Donkey Island - Crimson and Clover

Written by Michael

Said no adventure game player EVER.

Welcome back to scenic Donkey Island!  Last time, I just read the manual and watched the introduction.  Today, I’ll actually play some of the game.

No bananas in the tree.

We start on a sunny beach.  Looking around, there’s only one real object I can interact with, a palm tree, but the best I can figure now is to look at it.  I look at my surroundings, and while some things have descriptions, often the game will default to one of a random selection of dismissive phrases when it doesn’t have a response for me looking at a certain pixel.  For example, “You should get some fresh air”, “Don’t look at every cocaroach”, or “I don't have my glasses”.

Leaving the beach, I am brought to a map screen, very reminiscent of the game series this is a parody of.  When I mouse-over various spots on the screen, a name appears.  Those are areas I can visit.  I suspect more will appear as I explore, just like in Monkey Island.  For example, nothing appears when I check the island in the picture, but I expect that’s because I have no way to get there yet.

In no particular order, the areas I see from here are a hut, a cape, a volcano, a big tree, a jungle,  the beach I came from, and the coast.

I somehow didn’t notice the jungle on my first trip through here, but found it later.  No real consequences to that other than potentially delaying my progress.

Sending out an S.O.S.

In the sand at the coast, I find a green bottle in the sand.  I do not find any messages from a H. Toothrot inside, but rather, find it empty.

When I look at it in the ground, I’m told, “There’s a regular green bottle in the sand.”  After I pick it up and then look at it, I get more details.  “There are remnants of an illegible sticker on it.”

Everybody must pick up a stone.

At the big tree, I enter the scene from the right and spot a big tree.  The screen, I suppose, is aptly named.  Very clearly in the art is a rock in the ground at the base of one of the large roots of the tree.  When I look at it, I’m given one of the generic failure messages, but when I try to pick it up: “And hey! A stone...”

Once collected, I look at it, and I’m told it’s a long, flat, common stone, and “Its chemical formula is SiC.”  Does this mean I’m going to be building a computer with this? Looking at the tree, I’m told it’s big and he doesn’t want to climb it.  Understandable.

At this time, I feel I’ve done all I can for now in the tree scene.  This isn’t actually true, and I’ll be coming back here later.  The reason I say this is one of my frustrations with this game, the exits from screens and resulting navigation.  In this case:  I entered the screen from the right when I arrived, and when I tried to walk off the left side of the screen, it took me back to the map.  I later found I could go off to the right side, and in doing that would bring me to another screen.

Also of note: the hot spots to leave some of the screens, especially coming up, are very picky, almost to the level of a hard-core pixel hunt.  And the game doesn’t auto-navigate well.  I’ll explain this in our next location.

No chickens to bite the heads off of here.

I head over to the hut, which the location screen calls instead a cottage.  Visible in the picture is a woodpile, and there is animated smoke coming from the chimney.  Looking at the woodpile tells me nothing, but I try to pick up some wood and I am rewarded with a cord of wood in my pocket.  When I do this, it reveals something else behind the woodpile, which ends up being a paddle.  When I try to pick up more wood, the game actually admonished me: “I’ve probably stolen enough here, haven’t I?”

I use the hand icon on the door, thinking I’ll be knocking, but Gajbraš instead says he’ll open the door.

We steal and we’re inconsiderate of others.  We really ARE a seasoned pirate now!

This is not allowed.

Inside the cottage, there’s a lot of details, and when I try to open, use, or manipulate most of them, I am confronted by the resident of the cottage, a donkey who peeks out from around the curtain, telling me not to touch his stuff. So, I can’t open the chest in the corner of the room, or push aside the curtain to see him properly, or investigate the many items in the foreground.  However, I’m given no resistance when I steal the knife hanging on the wall above the chest.

I try to talk to the donkey, and he tells me he’s “not at home” and even if he was, he wouldn’t have time for such nonsense.

When I try to examine the knife, our hero simply stabs himself with it, well-animated, disclaiming that nothing can happen because it’s a blunt, rusty old knife.

I disagree, mind you.  Tetanus is certainly a concern.

The solution to this is simple, even though I do not have a use for the knife intended yet.  I use the stone on it, and Gajbraš sharpens the knife.  Now that the knife is razor sharp, our hero disposes of the stone (“so that my dagger doesn’t get stuck on it”).

I cannot think of anything else to do here, so I head over to the Rocky Cape.

Step on the stones.

Other than unsuccessfully try to look at, push, or take the round stone in the picture, I have nothing to do here at this time, so I leave.

The floor is lava.

At the base of the volcano is a path of seemingly uncrossable lava.  For the heck of it, I try collecting it with the bottle, but doing so only causes our player to do an animation demonstrating that the bottle is empty.  

Can I cross it?  I try to click the walk icon on the other side, and he acts like he’s going to try to jump and then aborts.  “No, no no!  I wouldn’t want to fall.”

Inspiration or just guessing made me try something else, the stack of firewood.  He places all the logs out like a path, and as I walk over them to the other side, they burn away, making it a one way trip.

Well, I guess that’s why the game wouldn’t let me take two bundles.

I haven’t got a prayer, have I?

So, here’s a stone structure of a donkey looking rather run-down and tired.  Looking around, it seems the entrance is in the nostril.  So I go in.

Inside is a small niche that corresponds with the outward part of the snout, and the passage out the other end, which is blocked by something that might be a large boulder.  Nothing in my inventory is any help here.

I seem to have dead-ended myself.  So, a visit to the previous saved game, and a little bit of catch-up is required.

Let me pause to describe the save system.  It’s simply five spots that can be named with short names.  Damn.  For a game that’s likely going to require a lot of save-scumming, that’s not a lot.

Smoked venison.

As I leave the cottage again (after obtaining and sharpening the knife) I try to walk in the woods behind it, checking all my avenues of escape, and I notice I can walk behind the house.  I try walking lots of places, and end up clicking the walk icon on the chimney itself, and Gajbraš says he won’t go in there right now.

“Right now.”  Those words stuck with me.  Could it be a hint that I need to go there later?  Or, a later thought, could it be that we don’t go down a chimney with an open flame?

I head to the beach, and try to use the bottle on the water.  No such luck.  That screen is much zoomed out; maybe I should try one more close up?  I head to the coast. Still no luck.

Okay, this doesn’t seem right to me.  Maybe I’m not using the icons right, for the way this game is programmed?  I try something more unorthodox.  I use the pick up icon directly on the water.

Don’t put that into your mouth.

Our boy decides to use his mouth to pick up the water, and store it there.  So I go back to the cottage and use the water on the fireplace, which extinguishes the fire.

Unlawful entry.

I tumble down the chimney, knock my head, and fall unconscious for several hours.

Some picture captions are more obvious than others.

I awake inside the attic, and there’s a pile of junk on the back wall, and something that looks like a red button near the window. I search the pile, and I’m told that I didn’t find anything useful this time.  “This time.”  So I search again, and find a pump.  We think it might come in handy, so we keep it.

Further searches of the pile yield nothing, so next I save the game and press the button.  Why?  Because it’s there.  “I don’t know what this button does, but I suspect it’s something insidious...”

Wait, they made a song other than Epic?

The button magically transports me to the ground floor of the house. The donkey downstairs will now talk to me, because he thinks I’m just an amateur magic-user that chose an unorthodox way to travel through space. His name is Thruss, and he introduces himself as a great mage and alchemist.  He’s preparing a healing potion for us, and also admonishes us for entering his home more than once. 

I decide to roll with it: “I am Gajbraš Trípvůd, an amateur magician.  I had nothing to do, so I tried a new spell... and, well, I ended up here.”  This pleases Thruss, who says he needs an assistant and could keep us busy with work.  He gives us a starting task, to bring him four ingredients for a potion: mother’s milk, forest scent, death of the sea, and the glitter of the ocean.  Of course, I say “No problem” and then head out.

An unusual tree, I suppose.

This is when I notice the other map location the jungle, and explore.  In the first screen, I find a magenta-colored tree, but it doesn’t appear to be useful to me right now.  Yes, I even tried to talk to it, because, well, why not.

I honestly am confused by this description -- don’t all donkeys have ears and tails?  Perhaps except the ones from a child’s birthday party.

To the west is a donkey, relaxing on what might be a chaise lounge, surrounded by large balloons.  Is it his birthday?  Nearby is a strange fireplace, built from stone blocks, with a funnel-like opening in the top.

Talking to him, we find out that his name is Dunlop, a rubber trader.

Oh, game, I see what you did there.  I shall never, ahem, tire of this kind of humor.

He says he is surrounded by his merchandise.  He offers inflatable monkeys, donkeys, and more, made using his machine over there, that fireplace thing.

The game utilizes dialog trees, so I have multiple options, so I ask him about the island.  There are peculiarities in the layout of the island, but he forgets what makes them interesting.  There used to be many donkeys living here but now there are few, “they all disappeared due to an accident.”  But the temple survived.  “You’ll likely see some debris among the clover.”

Clover?  Did I miss a location?  Gotta keep looking.

When I try to talk business, one option seems obvious.  Yeah, I suppose the pump might need fixing... but hey, an inflatable boat!  We could use that to get to the island, and since this is an adventure game, I guess at least two of the four spell ingredients will be there.  Maybe all four?

He asks for food in exchange.  We don’t have any right now, so that’s something for us to look for, I suppose.

She is truly a god when it comes to Skeeball.

We head the other direction in the forest, and I come across a tree with some beautiful orchids growing on it.  I try to pick them, and the plant yells at me: “How dare you!  I don’t even want to look at you!”

So the puzzle here is to get on the flower’s good side.  I found that if I click the “use” icon on it, I apologize for my past bad behavior, and we start fresh.  I talk to her (assuming it’s a her, I guess that’s not politically correct) and anger her some more when I imply that there might be other attractive flowers.  No, I need to act like she’s number one, and has a lovely scent.

Scent?  Don’t I need some forest scent for the mage?  

The winning line, by the way?  Something that will never, ever work on a woman ever again in the future.“You smell nicer than me.  I haven’t washed in ages!”  I ask for a memory of her scent, and she tells me to bring her a leaf and she will perfume it for me.

On that note, much like Biff Tanner, I’m going to make like a tree and leaf leave.  I’ll be back soon.

Session Time: 45 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes