Walkthrough for
Crack City
Snow Dogs Trilogy part 1
by Garry Cappuccini
Written by Richard Bos
First, a few notes.
To start with, Crack City is a PAWed game for the ZX Spectrum. Words are,
therefore, significant to five letters rather than the more usual Quill's four.
It's also a refreshingly tight game, with only a few locations, in almost all
of which something or several things happen. This is a welcome change from the
usual 150+ locations, 100+ of which are corridors.
The game also lets you play as three different agents, but this doesn't seem
to make any difference to game play, except in one case I've noted below. In
any case, it doesn't seem to make much, if any difference for the sleep and
hunger counters, which in this game are at least better justified than usually:
the sleep counter separates the game into three days - you have more than
enough time, by the way - and the hunger counter at least introduces you to a
location which is otherwise involved in two separate puzzles.
Some actions involve random numbers. Unfortunately, this means that in two
cases you can die, due to bad luck with the RNG, with no guaranteed solution.
Mostly, though, you just need to retry your action. Again, you have quite
enough time, so don't worry. NPCs, on the other hand, use the RNG extensively
and therefore have a mind of their own, particularly when it comes to wandering
about. Because the map is so small, though, you can always find them when you
want them - or find them getting in your way!
Obviously, since this is a walkthrough, spoilers are rife below. I'm not
taking you past every single clue and sight, but I do provide some commands
which give some hints while not being strictly necessary to get to the end.
There is a help command, which gives all of three hints. That's hardly
extensive, but hey, it's there.
We start in our own apartment.
Get all from the wardrobe and wear all. Search the bed, get all, wear the
jacket. Pull the table, put the ashtray under it, put everything you're still
carrying in your pockets, then stand on the table, remove the mesh, and look in
the vent.
Exit, push 0, exit, go east and north twice. Show your pass to the guard
(it's in your wallet which is in your pocket, but presumably you whip it out
easily because the command still works), then go west (and note the task you're
given) and north. Talk to the technician, redescribe, and of the two available
objects take the dart and wear it.
Go south, east and south, enter, and ask the barman about the nurse. You'll
be hungry soon and we can't tell how long the next bit is going to take, so buy
a burger to be on the safe side.
Go and find the nurse. The map isn't large, so she can't be far away. She
does have a disturbing tendency to walk off, though, so you may have to be a
bit patient. When you find her, ask the nurse "are you sharp". She'll say she's
hidden "it". To find "it", go to Goldman Square, which is where Benson's
Bar
is. From the square, go west, and look in the crates.
Save your game: in the next bit your survival is dependent on random numbers.
Go east and enter. Sit at the table for a surprise. Fire a dart at the
crossbow until you hit it. (You may miss too often and be killed. In that case,
there's nothing you can do but reload.) Open the cabinet, search it, and remove
the panel. Examine the cage, cover your hand with your shirt and then pull the
wire. Pick the lock, drop the wire, open the door and exit.
The next bit is also dependent on random numbers, and is also the only place
I've found where your ratings are important. First, if the policeman is here,
go west, wait for him to come out, and then go back east and hope he doesn't
return to arrest you for murder. When the coast is clear, wait for an armed man
to appear. Fire your gun at the man. You may miss, in which case you're killed
instead. The chance of this happening is partly random, partly dependent on
your Skill rating, and there's nothing much you can do about it. Presuming
you've survived, search the body and push it into the canal.
Go west and north, show pass to guard, north. Examine the laser, put the
pyramid on the platform, then first push green, then push red. Take the pyramid
from the platform and examine it. Those will come in useful later.
But now it's getting late. Time to get a kip. Go south, east, south twice,
enter twice, push 32, and exit. You may have had a message already telling you
that you're getting tired. If not, you might wait around a bit until you do,
but it's not necessary. Sleep.
It's now early on the 8th. Wipe the ashtray, and remember that number. Exit,
push 0, exit, and dial the number from the ashtray. Go east. Throw the hook. If
it holds, good. If not, take it back and throw it again, until it does. Then go
up. Put the cutter on the bowl, turn the cutter and get it; look in the bowl
and swap the cutter for the figurine. Go down.
Next go north and west, cut the wall and move the fireplace. Enter, pull the
rope, and exit. Open the cabinet, look in it, and remember that surname. Also
examine the camera. Exit, pull rope, exit, east. Go and find Dwight. Say to
Dwight "<the surname from that file>", and give the figurine to Dwight.
Rest - which will automatically move you to Benson's Bar - until it's between
11:00 and 12:00. Buy a burger. Rest some more until it's past 19:00. Around
20:00 you'll start getting tired, so exit, go south, enter twice, push 32,
exit, and sleep. You'll wake up in the middle of the night, which is no good,
so sleep again.
You'll probably wake up hungry, so exit, push 0, exit twice, north, enter,
buy burger. Then for our first task of the final day: exit and go east. Turn a
bar and go east. Get all from the pyramid, put the bug under the table and the
receiver in your ear. Now rest until it's 13:15 or later, then wait until you
hear the password. Go find Dwight, and say to Dwight "<the password you
heard>". Drop the pyramid and receiver.
We have nothing more to do until the hand-over, so rest until the time
reaches 17:30. (You can push this to a bit later if you know what you're doing,
but then you have to be careful.) Buy a burger, just to be sure you don't get
hungry again.
Exit, go west, enter, pull the rope, exit. Wait until it's 19:00. Take a
photo, then take the film. Exit, pull rope, exit twice, and find Dwight, who
will hand you a case - you may have to catch him not moving around for a turn,
but this will eventually happen.
With the case and the film, go to Lichfield Junction, just north of Goldman
Square, where the guard is. Show your pass to the guard, go north, give film,
west, give photo, give case to chief (and you have to add "chief" to the
latter, but not to the former - though you may if you like). Finally, go east
twice and north.
And that's it, you've cracked the first part of the case! In fact, you've done
more than that: because of a slightly buggy scoring system, you have at least
103%, and may have 106%! You can also finish the case with as little as 97%;
I'll leave you to discover how. By the way, it seems that missions 2 and 3 were
never published - unfortunately, because this one was quite good.
