A Conversation with David Marsh

Interview by Joe Pranevich

As we close out our coverage of Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, I am thrilled to have been able to speak to one of the masterminds behind ICOM Simulations’ success, David Marsh. In the first decades of his career, David helped bring us classics like Deja Vu, Shadowgate, and Uninvited. He was the art director for the Consulting Detective series. These days, David is the driving force behind Zojoi, the current owner of much of ICOM’s adventure gaming legacy. He and his team have recently released updated versions of the first three Consulting Detective cases plus a complete reimagining of the original Shadowgate.

In a wide-ranging conversation, David and I talk about all of those titles, games that didn’t quite make it, and even Road Runner’s Death Valley Rally. It was a lot of fun and I’m thrilled to be able to bring this interview with you.

Game 14: Shadowgate - Final Rating

I've written more about Shadowgate than any game prior on the list, so I'm actually pretty happy to be finally writing a final rating post for the game. I intend to keep this fairly short, as I've gone into a lot of detail throughout each post on the game so far and don't wish to repeat myself ad infinitum. Let's do this...

Puzzles and Solvability
Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat. Shadowgate is a really hard game! But it’s not difficult in the same ways that Uninvited was. That game was difficult due to illogical puzzle solutions, and for putting way too many items at the player’s disposal. The solutions to the puzzles in Shadowgate are for the most part very logical, and in some cases actually pretty clever. I may have struggled to solve sections such as the key under the rug right near the locked door and the arrow acting as a directional marker rather than a weapon, but I didn’t feel angry when I finally solved them. They were just hard, and involved taking a different approach than you might expect. Where Shadowgate is unnecessarily difficult is the way items and even locations are so deviously hidden. The ring hidden in the tree in the garden, the metal rod behind the map in the observatory, and the holy water under the floor in the laboratory, are just three examples of items that require a bit too much luck to find. Miss even one of them, and you can’t finish the game! As for locations, well the cavity behind the waterfall isn’t at all obvious, and the game gives you absolutely no hints that there’s anything beyond the collapsing rickety bridge, with both locations being of ultimate importance. I’ve given Shadowgate a 3 for this category, which is two more than I gave Uninvited, as it’s definitely an improvement.
Rating: 3

It was nice to successfully solve puzzles using logic this time round. The cyclops went down with a rock to the eye.

Interface and Inventory
The interface for Shadowgate is identical to Déjà Vu and Uninvited, so I’m not going to go into too much detail here. There are some aspects of it however that affect Shadowgate in ways they didn’t in those previous games. Firstly,  having actions in the interface that the player is never required to use is off-putting. I never once used consume or hit, and speak was only useful once in the entire game, but I tried using them probably a hundred times! I realise they’re just a carryover from the other ICOM games, but that’s just lazy in my book. The way the game changed the way the player needs to use spells was also a major bitch for me. In Uninvited I used the “speak” action to cast spells, whereas in Shadowgate I needed to “operate” the parchments themselves. This resulted in me initially leaving all the parchments behind to save on inventory space when they were in fact required, and it also meant I failed to cast spells successfully for half the game despite attempting to use them at exactly the right points. Finally, there’s the inventory. The game requires you to carry a lot of items, but it also requires you to keep a good few torches spare on you at all times. There’s just not enough room in the inventory for both, which means leaving behind things you actually need later on. This problem is exacerbated by the game not informing the player when an item has served its purpose. I was never told that the gauntlets helped me get the flute out of the fountain or that the cloak allowed me to enter the fire drake’s den, and therefore kept them far longer than I needed to, once again taking up valuable room in my inventory.
Rating: 2

If only I knew at the time that I no longer needed the cloak or the gauntlets...

Story and Setting

I quite like the fantasy setting of Shadowgate. I’m naturally attracted to swords, magic and monsters type themes, but even more so when they’re a bit darker than usual. Shadowgate feels as much like a horror game as it does fantasy, which is right up my alley. That being said, the story isn’t exactly brilliant, and is basically a bunch of clichés tacked together. The player must make his way through a booby trapped castle, collecting five items of power on the way that are required to defeat a Warlock that wants to rule the whole world. How incredibly original! I actually didn’t mind the second half of the game turning into a “find and destroy the five guardians to get their magic items” quest, but it sure was confusing finding parchments and prophecies everywhere that talked about the items in the first half of the game. I found myself trying to apply the fairly cryptic documents to everything, but none of it made any sense until much later in the game. At least they eventually did make sense, unlike in Mortville Manor where they didn’t mean anything to me even after I’d finished the game.

Rating: 4

I thank you your majesty, and in return I give you this fine goblet that I could find no use for on my quest

Sound and Graphics

As with the interface, the sound and graphics are pretty much of the same quality as Déjà Vu and Uninvited. In fact, the majority of the sound effects, including those used for opening doors and screams, were lifted directly from Uninvited. That means they’re terribly grating, and the small amount of music that pops up from time to time is even worse. Dying is never much fun, but when it's accompanied by a horrible little tune that makes you want to end your real life, it's just not cool. The graphics are once again CGA, and given that Shadowgate was released on the PC in 1988, that’s not really acceptable. The illustrations are not terrible, but the limited colours make everything ugly and certain puzzles all but impossible to solve. There’s quite a bit of pixel hunting due to all the hidden items and locations, and what might be obvious in 16 colours is all but indiscernible in 4 colours. The markings on the stairs in the Sphynx’s room and the key under the rug are just two examples of where the difficulty is substantially increased in the PC version of the game due to the low graphics quality. It was a 2 for the other two games, so I’m giving Shadowgate a 3 for the increase in illustration quality.

Rating: 3

The most evil of all castle inhabitants is undoubtedly Sebastian the interior decorator

Environment and Atmosphere

As with Uninvited’s House of Abraxas, Castle Shadowgate is a suitably dark and creepy place to spend time hunting down a Warlock Lord intent on world destruction.  Right from the opening screen containing a skull adorned wooden door surrounded by stones and the silhouettes of jagged trees, Shadowgate keeps the atmosphere dial turned right up. The amount of ways that the player can die during the game, the majority of which I discovered unintentionally, is pretty impressive, and I was seriously thankful that I managed to get the save feature functioning correctly prior to setting out on my quest. There are touches of humour here and there, but it’s more of the mocking variety than laugh out loud comedy. As much as I hated the time limit created by torches having a use by date, I have to admit that it adds a sense of urgency not felt in many adventure games. Whether that’s a good thing or not is another matter, and I think it’s pretty obvious which side of the fence I sit on. This should really be the highest rated category for the game though, so I’ll go with a 5.

Rating: 5

Shadowgate Death Number 173: Death by Brick

Dialogue and Acting

The dialogue in Shadowgate can really only be described as adequate. There is quite a bit of descriptive narrative and it’s satisfactory in giving the player a good sense of their surroundings while using both unsettling horror and mildly amusing comedy to help keep things interesting. If it wasn’t for the small amount of interaction that occurs when the player operates certain objects in the graphical interface, the ICOM games could really be considered interactive fiction, and would probably have worked reasonably ok in that format. There really isn’t much else to say about this category and I'm happy to repeat the 4 I gave to Uninvited.

Rating: 4

The highly descriptive narrative does make up a little for the technological deficiencies.

That leaves Shadowgate with a final rating of 35, which is 5 more than Uninvited, yet 10 less than Déjà Vu. Is Déjà Vu really that much of a better game? Probably not, but it was unquestionably pioneering for its time, and ICOM made next to no technological improvements in the 2 years proceeding it. Comparing Shadowgate to other games that came out in 1988 (the time of its release on the PC), it just doesn’t hold up. If I played the Windows 3.x version that came out a few years later, the game might have rated a fair bit higher, but I can only rate what I’ve played. It’s onto Space Quest II we go!

Game 14: Shadowgate - Won! (Part Two)

The Staff of Ages
I began my search for the next item with a major victory. I found the last key! It happened in the most surreal way too, and given how much luck was involved, I can’t really call it a “eureka” moment. I was in the banquet hall, staring at the third door, wondering where the last key could possibly be. I’d previously noticed an oddity in the carpet texture, but examining it hadn’t given me anything, so I just assumed in was a glitch in the graphics. I suddenly realised that despite burning everything I could in the early parts of the game, I’d inhibited my pyromaniac tendencies for a long while since. I operated a torch on the carpet and it disintegrated, revealing that the oddity in the carpet texture hadn’t been a graphical glitch at all. The key for the third door was literally under the carpet about two metres away from it! This is actually a pretty clever puzzle, and I’ll admit that the game made burning rugs the norm early on, so it’s not totally out of the blue. The issue in the DOS version of the game is that the hint (being a bump in the carpet) is pretty much imperceptible due to the low quality CGA graphics.

See that little blue anomaly below the cursor? That's a key under the carpet.

So the third door was finally open and I felt like I was on the home stretch to victory. Through the door was a passageway with two exits. The left one leads to a balcony with an empty flagpole socket. I couldn’t find any item that would fit in the socket (I even went back and got the fire poker but that didn’t work either). Down the steps was a lookout with a bag of coins and a massive pot of gold! I added the coins to my inventory, but trying to pick up the pot of gold resulted in one of the more humorous and mocking deaths in the game (see below). Deciding to ignore the flagpole socket for now, I went through the second exit and found myself in a throne room with a seated skeletal king the centrepiece. To his right is the symbol of a sword and to his left is a panel that can be opened. Opening the panel reveals a slot, obviously requiring an item of some sort. I knew there was some mention of this in the parchments and when I checked it out I found “The seed of the dream, ‘fore the evil is free, where the sword is hung, he must place the key”. I tried using all the items I had, but nothing fit in the slot. Operating the king’s sceptre on the skeleton did work however, but apart from it appearing in his left hand, nothing happened.

I knew before I picked up the pot of gold that it wasn't going to end well. All the more reason to do it!

I spent the next hour wandering around Castle Shadowgate looking for an item that I’d missed previously that might go in that slot. I came up empty handed. I hadn’t yet found a use for the goblet, the sword, the flute, or any of the various potions I’d come across, but I found no obvious place to use any of these. So…this is where I turned to the hints left by readers, hoping that one of them would give me the push I needed. The first hint was from Bobbyloathesyou, but Zenic had warned me that it was not correct for the version of the game I’m playing, so I moved on to Zenic’s first hint: “A rickety bridge collapses under your weight. There’s very little you’ll need to progress.” After reading this, my thoughts were filled with numerous obscenities so I won’t repeat any of that here. There’s a way to cross the bridge right back at the beginning of the game without falling to your death?!?! I’d considered the idea previously but that part of the game was left behind long ago. I’d assumed once I got past the fire drake and bridge troll, that I wouldn’t need to go back through there, but obviously there was something across that bridge that I was going to need. Maybe it was the “key” I needed for the throne room!

There's a skeleton king on the throne too, but that's probably not worth mentioning.

I quickly went back to the bridge room and read Zenic’s hint again. “A rickety bridge collapsed under your weight.” I removed every item from my inventory and placed them on the ground in front of the bridge, and walked across successfully. How the f#$% was I supposed to know to do that?! I’ve seen no hint in the game, not even when I died trying to cross the bridge originally, that would lead me to think that it was even possible to cross the bridge, let alone to give me an idea of how to do it. If it had been the only bridge leading out of the room then I might have made more attempts to cross, but the game has a habit of throwing unpassable booby traps at you (such as the pot of gold), so I figured this was an example of that. Rant aside, crossing the bridge took me to a cave with a serpent in it. OK, so this was obviously another guardian that I needed to defeat to get another item needed to finish the game. The problem was that I had nothing in my inventory apart from a torch! I tried using the torch on the serpent, but no luck. Hmmm….I crossed back over the bridge and looked at all of my items, trying to figure out which one might defeat the serpent. The short answer is none of them!

This is all I was carrying the first time I crossed the bridge early in the game. The torches weighed me down!

I have to admit I was getting a bit frustrated with the game at this point. I’d scoured every room over and over yet still I kept finding myself in a position where I was missing something. I decided that another hour spent looking at every room in detail would probably be futile, so I went back to Zenic’s hints. His second hint was “an item you need lies behind the stars”. Behind the stars? I’d seen plenty of stars through various windows, but surely that had nothing to do with it. The observatory!!! I went straight back to the observatory to see if there was anywhere an item might be hidden. The star galaxy map would make sense, but then I’d already taken the shooting star from it. I tried operating the galaxy map and it moved away, revealing a metal rod! I couldn’t imagine how the rod would help me defeat the serpent, but I could think of another place where it might be useful. The flagpole socket! Sticking the metal rod in the flagpole socket resulted in a hand extending from the ground offering me a wand. More importantly, the wand had an image of a serpent on it, making its use extremely obvious. It was exactly what I needed! I rushed back to the bridge room, dropped everything except a couple of torches and the wand, crossed over and defeated the serpent. My reward? The Staff of Ages!

By the power of Castle Shadowgate...I have the power!!!!!!!!!!!

The Orb

So…I had four of the five items I needed, but unfortunately, I still didn’t have the “key” for the throne room and had absolutely no leads whatsoever. It was time to get yet another hint! By now I was starting to feel a bit down about not being able to complete Shadowgate without assistance, but I also knew deep down that I probably would never have figured out the solutions that I’d got hints for so far. Bobbyloathesyou’s next hint was “the goblin room is completely superfluous”. That didn’t help with my predicament, but it was certainly good to know that I hadn’t just failed to figure out what to do there. I can’t believe how much time I wasted trying things with the goblins, so I’m likely to be critical of that when rating the game. The majority of the other hints I received described things I’d already achieved, until I got to one of Zenic’s. “The flute speaks to trees”! I’d operated the flute about a hundred times since I picked it up, but it never seemed to do anything. I’d eventually just stopped trying and instead waited for a scenario to arise where it made sense to play it. That never came! Reading Zenic’s hint, there was only one place in the game that I could remember having trees, and that’s the garden where I found the flute!

Believe me, the sound of the flute is NOT "very pretty".

I went back to the garden and operated the flute. A cavity opened up in one of the trees, revealing a ring in the exact same shape as the hole on the panel in the throne room. Once again I have to ask…how the f$%^ was I supposed to know to do that?! When I picked up the flute, I saw no reason to play it right then and there, and on revisiting the garden I can see no hint that would ever lead me to do so. This puzzle relies on either trial and error (play the flute on every screen until something happens) or sheer luck (you just happened to try using the flute as soon as you picked it up). Regardless, I had what I needed, and I quickly moved back to the throne room and placed the ring into the panel. The throne lifted up revealing a passageway beneath. On entering it, I was confronted by two stone gargoyles guarding a doorway and another exit off to the right. I’ll come back to the doorway later as that leads to the finale. Taking the right pathway, I entered a cavern with a large statue surrounded by bubbling lava. A bridge extends to the statue in the centre but no further, yet I could see an inaccessible doorway on the other side. This reminded me of the prophecy I read in the library. “A bridge to form amidst burning death, a demon to guard, ‘Motari Riseth’. Speaking the words aloud didn’t do anything, so I went back to the library, picked up the book and brought it back to the bridge. Operating it on the statue caused the missing part of the bridge to rise so I could get to the doorway.

Motari Sinketh more like it

Through the doorway was yet another cave, but this one contained a large hole in the ground, a metallic cylinder hanging on a chain, and three levers. It was clearly apparent that I needed to pull the levers to make something happen with the cylinder, but doing so in the incorrect order caused a griffon to come out of the hole and attack me, killing me instantly. I had no idea what the correct order might be and couldn’t see any hints in any of the parchments. I set about writing down all the possible combinations (123, 132, 213, 231 etc.), but things turned nasty when I got through all possible combinations that involved pulling any particular lever only once. That meant that the solution would involve pulling at least one of the levers twice and at least one of the levers no times at all. Thankfully I hit upon the correct combination fairly quickly, and the cylinder opened to reveal the fifth and final item, an orb. I now know that one of Zenic’s hints was to make sure I read the writing in the Sphynx’s chamber. Looking at it now, I can see the lever order is drawn on the steps, but I sure as hell had never noticed it. It looks more like a bad attempt to produce a shadow effect, and no doubt is more obvious in non-CGA versions of the game.

Honestly...would you have noticed the markings on the steps if you had no reference?

I knew from many of the parchments that three of the items need to be combined, so using trial and error, I eventually operated the spike and the orb on the staff to make one super powered Staff of Ages. Ready to take on the Warlock Lord, I travelled back to the door guarded by gargoyles. Trying to pass the gargoyles seemed to anger them and they killed me, so I cast the “instantum illuminaris” spell to blind them before going through (the first time I cast the “ulterior humana” spell which made me go invisible to pass the gargoyles, but I needed that spell later to pass the troll on the bridge a second time after going back to the rickety bridge…cheeky bastards!). Past the gargoyles is a well room, which is surprisingly easy to get past. Pull the lever to open the well and then throw one of the coins collected on the lookout in (the one with a well printed on it). A wind starts blowing up through the well, allowing you to hop in and float down. There’s no coming back once you’re down there though, so you need to have everything you need before hopping in. The first couple of times I went down there, I didn’t have the completed staff, but the last time I was prepared.

The door on the left is a total red herring, but a reasonable one

Exiting the bottom of the well brought me to a river, with a large gong. I hit the gong with the accompanying mallet and a ghostly ferryman appeared, demanding a fare. The remaining coins I had from the bag on the lookout all had skulls on them, so I gave him one of those. He accepted it, and took me across the river to a vault on the other side. This is where things get a bit weird. There is a large door which acts as the mouth for a skull decoration, and three holes on the wall. Each of the holes have a symbol above them, with the first being a sword, the second a crown, and the third a gem. My immediate thought was that I needed to find items to represent each of the symbols, and put them in the appropriate holes, but a quick look at my inventory showed me that I had no such things available. I couldn’t possibly have missed three more items, so I instead went to the parchments for clues. “Five to find, three are one.” That would be the three items I used to make the Staff of Ages. “One gives access, the bladed sun.” Well, that must surely be the talisman, but what has that got to do with a sword, a crown, or a gem? I saved my game and placed the talisman in the first hole. It fit, but nothing seemed to happen. I continued reading the parchment: “The silver orb, to banish the below. The staff of ages, to vanquish the foe. Joining two, the golden thorn.” That must be the orb, the staff and the spike, all of which I combined into one item. “The last to invoke, the platinum horn.” So the horn invokes something…but what? With nothing else to try, I “operated” the horn. The skull door opened!

There's nothing more embarrassing than putting things in the wrong hole

Did I miss something? I have no idea why there are three holes if you only need the talisman, and I have no idea what the symbols represent. I also have no idea what blowing the horn invoked and how that caused the door to open. This can all probably be explained by one of the parchments, but I feel like I was just fortunate enough to try the right things. Entering the door took me into a cavern where I witnessed the Warlock Lord summoning the dreaded behemoth. Operating the staff of ages on the behemoth destroyed it, but not before it took the Warlock Lord out and the game was won! I then found myself in front of King Otto, receiving his rewards of title, vast riches, and the hand of his daughter. Wasn’t I the last in a line of kings already? Oh well, what do I care?! I have my High Lord of Westland certificate to go with my Ace Harding Private Investigator and Master of the House of Abraxas certificates! I may not have got through any of those games without some sort of help (I can’t actually remember whether I needed any hints for Déjà Vu), but I can be happy with the fact I gave them my all. The ridiculous thing is that now that I know how to finish Shadowgate, I could do it in about 15 minutes!

The ending is actually pretty cinematic. Just as well after such a long journey to get there.

Session Time: 4 hour 00 minutes

Total Time: 9 hours 30 minutes

Game 14: Shadowgate - Won! (Part One)

Journal Entry 4: “The deed is done and the Warlock Lord is dead! The odds appeared overwhelmingly against me, but I have prevailed, proving once and for all that my destiny is truly controlled by prophecy. I now know that the “five” the parchments described are in fact items of power. The first was a spike guarded by a werewolf in one of the castle turrets, the second a talisman guarded by a wyvern in another. The third item was an orb hidden in the depths of the castle and guarded by a griffin, the fourth a platinum horn guarded by a demon hound. Collecting these items was difficult, but the last of the five, the staff of ages, was the one that evaded me the longest. Guarded by a serpent in a cave, accessing it required crossing the rickety bridge I avoided at the beginning of my quest. Even once I figured out how to cross the bridge and subsequently knew of the serpent’s location, discovering the method of defeating him proved quite a challenge. I solved it eventually with a wand uncovered on the castle balcony and once I held all five items in my hands, I was finally able to read the parchments in my possession and make sense of them. “Five must thou find. Three for the staff, one to be the key, and one to be thy pathway.” The talisman and the horn were used to gain entrance to the Warlock’s cavern, and the remaining three were combined to give me the weapon I needed to defeat the Warlock Lord’s behemoth. As the monster went down, it took the Warlock Lord with it, completing my quest. Finally I can leave this cursed place.”

Bobbyloathesyou requested a screenshot of the fire drake. Here it is!

Shadowgate is finished! I should feel very proud about that achievement, but I’m afraid the whole thing is tarnished by the amount of hints I required to get to the end. All up I have very mixed feelings about the game and I’m sure that will be obvious over the rest of this post and the final rating post when it comes. I’m not going to run through exactly what occurred between the last post and this one, as I was forced to do a heck of a lot of going back and forward, restoring to earlier games several times, and even restarting at one point. Instead, I’ve decided to split this post into the five items that are required to finish the game, and my experiences while trying to recover them. It has turned out to be a very long post (around 3000 words!), so I’ve decided to split it into two. I’ll post part two tomorrow and the final rating post on Friday.

This is where I was stuck at the end of the last post.

The Spike

I actually hadn’t got my hands on any of the five items needed to complete the game when last I posted, and I’d only found one key out of three needed in the banquet hall to proceed. I’d just made my way to the top of the first turret, but couldn’t figure out how to get the spike (the first of the five items I came across) from the beautiful woman without her turning into a werewolf and tearing me to shreds. This turned out to be fairly simple and despite the fact he hadn’t reached this part of the game yet, Charles questioned whether I’d tried using the silver arrow. I hadn’t, but as soon as I read his suggestion I knew it would be the right one. My failure here was definitely my own fault and not the game's, but in my defense, I’d assumed that the arrow only had one purpose, which was directional rather than as a weapon. The inventory limitations just don’t allow the player to carry all the items they come across, so decisions have to be made as to which ones you feel might be useful later on. I was wrong when it comes to the arrow, and since I never noticed that it was made of silver, it never entered my mind when I was trying to defeat the werewolf. Anyway, “operating” the arrow on the woman killed her and the spike was mine. The first item was collected, although I had no idea of its importance at the time.

I hear this happens in Thailand quite a bit

The Horn

After getting the spike, I wandered around aimlessly for a while, unsuccessfully looking for something I could use it on. Eventually I gave up and started going through my parchments again, looking for a clue. One of the spells caught my attention, and not for the first time either. “Lands under the heavens; the key to the world. Terra Terrakk.” Surely I was supposed to cast this spell on the globe in the study, but I’d already tried previously with no luck. I went back to the study to have another go. I selected “Speak”, clicked on the globe and typed “Terra Terrakk”. Nothing happened! This is how all the spells in Uninvited were cast, and given that I’d cast the EPOR (rope) spell using the same technique earlier in Shadowgate, I never for a second thought that I needed to take a different approach. It crossed my mind that perhaps the spell wasn’t working because I didn’t have the parchment in my inventory (there was no need to hold onto them in Uninvited and since they take up valuable inventory space, it was preferable not to), so I went and got it from where I’d left it and came back. “Terra Terrak”…nothing! Out of sheer desperation I tried “operating” the parchment itself on the globe and it opened up, revealing a key and a bottle.

Oh stop it! My sides are hurting!

This is the first example of Shadowgate changing the rules from the blueprint that was set in previous ICOM games. There is no mention of this change in the manual and I didn’t come across anything in the game itself to inform the player that you need to "operate" the spell parchments to cast spells. What this means is that the rope puzzle is the only time in the whole game where you’re required to use the “speech” action, and now that I think of it, I never once had to use the “hit” or “consume” actions at all, which begs the question…why are they there?! Finding out this piece of information changed things a lot, and I quickly ran back to where I was storing all the items I couldn’t fit in my inventory and made room for the remaining two spell parchments. Before I even considered looking for a place to use them, I had a new key, which I quickly took to the banquet hall and unlocked the second door. Through the door was a chamber with a horn sitting on the ground. When I tried to add it to my inventory, a demon dog appeared out of nowhere, threatening to attack me. Something I haven’t mentioned yet is that while I was looking for a place to use the spike, I spent quite a bit of time in the laboratory. I knew the chain attached to the floor had to have a use, and eventually I simply “operated” it. This revealed a bottle of holy water, which is an obvious weapon to use against a demon dog! It vapourised, allowing me to collect the second item, the platinum horn.

Oh come on...can't I just pick up one of these items without some horrific beast trying to eat me!

The Talisman

This was by far the easiest of the five items to retrieve. A ladder from the cavern where the dog guarded the horn led up to the second turret, where a Wyvern aggressively guarded a talisman in the stand. I systematically “operated” the items I had in my inventory at the time, hoping that one of them would do the trick. Using the sword resulted in an angry wyvern wrapping its tail around my neck and strangling me, as did using the “instantum illuminaris” spell, the sceptre, a torch, and the fire poker. Eventually I got to the shooting star that I’d plucked from the galaxy map in the observatory. It fired across the screen the way it normally did, but this time it made contact with the wyvern and destroyed it. Trial and error wins the day, and the third piece of the puzzle was in my possession. So that’s three pieces collected with only one hint required. So far so good! Surely it would only be a matter of time now right? Well...things were about to get nasty!

I guess not!

TO BE CONTINUED...

Game 14: Shadowgate - When Monsters Attack

Journal Entry 3: “I have come so far and yet there are still many obstacles that stand between me and the Warlock Lord. I have entered the castle proper and investigated the rooms I can gain entrance to. I have collected more parchments, some of which seem to contain spells, while others describe a prophecy in the same cryptic manor as previous documents I have discovered. “The light grows faint, the path winds round. Where life is lost, wisdom is found. The seed of the dream, ‘fore the evil is free, where the sword is hung, he must place the key. A bridge to form amidst burning death, a demon to guard, ‘Motari Riseth’.”  I have read through these documents many times but still can make no sense of any of it. My original belief that “the five” things I required were gems has not turned out to be correct. I’ve now used all three gems, with the last one opening a secret door in the library, but their uses do not match those in the messages, nor have I found the two more I would need to have five. Most intriguingly, I have come across a Sphynx in a castle turret who continues to ask me riddles that I must solve before he will allow me to pass. Each riddle requires finding an object that matches his descriptions and bringing them to him. I have not had any trouble solving these riddles and yet passing him into the rooms beyond has not produced anything that aids my quest. I must continue to investigate as surely I am not far away from the Warlock Lord’s location. I must find the keys to the doors in the banquet hall!”

This is where we left off at the end of the last (real) post

Well it had to happen! My run of good luck and correct choices very abruptly came to an end. In case anyone is beginning to doubt my sincerity, I’ll say straight up that this post is a real one, unlike my previous one, which was a celebration of April Fool’s Day. I hope I had at least a few of you for a couple of paragraphs there and I know I had at least one reader all the way through (sorry JosephCurwen, you’re just the unfortunate one that happened to stumble across it first).  I may have to put a warning at the beginning of that post soon so that some poor unsuspecting Shadowgate player doesn’t come across it and wonder whether the game is worth persevering with. There is one aspect of that post however that isn’t entirely fabricated, and that’s that I have no real idea what to do next. It’s not for lack of trying either, as I’ve put over two hours into attempting to figure out what I’m supposed to do next without success. So...it’s time for me to swallow my pride and ask for help! Before I can do that, I need to let you know what I’ve achieved, and what obstacles remain in my path...

I wonder if there are trolls out there angry about the bridge toll cliche

At the end of my last (real) post, I’d just defeated the Fire Drake by throwing the crystal globe into the fire. I had no idea what was through the next door, and it turns out there was another bridge. When I attempted to cross this bridge, I was confronted by a troll demanding coins. At first I gave him some coins, but he demanded more, so I decided to try using the spear I collected in the dragon’s lair on him instead. It worked and he fell to his death (I assume), so I was able to cross the bridge without paying the toll. On the other side of that bridge was a courtyard containing a well and a fairly scary looking Cyclops. My immediate thought when I saw the Cyclops was to throw a rock at him, so I used the sling. He hit the deck hard and while the game suggests he’s merely unconscious, I haven’t seen him stir since. With the Cyclops out of the way, I focussed on the well. I found a gauntlet in the bucket, which I subsequently am now wearing, but as with all other items of clothing or armour that I’ve discovered so far, I have no idea what effect that has. I couldn’t see anything else to do in the courtyard, so I entered the castle. Am I right that up until now I haven’t actually been in Castle Shadowgate or am I now just re-entering it?

Yes, I've always considered Cyclops' to be overly materialistic, and to favour conventional social values unthinkingly.

Either way, once I entered the castle, things started to get more challenging. I waltzed into a hallway, full of confidence, and found myself with four doors to choose from. None of them were locked, so the game suddenly opened right up for me, giving me access to a number of new areas all at once. When confronted with choices like this one, I generally go from left to right, for no particular reason. The first door leads to a library, with books lining the wall, a map, and a desk. The very first thing I noticed was a hole in the wall, just like the others I’d found and had used gemstones in previously. I only had one gemstone left (the red one), so I placed it in the slot. Part of the bookcase slid away, revealing a hidden doorway. Before I passed through, I checked out the desk and found a couple of scrolls in the draw along with a pair of glasses and a key! I tried reading the book on the table, but it was in a language I couldn’t read, so decided to move on. Much later I thought to put the glasses on and tried reading the book again, which worked! That’s where I read the prophecy that I included in the journal entry above.

If adventure games have taught me anything, it's that rooms hidden behind bookcases are fair game.

Through the hidden door is the study, with a fireplace and a globe in the centre of the room. I took the goblet from the top of the fireplace, and even lit it with my torch, but I can’t see much else to do here. If I try to operate the globe I’m told it hasn’t been oiled for a long time. I can pick up the poker and the bellows too, but by this stage the inventory limitations are causing me a LOT of trouble. Check out the below image to see how full it is and if I try to add anything else, I’m told that I’ll have to remove something first. This is just not cool in an adventure game that revolves around finding and using items at the right time! I’ve already complained about it in other ICOM games and it’s true that Shadowgate has nowhere near as many items as Uninvited had (most of which you never needed), but it’s extra annoying in Shadowgate because torch management plays such a major role in the game. Basically the better you manage your torches, the bigger your chance of survival, but the more torches you have remaining, the less items you can fit in your inventory. Just this morning I ran through the whole game as quickly as I could (up to where I’m stuck) so that I had enough torches remaining to focus on the puzzles rather than torches all the time. I’ve now got about six torches in my inventory, but now I can’t bloody pick anything else up!

A lot of my recent problem solving has been around managing my inventory rather than the puzzles themselves

I’ve had my rant, so let’s move on. The second door off the hallway leads to a laboratory containing a kettle, numerous bottles containing various forms of liquid and a cage containing a mutated dog (opening the cage does not end well). I can pick up all the bottles but haven’t found a use for any of them yet. I can also pick up a horseshoe from the wall, and exit the room through a stairway leading down. Following the stairway takes me to a garden with a fountain in it. Rather bizarrely there is a flute sitting at the top of the fountain, which I’ve added to my inventory, but can’t find anything else to do here either. I’ve noted that the fountain contains an acidic liquid, but what it could be for evades me. I’m pretty sure the laboratory plays a role in the solution I require, but I just can’t put my finger on what it might be. One of the jars is hot, one is silver, one is oily and one feels as light as air. My first thought was that the oily jar might assist with the globe in the study, but it didn't. Consuming them in most cases results in immediate death, but the oily and light jars simply leave a taste in your mouth with no noticeable effects. Another thing I should mention is there’s a cat chasing a rat around in the laboratory and the study, but once again, I can’t think of any way that I might use this to my advantage or do anything about it.

Shadowgate Death Number 59: Death by Mutated Dog

Onto door number three and this is where things get very interesting indeed. There’s a banquet hall with three locked doors and a shield and mirror on the wall. I can pick up the shield and the mirror, and the iron key I retrieved from the library opens the door on the right. I’m yet to figure out what either of the items are for however, nor have I been able to find any other keys to open the remaining locked doors. Through the unlocked door is a sphinx that demands I answer riddles before I can go up the stairs behind him. I’ve so far received five different riddles and have been able to answer all of them easily, as they involve giving him an item that matches his riddle. I’ll give you two examples: “I at fires attend, am a kitchen friend; when my nose I blow, how the embers glow! When the wind compels, how my body swells.”  The answer of course was to give him the bellows from the study. “Eyeless tho’ that I may be, through me once a man did see; my form once thoughts did hold, now I’m empty, white and cold.” The answer for this one is to give him the skull found in the library. The most useful thing to come out of these riddles, and the reason why I’ve gone back to him repeatedly trying to get new riddles, is that I think I could safely assume that the items that he’s demanding are not needed elsewhere in the game. That’s pretty useful knowledge to have, and if I’m right, I know that I don’t need the broom, the skull, the horseshoe, the bellows or the map anywhere else.

Even creatures with the body of a lion and the head of a man suffer from bloating

So what’s up the stairs? Well firstly there’s an observatory, complete with a telescope pointing at the night sky. There’s also a parchment on the table that reads “Observation: half moon-third season. The constellation of the throne appears once every five summers and is believed to be a portal into another land.” It’s yet another document containing a mystery with no answers! Rather oddly, I’m able to pick up a carving of a shooting star from the galaxy map on the wall, and literally fire it around. I’ve tried using it on numerous things, but it always returns to me without striking a target. Speaking of odd, heading up the ladder from the observatory leads into the turret, which is one of the stranger scenes in the game it has to be said. There’s a woman lying on the floor, chained to the wall next to a spike made of precious metals. Any attempt to do anything with the spike or the woman result in her turning into a werewolf and killing me. The fact that she’s chained to the wall with silver doesn’t seem to make any difference, and all of my grand ideas revolving around using silver on her (the silver shooting star, the silver jar etc.) have only resulted in my own death. Apparently she’s guarding the spike, but I don’t have any idea what I would even do with the spike if I got it.

None taken, but did you have to draw attention to it in front of the lady!?

So that’s three doors out of four where I come to a dead end. The answer must be through the fourth right? Not so! In fact, the fourth door is the one that’s baffling me the most. It leads to the armoury, where there are four goblins sitting at a table, and various weapons spread out on the wall. Anything I do in here seems to have exactly the same outcome, which is death by goblin. I can’t give anything to them, say anything to them, touch any of the weapons, or even put anything in the room without them jumping up and killing me. So that’s where I’m at! No idea what to do next and my only leads are so cryptic I can’t make any sense of them. I’m going to have to call on you my fine readers to help me out of this predicament. Remember, any hints or spoilers should be done in ROT13. For those of you that left hints on the previous posts in ROT13, I haven’t even read them yet as I managed to get through unassisted. I’ll be attributing points once I’ve completed the game and can therefore read through the hints you all gave. I’m going back in now to see if I can figure it out on my own, but I’m not holding my breath.

Shadowgate Death Number 84: Death by Goblins

Session Time: 2 hour 30 minutes

Total Time: 5 hours 30 minutes

Game 14: Shadowgate - Demon of the Fall

Journal Entry 2: “As harrowing as this place is, I am making good progress and overcoming many obstacles. I have uncovered new sections to the castle, defeated strange creatures, and discovered parchments that shed some light on the difficult task ahead of me. The main parchment states “Five to find, three are one. One gives access, the bladed sun. The silver orb, to banish below. The staff of ages to vanquish the foe. Joining two, the golden thorn. The last to invoke, the platinum horn.” It is my belief that the five items it speaks of are gems of different colours, three of which I found behind the waterfall near the lake. I have now used two of them; one in the cave to lower the wall and receive the parchment, and the second in the pedestal room to retrieve a crystal sphere. The sphere has been extremely valuable to me, freezing the lake so I could collect the key from the skeleton and then allowing me to defeat a fire drake that stood guard behind the mirror door (which the key opened). My confidence has risen with these victories and I long to continue with this quest I once considered futile.”

Hmmm...I can take the sturdy looking bridge or the rickety one surrounded by skulls. Oh I just don't know!

I’m very pleased to say that my ninety minute session last night was a very productive one! I’ll admit straight away that I did not achieve all my success without playing the reader assistance card, but that wasn’t entirely my fault. Many of you left me hints, ranging from pure guesses (what would this blog be without Canageek’s enthusiasm) to straight out spoilers. I have not yet deciphered all of the hints as I don’t want to ruin anything for myself, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) Bobbyloathesyou left me a few unsubtle intimations regarding the waterfall. While I’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone to use ROT13 when providing hints or spoilers, I’m not going to be too harsh on the offender in this instance because in all likelihood, I never would have found the bag of gems behind the waterfall if it were not for his varied and humorous attempts to inform me of the beauty and tranquillity that one can experience when spending afternoons basking in the vicinity of waterfalls. I will however deny the ten points that he otherwise might have earned as a lesson. ;) But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s how my session played out…

As Zenic says, "ROT13 is your friend"

Determined to get as far as I could without assistance, yet knowing that the waterfall played a role in the game’s solution, I once again loaded Shadowgate and entered the fray. My restore returned me to the chamber with the unclimbable wall, so I decided to spend a bit of time trying to figure out how to scale it. The one thing that caught my attention about the room was that the torches on the wall can’t be removed, whereas they can be (and need to be) in every other location so far. That made them suspicious, so I tried lighting them…nothing happened. I tried “operating” them and what do you know, the left one is a lever that opens up a hidden door. In hindsight, it’s obvious that the purpose of the arrow positioned in the centre of the wall is not to be collected as a weapon, but instead acts as a directional marker, informing the player that they really should focus their attention on the left hand torch. It seems obvious when you think about it, but how many times have you paid attention to what direction a newly discovered arrow (and by arrow I mean the type you project from a bow) is facing in a fantasy based computer game? It didn’t help me that the first thing I did on entering the chamber is add the arrow to my inventory, subsequently removing the game’s ingenious hint from the room.

OK, so it looks really obvious now! Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I eagerly saved and went through the door, excited that I’d opened up a new part of the game while still having the waterfall hint up my sleeve. The bridge room beyond has two separate bridges that you can cross, but experimentation soon told me that only one of them can be crossed without falling to your death. The alcove I entered after crossing that bridge contained a rather eerie looking shadow wraith, apparently “searching for a soul to take its place”. Setting things on fire had been a fairly successful tactic so far in Shadowgate, so I immediately tried it with the wraith. He disappeared in a puff of smoke, but not without letting loose terrible laughter that suggested there might be consequences to my actions. I was able to continue a couple of screens, but the wraith kept reappearing and my strength deteriorated until eventually his curse overcame me and I died. Reloading, I looked at my very limited inventory to see what else I might be able to use on the wraith. One of my torches was described as being unusual and unlike the others, and I knew from previous uses that when lit it produced a glowing green flame. I lit that torch and “operated” it on the wraith, with the result being a lengthy scream rather than laughter and the wraith was no more. Another success and Shadowgate was beginning to be much less threatening than my Uninvited fallout had led me to expect.

I don't suppose you're scared of spiders are you? No? Um...do you like fruit?

I picked up some sort of cape from behind the wraith, which I’m now wearing (in the game that is), but I’m not yet sure what its purpose is. The next room beyond the alcove was another chamber with some interesting features. Most noticeably, there was a sign on the wall with the letters EPOR on it, along with a coiled up rope on the ground. I don’t think it takes a genius to realise the word EPOR is ROPE backwards, but any attempts to pick up or operate the rope fail as it was being held in place by some sort of magic. Deciding to try my luck, I clicked on the rope then clicked on “speak” and typed EPOR. The rope uncoiled and tied itself to an opening through the ceiling. Once again Shadowgate earned a little more of my trust and rewarded me for applying logic (well, fantasy logic anyway)! Climbing the rope took me to the mirror room, which was a bit disorientating since there are no stairs or any sort of incline between the chamber and the mirror room, but it’s nice to be able to jump between the two locations quickly. Also in the chamber were three items, being a bottle of vile smelling liquid that I've not yet used, the parchment that contains the message I wrote in the journal entry, and a bottle of Goo-Gone. Immediately thinking of the green slime that came out of the second tomb, I saved my game and skipped over there to see what would happen if I used it. It did make the goo disappear, but I couldn’t see that doing so gave me access to anything I didn’t already have.

It's not often solutions to puzzles are literally written on the wall

The other thing of note in the chamber with the rope was a fairly obvious outline of a door at the end of the room. I opened it and pushed through into a cave containing a wall with cracks all over it and some sort of stone inscription with a hole in it on the floor. I could figure out anything I was supposed to do there, so I assumed I mustn’t yet have whatever it is that needs to go in the hole. Still holding the waterfall hint up my sleeve, I decided to push my luck and head back to the dragon’s lair to see if I could now achieve something there. From my last post you might remember that anything I tried to do in this room resulted in dragon’s breath burning me to a cinder. Unfortunately, nothing new that I had in my inventory appeared to be of any help, but before I left I thought I’d try a few more random things. Interestingly, unlike every other item in the room, “operating” the shield resulted in “you raise the shield instinctively as a warrior should”, yet adding anything from the room into my inventory afterwards still resulted in a fiery death. I dragged the shield into my inventory and when the dragon sprayed me with fire the game stated that “the shield protects you from a burst of flame as the dragon tries to roast you”. I was then able to pick up the spear, the helmet and the war hammer without being toasted. Yet another small victory and I was on a roll!

But there's a treasure chest...surely I can just get the treasaaaagggghhhhh.....it burns!!!!!!

At this point, given how well things were already going, I decided it was time to check in my “ask the audience” card and go and see this waterfall. I tried clicking on the waterfall and selecting “go”, but that just made me stand in the water with no positive outcome. I tried "operating" the waterfall but that didn’t do anything at all. Any attempts to access the area behind the waterfall were blocked due to a landslide and the game informed me that the rocks were too heavy to lift. Honestly, if Bobbyloathesme hadn’t given me the hint that I needed to do something with the waterfall, I would have left that screen and not thought about it again, certain that there was nothing more to do. Instead, given how adamant he was that I simply must see this splendid waterfall, I started double clicking on different spots on the screen to see if anything would happen. Suddenly I appeared in a little alcove, wondering how I got there. It turns out there’s one little shadowy spot just next to the waterfall that you have to double click on to gain access to the alcove, and since this is where you get your hands on the three gems that are of major importance in the game, I think that’s a bit unforgiving. Perhaps in other versions of the game (with more colours and better resolutions) the solution may have been more obvious, but I’m putting this down as the first example of a puzzle in Shadowgate that requires a bit too much luck to resolve.

The fact that there's an exit displayed on the minimap, and yet double clicking on it tells you the path is blocked, makes this particularly difficult

Thanking my lucky stars that the one hint I needed was the one I’d accidentally received, I set about figuring out what these gems were for. There were two places that quickly came to mind where I might be able to use them. The pedestal room, where there’s a hole in the wall, and the cave beyond the bridge room, where there’s a similar hole in the floor. I went to the cave first and the blue gem fit the hole perfectly, lowering the crack-filled wall and revealing an old wizard. “Heed my words, warrior!” he said. “The Warlock Lord can only be defeated by thy courage and the Staff of Ages. Remember, five must thou find. Three for the staff, on to be the key, and one to be thy pathway. Have the wits about thee, warrior! Fare thee well.” With that, the wall closes again and I’m left with a parchment on the ground. The parchment rather cryptically says “As the shadow of the wind, thou shalt be! Ulterior Humana.” I have no idea yet what that means, but perhaps I’ll know when I need to. With nothing else to do, I quickly moved onto the pedestal room and successfully slotted the white gem into the hole there. I was rewarded with a crystal sphere that would turn out to be extremely useful! The sphere was described as being “as cold as ice”, which gave me an idea...

A magical image of an old wizard? I guess projectors must have seemed pretty magical back in the eighties.

That damn skeleton with the key in the lake had been annoying me since I first came across it, so every time I picked up a new item, my first thought was whether it could be applied to that puzzle. In this case I wondered if the freezing sphere might help, so I “operated” it on the lake. The water froze up, allowing me to cross over and get the key! While I was trying to think about what I might do with that key, I wondered what would happen if I then melted the ice with my torch. The answer is that I was able to recollect the crystal sphere, so I happily placed it back in my inventory. Lucky I did too, because I was about to find another use for it! The only mystery I could think of that I still hadn’t solved was the mirror room, so that was my next destination. Looking through my inventory, I now had a war hammer that seemed the perfect thing to use to smash one of the mirrors with. I chose the middle one due to the surrounding gems and to my astonishment it actually smashed, revealing a locked door. That’s right, a locked door that just happened to be unlocked by the key I’d just found!

Did I need to smash the other mirror? Probably not. But damn it felt good!

Still not being able to believe how much progress I was making, and wondering what the hell I was about to come up against, I stepped through the door to be confronted by a bridge surrounded by fire and “a legendary firedrake” blocking my path. My attempts at burning and hitting it achieved nothing but death, and then I remembered the freezing sphere. Operating it on the firedrake didn’t work, so I tried it on the fire surrounding the bridge. Apparently he was getting all his power from the fire, so as soon as the sphere touched the flames, he vanished! I can very happily say that this is where I left the game session. Typically I finish game sessions at a point where I’m not entirely sure what to do next, hoping that a good night’s sleep will make the solution come to me (it works sometimes too!), but in this case, I don’t even know what is beyond the next door! I’m genuinely eager to get back to the game, which is not something I expected to say a few days ago. I’m not sure whether my excitement has more to do with my surprising success, or whether Shadowgate is actually a great game just yet, but one thing’s for sure...it’s far better and much more rewarding than Uninvited, which is just as well.

No ICOM gaming session would be complete without being ripped to pieces

Session Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Total Time: 3 hours 00 minutes