As we load up the game, we once again see evidence of Scott Adams' influence on most early microcomputer text adventure games -- the startup screen is very similar to those of the Adventure International titles:
I don't think Hassett used the actual Scott Adams engine -- his display approach is very similar, but not exactly the same; he denotes treasures with plus signs rather than asterisks; and his interpreter works a little differently. The game begins on the shore of an island, as we are sent forth on a treasure hunt:
I wasn't able to locate a published walkthrough for this game, so I will provide one at the end of this discussion. At the risk of repetition, I must mention that I will be giving away a number of surprises and solutions in this post. So if you would like to play The Enchanted Island on your own, it would be wise to go and do so before reading further, as there are multifarious...
***** SPOILERS AHEAD! ******
We don't have to go hunting for the SCORE room, where we are to drop the treasures per long-standing tradition, as it's the game's starting location. There are eleven treasures, each worth 10 or 15 points, for a total of 140 possible. (And despite what the sign says, the correct command is SCORE; SAY SCORE yields only WHAT IS "SCORE"?)
It's wise to heed the advice displayed at start-up -- we can go S into the ocean if we like, but we immediately drown and are sent to THE LAND OF THE LOST ADVENTURER, where we are advised to quit and restart as there is no way back. The same thing happens if we go D from a cliff later on, or wander out of the marsh into the ocean, though there are no friendly warnings provided in those situations. As it turns out, if we have the +MAMMOTH RUBY+ in hand when we die, we can SAY BIMBO to return to the land of the living and continue the game.
The game has a fairly large map, but really only features one type of puzzle -- every treasure is guarded by some kind of creature or obstacle, and we must figure out how to get him/her/it out of the way so we can get our hands on it. Hassett provides quite a few clues, but he likes to obscure them by interleaving or rubbing out part of the text. Thus, an old book reads MAGIC BREAK WORD BOTTLE "BIMBO", a big rock has text reading WARLOCK SLIP. HIT DEER., and a note reads HOLY SMOKES, A TIGER! BARBS LIKE BAN... (THE INK ON THE REST OF THE NOTE IS TOO FADED TO READ). All will come to make sense in time.
I played ENCHANTED ISLAND-PLUS using Matthew Reed's TRS32 emulator, and I suspect the game's save/load system is buggy, as the tape drive emulation has worked properly for me on other occasions. At any rate, my attempts to save to and load from tape didn't quite work as expected -- RESTORE seemed to bring my inventory back correctly, but never put me in the same room I was in when I did the original SAVE. And while the location it dropped me in (LOST IN A DARK MARSH) proved valuable, as it allowed me to visit and map out an area I hadn't figure out how to reach yet, I later learned that a couple of key items were not where they were supposed to be, and so were not on my map or in my inventory, which led me to beat my head against a couple of puzzles unnecessarily.
There's a waterfall in this game that's just for decoration, which is a bit unusual -- almost every other adventure I've played that has a waterfall has a "hidden" chamber behind it.
Young Mr. Hassett committed a few spelling errors to digital immortality here -- there's a MAGESTIC CHAMBER, and a room with a high CELING.
One puzzle has no associated clue, but gives itself away in a more subtle way -- if we try to THROW almost any object, the game responds SORRY CHARLIE. I CAN ONLY THROW THE BALL. I hadn't found the ball when I first encountered this message -- it was one of the missing objects due to the aforementioned RESTORE bug -- but now I knew I should try to find it.
The map is large, but the dictionary is not -- a lot of verbs and nouns aren't recognized, so experimental solutions tend to bounce off the parser. There's no GIVE verb -- we usually have to FEED or DROP items to hand them over to another character -- and in the phrase BURN GRASS neither word is recognized.
There are some old-school arbitrary solutions to contend with. We can ATTACK anyone we choose, but our sally forth almost always ends in: WE ENGAGE IN A WILD FIGHT. WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS I FIND MYSELF BEAT TO A PULP. I'M DEAD. But we can ATTACK BEAR and emerge victorious.
The correct way to get to the marsh area is to hold the +MAMMOTH RUBY+, which is a magical transportation device as well as a treasure, and SAY BIMBO. We are given a couple of hints -- we OPEN BOOK, and A HOLLOW VOICE ECHOES: "THE RUBY WAS BIMBO'S." If we SAY BIMBO in the room where the ruby is found, it takes us to the marsh; if we say it elsewhere, it takes us to its original location, so it's a fairly efficient way of getting around.
Dealing with the tiger guarding the +PRICELESS GIRAFFE SKIN+ depends on an earlier clue -- once we have attacked the bear and obtained the +CUBAN CIGARS+, we can SMOKE CIGARS in the tiger's presence, yielding:
OKAY...PUFF...PUFF...PUFF...
TIGER SMELLS SOMETHING...LOOKS AT ME WITH DISGUST, AND WALKS AWAY.
Inventory management is important in this game -- we need to keep the +MAMMOTH RUBY+ and the LANTERN in hand most of the time for safety's sake, and I had to make several return trips because I couldn't carry all of the treasures at once.
The vulture and the barbarian can both be fed -- the vulture likes the nondescript TASTY FOOD, and the barbarian likes the BANANA. He leaves the peel behind, which allows us to DROP PEEL in the presence of the Warlock, yielding WARLOCK SLIPS, FALLS, AND VANISHES and granting access to the +SILVER KEY+.
I don't know why, but we need the BAMBOO POST and not the pick or our bare hands to HIT DEER -- at which point THE DEER RUNS AWAY...BUT SHE LEAVES SOMETHING BEHIND! It's a pair of +GOLDEN ANTLERS+, which presumably speaks well for the legal acumen of her divorce lawyer.
The final and toughest puzzle for me involved dealing with the Evil Medicine Man. I had figured out what to do with every useful item I'd found, and without a walkthrough handy, I broke down and hacked into the raw disk image. Buried in the code (in plain ASCII, fortunately) were several references to a wizard appearing out of a broken glass ball, and two inventory items I hadn't seen: a +GOLDEN CHAIN+, which I took to be the final treasure, and a GLOWING GLASS BALL. I thought for a while that I shouldn't have just broken the glass bottle, but was supposed to find some way to melt it down and mold it. But as it turned out, the fabled glass ball was there for the taking at a dead-end room in the marsh -- I had mapped that room after arriving nearby as a result of the RESTORE bug, but the ball wasn't there at that time and I had had no reason to revisit the location. I soon learned that BREAK BALL causes a wizard to appear and kill me, under the mistaken assumption that I am the Evil Medicine Man. Doing the same in the room with the Medicine Man had the same result, unfortunately, but THROW BALL had the desired effect.
With all eleven treasures arrayed on the beach, victory is ours!
An unusual feature here is that the game doesn't automatically end when we have scored all the points -- we are still free to wander around in the game world and QUIT at our leisure.
I enjoyed my visit to The Enchanted Island -- the puzzles were simple, arbitrary and often silly, and there's no plot development to speak of. But it was a fun world to explore, and not a difficult or frustrating experience, so I look forward to playing more of Greg Hassett's adventures in the future.
As promised, because I didn't find one online, below the fold is a full walkthrough of the game, with score details.
WALKTHROUGH:
N
N
TAKE FOOD
S
S
E
E
S
E
S
E
TAKE LIGHTER
W
N
W
N
E
N
N
E
TAKE LANTERN
W
S
S
W
CLIMB TREE
FEED VULTURE
TAKE FEATHER
D
W
W
DROP FEATHER
N
N
E
N
LIGHT LANTERN
N
N
W
S
TAKE RUBY
SAY BIMBO
DROP LIGHTER
W
N
W
W
N
W
GET BALL
E
E
N
W
TAKE PICK
E
S
TAKE BANANA
W
TAKE COCONUT
S
S
S
S
FEED BARBARIAN
TAKE PEEL
SAY BIMBO
N
E
N
THROW BALL
TAKE CRATE
S
E
S
E
E
N
U
W
DROP PEEL
TAKE EMERALD
DROP PICK
TAKE PEEL
SAY BIMBO
N
E
S
S
S
W
S
S
DROP COCONUT
DROP EMERALD
DROP CRATE
SAY BIMBO
SAY BIMBO
TAKE LIGHTER
E
ATTACK BEAR
TAKE CIGARS
N
N
TAKE POST
W
SMOKE CIGARS
DROP LIGHTER
TAKE SKIN
SAY BIMBO
N
E
S
S
S
W
S
S
DROP CIGARS
DROP SKIN
E
E
S
E
S
E
N
N
E
HIT DEER
DROP POST
TAKE ANTLERS
S
DROP PEEL
TAKE KEY
SAY BIMBO
N
E
E
S
E
E
N
U
TAKE RING
SAY BIMBO
N
E
S
S
S
W
S
S
DROP ANTLERS
DROP RING
TAKE CRATE
OPEN CRATE
DROP KEY
SAY BIMBO
SAY BIMBO
W
TAKE SPICES
SAY BIMBO
N
E
S
S
S
W
S
S
DROP SPICES
DROP RUBY
SCORE
(Then QUIT, of course, if you're done playing.)
For reference, here are how the point values for the various treasures break down:
GOLD RING - 15
MAMMOTH RUBY - 10
GOLDEN FEATHER - 15
ENORMOUS EMERALD - 15
JEWEL ENCRUSTED COCONUT - 10
CUBAN CIGARS - 15
RARE SPICES - 10
GOLDEN ANTLERS - 15
SILVER KEY - 10
PRICELESS GIRAFFE SKIN - 10
GOLDEN CHAIN - 15
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