. The 9 x 9 levels have a fixed layout but a random distribution of gold, chests, and other items, re-randomized every time you change levels or exit the dungeon. Encounters are completely random and also extremely variable. Sometimes, I walked 20 steps or more with no encounters; other times, I had three or four in the same square.
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| The limited character creation process. |
For the most part, you meet the same monsters on all levels, but the monsters themselves have levels. The monster's level is far more important in determining his danger than the monster type; that is, a Level 3 ghoul is deadlier than a Level 1 dragon. On dungeon Level 1, monsters are never higher than Level 1 themselves. On other dungeon levels, their levels are randomized to a maximum of roughly 5 times the dungeon level for levels 1-10--unless you're carrying gold, in which case their maximum level is something like 4 times the dungeon level plus 1 for every 5,000-10,000 gold pieces you carry.
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| My maps of the first nine levels. |
OrbQuest lacks the "excelsior transport" from Game, but several of the levels have pits that take you directly to lower levels. The levels have varied layouts with secret doors, one-way doors, and such, but no special encounters until Level 10. Playing the game is a process of exploring downward, picking up gold until you start to encounter monsters you can't handle, then hauling it back up to Level 1 and then exit in order to level up. The next time, you can go a little further and collect a little more gold.
There are 13 monsters in the game: balrogs, deaths, demons, dragons, evil curates, ghouls, green slimes, hirebrands, huge spiders, mindworms, specters, wizards, and zombies. A few of them have special attacks. If mindworms do any damage to you at all in combat, they'll sap intelligence permanently. Same goes for specters and strength. Green slimes eat inventory items.
As with Game, fighting here is a last resort except for enemies significantly below your level (you can set the game to auto-fight such enemies so you don't even need to press "F"). Instead, you need to learn, through trial and error, each enemy's weaknesses to various spells. For instance, balrogs are susceptible to the "Fatal Charm" mage spell. The cleric spell "Holy Water" deals with demons, evil curates, and zombies. As in Game, the cleric's "Hold" and the mage's "Sleep" work reliably against enemies below Level 5 and hardly at all after that. As long as the enemy isn't more than three times your level, he should die immediately from the spell that works best against him. At higher levels, the spell might partly work (depending on the spell), leaving you to finish him off (or vice versa) in melee combat. Again, you can control the level of enemy you face by controlling the amount of gold you carry and the dungeon level you're visiting.
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| Despite my victory, the specter manages to eat a point of strength. |
As with Game, fighting here is a last resort except for enemies significantly below your level (you can set the game to auto-fight such enemies so you don't even need to press "F"). Instead, you need to learn, through trial and error, each enemy's weaknesses to various spells. For instance, balrogs are susceptible to the "Fatal Charm" mage spell. The cleric spell "Holy Water" deals with demons, evil curates, and zombies. As in Game, the cleric's "Hold" and the mage's "Sleep" work reliably against enemies below Level 5 and hardly at all after that. As long as the enemy isn't more than three times your level, he should die immediately from the spell that works best against him. At higher levels, the spell might partly work (depending on the spell), leaving you to finish him off (or vice versa) in melee combat. Again, you can control the level of enemy you face by controlling the amount of gold you carry and the dungeon level you're visiting.
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| Combat options. |
The occasional potion or tome offers a chance to increase your attributes, and unlike the ones in Game, they don't have an equal chance of decreasing attributes, although they do have an occasional negative effect like poison or a trap. "Clerical detection" reliably determines if the item is safe.
Chests occasionally deliver magic items. Swords, shields, helms ("haumes"), hauberks, Cloaks of Defense, and Belts of Healing are all initially found at +1, and as you find more, you gain additional pluses. Amulets of Revival will save the character from one death. Small Idols of Luck increase the amount of treasure that you find. Necklaces of Eyes allow you to see secret doors. I was never sure what Rings of Power or Glory did.
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| The Belt of Healing is a useful tool that regenerates hit points. |
Level 9 has a bunch of one-way doors that funnel the player to one of the teleporters to Level 10. Immediately on arrival to Level 10, the character is attacked by Demogorgon. This is a test encounter to see if you're strong enough for the lower levels, and you need to be around Level 100 to beat him. Once he's dead, he never appears again.
Levels 10-20 are a lot harder. Not only are the monsters much higher level, but there are more navigation obstacles. There are invisible walls, wrapping levels, lots more one-way walls and doors, and other difficult terrain. Downward teleporters sometimes skip two levels. Level 15, with a bunch of concentric squares, is a copy of Game of Dungeons' Level 11. Level 16, featuring a spiral of corridors, is a copy of Game's Level 15. And Level 17, with a bunch of featureless north/south corridors connected by secret doors, is a copy of Game's Level 20.
The Dragon Wizard is found somewhere on Level 20. The level has a couple of squares that halve your available spells and another one that blinds you. If you defeat the Dragon Wizard, you get the Orb and millions of gold pieces--which it would be sensible to immediately drop, as the Orb itself is going to attract enough high-level monsters. You then have to make your way back up 20 levels, apparently somewhere encountering The Grim Reaper, who's even harder than the Dragon Wizard.
Here is where I run into problems. Although I've explored them both multiple times, I cannot find the up teleporters from Levels 19 or 13. A "Teleport" spell that's supposed to move you upward for one cleric and one mage spell slot absolutely never works. Thus, although I have managed to obtain the Orb, I can't find my way out of the dungeon.
I haven't been adhering to permadeath, of course. The game makes it easy to cheat. It saves your character with every level transition and doesn't record his "death" until you acknowledge the death message. This is an opportunity for players to quickly remove the disk from the drive, or in my case kill the emulator. Reloading is a pain, though, so death still has consequences. Since I'm emulating the CP/M from within DOSBox, I have to restart two emulators with their associated commands and sit through a timer in the unregistered CP/M emulator. It was probably easier for a 1981 player to restart his game than it is for me.
Thus, having wasted an absurd number of hours on the game, I can't show you a winning screen. But if I know my readers, one of them will eventually grow curious enough to poke around in the game's code and let me know what I missed, and I'll be able to come back with an addendum. For now, the game ties with Game for an 18, although the individual stories aren't exactly the same. Game of Dungeons at least tried to make up a story about the dungeon, which OrbQuest doesn't, but OrbQuest has a slightly better variety of equipment.
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| Killing Level 10's Demogorgon is a key milestone. |
Levels 10-20 are a lot harder. Not only are the monsters much higher level, but there are more navigation obstacles. There are invisible walls, wrapping levels, lots more one-way walls and doors, and other difficult terrain. Downward teleporters sometimes skip two levels. Level 15, with a bunch of concentric squares, is a copy of Game of Dungeons' Level 11. Level 16, featuring a spiral of corridors, is a copy of Game's Level 15. And Level 17, with a bunch of featureless north/south corridors connected by secret doors, is a copy of Game's Level 20.
The Dragon Wizard is found somewhere on Level 20. The level has a couple of squares that halve your available spells and another one that blinds you. If you defeat the Dragon Wizard, you get the Orb and millions of gold pieces--which it would be sensible to immediately drop, as the Orb itself is going to attract enough high-level monsters. You then have to make your way back up 20 levels, apparently somewhere encountering The Grim Reaper, who's even harder than the Dragon Wizard.
Here is where I run into problems. Although I've explored them both multiple times, I cannot find the up teleporters from Levels 19 or 13. A "Teleport" spell that's supposed to move you upward for one cleric and one mage spell slot absolutely never works. Thus, although I have managed to obtain the Orb, I can't find my way out of the dungeon.
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| I had the Orb at one point; I just couldn't get it out. |
I haven't been adhering to permadeath, of course. The game makes it easy to cheat. It saves your character with every level transition and doesn't record his "death" until you acknowledge the death message. This is an opportunity for players to quickly remove the disk from the drive, or in my case kill the emulator. Reloading is a pain, though, so death still has consequences. Since I'm emulating the CP/M from within DOSBox, I have to restart two emulators with their associated commands and sit through a timer in the unregistered CP/M emulator. It was probably easier for a 1981 player to restart his game than it is for me.
Thus, having wasted an absurd number of hours on the game, I can't show you a winning screen. But if I know my readers, one of them will eventually grow curious enough to poke around in the game's code and let me know what I missed, and I'll be able to come back with an addendum. For now, the game ties with Game for an 18, although the individual stories aren't exactly the same. Game of Dungeons at least tried to make up a story about the dungeon, which OrbQuest doesn't, but OrbQuest has a slightly better variety of equipment.
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| OrbQuest gets some credit for slightly more gruesome combat language than its source. |
We'll take our second look at Planet's Edge next while I gear up to plan fan (and Addict) favorite Ultima VII. Replacing it on the "upcoming" list is Catacombs (1982) for the ZX81, for which I haven't even found an emulator yet, so we'll see.
Friday, March 20, 2020
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Missed Classic: Trinity - Fly Me To The Moon
Written by Joe Pranevich
Trinity continues to impress and depress me. Last time out, we witnessed the unexpected destruction of New Mexico thanks to a more powerful than expected nuclear test at the Trinity site. My guess was that we had finally found the "plot" of this game: to find out what interfered with the original test and put it right again. Do we have a time-traveling saboteur? Could he be related to that voice that keeps whispering bad "gnomon" puns in my ear? I have no idea, but it feels good to finally be discovering the plot after so much semi-random exploration.
At this point, I am most of the way through. I've solved (perhaps) four of the seven areas including Kensington Gardens, the South Pacific atoll, the Siberian steppe, and Nagasaki. Still to be conquered are an outer space segment, an unknown area, and the Trinity test site itself. I also know that I need to find a lizard for a magic potion, recover a magnetic meteorite from an impact crater, and maybe even deal with an injured wight. When we do these "Missed Classics", we aim to close out games in three posts. I hope I am not disappointing too many people when I say that we will have this one and at least one more, depending on how writing about the endgame goes.
To recap a bit, last time around I attempted to explore the second mushroom but ended up transported into orbit and a very quick death. I worked out with some experimentation that I could ride a soap bubble from the "Bubble Boy" in the wabe through the mushroom door and this would make surviving in space possible, but even then I could not work out how to get to a satellite that I see whizzing by before my eventual death. Having given this some thought, I am convinced that the magnet rock is my best bet since that may allow the bubble to steer itself towards the satellite. I'm a little unsure of the specifics because it seems too small and the distance seems too great for this to actually work, but this is a game with a 40-foot tall boy blowing bubbles so I'm willing to suspend disbelief. Digging around the rock didn't work and I think that I need to cool the rock down somehow, but I do not know how.
My first thought was to carry water to it. We have ample water nearby in the river and bog, but no watertight container. You'd think the cottage would have a cup or something, but you'd be wrong. The only other water I can find is the frozen icicles on the ceiling of the ice cave. With some experimentation, I discover that I can throw the axe to knock one down! I also score one point, so I must be on the right track. Unfortunately, the ice melts quickly and there is no way to get it to the meteorite without it melting.
As puzzles go, this was fun since I realized very quickly that we had four turns before the icicle would melt. The time-box helped to narrow down where we had to explore and I realized that it would re-freeze if we take the icicle to the top of the triangle at the center of the world. From there, I can make it to the crater only if I follow the exact shortest path. Still, that is not hard considering my experience at adventure game mapping and I place the cold icicle on the hit rock. It sputters and steams a bit, but the end result is that I lose the icicle but gain a magnet rock. Score!
The Final Frontier
My thought from last week was that once I made it to the satellite, I could board it. I had in mind something like the ISS (which had not been invented yet in 1986) or a half-remembered scene from Moonraker (not yet a decade old at that point). The good news is that the magnetic rock took me to the satellite as I expected, but once there I found nothing to do. There was no airlock or entrance hatch, only an automated defense satellite and an oncoming nuclear missile. The voice in my ear managed a Star Trek pun ("where gnomon has gone before"), but that doesn't help much.
One thing that changed is that I am now on the satellite and it is firing maneuvering thrusters to position itself. In the process, we are getting closer and closer to the white door. This is good since it means a way out! This is bad once you remember that the white door is the location of a nuclear explosion and the fact that we are going towards it means that this satellite will likely be blown to bits soon. Just before the missile hits, when the white door is closest, I pop the bubble with my spade. Instead of being suicide, the sudden pressure forces me to spring towards and through the door before I die of exposure to the cold of space. I still accomplished nothing, but at least I know how to get back to the wabe. I try the sequence again and again to find anything that I missed, but come up empty. Whatever I am supposed to do there, I don't think I am doing it yet. I restore.
Tunnel Vision
One low-point last week was that I could not find the third mushroom, despite the fact that I had found it and wrote about it a post or two before. What happened? It's a combination of my writing being behind my playing, but also because I simply didn't keep the whole game in my head. I forgot that I saw it there even though I had it in my notes. In my defense, I was certain that the ossuary was underground and there was no way a magic shadow could reach there. Let's just say that I could have explored this area a while ago if it had not been for this mistake.
Passing through the door, I emerge at the eastern end of a long dark tunnel. This also happens to be the end with a nuclear bomb that will no doubt explode in a few minutes. In classic text adventure style, there is a disused lantern on the ground that I grab. Exploring west, I discover a walkie-talkie and a skink. If you are like me, you may have no idea what a "skink" is and may have resorted to Google. If so, you would have learned that a skink is a variety of lizard. I finally found my lizard! Or rather, I had found him because he immediately rushes off to the west. Before engaging in pursuit, I muck around with the walkie-talkie by extending its antenna and listening to some static. The signal doesn't reach well into the tunnels and the only word that I can make out is "eight", although eight what will have to remain a mystery… but I'd better hurry.
Just to the west is the end of the line as the cave is sealed except for a tiny, lizard-sized crevasse. The skink runs there to hide immediately and I have no obvious way to get him out. This leads to a nifty little puzzle of "catch the skink" that goes something like this:
I take a second hint and discover that I missed or misinterpreted one of the magpie's messages: "Killed in the light of a crescent moon." That is obvious in retrospect, but I did not connect it with the lizard in specific and forgot about it entirely until now. Since I have to murder my lizard, where can I find a crescent moon? The tunnel section could have been at night, but since killing it there didn't work I am going to guess not. All of the other time periods have been daylight hours. Thankfully, the answer is obvious since there is one area that I have not "won" yet: space!
I ride my bubble back to the final frontier and verify that the moon is in fact a crescent from my perspective. I murder the lizard with the same heart-wrenching scene, but at least I got points for it. I follow the rest of the puzzle as before to dock with the satellite, ride it back to the white door, and then pop the bubble just before orbital armageddon. (Speaking of which, why would they bother to have nuked orbit? The satellite that I was on seemed like it fired lasers at missiles as an orbital defense system. That part makes sense, but nuking it seems overkill since a laser-satellite would be just as destroyed if you fired a conventional missile at it. I guess when all you have are nuclear-powered hammers, everything looks like a nail.) I drop my freshly killed lizard into the cauldron and it begins to smoke and bubble. I leave quickly and the cottage explodes, leaving nothing but the charred remains of the book and maps plus one intact cauldron. At the bottom of the cauldron is my reward: a single emerald.
I check my list of open puzzles but I have just about reached the end. All that remains is helping the wight and heading off to Trinity, but alas I think my own pity for the injured wight is my own and not Moriarty's. What's left? Eventually, I notice the color of the two boots on "my" corpse are red and green, the same as the colors of the two jewels that I have been (knowingly or unknowingly) chasing after, a red ruby and a green emerald. I also recall that there are recesses in each boot where you could hide something, but I never found anything that fit. I stick my new emerald in the green boot and it is absorbed instantly. The boot seems to hum with newfound power and tiny wings sprout from the heel. What does that give me? Flight? Speed? I'll have to get the matched set to find out.
Following the same path in my previous post to disguise myself as a corpse to ride the ferry, I slip through the mushroom door to the Trinity site. Before I go, I have a small crisis that I have far too many objects to carry at once and no idea what I will need on the other side. Should I take the axe or the spade? The walkie-talkie? I will have to restore if I bought the wrong kit, but clearly knowing what to bring is part of the "fun". Once at Trinity, I wait for the guards to leave and meet up with the roadrunner at the bottom of the tower. He hands over the ruby and I install it into my other boot. I get the same message about hidden power and little wings but nothing else obviously happens… until I try walking north:
I have super speed! Since last time out, the bomb exploded after only a few turns, I'll likely be able to explore more of the site and maybe, finally, figure out what this game is all about. But all of that will have to wait until next time when I (probably) will wrap up the game and provide a final rating. Note that as I end this session, I have 71 points which is only one more than what I had before. I'm worried that I forgot something since I did more than one point's worth of new stuff but if so it should be obvious soon enough.
Time played: 2 hr 30 min
Total time: 10 hr 10 min
Inventory: bag of crumbs, small coin (20p), red boot (with roby), blue boot (with emerald), bandage, burial shroud, credit card, wristwatch, birdcage with lemming, broken coconut, spade, silver axe (not all carried with me to Trinity, but which I can fetch if needed)
Score: 71 of 100
Trinity continues to impress and depress me. Last time out, we witnessed the unexpected destruction of New Mexico thanks to a more powerful than expected nuclear test at the Trinity site. My guess was that we had finally found the "plot" of this game: to find out what interfered with the original test and put it right again. Do we have a time-traveling saboteur? Could he be related to that voice that keeps whispering bad "gnomon" puns in my ear? I have no idea, but it feels good to finally be discovering the plot after so much semi-random exploration.
At this point, I am most of the way through. I've solved (perhaps) four of the seven areas including Kensington Gardens, the South Pacific atoll, the Siberian steppe, and Nagasaki. Still to be conquered are an outer space segment, an unknown area, and the Trinity test site itself. I also know that I need to find a lizard for a magic potion, recover a magnetic meteorite from an impact crater, and maybe even deal with an injured wight. When we do these "Missed Classics", we aim to close out games in three posts. I hope I am not disappointing too many people when I say that we will have this one and at least one more, depending on how writing about the endgame goes.
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| "Ice ice baby. (Too cold, too cold.)" - Rob Van Winkle |
To recap a bit, last time around I attempted to explore the second mushroom but ended up transported into orbit and a very quick death. I worked out with some experimentation that I could ride a soap bubble from the "Bubble Boy" in the wabe through the mushroom door and this would make surviving in space possible, but even then I could not work out how to get to a satellite that I see whizzing by before my eventual death. Having given this some thought, I am convinced that the magnet rock is my best bet since that may allow the bubble to steer itself towards the satellite. I'm a little unsure of the specifics because it seems too small and the distance seems too great for this to actually work, but this is a game with a 40-foot tall boy blowing bubbles so I'm willing to suspend disbelief. Digging around the rock didn't work and I think that I need to cool the rock down somehow, but I do not know how.
My first thought was to carry water to it. We have ample water nearby in the river and bog, but no watertight container. You'd think the cottage would have a cup or something, but you'd be wrong. The only other water I can find is the frozen icicles on the ceiling of the ice cave. With some experimentation, I discover that I can throw the axe to knock one down! I also score one point, so I must be on the right track. Unfortunately, the ice melts quickly and there is no way to get it to the meteorite without it melting.
As puzzles go, this was fun since I realized very quickly that we had four turns before the icicle would melt. The time-box helped to narrow down where we had to explore and I realized that it would re-freeze if we take the icicle to the top of the triangle at the center of the world. From there, I can make it to the crater only if I follow the exact shortest path. Still, that is not hard considering my experience at adventure game mapping and I place the cold icicle on the hit rock. It sputters and steams a bit, but the end result is that I lose the icicle but gain a magnet rock. Score!
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| Worked about as well as Reaganomics. |
The Final Frontier
My thought from last week was that once I made it to the satellite, I could board it. I had in mind something like the ISS (which had not been invented yet in 1986) or a half-remembered scene from Moonraker (not yet a decade old at that point). The good news is that the magnetic rock took me to the satellite as I expected, but once there I found nothing to do. There was no airlock or entrance hatch, only an automated defense satellite and an oncoming nuclear missile. The voice in my ear managed a Star Trek pun ("where gnomon has gone before"), but that doesn't help much.
One thing that changed is that I am now on the satellite and it is firing maneuvering thrusters to position itself. In the process, we are getting closer and closer to the white door. This is good since it means a way out! This is bad once you remember that the white door is the location of a nuclear explosion and the fact that we are going towards it means that this satellite will likely be blown to bits soon. Just before the missile hits, when the white door is closest, I pop the bubble with my spade. Instead of being suicide, the sudden pressure forces me to spring towards and through the door before I die of exposure to the cold of space. I still accomplished nothing, but at least I know how to get back to the wabe. I try the sequence again and again to find anything that I missed, but come up empty. Whatever I am supposed to do there, I don't think I am doing it yet. I restore.
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| Skink: noun; a smooth-bodied lizard with short or absent limbs, typically burrowing in sandy ground, and occurring throughout tropical and temperate regions. |
Tunnel Vision
One low-point last week was that I could not find the third mushroom, despite the fact that I had found it and wrote about it a post or two before. What happened? It's a combination of my writing being behind my playing, but also because I simply didn't keep the whole game in my head. I forgot that I saw it there even though I had it in my notes. In my defense, I was certain that the ossuary was underground and there was no way a magic shadow could reach there. Let's just say that I could have explored this area a while ago if it had not been for this mistake.
Passing through the door, I emerge at the eastern end of a long dark tunnel. This also happens to be the end with a nuclear bomb that will no doubt explode in a few minutes. In classic text adventure style, there is a disused lantern on the ground that I grab. Exploring west, I discover a walkie-talkie and a skink. If you are like me, you may have no idea what a "skink" is and may have resorted to Google. If so, you would have learned that a skink is a variety of lizard. I finally found my lizard! Or rather, I had found him because he immediately rushes off to the west. Before engaging in pursuit, I muck around with the walkie-talkie by extending its antenna and listening to some static. The signal doesn't reach well into the tunnels and the only word that I can make out is "eight", although eight what will have to remain a mystery… but I'd better hurry.
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| "Earth below us / Drifting, falling / Floating, weightless / Calling, calling home" |
Just to the west is the end of the line as the cave is sealed except for a tiny, lizard-sized crevasse. The skink runs there to hide immediately and I have no obvious way to get him out. This leads to a nifty little puzzle of "catch the skink" that goes something like this:
- The skink will flee from light, either the splinter or the electric lamp that I found in the tunnel. He's like a peaceful grue in that respect.
- I can force him out of the crevice by dropping my splinter of wood in; it is too narrow to do the same with the lantern. Doing that causes him to race past me down the eastern tunnel I never see it again.
- If I (after a restore) place the lit lantern in the next room and repeat, the skink runs there and then immediately back. He's disoriented by all of the lights so I can pick it up!
- Unfortunately, it wiggles out of hands nearly immediately although I get 1-2 turns to do something else with it. I try putting it in the bag and birdcage, but neither do the trick.
- With no other option, I resort to killing the skink in the brief time that I am able to hold it. Killing it is vividly described, down to the way that your hand aches as you choke the life out of its innocent lizard body. For all the implied death in this game, killing this creature-- that would die in minutes anyway-- hurts.
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| I should have listened to you! |
I take a second hint and discover that I missed or misinterpreted one of the magpie's messages: "Killed in the light of a crescent moon." That is obvious in retrospect, but I did not connect it with the lizard in specific and forgot about it entirely until now. Since I have to murder my lizard, where can I find a crescent moon? The tunnel section could have been at night, but since killing it there didn't work I am going to guess not. All of the other time periods have been daylight hours. Thankfully, the answer is obvious since there is one area that I have not "won" yet: space!
I ride my bubble back to the final frontier and verify that the moon is in fact a crescent from my perspective. I murder the lizard with the same heart-wrenching scene, but at least I got points for it. I follow the rest of the puzzle as before to dock with the satellite, ride it back to the white door, and then pop the bubble just before orbital armageddon. (Speaking of which, why would they bother to have nuked orbit? The satellite that I was on seemed like it fired lasers at missiles as an orbital defense system. That part makes sense, but nuking it seems overkill since a laser-satellite would be just as destroyed if you fired a conventional missile at it. I guess when all you have are nuclear-powered hammers, everything looks like a nail.) I drop my freshly killed lizard into the cauldron and it begins to smoke and bubble. I leave quickly and the cottage explodes, leaving nothing but the charred remains of the book and maps plus one intact cauldron. At the bottom of the cauldron is my reward: a single emerald.
 |
| It's kryptonite without the aftertaste. |
I check my list of open puzzles but I have just about reached the end. All that remains is helping the wight and heading off to Trinity, but alas I think my own pity for the injured wight is my own and not Moriarty's. What's left? Eventually, I notice the color of the two boots on "my" corpse are red and green, the same as the colors of the two jewels that I have been (knowingly or unknowingly) chasing after, a red ruby and a green emerald. I also recall that there are recesses in each boot where you could hide something, but I never found anything that fit. I stick my new emerald in the green boot and it is absorbed instantly. The boot seems to hum with newfound power and tiny wings sprout from the heel. What does that give me? Flight? Speed? I'll have to get the matched set to find out.
Following the same path in my previous post to disguise myself as a corpse to ride the ferry, I slip through the mushroom door to the Trinity site. Before I go, I have a small crisis that I have far too many objects to carry at once and no idea what I will need on the other side. Should I take the axe or the spade? The walkie-talkie? I will have to restore if I bought the wrong kit, but clearly knowing what to bring is part of the "fun". Once at Trinity, I wait for the guards to leave and meet up with the roadrunner at the bottom of the tower. He hands over the ruby and I install it into my other boot. I get the same message about hidden power and little wings but nothing else obviously happens… until I try walking north:
Woosh! Desert streaks past in a dizzy rush of color.
I have super speed! Since last time out, the bomb exploded after only a few turns, I'll likely be able to explore more of the site and maybe, finally, figure out what this game is all about. But all of that will have to wait until next time when I (probably) will wrap up the game and provide a final rating. Note that as I end this session, I have 71 points which is only one more than what I had before. I'm worried that I forgot something since I did more than one point's worth of new stuff but if so it should be obvious soon enough.
Time played: 2 hr 30 min
Total time: 10 hr 10 min
Inventory: bag of crumbs, small coin (20p), red boot (with roby), blue boot (with emerald), bandage, burial shroud, credit card, wristwatch, birdcage with lemming, broken coconut, spade, silver axe (not all carried with me to Trinity, but which I can fetch if needed)
Score: 71 of 100
Reasons Why This Chain Of Command Malarky Must Be Pretty Good
If you are reading this then you might have noticed that I have started to re-invigorate this erstwhile dormant blog, one of the main reasons for this has been my (rather late) discovery of these rules. A set of rules that has managed to achieve that after a seven year lay off is in itself no mean feat given my natural indolence.
Last night is a good micro example of why for me Chain of Command is a great set of rules and lives up to its recent accolade from WI of "Best game of 2017"; for me, that is literally so.
We had a game planned at the CLWS, just a vague pick up game of "medium" CoC, 2 German infantry platoons versus 1 BEF and 1 French infantry Platoon. Nothing special, but even as a simple game it was extremely tense, tough on both sides, and with neither really having any great advantage until the very end.
We plumped for a Delaying Action scenario, with the Allies deploying in a small village protected by a small wooded rise to the south of it, with an open flank to the west and the eastern side protected by walls and hedges
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| The view from the southern German approach The forces were a slightly weird mix, 1 full strength early war German outfit, plus 1 German platoon with only 3 sections rather than 4. This meant the Germans were giving away a total of +3 support points. The Allies had a full strength BEF platoon, on a minus 5 support points, plus a weakened (2 section) French platoon at minus 3 points. The net result was a massive 11 support point adjustment for the Allies. Then the fun begins: Will, for the Germans rolls a 3 (three....) for the German side. So the net result was indeed 3 support points for the German and 12 for the defending Allies....ewwwww. It actually turned out, in my opinion, to make for a really good game. What on earth could we take with our puny 3 points? We were sure to be up against armour of some sort...A flamethrower? decent choice but we'd be attacking so it would be tricky to use in an ambush role...an ATR plus perhaps a satchel charge? ...In the end we opted for 3 satchel charges, in order to spread some sort of AT ability around. The only problem with 2 on 2 games of CoC is that they inevitably turn into 2 x 1 on 1 games, and this was no exception, doesn't really matter, and still worked out ok for us. However, it does mean that my knowledge of what went on on my right flank is a bit sketchy as I had my hands full to my front trying to winkle out the BEF from a collection of buildings. To be honest, I found it sort of added to the experience and emphasised how this truly is a platoon commanders game. Yes, bits of news and sounds of fighting filtered through to me, but generally I was concerned with doing my own job and not worrying too much about someone elses. The plan was fairly simple, I was to fix the defenders by approaching and occupying the wooded rise while Will with the 3 section platoon swung right and went for the nearest (French) JOP which was tantalisingly close to our right flank.  And so it begun, this was going to be quite tough. The buildings facing south (me) had a decent field of fire, and the defenders in the upper storeys would be able to pop away from hard cover as soon as I crested the little rise, so I wasn't in too much of a hurry, I thought I'd get a couple of sections on, go tactical and advance up the rise, which is indeed what I did....meanwhile from my right I could hear a lot of firing (and quite a lot of swearing) from Will. I don't think things were going to well over there.  About to crest the riseA few British had indeed deployed into the buildings to my front as I readied to "go over the top", off we went. I was indeed met by a hail of rifle and Bren fire, plus (horror) a Vickers gun opened up from one of the rear buildings on my right hand section. I took the odd casualty, and bit of shock, nothing too terrible, but I kept rolling 1's for my movement. I was going nowhere fast, taking a steady dribble of hits, and, by staying tactical, not putting any fire back on the enemy (Dave). Not good. I dropped a couple of totally ineffective mortar rounds on the Vickers, came out of tactical with 1 section and traded fire with the section in the house but this simply wasn't working. Most of the British fire was on my right hand section, the left hand one was safe from the murderous Vickers by virtue of a building blocking his LOS. What to do? Sod it. Pull back, rally up. Do it properly. Meanwhile on the right things were not going well. 1 German section had been almost eliminated and some French armour had showed up. Questions such as "How do these satchel charges work?" were being asked. I hadn't inflicted any damage at all on the British and had 3 men dead for my trouble,Oh, and my mortar rolled a double 1....out of ammo. So I pulled back down the little rise. Meanwhile, a Bren carrier had appeared on my left flank, and was trundling up the road to come and cause trouble. A couple of rather indecisive phases passed, I ended up deploying all of my force now behind the riseand had racked up 3 CoC dice...there were some 40 odd German infantry milling about there, Jerry and Dave were rightly bemoaning the fact they hadn't taken a mortar in their support! All the while the Bren carrier advanced, I'd pulled 2 of my sections to the left of the rise, which would allow them to get over it out of sight of the Vickers which would be blocked by the occupied house in front of them, but, the Bren carrier would also spot them. A third section moved tactically to the left to distract the carrier. Then suddenly I had a brainwave..Smoke! doh! why hadn't I used this? My senior leader expertly lobbed a smoke grenade to cover my left flank and the 2 sections on the rise tactically moved over, steeling themselves from the fire about to come their way from the occupied house to their front.  |
Over I went. British turn.He opened up at close range with a Bren and a couple of rifles, and....I got away with it...He only managed to hit 1 rifleman and inflict a couple of points of shock.
Then my turn: A double 6 plus a 4 and a couple of 3's..perfect! I returned the British fire with some 25 fire dice, got 17 hits, killed 3 or 4 British and inflicted a similar amount of shock, he was wobbly but not quite pinned, I also continued moving my left flank section up to distract the carrier. With my second turn from the double six I fired again...hitting the BEF section with another 25 dice...too much for him- the entire section was wiped out including the corporal. Much better.
A loud bang and and a shout went up from my right flank. The lone surviving rifleman from Will's section had got forward, flanked the Souma and detonated his satchel charge! Things were looking up. I despatched my 4th section round to reinforce the right now that Will was making headway.
Then the British turn, he rolled 3 sixes so the turn ended....my smoke evaporated....Gulp...The bren carrier and a section in the rear house started peppering my left hand section, The Bren carrier continued forward firing.. I took a couple of hits and several shock, I needed to get forward. In my phase the sergeant readied another smoke grenade and promptly rolled double 1! dropping it at his feet and enveloping himself in smoke. Nothing for it, The platoon sergeant ordered forward a rifleman with my only satchel charge, he ran to the Bren carrier, planted the charge and retired to safety. It was even the right figure to do it, he had a gold close assault badge on his little plastic arm! The charge went off and did absolutely nothing, didn't even scratch the carrier.
I pushed forward with the left hand section despite taking fire from the carrier, I didn't really know what to do to be honest, but at that point the game was won on the right, the last French section broke, the German force morale was hanging on by a thread (Will was down to FM 1!)but in the ensuing tests I used a CoC dice or 2 and survived and the British morale gave way. I ended on FM 7
It was a thoroughly enjoyable game, so thanks to Will, Dave and Jerry for a good evening. I don't think I've managed to convey much of the tension that was in this game. The lack of support options for the Germans meant they had to do it the hard way. I don't think it would have been as much fun if the Germans had brought along a Stug or 2. I took 12 casualties but if this had been a campaign my losses wouldn't have been too bad after adjustment.
Thinking about it, if we had been playing a game of say, Spearhead, or Command Decision, this entire game would have been about 3 or 4 die rolls between 4 stands.....
So, it looks like I'm sold on Chain of Command.
(Apologies for the lack of photos for this game, but I was having too much fun to remember to take many)
Monday, March 16, 2020
Suzy Cube Update: Wish List, Pre-Registration And Release Date!
#SuzyCube #gamedev #indiedev #madewithunity @NoodlecakeGames
I promised you all a big update mid-week, well here is a HUGE update! Suzy Cube is now available to Wish List on Steam and Pre-Register on Google Play!
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