Game 33: Dungeon Master (1987)

I don't like games with names this generic. It makes it hard to Google for "Dungeon Master manual."

   

Dungeon Master

United States
FTL Games (developer and publisher)

Released in 1987 for Atari ST; 1988 for Amiga; 1989 for Apple IIGS and FM Towns; 1990 for PC-98; 1992 for DOS; 1993 for SNES

Date Started: 10 March 2020
           

Well. What an unexpected pleasure. Only a few postings ago, I was lamenting that none of the recent games were really feeding my CRPG addiction. You know--taking my attention from work, making me ignore my wife and friends, keeping me up until the break of dawn. I missed that. I'm not saying Dungeon Master is that game--not yet--but it is a multi-character game set in a multi-level dungeon with strong graphics and sound, so it certainly has the potential. Oddly, I'd never heard of this game until a few weeks ago, when I noticed it was coming up in my queue. As I am occasionally reminded (Starflight, Phantasie) there are hidden treasures from this era awaiting discovery.

The back story to Dungeon Master is told in a well-written 18-page prologue to the game manual. The dungeon in question was the abode of the Grey Lord, an extremely powerful wizard who many people regarded as a god. One fateful day, the Grey Lord discovered beneath his mountain the Power Gem--the source of the creation of men, dwarves, halflings, elves and "High Lords"--and thought he would use it to usher in a new era of world peace. But something went wrong in the casting of the spell needed to extract it, and it ended up tearing the Grey Lord's essence into two halves: the benevolent "good" wizard, and Lord Chaos, bent on using the gem for the destruction of the world.

The Grey Lord's apprentice, Theron, was affected by the event because...I don't know...I guess he was psychically linked to the Grey Lord at the time, even though he was visiting his girlfriend in the next village. His spirit was cast into limbo, but there he received a message from the Grey Lord (now going, for some reason, by the name "Librasius"). In the years that had passed since the catastrophe, the Grey Lord had sent hundreds of champions into the dungeon with the quest to recover the Grey Lord's Firestaff, which would give the Grey Lord the power to assume corporeal form again and defeat Lord Chaos. Unfortunately, all the adventurers died. Now, the Grey Lord has tasked Theron with the task to resurrect four of those adventurers and guide them through the dungeon.

Sorry, but it takes a long time to summarize 18 pages.

Thus, although you control four heroes in the game, the player literally takes the role of the noncorporeal Theron, who guides their actions. If you've ever played a multi-player CRPG and wondered who "you" are supposed to be, since you can't be all of the party members at once, this game answers it for you. It's very meta.

  

    

The setup means that Dungeon Master has a unique party creation process, though. You don't really "create" your party--instead, your incorporeal essence wanders the Hall of Champions on the first level of the dungeon, reviewing the characteristics and equipment of each of the 24 heroes enshrined there, and choosing which you want for your adventure. You actually have two options: to "resurrect" the hero, with his attributes and skills intact, or to "reincarnate" the hero, which wipes his memory (and skills) and allows you to give him a different name. In the prologue, Theron expresses horror at this idea for its obvious ethical implications.

       

This is the first clue that perhaps the "good" half of the Grey Lord may not be all that good. I feel like the game is setting me up for a very obvious twist ending.

There are four character types: fighter, ninja, wizard, and priest. But characters can be multi-classed; at least one is all four classes. I really didn't have much of a basis for choosing except a desire to have some representation from all four.

The character screen. Note the food in the inventory slots.

The game starts you off with a few disadvantages. First, you're limited to the equipment that your resurrected characters had upon death, which in my case wasn't much. Second, you have no idea which way you're facing in the dungeon. I'm not sure how you ever find this out. I just guessed for the purposes of the map. Third, you have no clue what the different spells are. Spells in this game are cast by stringing together glyphs. The game manual tells you the glyphs...

    

...but not in what order you must string them to achieve certain outcomes. Fortunately, you find scrolls along the way that give you hints. I've already determined that LO FUL gives a low-level light spell.

A couple of other random notes:

• This is one of several games in the era to require food. This is a good element in CRPGs for the realism value. Realism as in, "Hey, Leyla! Here's an ear of corn I found in a dank crevice on the sixth level of a dungeon! Tuck in!"
• Although the dungeons are made up of gridded tiles, the game occurs in real time, meaning if you just stand there, monsters will advance on you and kill you, your characters will get hungry, your spells and torches run out, and so on. As far as I can tell, there's no "pause" option--not even when you go to inventory. This makes mapping--and blogging--fairly difficult. [Later edit: Reader Menetekel clued me in that the ESC key pauses the game. Thanks!]
• Although you can move with the keypad, the mouse is most of the interface for the game. You have to click on various buttons on the screen to attack, manipulate objects, and access inventory.

Note the four attack icons--hand, club, arrow, and sling--on the right side. When I open this gate, I have to click these quickly in sequence to fight the mummy behind it.

     

Dungeon Master was originally published for the Atari ST in 1987; its DOS port came in 1989. The technical improvements over games like Might & Magic and Wizardry are obvious. It supports VGA graphics and sound cards like AdLib and SoundBlaster. (It is the first CRPG in my blog that uses a mouse, though it only gets this award because I'm playing in order of original release date, not DOS release date.) Finally, it takes advantage of (then-) modern CPU power and offers real-time, not turn-based, gameplay. It's quite startling, after the latest sequence of games, to start the application and be greeted with animated graphics, decent-quality audio, background music, and an unresponsive keyboard!

The publisher, FTL Games, never published anything but the Dungeon Master series and a 1984 adventure game called SunDog: Frozen Legacy. None of its games appear to have sold nearly as well as Dungeon Master, and the company disbanded in the early 1990s. I'll save discussions of Dungeon Master's legacy for my final posting on the game, except to note that if the Eye of the Beholder series didn't license Dungeon Master's interface, it sure ripped it off.

      

Tonight, I got Level 1 mapped (not hard because most of it was the Hall of Adventurers) and started to map Level 2, where after a fight with a mummy I was rewarded with some decent treasure. As I say, it definitely has promise. I'm going to make a return to Beyond Zork tomorrow and then see how addicted I can get to this new game.

     

Your first sword in any CRPG is always a bit of a thrill.

Game 32: Braminar (1987)

Braminar is a CRPG the way that the home movies your dad made are "cinema." They might be interesting, but you wouldn't expect to find them cataloged on IMDB. Braminar's inclusion on MobyGames's list of CRPGs stretches the definition of the term to its utmost limits.

Braminar might be the oddest game I've played since starting this blog. First, it's all text. The short documentation that comes with it describes it as a "Boolean interactive fiction" game. The author seems to have gotten sick of traditional Infocom-style interactive fiction (like Beyond Zork, from which I took a break to play Braminar) in which you have to remember (and in some cases divine) the right verb/object combo to use. So he offered a game in which all of your choices boiled down to "yes" or "no" or a selection from a very limited list.

The action takes place in the titular land, "a magical kingdom plagued by an evil overlord," who has "raised taxes, enslaved villages, and outlawed hamburgers." You play a young male or female warrior raising an army and developing experience so you can challenge the overlord. Character creation consists only of giving yourself a name and sex; the game randomly generates everything else, including your hair color and whether you have "good looks" or not!

I do. Naturally.

Then the action begins, and boy is it relentless. The game simply throws one encounter after another at you:

• You come up to a thicket in the woods. Enter? (Y/N)
• You come upon the Dark Castle of the Mad King. Enter? (Y/N)
• The statue of Pan suddenly animates and asks you the following riddle: Why does Pan play the flute? 1 - His sax is broke; 2 - His tube is broke; 3 - 'cause it's there. Choose (1,2,3) (I guessed that one right as #3 and was given "the prime command is GOMDC")
• You come upon a flowing river. Gaze into it? (Y/N)
• Things seem strangely quiet when out of nowhere jumps a band of demons. They look grumpy. The say they will let you pass if ou give them 2 male slaves, 5 female slaves, 6 gold pieces, or you may fight their champ and win their horde. Do you wish to (f)ight, (g)ive, or (r)un?
• While you are walking along, the weather suddenly changes. A tidal wave comes. Will you take shelter? (Y/N)

If you successfully navigate these--and winning battles is entirely due to chance; you play no role in the combat--you slowly gain levels, gold, and slaves. Yes, slaves. I don't really know what they're about, but the game keeps track of how many male and female slaves you own. You need to keep up a food supply to feed them and medicine for when they get sick. I guess you're ultimately using them as soldiers in the final battle. The goal is to get to Level 20, find the Staff of the Aviatar, and confront the mad overlord in his castle.

 

Here's an encounter that anticipates the button-pushing-sequence "quick time" challenges of a lot of X-box adventure games by more than 20 years: "You spot a large chest of gold at the throne. Press: 1 / = \ H keys in that sequence to simulate grabbing gold and putting it in a bag. A mis-typed key = dropped gold. Don't make too much noise, or the king will hear you and enter the room!"

 

I stole food from a gnome and got knocked down a level by my deity. I entered a gypsy camp and engaged in a stabbing-a-dagger-between-the-fingers game and lost. A fortune teller told me "enter no dungeon without a dagger." I ordered a drink at a tavern, realized it was poisoned, held on to it, and used it in a battle against demons to win automatically. I lost dozens of slaves to starvation when my food supplies ran out. I refused to steal from a tree and got the Talisman of Braminar for being a good person. I was ambushed by a troglodyte at a river, but I defeated him in combat and acquired his gold and slaves. I entered a hut in the woods, was attacked by the evil wizard Anthrax, but instantly vaporized him with a ring on my finger. In a river, I had a vision of a deity giving me a box of "Duncin' Donuts" [sic]. And so on, through a couple of dozen such encounters (a few of which repeated). Finally, I died at the hands of some drow elves.

The best things in life always pass so soon.

The game offers no way to save, so when you die, you simply have to start over and try again.

Braminar is an interesting curio, published by a shareware company named PC-SIG that apparently went defunct in the early 1990s after publishing half a dozen titles. I'm guessing that whoever included it in the MobyGames RPG list would say that its inventory and statistics qualify it as an RPG. My problem is that it's not even really a "game." If Braminar was Super Mario Brothers, you'd get a question at the beginning saying "Do you want to try to rescue the princess? (Y/N)," and you'd say "Y" and watch the computer play the game in front of you.

I should probably exclude shareware titles from my list, but honestly, it didn't take me long to play, and it didn't take you long to read it, right? I give it a 9/100 on the GIMLET scale (it's not even worth explaining why). I'm going to hit Beyond Zork for a few more hours and then see about Dungeon Master.

One more WTF screen shot, though (y'all realize you can click on these to enlarge, right?):

Nnnnooooooooo! Anything but that!

******

For further reading: 7 years later, I was persuaded to take a second look at the game and still didn't like it. I did win it, though.

Beyond Zork: Lost in Quendor

This was painful.

There is effectively no way to win Beyond Zork with the same character you started with. You simply have to accept that 90% of your playing time will involve messing around and figuring out puzzles so that your final character--the one that wins the game--will be able to use the accumulated wisdom. Ultimately, you do something that "breaks" the game. I did it yesterday when I levitated the baby hippo out of the quicksand before I lured his mother to the statue to help me get the jewel. I did it again today when I used up the Scroll of Gating before accomplishing everything I needed to accomplish on the "Ethereal Plain of Atrii." I did it another time today when I wasted my three pterodactyl rides.


Solving the pterodactyl puzzle involved putting it to sleep with the hurdy-gurdy, taking the arrow out of its wing, healing the wing with a special weed (that took me a damned long time; I knew they existed because of the manual, but it's mentioned very obscurely in the place that you find it), putting a saddle on its back, and taking its whistle. You can blow the whistle to summon it three times. Since there are several places you have to fly to and from to visit, you can't waste a trip goofing around, which is what I did.

The problem is, you keep thinking that this time you've figured out all the puzzles, and this character will be the one that goes the distance. Then you realize you've bungled the next puzzle and have to start over again.

Still, starting over beats getting stuck on the puzzles, which is where I remain. The most insidious puzzles are the ones you don't even know exist; you only see pieces of them. For instance, with reader Jason Dyer's help, I figured out how to save the minx from the hunters by erasing its tracks, so now I have a pet minx. I named him after one of my readers.


Now, I know from the manual that minxes find truffles, and sure enough, if I bring the minx to an oak tree and hang around, he ultimately digs one up. But it goes bad within a few moves and dissolves. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with it. There is a road blocked by Christmas Tree Monsters, who are afraid of caterpillars, but damned if I can find any caterpillars. There's a castle that I can see from a couple of angles but I can't find any way to reach it. (The pterodactyl is an obvious solution, but he won't fly against the wind, and the wind always seems to be blowing against me when I try to reach the area that the castle would be in.)

My inventory is chock full of stuff that's probably the solution to one puzzle or another, but I don't know what: a horseshoe, an hourglass, a dispel staff, a shovel, and something called a "vague outline."

The CRPG Addict does not consider himself a man of great willpower--he is, after all, playing CRPGs instead of working on his dissertation--so knowing that the answers to all of these questions are a quick Google search away is driving him a bit crazy. But he shall not succumb.

Nonetheless, I can't keep relying on readers for hints, and I don't want to drag this one out. To solve some of these puzzles, I may have to resort to brute tactics in which I revisit every location and try every object. Thus, I'm going to take the unusual step of playing an interlocutory game while I continue to puzzle through Beyond Zork. My next posting will be on Braminar (tonight; this short posting doesn't constitute a day's work) but I'll devote a little time each day to Beyond Zork--maybe posting updates, maybe not. What I can promise you is there will be a "won!" posting for Beyond Zork eventually.

Beyond Zork: Giant Onions, Unicorns, and Puppets

I could only think of one way to get revenge on the cook for locking me in the cellar.

     

Quendor is a reasonably small place, and frankly I haven't bothered mapping it because the various sites are fairly easy to remember (and also because certain locations generate random maps). The locations that I've visited so far include:

• A seaside town with a pub (containing the cellar from my previous posting)
• An abandoned lighthouse with various monsters and a mysterious chest at the top guarded by a multi-eyed monster (see below)
• A village called Accardi-by-the-Sea with a weapon shop and an abandoned magicians' guild hall
• An eerie forest with two difficult monsters: a cruel puppet and a hellhound
• Gurth City, which contains Ye Olde Magick Shoppe [note: I found out recently that "ye," when used this way, was actually pronounced "the"]
• A swamp containing gas and mist, including an evil Eldrich Vapor who tries to steal your stuff, and a wounded pterodactyl
• The town of Borphee, which contains a stable (with a sad unicorn) and an armor shop
• A jungle, accessible by jumping off a gondola during an amusement ride, full of strange beasts and an unreachable jewel

There are treasures, including scrolls, wands, and potions, scattered randomly throughout these areas. Once you find them, the associated shop will identify them and buy them. Shops also sell useful items. I've restarted a couple of times, and sometimes items I found on the ground in one game are in the Magic Shoppe in another, and vice versa. Earlier Zorks didn't have this randomization at all.

My big victory of the day was figuring out what to do with the onion. The whole cutting-an-onion-and-crying thing seemed obvious, but I didn't know who would benefit from crying. I took it to a depressed unicorn and cut it there. I don't know why I thought it would help. Naturally, it just made things worse.

    

Rolling a giant onion up to a depressed unicorn and cutting it to make her cry ought to send you directly to adventure-game Hell.

    

I thought I'd try it on the cruel puppet next. Maybe he wouldn't be so cruel if he was sad. But it just made him more cruel, and then he killed me.

The cruel puppet crossed the line.

So I decided to give up on the onion for a while and concentrate on how in the world was I going to defeat the monster at the top of the lighthouse: the Dornbeast, a fearsome creature with 69 eyes--69 "sensitive eyes," as the manual explains. I mean, what an annoying game, right? Giant onions... beasts with 69 sensitive eyes... how am I ever going to get through this game without a walkthrough? Yes, I have become the Homer Simpson of adventure game playing:

    

      

As embarrassingly long as it took, I did ultimately figure it out, distracting the dorn with onion fumes long enough to get the chest he was protecting.

    

       

I ignored the chest's warning, written on a brass plaque, not to open it. I was teleported to a land of unicorns who were not at all happy with my presence and banished me back to the real world. Just for fun, I opened the chest and visited again, and I--or, I should say, Adamantyr--had one of the more memorable deaths of any adventure game:

    

       

Well, if the chest takes the person who opens it to a land of unicorns, it seemed I had a sure way to help one unhappy unicorn locked in a stable. Sure enough, she used it to return home, and I got a boost in compassion for my troubles. I also got a boost in luck when I (as clued in by the manual) kissed her horn.

The chest seemed like a good way to get rid of enemies, so I tried giving it to the cook, the cruel puppet, and a group of bandits to no avail. With the monkey grinder, though, I hit paydirt. (I should have realized this from the manual's description that monkey grinders "suffer an illiteracy rate of 103%.")

     

   

With the monkey grinder gone, I was able to get his hurdy-gurdy (yes, another word I will never again get to type in any other CRPG review). An interesting device, it has six settings: eye, ear, nose, mouth, hand, and clock. When you point it to one of the settings and turn the crank, either something good or something bad happens related to the setting. For instance, if it's on "ear," you might hear beautiful music or a horrific cacophony.

The cruel puppet and the hellhound both fell to a Rod of Annihilation that I found somewhere. Getting past them, I came to a boulder with a riddle:

Never ahead, ever behind
Yet flying swiftly past
For a child, I last forever
For adults, I'm gone too fast
What am I?

The CRPG Addict knows the answer to that one only too well. The correct answer causes the glade to erupt in a "pool of radiance." I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Beyond the forest, I found a rope bridge called "Zeno's Bridge." It's a cute joke:

     

Just to be sure, I went all the way to 2047/2048.

     

If I wasn't already aware of Zeno's Paradox, I might learn about it from this game, so chalk another one up to "What Have You Learned?"

So, how to get across the bridge--if there is a way, and it's not just a joke--is one puzzle I haven't figured out yet. The others keeping me occupied are:

• A wounded pterodactyl with a whistle around his neck. He won't let me come near him.
• There's an hourglass in the magick shoppe for 1000 zorkmids. I've sold everything I'm comfortable selling, and I only have 121 zorkmids. I have no idea where you get so much for the hourglass, or even if the hourglass is all that important. (I spent 100 zorkmids on a sword, but I'm not sure if that was really a good investment; I seemed to be doing okay with my dagger.)
• On an idol in a jungle is a tear-shaped jewel, but every time I try to climb up to it, the idol overbalances and I fall inside of it. My stick of levitation is exhausted, so I can't use that.
• I have a bunch of wands, staffs, and rods, and I'm not sure which ones I really need to keep to solve puzzles and which ones I can sell. My inventory is getting pretty full.
• In one place, a bunch of hunters ferret out a minx and take it. I have the impression that I need the minx for something, as the manual mentions them, but I can't figure out how to stop the hunters form getting it.
• There's a trail blocked by "Christmas Tree Monsters" (see below). Getting past them involves something to do with inscribing a glyph, or perhaps finding a caterpillar.

    

Another Beyond Zork original.

  

If you want to hint me on any of these, give me very light hints, not outright spoilers, please.

On the plus side, I keep getting to rescue animals. This episode was a little heartwarming. My compassion is going through the roof. (Technically, I'm not sure what that does for me.)

    

        

One final mystery: I ended up naming my sword "Elzair" to close out my "Guess the Game" obligations. But my first attempt was to name it after frequent commenter Xyzzy. When I tried that, I got:

A hollow voice says, "Fool! That name is reserved by the Implementors. Choose another!"

What are the odds that the handle of one of my readers is a "reserved word" in a 23-year-old game? Assuming that reserved words are commands, I just typed "Xyzzy" in the command line, and the game said, "A hollow voice says, 'Fool!'" What's the in-joke that I'm missing? I'm afraid to Google it for fear I'll get spoilers.

This may not be a "real" CRPG, but I'm having a lot of fun with it. As in previous Infocom games, the quality of the writing is excellent, the humor witty, and the puzzles original. It's hard to ask for more.

Beyond Zork: Zorkish Puzzles, Beyond-Zorkish Combat

In Zork, you could fight a couple of monsters with your Elvish sword of great antiquity, but the outcome was based on pure luck. You kept swinging and they kept swinging, and either you'd die and reload or the monster would die and you could continue on.

Beyond Zork changes all of that by introducing first, a lot more monsters, and second, a skill-based combat system in which your strength helps determine the damage, your dexterity helps determine your chance to hit, and your endurance determines how many blows you can take. There's still quite a bit of luck involved, though.

I have to confess that its CRPG creds are nonetheless doubtful. There are only a few monsters that you kill in this manner. Most of the rest you have to banish in the traditional adventure game fashion: by solving a puzzle. Take the slug that occupies another room in the same abandoned lighthouse as the spider. You can beat at it with the club and ultimately kill it that way, I suppose, but its demise is so much quicker (and more satisfying) if you toss some salt on it.

What kind of a game doesn't recognize "boo-ya"?

Puzzles, often inventory-based puzzles, are the hallmark of adventure games, both text and graphical, and boy does Beyond Zork have some hard ones. Some depend on reading the manual (thanks to Jason Dyer for emphasizing this in a comment yesterday), some on common sense, some on careful deduction, and some on bat$*#% logic that only a career Zork player would possess.

For instance, in the same lighthouse, hiding under a bed, is a "dust bunny." No, not the kind your mother-in-law is always finding, but the man-eating kind (the kind you wish your mother-in-law would actually find). Here's the manual's take on dust bunnies, with an amusing image:

So they respond to static electricity. For a while I thought this meant that I had to find a Wand of Lightning or a ZAP spell or something. Nope. You know what it is? You take a bearskin rug from a pub, carry it to the room where the dust bunny is lurking, drop it, step on it, shuffle your feet to build up a charge of static electricity, and touch the dust bunny.


Now, if you're not much of an adventure game player, you're sitting there asking, "How in the world would you ever know to do that?" And the answer is simple: you explore the map until you realize that there's no Wand of Lightning to be found. So you visit every location, talking to yourself like a madman, "Dust bunnies... dust bunnies are afraid of electricity... and lemon-scented spray... electricity... static... lemons... where can I get lemons?.... where can I get electricity?... can I get electricity from an oak tree?... no, what about this painting... SAILOR, TELL ME ABOUT STATIC... that didn't work... static... electricity... lemons... here's a shop... BUY LEMONS... that was stupid... hey, here's a bar... I wonder if they sell lemonade... no lemonade... here's a bear-skin rug... rug... static... AHA!"

The problem is, this goes on for about 20 puzzles in the game, and I'm dangerously close to admitting defeat on almost half of them. Right now, my big conundrums are figuring out how to make a pterodactyl sit still long enough to remove an arrow from its wing and how to defeat an organ-grinder monkey. An organ-grinder monkey? Oh, yes, I'm quite serious:

CRPG or not, no other game features monsters this original.

While we're on unique monsters, here's the game's description of another creative offering: the cruel puppet.


And here's a shot from my encounter with the puppet in the game:

Beyond Zork: the only game that lets you fight an emotionally abusive puppet.

To give you a sense of both combat and puzzles, I'm going to paste below the transcript from my adventures in the basement of the bar, where I was sent to recover a bottle of wine in exchange for a giant onion. I have no idea what to do with the onion. I'm guessing it's not related to the pterodactyl, but you never know.

The basement is one of several locations in Beyond Zork in which a random map generates every time you enter, so you can never be sure of finding the exact same items and monsters in the exact same locations. The script was automatically generated by the game, although I've redacted some of the parts where I died and reloaded or tried to do embarrassingly stupid things.

*****

>W
Kitchen
Coils of greasy steam rise from a cauldron bubbling over a roaring hearth. The ceiling is hung with crusty pots and strips of old meat.
A closed door in the corner bears the legend, "Keepeth Out."
A skinny old cook is bustling around the kitchen.
There's a giant onion here.

>OPEN DOOR
You open the cellar door.
The cook gives the giant onion an affectionate kick. "Nice, eh? Won second place at the Borphee County Fair."

>DOWN
"Wait a second."
The cook's scowl changes to a malicious grin. "Listen, boy," he says. "You look like somebody who knows a great vegetable when he sees one. You want this here onion? Okay. There's an old bottle of wine lyin' around downstairs somewhere. Bring it up to me in one piece, and the giant onion's yours." He glances at the cellar door and shudders. "Simple."

>SAVE
You mumble the Spell of Saving.
Enter file name (".sav" will be added).
Default is "1.sav": 2
Overwrite existing file? (y/n) >y

[SAVE completed.]

>DOWN
You clump down the stairway.

Wine Cellar
You're standing at the bottom of a short, rickety stairway, ankle-deep in refuse. Light streams down through an open door overhead.
A crinkly scroll lies trampled in the dust.

>TAKE SCROLL
Taken.

>READ SCROLL
The meaning of the crinkly scroll is obscure. It seems to have something to do with refreshment. The word Yabba is inscribed across the top.
A rat-ant scurries in from the southwest passage!

>KILL RAT-ANT WITH ZINK
Zink noticeably wounds the rat-ant.
The rat-ant's teeth barely miss your ankle.

>KILL RAT-ANT WITH ZINK
You swing at the rat-ant with Zink, nearly hitting it.
The rat-ant misses you again, but just barely.

>KILL RAT-ANT WITH ZINK
Zink seriously wounds the rat-ant.
The rat-ant closes in with its sharp teeth!
Snap! A spark leaps between you and the rat-ant, leaving it nearly stunned. (I have no idea what this was about. I guess I still had a charge from the rug.)
[Your endurance just went down.]

>KILL RAT-ANT WITH ZINK
You deal the rat-ant a decisive blow with Zink!
Mortally wounded, the rat-ant retreats into the darkness.
[Your experience just went up. You have achieved the rank of Level 2 Male Peasant.]

>WAIT
Time passes.
[Your endurance is back to normal.]

>UP
Bang! An unseen hand slams the cellar door in your face.

Darkness
It's completely dark.
You hear the snap of a substantial lock.

>TAKE LANTERN FROM PACK. LIGHT IT.
You take the rusty lantern out of the pack.

Click. The rusty lantern emits a feeble glow.

Wine Cellar
You're standing at the bottom of a short, rickety stairway, ankle-deep in refuse. The door overhead is closed.

>SOUTHWEST
Musty Corridor
The lighted lantern's glow reveals a gray patch of moss on the wall.

>EXAMINE MOSS
The moss is sickly gray, glistening with moisture.

>SQUEEZE MOSS
The moss seems soft and pliant.
I knew to do this because of the manual, which talks about the "Moss of Mareilon" that, when squeezed, "releases an invisible clout of spores which improves the dexterity of laboratory rat-ants."

>SQUEEZE MOSS
The moss seems soft and pliant.
You idly scratch an itchy finger.

>SQUEEZE MOSS
The moss seems soft and pliant.

>SQUEEZE MOSS
The moss seems soft and pliant.
You give your fingers a satisfying scratch.

>SQUEEZE MOSS
The moss seems soft and pliant.

>SQUEEZE MOSS
The moss seems soft and pliant.
Those itchy fingers are becoming quite a nuisance.

>SQUEEZE MOSS
The moss seems soft and pliant.
Damn that itch! You hold your bothersome hand up to the lighted lantern... and gasp with shock!
Your fingers, once fat and stubby, are now long and slender as a pianist's.
You flex the new digits one at a time; they respond with unfamiliar agility.
Fact is, your whole body feels tighter and more coordinated than ever.
[Your dexterity just went up.]
The lantern's glow is fading rapidly.

>STATUS
[Displaying status.]
Adamantyr/Level 2 Male Peasant
EN:30 ST:11 DX:18 IQ:10 CM:10 LK:10 AC:01

>SOUTHWEST
Reeking Room
Smashed bottles litter the floor, and the air reeks of sour wine.
A rod lies in a shadowy corner.

>TAKE ROD
Taken.

>EXAMINE ROD
You see nothing interesting about the rod.

>PUT ROD IN PACK
You put the rod in the pack.

>SOUTH
Throne Room
A shallow nest of sea shells, coral and other bits of ocean debris lies in the corner.
The discipline crab is waiting for you.
The discipline crab's antennae snap to alert as you enter. He rises from the nest of seashells and charges across the floor, claws snapping with anticipation!

>KILL CRAB WITH ZINK
Zink gravely wounds the discipline crab.
The discipline crab closes in with its pincers!
[Your endurance just went down.]

>KILL CRAB WITH ZINK
Zink slightly wounds the discipline crab.
The discipline crab gives you a nasty pinch!
[Your endurance just went down.]

>KILL CRAB WITH ZINK
You deal the discipline crab a decisive blow with Zink!
Something falls to your feet with a plink, and the discipline crab retreats into the darkness.
[Your experience just went up.]

>TAKE CROWN
You take the tiny crown.

>INVENTORY
You take stock of your possessions.

You're carrying Zink the shillelagh (wielded), a tiny crown, a lighted lantern and a crinkly scroll.
You're also carrying a pack. Inside the pack you see a rod, a ring, a gilt-edged scroll, a rusty dagger, a bubble gum card and a stick.
You're wearing nothing special.
You have 1 zorkmid.

>TAKE DAGGER AND WIELD IT
You take the rusty dagger out of the pack.
The lantern's light flickers and goes out.

Darkness
It's completely dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

>NORTH
You feel your way onward, straight into the jaws of a deadly presence lurking in the darkness.

Death
You are dead.

Do you want to undo your last command, restore a previously saved game, restart
from the beginning, or quit?

[Type UNDO, RESTORE, RESTART or QUIT.] >RESTORE
Enter file name (".sav" will be added).
Default is "3.sav":

[RESTORE completed.]

At this point, I re-did everything, realizing that the rusty lantern didn't have enough light to get me all of the way through the cellar. I figured the "crinkly scroll" with the "renew" spell might work on the lantern. It did, but then I realized I had a "rusty dagger" it might work on, too. So I re-loaded and made sure I was holding both the dagger and the lantern before invoking the spell.

>READ CRINKLY SCROLL
The meaning of the crinkly scroll is obscure. It seems to have something to do with refreshment. The word Yabba is inscribed across the top.

>YABBA
A refreshing pink aura envelops you and all your possessions as you study the crinkly scroll. Then the aura fades, and the crinkly scroll disappears.
The lighted lantern begins to glow.

>EXAMINE DAGGER
It's a very basic dagger with a razor-sharp blade.

>EXAMINE LANTERN
The lighted lantern looks good as new. Its glow is bright and strong.

>NAME DAGGER "CALIBRATOR"
You invoke the Spell of Naming, and the dagger basks in the glow of a new-forged synonym. Henceforth, you may refer to it as "Calibrator."

>NORTHEAST
Bottom of Stack
Empty wine crates are stacked to the ceiling in a stairlike spiral.

>NORTH
Musty Corridor
The lighted lantern's glow reveals a gray patch of moss on the wall.

>NORTHEAST
Wine Cellar
You're standing at the bottom of a short, rickety stairway, ankle-deep in refuse. The door overhead is closed.

>EAST
Shadowy Stacks
Precarious stacks of barrels loom in the shadows on every side.
A skeleton lies at your feet. An amulet dangles from its neck.

>TAKE AMULET
You reach down to touch the amulet...
Snap! Ten bony fingers clamp around your throat!
[Your endurance just went down.]

>KILL SKELETON WITH CALIBRATOR
With a sigh of exhaustion, the heap of bones releases its strangle hold and crumbles into a useless heap of bones.
[Your experience just went up.]

>TAKE AMULET
You take the amulet off the heap of bones.

>WEST
Wine Cellar
You're standing at the bottom of a short, rickety stairway, ankle-deep in refuse. The door overhead is closed.

>SOUTHWEST
Musty Corridor
The lighted lantern's glow reveals a gray patch of moss on the wall.

>SOUTH
Bottom of Stack
Empty wine crates are stacked to the ceiling in a stairlike spiral.

>UP
You teeter for a moment on the lowest crates, then slowly edge your way upward.

Top of Stack
You struggle to keep your balance as the stack sways back and forth in then darkness.
There's a wine bottle here.

>TAKE BOTTLE
Taken.

>EXAMINE BOTTLE
The words "Chateau Blanc 877, bottled by Frobozz Magic Wine Company, Ltd" appear on the wine bottle's label, above a picture of a white house with a small mailbox. A pale red liquid swishes around inside. You can see right through it.

>PUT BOTTLE IN PACK
You put the wine bottle in the pack.

>DOWN
You carefully descend the stack.

Bottom of Stack
Empty wine crates are stacked to the ceiling in a stairlike spiral.

>NORTH
Musty Corridor
The lighted lantern's glow reveals a gray patch of moss on the wall.

>NORTHEAST
Wine Cellar
You're standing at the bottom of a short, rickety stairway, ankle-deep in refuse. The door overhead is closed.
[Your endurance is back to normal.]

>UP
The cellar door is closed.

>EXAMINE CELLAR DOOR
It looks as if the cellar door is closed.

>OPEN CELLAR DOOR
The cellar door seems to be locked.

>KNOCK ON CELLAR DOOR
You hear a muffled "Har!"

>COOK, OPEN DOOR!
He doesn't seem to hear you.

>COOK, I SWEAR TO GOD I'LL KILL YOU!
He doesn't seem to hear you.

>BEAT AT DOOR
[The word "beat" isn't in the vocabulary that you can use.]

>SMASH DOOR
Wham! Your fist deals the cellar door a mighty blow, with little effect except for the noise.

>TAKE ZINK FROM PACK. WIELD IT.
You take Zink out of the pack.

[setting aside Calibrator first]
You wield Zink.

>HIT DOOR WITH ZINK
Wham! Your Zink deals the cellar door a mighty blow, with little effect except for the noise.

>HIT DOOR WITH ZINK
Wham! Your Zink deals the cellar door a mighty blow, with little effect except for the noise.

>SCREAM
You begin to get a sore throat.

>PUT ZINK IN PACK. TAKE CALIBRATOR FROM PACK,. WIELD IT.
You put Zink in the pack.

You're already holding Calibrator.

You wield Calibrator.

>PICK LOCK
You can't see any lock here.

>CUT DOOR
[with Calibrator]
Wham! Your Calibrator deals the cellar door a mighty blow, with little effect except for the noise.

>COOK, OPEN THE GODDAMNED DOOR!
He doesn't seem to hear you.

>TELL COOK ABOUT WINE
He doesn't seem to hear you.

>INVENTORY
You take stock of your possessions.

You're carrying Calibrator the dagger (wielded), an amulet and a lighted lantern.
You're also carrying a pack. Inside the pack you see Zink the shillelagh, a wine bottle, a tiny crown, a rod, a ring, a gilt-edged scroll, a bubble gum card and a stick.
You're wearing nothing unusual.
You have 1 zorkmid.

>EXAMINE AMULET
The amulet is inscribed with green runes, confusingly intertwined with red swirls and flourishes and three shiny stars.

>WEAR AMULET
You put on the amulet.

>HIT DOOR
[with Calibrator]
Wham! Your Calibrator deals the cellar door a mighty blow, with little effect except for the noise.

>RUB AMULET
Fiddling with the amulet would accomplish nothing.

At this time, I wandered around the basement again, looking for anything I missed. I did find a gold doubloon I had previously overlooked, but that was it. How was I going to get out of the basement? I returned to where the door was.

>TAKE WINE FROM PACK
You take the wine bottle out of the pack.

>EXAMINE WINE
The words "Chateau Blanc 877, bottled by Frobozz Magic Wine Company, Ltd" appear on the wine bottle's label, above a picture of a white house with a small mailbox. A pale red liquid swishes around inside. You can see right through it.

>OPEN WINE
The wine bottle is tightly corked.

>DRINK WINE
The wine bottle is tightly corked.

>REMOVE CORK
[The word "cork" isn't in the vocabulary that you can use.]

>SMASH WINE
Crash! The wine bottle shatters into useless fragments, and wine splashes all over the place.

Dammit, that can't have been right.

>RESTORE
Enter file name (".sav" will be added).
Default is "3.sav":

[RESTORE completed.]

I re-did the things I had done up to the point I smashed the wine.

>EXAMINE BOTTLE
The words "Chateau Blanc 877, bottled by Frobozz Magic Wine Company, Ltd" appear on the wine bottle's label, above a picture of a white house with a small mailbox. A pale red liquid swishes around inside. You can see right through it.

Note: the picture of the white house with a small mailbox is a reference to the original Zork.

>EXAMINE AMULET
The amulet is inscribed with green runes, confusingly intertwined with red swirls and flourishes and three shiny stars.

>READ AMULET
The green runes are hard to see. They're confusingly intertwined with the red swirls and flourishes on the amulet.

I figured it out. If I read the red/green amulet through the red wine bottle, the reds should cancel each other out, leaving only the green runes.

>EXAMINE AMULET WITH BOTTLE
When viewed through the wine bottle, the word "Smee" stands out clearly against the swirls and flourishes of the amulet.

>OH, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. REALLY?
[The word "oh" isn't in the vocabulary that you can use.]

>SMEE
One of the stars on the amulet begins to glow.
A pulse of energy surges through your muscles!
[Your strength just went up.]

>SMASH DOOR!
Wham! Your fist deals the cellar door a mighty blow, shattering it and much of the kitchen wall into splinters.

Wine Cellar
You're standing at the bottom of a short, rickety stairway, ankle-deep in refuse. Light streams down through a gaping hole overhead.
"Yow," murmurs an admiring voice upstairs.

>UP
You ascend the steps.

Kitchen
Coils of greasy steam rise from a cauldron bubbling over a roaring hearth. The ceiling is hung with crusty pots and strips of old meat.
A gaping hole in the corner reveals a stair leading downward.
A skinny old cook is bustling around the kitchen.
There's a giant onion here.
"The bottle!" gasps the cook when he sees it in your hands. "You got it!"
The amulet's glowing star fades and disappears.
The tension in your muscles subsides.
[Your strength is back to normal.]

>SAVE
You mumble the Spell of Saving.
Enter file name (".sav" will be added).
Default is "3.sav": 1
Overwrite existing file? (y/n) >y

[SAVE completed.]

>KILL COOK WITH CALIBRATOR
The cook obviously means you no harm; even your meager compassion is enough to stay your hand.

>YELL AT COOK
[You must address characters directly.]

>COOK, WHY DID YOU LOCK THE DOOR?
[To ask about something, use the command: ASK CHARACTER ABOUT THING.]

>ASK COOK ABOUT DOOR
"Used t'be a wine cellar. Can't go down no more; too dangerous."

>ASK COOK ABOUT LOCK
The cook appears puzzled. "Don't know what you're talkin' 'bout."

>ASK COOK ABOUT BOTTLE
"This here onion's yours if you hand it over."

>SAVE
You mumble the Spell of Saving.
Enter file name (".sav" will be added).
Default is "1.sav": 1
Overwrite existing file? (y/n) >y

[SAVE completed.]

>SMASH BOTTLE
Crash! The wine bottle shatters into useless fragments, and wine splashes all over the place.

>ASK COOK ABOUT BOTTLE
"This here onion's yours if you get it for me."

>RESTORE
Enter file name (".sav" will be added).
Default is "1.sav": 1

[RESTORE completed.]

***

Beyond Zork actually has a fairly small game world, but the complexity of the puzzles makes it seem much larger and longer. Each puzzle you solve gives you a bit of a thrill. I look forward to seeing if I can complete this without any help--although if you've played it, feel free to give me a hint--just a hint, mind you--on the pterodactyl.