I figure that someone who really knows what they are doing in Colossal Cave Adventures, someone who has everything mapped out, moves confidently, avoids dwarves and pirates, could finish the original version of the game, start to end, in about half an hour. I bet speed runners could get the thing done in ten minutes or less.
Not so with me. With the wizard of the dungeon continually chiding me for taking so long, I completed the puzzles I knew about and waited for an end that never came.
But first, I had to distract the troll.
There is a troll bridge that bars the way to two treasures, the spices and the golden chains. The only possible way to get him to let you pass is to throw him a treasure.
Throwing him a treasure means there is now one less treasure you can bring in the building for your final score, so the best thing is to not through him anything you can miss.
I tried throwing him the little axe I took off a dwarf. “Bad workmanship,” he yelled, catching it from the air and disparaging a race of craftsmen. “Not valuable enough!”
We would have to throw him something we could get back. There are two treasures that can teleport (as far as I know, anyway). The emerald will teleport to the Plover Room from Y2 if you say the magic word, and it will teleport you, too, if you’re holding it. Unfortunately, the troll is nowhere near Y2.
The other teleporting treasure are the golden eggs we find in the giant room. The inscription on the wall in that room, like with all the other magic words, can teleport things to this room. In this case, saying “FEE’, “FIE”, “FOE” and “FOO” will teleport the eggs to this room.
I grabbed the eggs from the building, ran to the wooden bridge, tossed the eggs and the troll went away for awhile. I crossed over and went exploring.
I found some spices near a volcano view, and a little to the south, I found a Barren Room.
It wasn’t barren, though — it had a bear in it. It was really a Bear-In Room. Sigh.
I’d brought the food and the keys that I had stashed away in the Shell Room back when I needed more inventory space. I fed the bear, which tamed him instantly, then unlocked the chains and added them to my stash. There is no “follow” command, but if you “take” the bear, it does the same thing. The bear happily followed me, and when I encountered the troll on the way back, I threw the bear at the troll and scared him away.
Returning to the building, I dropped the treasures I was carrying and was — done. I was done. If this were the version of the game I played back in college, I would have been told that the dungeon was closing.
But, this game has been expanded. There were several more treasures to find, of which I knew nothing. And those, I figured, were at the other side of the new maze, the Forest Maze. Time to get mapping.
I noticed immediately that the cliff was disconnected from the rest of the forest. Since I only link up with regular directions and don’t include magic words or anything, it wasn’t clear how to get through the maze to the new location, the Cliff area.
So I returned to the building, and got my score.
The wizard chided me for taking 500 turns. Since I was in novice mode, I wasn’t in any danger of running out of light, but … I’d lost points for not winning before 350 turns and again at 500 turns, and lost points twice for saving the game twice, and I did a fair amount of exploring and mapping. I’ve kept making the manual map and it was actually super useful.
So, I ended as “Seasoned Adventurer”, which is pretty terrible, but it is what it is. I still have that expensive saved game that I’ll use at some point to explore the new maze and find the new treasures, and we’ll see if I can get a better score. Maybe I’ll start over again, now that I know my way around, a little, again.
Until then…. the 3D adventure awaits.
Can the Williams’ pictures look better than my AI generated ones? Let’s find out.
