Hand of Fate - Long-Haired Freaky People Need Not Apply

Written by Michael

When we last left our whiny heroine, Zantha was outside her laboratory, recently ransacked.  And from the swamp, there were some eyes looking at her, curiously.

Sadly, she didn’t say “Watch it, slimeball” the way Officer Hooks would have.

Clicking on the eyes produces some large lizard monster-looking thing.  Zanthia quickly grabs their tongue, ties it in a knot, and admonishes it for wasting her time.  It slinks away, with its metaphorical tail between its legs.  “Sometimes I have to be strict.”

Looking around at items, often I get a response.  Remember, this is a single-icon system, one click does it all.  Picking up items, looking at items, talking to people (or creatures) (or ourselves), and so on.  There are no hotspots to mouse over on the screen, telling us what something is.  So, to explore means to just click on things and hope you get lucky.

On this screen, looking at the roof of the lab: “Swamp mud makes beautiful tiles.”

We’d better not sit around the dock screen, wasting time.

As I work my way north, more of Kyrandia disappears before my eyes.  A tree starts to shimmer, and then disappears.  We’d better hurry before it’s all gone!  But I’ll stop to pick up a mushroom that is on the cusp of being an obvious item.  As I’ll find with some of the colorful flowers and what not, that’s not always the case.  They dig a good job so far keeping me on my toes.

Walking on the dock does nothing except channel my inner Otis Redding, so I continue down the path.

Feed me, Seymour!

On the next screen, we come across a pair of what looks like man-eating plants.  I’ll name them Audrey I and Audrey II.  Seriously, they’re almost identical twins to the movie star plant.  

We can look at them, but nothing else right now.  I suspect they’ll be important later, but who knows.  (“I really should clear this weed path some day.  It does keep the squirrels down, though.”  A Kyrandia 1 throwback maybe?)   

There’s a tree stump here as well.  Inside, I find a tunnel that opens into a system of catacombs, and that leads me to my old spellbook from my school days, with some pages ripped out.  It gets added to the empty section of screen next to my inventory, with room for more.

Further north, I find a Gnarlwood Tree.  Clicking one part of it tells me “I can’t break this one”, implying I should try elsewhere, and soon I’ve added a wriggling twig to my inventory.  There’s also something sticking slightly out of the ground a few steps past that, and it turns out it’s a wild growing onion.

I hope this ferryman doesn't expect a 2¢ fare.

We come across Brueth, master of the ferry boat.  He’s got the wings of a bee, but has the attitude of a fallen angel.  We ask him when the ferryboat will launch, so we can continue our mission to the next island, Morningmist.  Quite simply, he asks for payment first.  Not quite as unreasonable as Zanthia makes it out to be; she thinks it should be a charity mission.  After all, she’s on a mission from God.

Seriously, he responds with something that may or may not be a puzzle hint.  “You’re the alchemist.  Make some gold.”  Or it could be him just being fresh.  Time will tell.

If I keep talking to him: “Well, did you make some gold?”  “I’ll find some somewhere.”

Just add some tar, and don't fly too close to the sun.  There's a moral lesson in there somewhere.

I finally have two directions to choose from, so I choose left.  It brings me to another T intersection, connected with a bunch of rickety-looking foot bridges.  

There’s a couple of trees.  One of them has eyes glowing from the darkness, and when I check it out, Zanthia just refers to them as Voyeurs.  “Don’t look at me like that.”  I wonder if video game characters think that about us through the glass of the monitor?

The other tree houses a bird’s nest, and inside is a feather.  I check for more contents, but she just muses, “I can’t believe they make soup out of these things.”

Hence the name?

To the left, I find a scene likely, um, pirated from another adventure game.  There’s a swamp of quicksand, and a skeletal hand holding up a key.  The music in the background becomes something very, very obviously inspired by a certain popular adventure game series set somewhere in the Caribbean. (It feels like an homage, not theft.)

Well, I know how NOT to handle this scene, so I save the game and have a little fun.  I try to cross the quicksand, light as a feather I am.  I get near the key... and the arm grabs me and pulls me under.

No flowers, please.  Donations can be made to the local SPCA, I suspect we will be abusing animals way too much in this game.  Heck, just wait for the next screenshot!

Well, I saw that coming.  Back to the quicksand, and a look at the very obvious pathway.  The tree has been eaten by a beaver to the tipping point.  I push it.

Nothing happens.  “Hmm... Must be a magic tree.  I can’t tip it over.”

She turns away, and... timber!

The tree now crosses the quicksand.  I can walk across and grab the key.  A skeleton key, of course.  Actually, a “Skeleton’s Key”.  Honoring its origin.

Further west, and the trail skirts the lagoon.  There’s a tree with a hollowed out hole, and to the adventure gamer in me, that means search.  Bingo!  “My little camping cauldron!”  Not big enough for a portal potion (of course), but it can probably manage all the stuff in my spellbook.

Another game with an alligator next to a swamp.  Next time I'm playing Police Quest or something.

In the water is a crocodile alligator reptile.  At first I think I need to scare it away, or something cruel.  I throw my twisty bark at it, hoping he’ll either be scared or choke on it or something.  No dice.  He eats it and goes on with his day.

(No need to restore -- I can get another bark, it replenishes.)

No, this is a very KQ6-esque puzzle.  One of the recipes in the book calls for reptile tears.  I feed him an onion, and he starts to sob.  I use a flask on the tears, and I have an ingredient for a spell I don’t know I need to use yet.

Before I did that, mind you, I can also pet the alligator.  “I can’t help myself.  I like living dangerously.”

Good question.  I didn’t try that in this session.

North of the gator are some hot water springs.  And on the ledge in the back is a sulfur rock.  I pick that up, as another ingredient for that same spell.

It’s in the game, so it’s not copy protection.  Understand this, KQ3?  Freddy Pharkas?

Well, the sulfur counts as “Smell of Eggs” and I have the tears.  I’m sure I’ll find another onion in the ground, the way ingredients keep popping up.  “Windy Woof” I think might be the twisty twig I have in my inventory, because woof = bark, of course.  

A video game crossover.

That just leaves a Toadstool, which has to be this mushroom I have.  But until I find a bear in the woods, I’ll hold off on making this potion.

On that -- good thing I read the manual, right?  It tells me how to use the cauldron.  Put stuff in there.  Make potion.  If I screw up, there’s a flush handle I can pull, just like a toilet.  And it makes a whoosh sound.

I asked an expert.

I need hot water for the spell, but I suspect that if I take it now, it won’t be hot when I need it.  Best to wait.  Also, no empty flasks with me right now.

So, other than Zanthia saying the steam is good for her complexion, I think I’ve exhausted this screen for now.  So, first I go to where the Gnarlwood is, and yep, there was another onion.  Taken.

Back to the rickety bridges, and one more path to explore, going north.

“...is there some way to cool it off?”

We’re outside Herb’s shack.  Well, I haven’t met Herb yet, but Zanthia has.  And there’s a fireberry bush out front.  But I can’t pick one up, because they’re too hot.  I don’t know why I want one yet, but I just do.  That darn adventure game credo.

See a berry, pick it up.  All the day you’ll have good luck.

Nothing doing out here otherwise, so let’s go in.

I think this is where we are right now.

Inside, we find a large toad at a desk, writing something, and two other smaller amphibians sitting across the room.  One of them recognizes me as Faun’s friend (you remember Faun, right?  Our sidekick that we left at home and haven’t thought of since).  The other just chides me, “Aren’t you afraid of warts?”  Looking around the room, I find what was probably one of my flasks stolen from the lab.  I ask to take it, and he says, “Sure.  There’s flasks lying all over this country.”  Guess I’ll be finding a bunch more.

He also lets me take a bag of plant food, but won’t let me touch his mosquito candle.  I ask him if he has any gold I could use to pay Brueth, but while Herb says no, his younger cohabitants tell me about a lost pirate treasure.

Do you know where the treasure is?

I’ve never seen it.

Probaby buried.

Yeah, yeah, buried.

What a great help they were.  One of them halfheartedly thinks it’s buried in the springs, but I doubt that.

At least half of them.

I explore to the east of the ferry boat, and find a couple of fishermen in a boat, anchored near a natural bridge.  Talking to them, I find they haven’t caught anything yet, but they blame me -- I’m making too much noise.  Also, when I ask: “We don’t use live bait.”

I don’t know why I need these guys yet, or their fish, or their poles, or... who knows.  But I try giving them the gnarlwood wiggling around in my inventory, thinking it would make a good worm, but they aren’t interested.  So, let’s leave them for now.

In the last game, caves had ornate, carved stone entrances with decorative gargoyles.  Over here, they need to work on their curb appeal.

Further east is another path, and more of Kyrandia disappearing in front of my eyes. There’s an entrance to a cave, but before I can explore, out comes Marko.

What an arrogant jerk he is.  I definitely agree with Zanthia on this.

He tries to show off some magic tricks, which Zanthia feels is better suited for a birthday party.

It is way, WAY too easy to make a Fast Times reference here.

I don’t feel like chatting to him, so Zanthia gives her reasons why.  Why seems like a good restating of the goals ahead of me:  “I’d love to stay and chat, but someone has stolen my equipment.  I have to walk down to the center of the world to get one of those anchor stones.”

Marko offers to help, but we turn him down, not wanting to spend any extra time around him.  So, after yanking another onion from the ground, I go into the cave.

His application to work at Disney was denied.

Inside, there’s a twisty tunnel, and a lifesize rat.  There’s some swamp water collecting in a pool, which I can collect in a flask, but I dump it into the cauldron and flush it out for now -- I don’t have spare flasks.  Also, none of the recipes in my book so far call for it, but perhaps later I’ll find more pages?

I walk close to the rat, and he gets all freaked out, thinking his tail was a snake.  He’s blocking the way further into the cave -- and hey, maybe there’s treasure there?

Wait.  He’s scared of snakes, and I have the ingredients for a “Swampsnake Potion” for scaring bears in the woods.  I think I know where I’m supposed to use that!

I’m going to make my way back to the springs to make the spell (remember, I need hot water), but on the way, I chose a different path, South of where I found Marko, and found a firefly tree.

I do not believe my eyes.

So, there’s a bunch of multi-colored fireflies here.  If you click one, it makes a sound and lights up.  And then another one does.

I click the one that lit up, and it replays its sound, and another one follows. If you keep repeating back to it the pattern it plays, eventually it grows to all seven flies, and when you press them in order, they play a musical song.  It doesn’t seem to do anything other than entertain, and I can do it more than once, so I suspect I might need to remember this sequence.  For me, it’s green, orange, purple, red, yellow, blue, cyan, but I don’t know if that differs from game to game or not.  Still, I’ve written it down to remember it.  (“Cute tune, but inaccessible to the masses.”)

Other than noting the tree has creepy roots, there’s nothing else to do here.  Back on my mission to the springs.

I make the potion, adding each of the ingredients, then some hot water.  I click an empty flask on the cauldron, and then drink it.  “It’s a little warm for my taste.”  Hmm, guess I didn’t do it right.  Clicking on the cauldron reads the ingredients back to me, but I did something wrong, I guess?

I restore, and start revisiting locations, and I found something I missed the first time around.  I am so ashamed of myself for missing this.

What are the frogs sitting on?  Little stools.  Their buddy’s seat in the middle is empty.  An empty stool.  For a toad.  

Ugh.  This one is my fault.

I pick up the toadstool and remake the potion.  I save the game and test it, and it works.  So, even though the recipe made 3 servings, I restore, just in case for some reason I need all three.  I then go and replenish the ingredients I used, because I can.  More bark, another onion, another sulfur rock.  I’d like to get some more tears, seeing that another recipe calls for them, but I really wish I had another empty flask or three to keep stuff like that.

Just hanging out.

In my exploration this time, I come across Marko.  Again.  Caught by the large man-eating plant.  I try a few inventory items to help save him, but the answer is straightforward: feed the plant some plant food.

Why did I save him?  I’m not sure.  Maybe karma plays a role later on?

As I recall, in the first game, if you tell Larry to do that, the narrator says, “Larry!  The whole point of the game was to STOP doing that.”

We save him, he keeps on pestering me to help, and I send him on his way.  And I go on my way, back to the cave to use the potion.

Bad hair day.

I try to take the potion just inside the cave, but Zanthia tells me he should be awake to see this.  So I walk over and wake him up, and then drink the potion.  It works.  He runs away, Tom & Jerry-style.  I can now go off to the right and into the cave.

When a restaurant dims the lights like this, usually they do it to hide their tiny portions.

The dark cave.  I can walk a couple of feet in, but there’s nothing to grope around.  Not like the cave in Zak McKracken.  But I know where I have a perfect light source for a cave.  How to cool down the berries?

So, I think I’ll pause here for now.  What are some of my goals for the next session?

• Get gold to pay Brueth for a ferry ride
• Figure out how to pick a fireberry from the bush, to use in the cave most likely
• Find out the purpose of the fishermen

Sounds like a start.  I’ll be back.

My progress so far.

Session Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes