Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist: Stampedes and Indians (A Real One!)

By Alex

I have a confession to make: My adventure-gaming instincts have been dulled by the passage of time. Or maybe it’s the interface issue I’ll blame my woes on later in this post. Suffice it to say, it took me a long time, as well as a call for assistance from my adventure-gaming brethren, to make any progress in FPFP. As a result, it took me forever to get this post written, as my gaming time is curtailed by the demands of life. I spent over two hours making incremental progress, and while I’m still having fun with this game, I feel that I have let you, the reader down because—and this is hard to admit—I had to once again also consult a walkthrough.

To be fair, I had the right solution, just the wrong key. Because there are three keys. And I had missed the only one that I could use to open the beer bottles I needed to stop the snail stampede, and . . .

I’m getting too far ahead of myself. I’m going to tell the story in roughly chronological order and, in a fit of public petulance, blame my woes on the interface.

Yeah, the interface.Anyway, when we left off, I had saved Coarsegold from a fate worse than death—death by horse farts—which is actually death, but the manner of death makes it worse than death, so, you know . . . metaphors and all of that. The next threat to face Coarsegold was a stampede of snails that the game indicated would take weeks to slime the city, but in all actuality took maybe fifteen minutes.

I saw this screen. A lot.

You wouldn’t think it would be that hard to stop snails, right? Surely, something in Freddy’s laboratory could halt this vicious stampede of onrushing shelled gastropods. Maybe . . . salt? We all know that slugs will die a gruesome death if you sprinkle them with a little sodium chloride. How about snails? So I went to the most logical place to find some salt: Mom’s Café. However, Helen told me that Coarsegold was an entirely salt-free community.

It’s a funny gag, but it left me back at square one.

I consulted the manual, looking for anything with sodium, and there are entries discussing sodium bicarbonate (Alka-Seltzer, for us regular folk), but no way to make it, and my dithering around in the lab produced no useful results.

No context here. I just thought it was funny.

The rest of the town was similarly unhelpful; the closest I got to sound advice was Whittlin’ Willy, who told me that snails probably like the same things garden slugs do. So salt, although I suppose slugs actually don’t like salt. So . . . what did they like? Slug-ology is not my strong-suit, I’m ashamed to say. The Sheriff didn’t care and ordered Freddy to hunker down until the encroaching escargot had passed, and everyone else was paralyzed with fear.

This guy . . .

In Freddy’s pharmacy, I did notice something I had overlooked during my previous play sessions: a staircase that leads to Freddy’s private quarters. My mind was wandering and I wondered to myself, “Gee, where does Freddy live?” so I gave his back room a closer look and lo and behold, I saw the stairs!

See them behind the glass case to the right?

Okay, so it’s not as dramatic as “seeing the light,” but it was a revelation to me.

In Freddy’s personal quarters, I found the following items that didn’t help me with the snail problem, but that I probably should have found near the beginning of the game. These were:

• Freddy’s not-quite complete “good guy outfit” in the chest at the foot of the bed.
• A claim ticket for boots in the dresser drawer on the left.
• The key to Freddy’s roll-top desk downstairs in Freddy’s nightstand.
• I could open Freddy’s armoire, but there was nothing I could take, just several shirts.

In the roll-top desk was a locked drawer that the same key opened. Inside that was a letter from Freddy’s old friend Phil D. Graves (groan) that read:

“Dear Freddy,

Thank you so very kindly for your recent gracious hospitality during my recent convalescence. The floor of your workroom proved an extremely comfortable bed, and the stale Pharmacy goods you gave me to eat helped stave off starvation quite adequately. I must admit to being a little curious by your request that I retain your safety-deposit key for you; I cannot imagine what you have secured in the bank that creates such strong feelings of both revulsion and endearment. However, I have done as you have asked and taken the key with me. I swear to you that I will never return this key to you nor even allow it within your sight, and I further swear to keep it with me wherever I may go. On this you have my word of honor, for I am

Ever your friend,

Philip D. Graves”

Where Philip went was dead, but at least if I could find his body, maybe I could find the key.

But none of this helped with the snails.

Deciding I had to see this stampede for myself, I steeled myself, braved the crumbling bridge . . . and realized that no matter how many times I crossed it, the same board fell and I got the same message telling me I only had three crossings left.

A joke making fun of the puzzle design in King’s Quest II! I approve, Al Lowe and Josh Mandel! I heartily approve!

The snails kick up quote a cloud of dust, and I noticed that whenever I left the screen and game back, they were a little closer. So that gave some indication of the time Freddy had to solve this particular, and weird, problem. I could take a snail, but the only person who would do anything with it when I showed them was Helen, who put it in some cornstarch when Freddy suggested she add escargot to her menu.

I got points, and later, when looking for snail-control solutions online at Ilmari’s suggestion, discovered that cornstarch doesn’t kill snails but is used to purge them of toxins prior to eating.

Okay then.

As an aside, have you ever eaten escargot? It is delicious.

But deliciousness didn’t get me any closer to solving this puzzle. I tried eating the snail at one point, and Freddy died because he didn’t have any garlic.

Okay then.

I was well and truly stumped. I realized I could turn the length of rope I took from the abandoned blacksmith’s shop into a lasso. I thought maybe I could wrangle the snails, but no deal. So I then embarked on the classic adventure-gaming practice of clicking every inventory object on everything and everyone, revisiting each location as I did so, but all I did was futile.

I did open one of the outhouses to see a familiar face in a rather compromising position, though:

Ahhh . . . what would an Al Lowe game be without a joke or two about whacking off?

One thing I tried was clicking Freddy’s money on everyone, including Sam Andreas at the Saloon. All I got for my troubles was the game’s generic message of “It doesn’t work like that” when you click something on something you’re not supposed to.

Now, this all prompted me to look at Ilmari’s more spoiler-riffic hint that snails liked beer. It turns out I was supposed to use the money on Sam . . . but the funny thing is the icons are so big, yet you have to click on a very specific spot to use an item on something or someone. I ended up buying the beer, but this left a sour taste in my mouth that had nothing to do with beer gone skunky.

Yeah, there are also sheep dancing on stage.

I had the right answer, but I was defeated by the interface. I’m calling foul on this, but it also taught me to be very thorough with my clicking. Am I crazy in being annoyed by this? I don’t think so, but I’m sure you’ll all let me know in the comments. I’m prepared to take my beating. In any event, thanks Ilmari!

Now, the beer bottles are not corked. They have caps. And these are not twist-off caps. I needed something to open them with. As a veteran beer-drinker, I’ve used some funky objects to open a bottle when I don’t have a bottle opener handy, including a lighter, a fork, and, yes, a key. I had two keys in my inventory—the pharmacy key and the key to Freddy’s desk . . . but neither of them worked.

Here’s where I had to shamefully consult a walkthrough for the second time, the first being another interface-related issue I had dealt with when trying to get the Preparation G for Smithie that I knew I needed but didn’t know I could get, thanks to interface issues. To open the beer bottles, I needed a specific key in a very obscure location: the church.

When the doors to the church are shut, you can click the Eye icon on the very tiny keyhole to learn that it is blocked. What would it be blocked with? When you open up the doors and click your Eye on the same keyhole, you find the source of the blockage:

The key. And this key had apparently been cast in the perfect proportions to open beer bottles. So once again, I had intuited the correct solution, but stumbled on the implementation. This one is on me, but . . . why did I need this specific key? I’d love to ask Al and/or Josh the thought process that went into this.

Whatever. I opened the stupid bottles and used them to make a trail leading the snails over the edge of the gorge, where they followed like lemmings into the river, and got a pretty funny cutscene gently mocking the classic puzzle game Lemmings!

I got a kick out of this. More importantly, I got to progress in the game a bit.

Immediately, I see an Indian stuck in the anthill. And not a Native American, but an actual Indian from the subcontinent. Oh boy, a whole new realm of what is sure to be tasteful ethnic jokes awaits!

Srini is a bit of a chatterbox, so much so that his stagecoach party left him atop the anthill to be rid of his verbal diarrhea. And no, I didn’t need to use one of the manual’s diarrhea remedies to get him down from the anthill.

Why can’t Srini just step down? Good question! You see, to do so would mean potentially squashing the ants, and for religious reasons, Srini can’t harm another living creature. Too bad, because Freddy informs Srini that he’d be perfect as an assistant at the pharmacy Freddy is hellbent on reopening in defiance of Sheriff Moron’s orders.

That brings us to another plot point: Someone is trying to shut Coarsegold down and, by golly, Freddy’s gonna get to the bottom of it! But first, I have to rescue Srini.

I poke around town first, giving the claim ticket to Sal to get the only pair of boots I’ve seen in the game. Still, Freddy can’t wear them, or his good guy outfit, because it’s not complete. I don’t know what more I need, but maybe the missing piece is in Freddy’s safe deposit box. I thought I remembered a tombstone reading “Philip D. Graves” at the cemetery, and I was right! It’s just that the local gravedigger Doug McCarkus (double groan) is busy digging the grave, and there’s nothing I can do.

Oh well. Nothing in the manual or the pharmacy seems to help with ants, and my next circuit of Coarsegold doesn’t reveal anything useful, so I figured I must have what I need to rescue Srini from his ignominious fate. Along the way, I stop to chat with the lovely Penelope, and she decides we need to take our relationship to the next level.

The upcoming Sadie Hawkins Day dance! Sweet! For those of you who don’t know, a Sadie Hawkins dance is an American and Canadian thing where the women ask the men to go, and Penelope is going to ask Freddy. Aww!

Back to Srini: I figure I can lasso him down, but that’s a no go. Luckily, I can just use the ladder I swiped from the playground slide to get the little guy off of his precarious perch.

All right! And I didn’t even need to use a walkthrough for this one! I’m back in the saddle, baby, an appropriate metaphor for a western game if there ever was one!

Back at the shop, Srini is organizing stuff, and I take this as a good break point before embarking on further interface-frustration exercises. I mean puzzles.

I wonder what became of Freddy’s other Indian assistance, Dominick. Will there be an Indian-on-Indian rivalry? If so, will it be handled with the tact and dignity we’ve come to expect from an Al Lowe game? Or will it devolve into broad, borderline-offensive ethnic stereotypes and fart jokes?

My money is on the fart jokes.

Anyway, I am enjoying this game. It’s got colorful graphics, fun music, a really hilarious vibe, a likeable protagonist, and humorous characters. I just got frustrated by having the right ideas and just not going about implementing them the exact way the game wants. We need a word for this. Any ideas?

Also: the messages when you quit the game and go back to the DOS prompt are pretty funny:

Session Time: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Total Time: 2 hours, 55 minutes

Inventory: Boots, melted candle, pharmacy key, good guy outfit (complete with hat!), desk key, church key/bottle opener, empty beer bottles, lasso, letter
Score: 614 of 999

Fart Jokes: 3
Indians: 2