Missed Classic: Personal Nightmare - Shadow Thief

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

I just want to let those of you with a nervous disposition know that this is probably not the entry for you.

Now that I've seen the big opening event of Jimmy Rutherford getting run down, we can take a look at the whole village. Its a small place, really, just a confusing street that's about 10 screens wide with 2 sides of it. Navigation is confusing, since directions don't properly work the way the image is given, which is unfortunate since this is supposed to be a graphic adventure. Actually, this is quite crap as a graphic adventure, and you'll see why pretty quickly.

The most obvious destination is the church, the game really brings your attention to it. Since we need to come here anyway, we'll start here. I say this, but there's not really anything here that I can find yet. There's the pews, the office and a statue. I should note that modern storefronts all spoil what you're supposed to do here, which is say a prayer in here. If there's something else, I don't know. The game makes a point that my father doesn't have any religious books in his office. Curious. The desk in here is locked, of course.

Apparently the house is a ghost

Behind the church is the graveyard. Lots of gravestones, but outside of a large cross, seemingly nothing of note. There's a door to some house here, but the door is locked. So much for people in the countryside leaving their door open. And to complete the area, there's a mausoleum. I wonder what's in there?

If you're really quick, you can catch him coming out of the coffin

Oh, look, a friendly man has come out of a coffin.

Hmm, seems to be a vampire cosplayer!

This screen is taken from a photograph, judging by how noisy it is

Oh, no, I'm dead, how could I have possibly foreseen this possibility?

So obviously, the vampire here is going to be one of my big targets, but the question is...how am I going to take him out? He comes out practically the second I arrive in this room, and if I walk out the sunlight burns him and he retreats. Am I just supposed to do it early in the morning? Trick him into running after me in the street? Seems like a foolish move on my part...

Anyway, the violence, while less extreme than in Elvira, seems just as creepy. They might not have known how to properly depict such things yet, but they knew how to work around their limitations.

It's okay officer, I have a key

Now what? I'm unclear on what else I have...aha! The key I borrowed from Jimmy! I eventually find his house, and it's just as obtuse to navigate as the other places. Lots of mostly empty rooms too. It's here that I discover the joy of interacting with storage objects. You can't really properly get items out of it, and it's a pain to look at the items inside. I didn't realize there wasn't rope in one room until a few moments of unsuccessfully wrangling with it. To do anything, it seems like take object out of object is needed, which is incredibly annoying.

How wise of them to put in a response for drink chemicals!

Anyway, Jimmy's house has a dark room, for developing film. Aha! I think, now I can figure out what's on the film! Only, no, no, no. No. This isn't the kind of game where things are simple. There are chemicals nearby. Clearly what I do is put film in the liquid bath, add the chemicals and boom...the film is destroyed. Oh, I see, this is going to be one of those puzzles. There's an enlargener, but I can't do anything with it. Any film-related commands seem to not work. At least the game is kind enough to tell you if you don't need a command to win the game.

I decide that now is the time to look up a walkthrough. I knew it had to be done. Only, I'm not missing some obtuse series of commands that merely escaped my brain, this room is a straight-up red herring. I have to put the film in an envelope and mail it to someone. I'm starting to understand why people have tried to forget this title, because this doesn't feel like it's difficult, just that it's straight-up screwing with you in an unfun way.

Susan must be a servant of the devil if she can stop these guns!

At least I can get arrested for staying at Jimmy's house for too long.

 I know I asked him something he responded to, but almost everything I can ask him does nothing.

There's also a mansion in town. A burned down mansion. There's a gardener outside who refuses to let me in and doesn't have anything to say.

Hang on, isn't this supposed to be an Amiga game? Why is there so much crappy coloring jobs going on?

If I come back later, I can get attacked by a dog...

...with grizzy results. Modern storefronts spoil what I have to do here, hit the dog with a stake. Not really sure why, or where I'll find one.

 Only the devil would paint his door pink

Anyway, the rest of the houses I can't do much at yet. There's a house next to the church out on the street that I can't enter. An evil presence inside, apparently. I flee as soon as I enter. Now what? Well, each time I reload the game I note that Registar is outside the bar, meaning he's away from his coat, and unlikely to object if I rifle through his pockets. So I start over, rather than from a save, and do the usual routine, except taking a key out of his jacket. I check all the buildings again, looking for some place I can enter.

The Registar's office is another of those really fun sections where I play the adventurer's favorite game, What the hell is with this parser? Keen eyes will note that there's a desk and four wall objects, none of which contain anything. That leaves the safe, which needs a combination. Aha, I think, the portrait here has a number on it 1815, and the combination is four digits. Just find some way to input it, because god forbid we allow the player to input the combination with UNLOCK SAFE or even UNLOCK DIAL. No, we need to make everything as obtuse as possible, because otherwise this would be a twenty minute game!

Just penciling in Tony as a servant of the devil, who else owns a cat?

Might as well start examining the upstairs of the inn. There are three rooms, on the left...or the nearest one in, is Tony Donaldson, someone stroking a cat. He's mentioned in the manual! His parents died in a fire, and the Jones' took him in. He doesn't have much to say, just that he wants to be a soldier when he grows up. There's a bunch of toy soldiers behind a glass case. You'll know if you looked closely at that ad I showed that these guys are a puzzle later. For now I can do nothing.

The one on the right is my room, which doesn't seem like it has anything special right now, but the middle is interesting. There's a mirror I can take. Hang on, sunlight burns the vampire...I think I know how to kill him! The question is...will the parser let me? Ahahaha. No. The game at least tells me that using reflect is valid, but if I have the right combination of words, in reflect mirror at vampire, I don't know. I also can't use it very well, because the goddamn game won't let me walk anyway with a parser full of text. Curse you Horrorsoft!

Awfully polite of him to wait for me to do this

Aha! I figured it out, and reflect mirror at vampire...no. NO! NO!? Right...right, what else can I do...? Reflect sunlight?

He must not be a very old vampire

YES! Muahahahahahah! Now, what was I doing this for? What's in his coffin? It's locked. Impressive. Apparently he locked the coffin after exiting it. If he was that fast, why didn't he take me out before I could reach the sun? What a loser. Well, I better check his skeleton for a key...

A lot of the boring connecting rooms look like this

...and I went the wrong way. Into someone's house. The mansion! This might be troublesome. But I've advanced the plot. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! You know, I'm starting to wonder if I'm the bad guy, laughing like that. Well, maybe not, since I'm not killing people interrupting my rest at random hours of the night. Well, the closed door leads to another living room with nothing in it. Let's go upstairs.

A very casual lead-in to my horrific demise

Ah, yes, another bedroom, nothing interesting...and, wait, text appeared as I entered. Huh, that's a strange-looking person in the bed...oh...no...

The first time I got this screenshot, Scummvm saved its little thingy over it, which meant I had to die like this twice

Ah, yes...well, that's...grotesque. Moving on.

This, it seems, is the house I can't enter. Asking the Joneses' about Alice and it seems she's the local schoolteacher. A right snob and radical. I guess I walked in on a witch rather than a devil possessee. Lots of talk about that among the villagers. Okay, what did the vampire drop? Nothing, but there is a mop in the mausoleum. I'm really grateful about that. Alice's kitchen has nothing, but in the hallway just outside her door is an attic door. What's up there? I don't know, I can't reach it. I try using the mop to poke the door or something, but if there is a solution to it, I don't know what the command is. Alice will indeed kill me if I wander around her house for too long, but she's not really concerned until one in the morning. How nice of her to do nothing while I poke her attic with a mop.

Guess I better wait til the next day? Nothing else I can do now it seems. Nice that I already took out one of my enemies, but it doesn't feel like I have any method of advancing the plot short of wandering around until something happens. I've completely forgotten about the car and the numberplate...letterplate. I don't care how you spell it, I want answers!

They spin around and around, and its okay

I figure I should wait til the wee hours of the evening to see if anyone is wandering around. Unfortunately, the sound for the gonging of the hour and the resulting text message is bugged, and doesn't always show. So I have to guess. This doesn't really do anything new, but if I wander into the graveyard at night the ghosts of the dead kill me.

Who else but a servant of the devil would do this?

Well, I can't really do much more in the morning. I can enter the post office, and the post mistress confirms most of my suspicions. Alice's pupils have been returning to their parents with talk of witches and devils, while Susan is trouble. There's also some guy called Michael who also came in from the city. Unfortunately, this doesn't get me a solution to anything. I can talk to the garage owner, Peter, but he doesn't have anything to say and I can't enter the garage. I've got nothing. Just...nothing. What the hell?

My grand quest to save a pound and the trouble of developing it myself...

This must be a record, I'm checking a walkthrough twice for one entry. What have I been missing? Why, that I could look under things. Forgive me, graphic adventures make me forget that, I might have gotten it if the game was a pure text adventure. Where did I miss it? Why, at Jimmy's darkroom, I could get a voucher out of a magazine for developing film. Better take everything here that might be useful. I take from his widow, a screwdriver, a sledgehammer, a rag, and a secateurs. I see someone accidentally left the French translation for sheers in the English version.

And if Wizard of Oz rules apply, she's screwed

Since I figure I need to do a lot more looking in and under than I've been doing, I return to Alice's house. Nothing I didn't already notice, there's nothing in the cupboards and drawers. But there is a plug in the sink I can put it. I guess its a stopper. I can turn on the water in the sink and fill it, but if I do it again the game informs me there's an overflow hole. Clearly my objective here is to ruin Alice's house so she can't do any more witchcraft in here.

This game feels really aimless at times, because now I'm not exactly sure what to do beyond sleeping and hoping for the best. (point of clarification, I've usually been bouncing back to a save if I haven't found anything, I'm still on day 1 as it were) I basically just wander around and hope something looks like it'll happen. Hmm, maybe I mail the voucher! Okay, I just need an envelope. That seems like its not going to arrive in time if I don't find an envelope straight off though. What else? What else?

I decide to screw around with the safe again. I eventually hit on, dial 1815, and success. What evil secrets is the Registar hiding? Is it weed? No, its just the records...which doesn't actually have anything of value inside, but I do know that Susan Perkins was the only person in this village born during July. Which is this month. (or at least when I wrote it) Would be pretty funny if I were born in July, but alas, I am not. But something dropped out. Why, the marriage certificate of Susan Polly Perkins and James T. Blandford. Aha! This of course, means that...I have wasted my time. (also, you have to type marriage certificate to get it, because typing certificate makes the game think you want the Registar's license)

Hmm, I wonder if the next time I play this game it'll say Susan was the only person in this village born during August...or if it's just a coincidence.

Garage: Bad Dream Adventure or something, I dunno

There's one last thing I find out. There's a bin at the garage, and there's half of a numberplate there. Aha! Well, I'll give both halves to the police officer and we'll see how things go soon enough. Some observations:

*I hate this control scheme and every single element of it. I especially hate talking.

*I am 95% certain that ScummVM is breaking the game somehow. I will probably switch over to just playing the Amiga version in an emulator.

*If it isn't, why the hell wouldn't you make it clear how time happens? I'm not counting the bongs of the damn clock.

*In the morning of the second day I can search Tony's room without him in there. There's nothing in there.

*You know a horror game is effective when you wake up at 3:00 AM, try to get back to sleep only to have your brain remind you of all the fun scenes you've just seen.

A little bonus, quite a few elements in this game (assuming you played that version) are also in another 1989 DOS EGA horror game. A vampire, a witch, a gardener with a dog that kills you. Being able to interact with sinks and possibly cause them to overflow. That is, 1989's The Last Half of Darkness. It is curious as to how the two games share so much, despite being an ocean apart. Some of these are obvious coincidences, others seem quite specific.

Overall at this point I have a lot of leads but not a lot of solutions. The most obvious sticking point is how maddeningly difficult it is to find an envelope. I'm not going to have to find a stamp too, am I? Brits use those don't they? I might have to go back to day 1 and mail the film sometime between Jimmy dying and the vampire going back to hell.

Its deadly certain that Susan and Alice are servants of the devil, but the question is who else? Is the gardener someone I'm going to have to deal with? I strongly suspect Tony is a pyromaniac and that the other out of towner, Michael, ran Jimmy down. But does that mean they're servants of the devil? Everyone else except maybe the Registar seems to be a safe bet as innocent. Now if I can just prove it. Gentle nudges, if you know, are appreciated. This is one of those games I fully expect to have to do some kind of weird thing just to win the game.

This session: 1 hour 45 minutes
Total Time: 2 hours 5 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!