Adventure of the Week - Blackbeard's Island (1984)

This week, we visit Blackbeard's Island, a fairly obscure illustrated text adventure published by Tom Mix Software in 1984 for the TRS-80 Color Computer.  It was written by Greg Miller, with design assistance from Eric Nelson and art by Patricia Dawn Miller.  (And should not be confused with the recent Zuma-style Blackbeard's Island puzzle game.)

The title screen doubles as the color-test screen -- the CoCo's analog colors were unpredictable at bootup, swapping red and blue at random, so many games used the RESET technique to set the colors properly:

Tom Mix Software did not publish many graphic adventures, and this was a one-off by the creative team as well.  It opens with a bit of historical information about Edward Teach, the infamous pirate Blackbeard, but then drops us into traditional adventure territory as we, as a ne'er-do-well rich kid, are challenged to hunt for his treasure and a way off the island, as its volcano threatens to erupt.

Blackbeard's Island is an old-school design with a sense of humor, and it's fairly challenging.  I suspect playtesting was limited -- there's a major game-breaking bug at large, and the logic and parser are obstinate on numerous occasions.  But it's playable and I enjoyed the experience, frustrating as it was at times.

I always encourage readers to try these games for themselves before diving into the giveaways below, and this is an easy game to get hold of.  You can download it with the author's full permission from the archives at L. Curtis Boyle's excellent TRS-80 Color Computer Game List website.  It ran fine for me under MESS emulation.

I will admit that it took me longer than usual to finish this game -- mostly because, as far as I can determine, there have been no hints or walkthroughs made available online.  When I got stuck, I was well and truly stuck.  But I did prevail, so following the spoilers section below, I'll provide a full walkthrough for this relatively unknown game.  Adventures are supposed to be fun, and there's no shame in seeking a little help when the journey becomes a slog.

****** SPOILERS AHEAD! ******

The volcano lurking in the background constantly threatens eruption, but never seems to manifest as a real threat.  A more imminent danger is dying of dehydration -- the player must focus on solving this puzzle at the very beginning, or death comes swiftly:

An interesting and much appreciated design choice here is the VOCAB command, revealed early in the game.  It displays all the verbs the parser knows, which is a handy reference, although the SCORE command is erroneously listed as ESCORE.  There's also a HELP command, which in some rooms provides a useful hint about how to proceed -- although it seems it only works once for each possible hint, and restoring a saved game doesn't reset the hint flags, so if a tip is missed or forgotten, the player has to start over from a fresh boot to see it again.

Unlike some early illustrated adventures, objects disappear from the screen when they are taken from their original locations -- although they are not generally displayed in any other room when dropped there.

The designers apparently presumed the player would no longer be thirsty when reaching some areas of the game that appear to contain fresh water -- actually, DRINK in any context other than the correct one yields Drink what?? Surely not SALT water!!! as a response, regardless of location.
 
In addition to death of thirst, the player can die by trying to CLIMB DOWN the cliff without adequate preparation, attempting to JUMP RAVINE, or drowning at sea.

There are a number of parser issues in the game, mostly where a specific word choice is expected and feasible alternatives are ignored.  CLIMB DOWN and CLIMB UP are required in one context where CLIMB BELT should but does not; in another situation, CLIMB ROPE does not work, but GO ROPE does.  Similarly, EXAMINE UNDERBRUSH yields That's not here, but GO UNDERBRUSH succeeds.

The world of Blackbeard's Island is truly deserted -- there are no animals or people to speak of, which makes it a very lonely place.  Though there's no one to trade with or feed, classic adventure cliches still surface -- we enter a hut and are told there are floorboards in it.  Hmmmmm!

Experienced adventurers also get yet another opportunity to GO WATERFALL.

Opening a coconut to slake our thirst is a bit of a tricky puzzle -- an axe is available, but CUT COCONUT and the milk spills out.  After trying for a while to find some way to contain it, I found a knife and was able to open the coconut.  Fortunately the game is smart enough to prefer the knife if it's in inventory, and does not force inventory juggling by assuming the axe should be used to CUT.

Objects can be tied to other objects, but only in a limited way.  There are two tieable objects, each of which has one specific target; everything else yields Not to that!.

Another parser anomaly -- we discover a bird's nest made of string, but TAKE NEST does not work because we can't reach it, while TAKE STRING mysteriously does.

The most difficult puzzle I ran into was in dealing with the thick, impenetrable underbrush near the start of the game.  We can cut it with the bamboo axe, but the axe gets destroyed in the process, and the underbrush just regrows after we come back through it.  We need to revisit the area behind it; I tried several ideas for preserving the axe, to no avail, and considering the required sequence of other events, I finally realized I needed to find some other way to get back and forth between the two areas.

But I was still completely stuck -- I had figured out most of the other puzzles, but couldn't gather everything I needed in the same place at the same time.  I finally resorted to hacking a look at the raw disk image, and was happy to find that most of the in-game text is stored as plain ASCII.  My meta-adventure therefore discovered that the sign on the cliff can be pushed, revealing a tunnel.  (I consider this a parser issue, as PUSH SIGN works, while MOVE SIGN and TAKE SIGN imply that the sign can't be moved.)  I also discovered a note buried in the code, aimed at the cheating likes of me, which made me laugh:

Aren't you being a bit nosey? Yes, you. The guy going through the program!!!

There are a couple of other jokes visible in normal play -- STUDY SKY reveals a fairly subtle ad for Tom Mix Software:

In large skywriting:
From the author!
Welcome to BlackBeard's Island!
If you like the island, maybe you'd like to vacation here?
Call (616)-957-0444 today for details!

And DROP or THROW BELT produces This adventure isn't X-rated!!  I also noted that TAKE BELT doesn't work if inventory is full, but if the rope is tied to the sign, UNTIE BELT does so and puts it in inventory regardless.

The HELP command was very useful in the small boat -- ROW, SWIM and MOVE commands weren't getting me anywhere, but the in-game hint revealed that we can just GO HOME.  Of course, if we haven't yet found Blackbeard's treasure, this premature escape ends the game unsuccessfully.

Here's the game's biggest, most problematic bug.  Once we have tied the rope to the anchor, we're supposed to take it to the room with the picture of the pirate ship, which is actually a window, and THROW ANCHOR like a grappling hook to board it.  BUT the game doesn't restrict where we can THROW ANCHOR -- we can do it on the beach, far away from the picture, and still get the game to respond as though we had thrown it through the window.  The present room even contains a description of the rope going through the non-existent window to the non-existent pirate ship -- though we cannot GO SHIP, or GO PICTURE, or CLIMB ROPE, or GO ROPE successfully.

Once the anchor is thrown in any room, the picture room graphic is, in fact, updated to show the rope going through the window, if we can find our way there -- but GO ROPE still doesn't work there if we threw the anchor in the wrong location!

Still, it's not hard to work around this issue once it's discovered, and with that problem solved, we're able to fetch the necessary implements to discover Blackbeard's Treasure:

And it's a quick trip east to make our way home with Edward Teach's ill-gotten gains:

So I was able to finish the game, though I did have to use the HELP and even cheat a bit to get there.  To save others these headaches, I herewith present a full walkthrough, in under 100 moves.


*********** BLACKBEARD'S ISLAND WALKTHROUGH **********


W
S
DIG
TAKE AXE
N
E
S
TAKE COCONUT
CHOP TREE
TAKE BRANCH
N
W
S
S
E
S
E
DIG
TAKE KNIFE
OPEN COCONUT
DRINK COCONUT
DROP COCONUT
DROP KNIFE
W
N
N
W
N
E
CHOP UNDERBRUSH
GO UNDERBRUSH
W
LOOK TREE
LOOK NEST
TAKE STRING
E
GO UNDERBRUSH
W
S
S
S
E
TIE BELT - SIGN
CLIMB DOWN
E
FISH
TAKE ANCHOR
TAKE ROPE
TIE ROPE - ANCHOR
DROP STRING
DROP BRANCH
W
CLIMB UP
UNTIE BELT
PUSH SIGN
GO TUNNEL
N
GO POND
TAKE KEY
N
N
GO WATERFALL
GO WHIRLPOOL
N
N
THROW ANCHOR
GO ROPE
UNLOCK LIFEBOAT
N
OPEN CHEST
TAKE CROWBAR
S
GO LIFEBOAT
GO ISLAND
W
S
S
S
E
GO TUNNEL
E
E
GO HUT
PRY FLOOR
TAKE TREASURE
N
E
GO BOAT
GO HOME

************ END WALKTHROUGH ************

That sums up my trip to Blackbeard's Island.  It's too bad this team never rounded up a few QA resources and produced another graphic adventure -- there's considerable talent in evidence here, and I enjoyed the ride, glitches and all.