Death in the Caribbean - Lost! (with Final Rating)

Written by Michael

This is the only acceptable ghost this time of year.

There’s not much progress to report here.  I found a known bug in the game that prevents me from winning.  Apparently only the C64 version is finishable.  And I don’t feel like starting from scratch in a new system; this game just isn’t worth it.  There’s more important things in life, like waiting in line at the DMV, or getting your teeth pulled.

Still, let me tell you what I’ve done, and what could have been.

Last time around, I discovered a storm that destroyed the matches I had picked up.  So, I restored back before I encountered the storm, and instead used the ring to teleport to the cave entrance.  I then was able to use my dry matches to light the lantern, and enter the cave.

Are these sheetrock walls in a cave?

Inside the cave, we are are transported into the sharp right-angled corners of what is probably a maze.  With bright green (oops, jade) walls.  The first doorway in leads to a dead end.  I don’t know what possessed me to look, but inspecting the floor tells me it is made of wooden boards.  I try to BURN FLOOR and am told that it is impossible to light.

Somehow, I’m impressed this was programmed in.

Continuing down the way brings me to a room in the cavern with a coffin.  From the art, it seems we’re back in the cave proper, although I suspect the walls in the previous screens were possibly placeholder graphics that never got replaced.

There’s a zombie getting out of the casket as I approach it, and no matter what I try next, I’m going to die.  Going east or west, I’m told, “You must take a more obscure approach to leaving.  The zombie killed you.”  If I try to rub the ring, I’m told it doesn’t work underground.

So, I’m missing something, and apparently, my amulet only works on ghosts and not ghouls.

Tell me something I don’t know, game.

Restoring again (that’s about 6 times so far this session), I decide to go back to a different puzzle I skipped earlier on: the crevasse.  From the artwork, it looks like a bridge made of grass, but that’s not what a crevice is, is it?

Looking again, I’m reminded that “The crevasse is about 120 feet deep and 11 feet wide.”  There’s a tall tree right next to it; I’m thinking much like my playthrough of Hand of Fate, dropping a tree over it may help.  I try to push the tree, but the game doesn’t recognize the word “PUSH”.  Cut?  “You have nothing to cut with.”  That’s promising.  But I’ll try something else.

JUMP

And like that, the game seemingly enters a debug or machine language mode.

At this point, I’m getting really frustrated, so I decide to cheat a little bit.  Not really cheating, though.  In the game box, the game gives a few hints for some puzzles.  I resisted the urge to look at this before, but now that I was suffering programming bugs, I wanted to know if I was on the right track.

Thank you to the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History

The game authors apparently knew that some of the puzzles bordered on ridiculous.  For this one, though, I had the solution!

So, I restore the game and try jumping again.  This time, I fall into the crevasse and plummet to my death.

I repeat this about 10 more times, and the last time, I don’t plummet -- instead, the game crashes to assembly mode again.

I do some searching, and it turns out the blog I originally learned of the game from also hinted to this bug.  They were able to finish by replaying in the Commodore version.  Finding a walkthrough online, it’s noted that I should save my game because succeeding is random here.

Ugh.

So, this is where I will end this playthrough.  I was more than halfway through, and it’s no longer fun.

Browsing a walkthrough later, I found that the puzzles from this point on get more ridiculous as the game wears on. For example, the screen with the fog can be solved by using a sword and cutting through the fog. Also, you'll need to bottle up some of the fog to use to distract the zombie.

Or what might actually be the most convoluted puzzle ever, opening the final treasure, the game will ask you what key to use. The answer is G, as in the key the music on the piano is written in.

It is almost definite I would have needed a "Request for Assistance" for that one. I'm curious how some of you might have worded that hint.

Session Time: 1 hour 

Total Time: 3 hour 25 minutes

A useful website.

By the way, with the help of a cryptogram website, I solved the message on the cannon.  “PYRAMID MARKER GUARDS BURIED CHEST. EXCAVATE WITH GREAT CARE.” This was not easily solvable my hand, at least not without devoting an entire evening to it. There's no hint given, and the statistically most-occurring characters you would normally look for as a starting point,in this phrase, they aren't as prevalent. Compare this to, say, the original King's Quest and the name of the character you have to decipher... yes, Roberta Williams made the better puzzle. And hers was so bad, they had to include a solution to it in the box after weeks of customer complaints.

Puzzles and Solvability

Certainly not a high point for this game.  This game is almost entirely designed as “learn from dying over and over”.  I suppose it was the time the game was programmed in, but it still felt harsh.  In this last session, walking into the room with the coffin, you were already a dead man walking, just like the zombie in there with you.  Walking into the quicksand dead-ended you, as did entering the storm with the matches.  There are red herrings that kill you, like the bull, that seems to serve no purpose other than a death screen, and the alligator.  

The puzzles I would usually consider acceptable, there was no hints given at all.  The ghost stealing your stuff, there’s no indication why he’s doing it, or that it is even a puzzle to be solved, until you finally, randomly come across an amulet and have the forethought to wear it.

Also, there were at least two screens where the directions were just plain wrong.  Telling me there’s an exit to the east and west, and I try one of those directions and it says, “there’s no path in that direction.”

Covering the ant hole with the rock was okay.  Using the key to open the church door, shovel to dig a grave, and matches to light a lantern were all obvious and okay.  Knowing to rub a ring?  Not as much.  Very little thought was put into this game.

Some credit is given for at least one alternate solution: entering the cave from around the storm by using the ring, the hint sheet suggests lighting it before the storm and then being able to relight it afterwards.  Also, you can apparently get there by way of the trap door of the church as well.

But then there's the puzzles I learned from the walkthroughs. Key of G, really?

Score: 2

Interface and Inventory

A standard text adventure prompt with a two-word parser.  I was able to stump it many, many times.  The save system didn’t work for me, causing the same crash as when I successfully jumped the chasm.  Not cool.

The inventory system itself was inconsistent.  Apparently, you were limited to carrying four items if you did not have the wagon, but after I smashed the wagon, I was able to carry five at times.  Items were given descriptions, sometimes with useless information, sometimes giving hints. but this was an aspect of the game that was generally handled well.  The game did like to describe things by size a lot, like the height of the pyramid or the size of the crevasse, or the weight of the rock.  

Score: 2

Story and Setting

This is a positive part of the game.  The premise is both tried and true and compelling at the same time.  You’re a treasure hunter on a Caribbean island, in search of a big score.  The various screens were artistic, descriptive, and varied.  If it had been done just ten years later, it likely could have been a notable title.

Score: 4

Sound and Graphics

No sounds, and the graphics were certainly acceptable for the time.  Because of disk space limitations, they used the tried-and-true method of drawing the bordering lines and then filling the space between with a color.  Not quite up to the standards of the last classic I played here, Sherwood Forest, but acceptable hand-drawn art all the same.  If I gave that one a 3, I have no choice but to remove a point here, because this was a year later and not up to the same standard.

Score: 2

Environment and Atmosphere

Like I touched upon in the setting category above, this game did flesh out the world, and that made it feel all the more explorable.  Had the puzzles been designed better, I would have enjoyed going to each nook and cranny so much more.  Even the filler screens added to making the place fit the part.  

Score: 3

Dialog and Acting

Well, there really wasn’t any.  Okay, so we count inventory descriptions as dialog, but while they were occasionally useful, they also were dry and matter of fact.  The few creatures you hear from aren’t very interesting, like the ghost simply saying, “I hid your ring.”  And the room descriptions, I will count here as well, because I haven’t mentioned them yet.  They don’t change, even with changes in circumstances.  The screen you get the matches, for example, says “Someone left matches here” both before and after you take them away.

Score: 1

So, it’s time for some math.  2+2+4+2+3+1=14 / 0.6 = 23.333, which rounded...

... oh no!  A ghost came by and hid some points!  

I don’t feel bad about this score.  It was a good idea, but it lacked execution.  The graphics were okay, the puzzle design lackluster, and random death and random dead-ends never, ever work for me.  If you want to learn about the end, I strongly suggest reading the blurb on the review I posted earlier.

The lowest bidder, MorpheusKitami wins the prize, with a guess of 26.  As always, you’ll get your points when we finish the next mainline game, and I promise to wrap them in an amulet so they cannot be stolen by the ghost.  

Next time I post, we’ll return to the much more pleasant world of Kyrandia.