Tangled trees whip past your face as you run, stumbling and tripping through the bushes in the forest. Your breath is coming in short gasps. Not far behind are the shouts and clatter of the men chasing you. You are a young boy, and you have just shot one of the King's deer. In your hand you clutch the piece of blue coral, snatched from the neckband of the beast.
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I haven't played this in fifteen years and I never quite managed to finish then; so, I thought I would make another assault without any resort to clues - a task somewhat akin to tackling the north face of the Eiger while wearing wearing wellington boots and an overcoat.
After two days I have amassed 112 points and 64 objects, as well as exploring 128 locations so far. Given the complexity of the coding involved it is more than commendable that, bar the odd misspelling and typo I have only come across two bugs. The first is minor, the bolt that holds the grating closed in front of the north arch in the garden is still described as rusted shut after the addition of the last drops of oil from the petrol can. In the same time of day you can cross the river and the bolt can be opened easily.
The only other logic loophole occurs when you have visited the General (is it me or is this section rather melancholy rather than just surreal?) and have supplied him with the card table and the blanket. After the General's conjuring trick you have to close up the card table and the blanket is described as "making the room dark as it covers most of the chute." Clearly this is still referencing the blanket's initial use on the top of the celery stick sculpture in another area of the game. Notwithstanding these minor quibbles Jon Ingold created a wonderful puzzlefest with a mysterious narrative that sucks the player in for hours. Curses meets Mr. Nice Guy may be overdoing it but the inevitable comparisons between the two games show Mulldoon as very tough but fair, but Curses as very tough but sometimes unfair. What a treat it is to have these two games from the middle era of text adventures. Now I need to see if I can tie up the loose ends that proved beyond me back in 2010.
The game that just keeps on giving. After two weeks on and off and amassing an inventory of 109 items I have just pushed my score up to 152 out of 256 and visited room number 200 on my map after solving a problem with an origami machine and some mine excavation equipment. Oh no not that old chestnut I hear you cry.
I often lay in bed at night pondering text adventure impasses; Merlin's attempts to escape from his laboratory whilst evading the army outside had me stumped. They are battering his front door and you have a set number of moves to effect your egress before disaster befalls you.
The solution must be one of the cleverest in the entire text adventure canon. The four mise-en-scene puzzles accessible from the garden showcase almost every kind of problem and in each case they are masterful examples.
I often lay in bed at night pondering text adventure impasses; Merlin's attempts to escape from his laboratory whilst evading the army outside had me stumped. They are battering his front door and you have a set number of moves to effect your egress before disaster befalls you.
The solution must be one of the cleverest in the entire text adventure canon. The four mise-en-scene puzzles accessible from the garden showcase almost every kind of problem and in each case they are masterful examples.
I am nearing the end and suffering from player fatigue after a month of this. I think perhaps Jon Ingold was suffering from coding fatigue at the same point as for the first instance in the game there are some strange things happening. You can insert a long ladder into a box and close it; a twelve-foot wall next to you is not recognised at all. A shed can be closed but then you can walk through it and when inside the door cannot be referred to as there is just a doorway. A sack of fertilizer is described as full but when you attempt to empty it you are told that it is empty. And an object that is initially decribed as an insect is in fact something else when examined but subsequently still requires the first false description to interact with it.
With 220 points out of 256 I have ground to a halt in the outskirts of Moscow. Are those the gleaming spires of the Kremlin I can espy in the distance? Exploding bags of fertilizer aren't what they used to be at any rate.
To those who come after me...if you ever find yourself in the walled courtyard as Merlin in this game ignore the comment that the tower window is a long way away...and also the comment that the bag of fertilizer is empty. Unlike me, you won't then spend an hour and a half of your life trying to solve the puzzle predicating your struggles on these descriptions. The window is close and the bag is full! I made my escape and killed the guards by sheer persistance and trying something I never thought would work. After 10532 moves.