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 9: Uninvited - Final Rating

It’s time to pay the consequences Uninvited, for all the pain and torment that you caused me over the last week. You thought you’d get away with it didn’t you! Perhaps you assumed that I’d never defeat Dracan, rescue my brother and escape the mansion! Well I did, and now you’re going to get PISSED the way you deserve...

Puzzles and Solvability
I have to say that the hardest thing about Uninvited is not necessarily that the puzzles don’t make much sense. It’s that there are hundreds of items spread out all over the house that you can pick up and put in your inventory. Every time you come across an obstacle, you have this horrible feeling that the answer would be obvious if only you’d picked up the correct item. The inventory limitation only adds to this complexity, meaning you spend a lot of time going back and forth around the house looking for an item that might assist you with your current dilemma. Of course you soon realise that using this sort of logic just isn’t going to work, especially after you’ve scared a spirit away with a spider, convinced an angry demon to leave you alone by offering him fruit, and caused a bouncing smiley face to give you a diamond by releasing a bird in its presence, which it then flies after. Oh, and then there’s the unnecessary time limit, and the fact that there are rooms that play absolutely no part in the resolution (that I can see anyway) such as the bathroom of the master bedroom, the cell up the stairs, and the observatory in magisterium, all of which contain items that do nothing. This game nearly killed me!
Rating: 1

One of the rooms that seems to play no role in the story whatsoever. Am I wrong?

Interface and Inventory

The interface is the same as it was in Déjà Vu, meaning the only time you ever have to use the text parser is to enter a safe combination. Otherwise, the entire game is controlled by the mouse, which should make things easier, but doesn’t due to everything listed above. The game has a fair amount of pixel hunting, which can be difficult due to the CGA graphics and the amount of small items spread throughout nearly every room, but this task is made more challenging as the mouse cursor doesn’t seem to do what you want it do. I don’t know whether it’s the port or just playing it through DOSBox, but the actual tip of the cursor doesn’t have any effect, meaning you have to click with a bit of the cursor more towards the middle. This is frustrating, but it’s deadly during the numerous times in the game when you have one action to achieve something or you are killed. Clicking those hot and cold knobs on the bathtub was so difficult that I first thought it was impossible. I don’t really need to tell you what I think of the inventory system. I hated it in Déjà Vu, but Uninvited has twenty times as many items to collect.

Rating: 2

Oh joy! Another fifty objects that I may or may not need to use somewhere in this godforsaken house.

Story and Setting

The story of Uninvited is certainly a bit cliché these days, but it was probably the only thing that kept me interested. Everyone’s heard stories like this, where someone’s car breaks down and they’re forced to enter some creepy house from which they may never escape. The goings on in the house are suitably creepy, including the mysterious woman, the vicious hounds guarding the chapel, the underground caves, and of course your brother’s possession. Unfortunately a lot of this effective work is undone through silliness such as the grinning bouncy head, the annoying demon running around waving a key at you, and some rather odd attempts at humour. Plenty of adventure games use humour to keep things enjoyable, even when you’re stuck in the same section for two hours, but it often clashes with the otherwise oppressive tone in Uninvited. Still, the story is there, and I really did want to find my brother.

Rating: 4

The puzzles might not feel satisfying, but at least the story has closure.

Sound and Graphics

Yes, the graphics were damaged immeasurably by the port to four colour CGA, but they’re not by any means terrible. There’s certainly a lot more detail on the screen than there was in Déjà Vu, and the tone of the game is not lost despite the pinks and blues that make up the pentagrams, grimoires and phantom spirits. That being said, the lack of colours makes discovering and identifying objects much more difficult than I imagine it would be in the windows 3.1 remake. I have nothing good to say about the sound! The game regularly tries to scare you through the use of thunder and screams, and I have to say that the resulting sounds are indeed scary. So scary that your ears may never recover from the ear piercing, blackboard scraping quality of it all! While I would never, ever, actually recommend Uninvited to anyone other they my worst enemy, I recommend you all watch this video on YouTube all the way through. Make sure you turn it up real loud, not only so you can experience the truly awful sound effects, but so you can also enjoy the most marvellous closing music ever (watch the player struggle to click the bath knobs too)!

Rating: 2

Nothing could make that kitchen floor look good.

Environment and Atmosphere

Credit where credit is due! The haunted house and the atmosphere created within it are the best things about the game. It’s testament to the design that it feels quite creepy, despite the poor quality graphics and sound. I can only imagine that the developers are rather fond of haunted house and possession horror movies, as many of the occurrences and scenery that appear in them are replicated in Uninvited. The use of satanic imagery, as well as various cosmological pieces of equipment that play no real role in the story otherwise, give the game a real sense of dark mystery that enhances the playing experience. Even those horrible sounding thunder claps, squeaking doors and screams have the desired effect, even if it is partly due to how horrible the quality is. If I’m going to be generous in any of the categories, this is the one.
Rating: 5

One wrong move and you're dead again. The game at least manages to make you feel under threat.

Dialogue and Acting

Uninvited continues with the rather graphic approach found in Déjà Vu, but it seems much more appropriate this time around, given the situation the player finds themself in. Not satisfied with “you are dead”, the game gores it up with lines such as “You are frozen in horror as she begins ripping your body into a bloody mess” and “the three of you roll around, biting, kicking and scratching until the dogs manage to sever your jugular”.  Other than this, there isn’t much to say for this category. There are no conversations to be had, so it’s all description, which is done adequately if not impressively.

Rating: 4

The writing clunks under its weight. The clunky writing echoes throughout the whole game.

That leaves Uninvited with a PISSED rating of 30, positioning it at the very bottom of the nine games I’ve played so far. It totally deserves that position too, so I don’t feel sorry for it. It’s unfortunate that the more illogical and frustrating an adventure game is, the longer the player is required to spend completing it. Here’s hoping that Shadowgate, when I get to it, doesn’t take ten hours of pain and torment to get through.



Game 9: Uninvited - Won!

Journal Entry 3: “The nightmare is over! I’ve rescued my brother and escaped the haunted mansion, destroying the evil Dracan in the process. There are still so many things that don’t make sense to me about the last few days, but I figured out enough to finally get the key off the demon that has mocked me since my arrival here, to gain access to the cave system where I could end the life of Dracan, and to locate the hidden room where my brother was held captive. My ordeal didn’t end there though, as my brother had been possessed by some sort of malignant spirit, which I subsequently forced out of his body. I never thought I’d see daylight again, let alone be able to enjoy it with my sibling! I guess we’ll hitch a ride home now, but I’ll be taking this cross and amulet with me...just in case!”

If you’d asked me a few days ago whether I thought I’d ever finish Uninvited, I would have said “highly unlikely”. I was getting stuck at just about every point in the game, unaware of what I was supposed to be doing or how to achieve it. If it wasn’t for this blog, I almost certainly would have given up, or at least gone to a walkthrough numerous times just to see what happens. I feel a real sense of achievement for actually getting through it, and while I did get a few hints from readers, the majority of the success came down to sheer perseverance, and a lot of trial and error. At the end of my last post, I was trying without luck to enter the correct combination for the safe in the Magisterium laboratory, and as most of you would know, I was annoyingly close to figuring it out. My lack of experience with safes in general can probably be blamed for me typing 794780 and never trying 79-47-80, but it’s testament to how exacting the game is that I couldn’t use either. Thankfully, apart from one section I’ll talk about later, the rest of the game was solved fairly quickly.

I successfully solved the riddle, but still didn't know the answer

Once I opened the safe and found a jar that was sealed shut, it only took me a few minutes of trying items on it to realise the solution was hitting it with the axe. Inside was a cookie, and remembering the hints the game had been giving me about the mocking demon being hungry (plus Amy K.’s hint about needing something from the Magisterium to get the key), I immediately placed the cookie on the ground to see whether he would take the bait. He did, and consequently ran away for good, leaving the key behind. I knew exactly where the key would be needed, and headed through the trapdoor in the laboratory into the underground caves. It’s here that things get strange (as if they weren’t already)! I ran into a robed man (which I can only assume is “The Master”) in an icy cavern who said “You’ve come. I’ve been waiting for you...for you!” and then he disappeared. With absolutely no hints as to how to progress, I began using all of my items on the ice to see if anything would happen. When I tried Dracan’s star, I got a message telling me “You place the brass pentagon in a nook in the ice” and a fiery creature melted it away. As you can see below, there is nothing on the wall to suggest you should use the star, so this was blind luck.

My character can see the nook. Is it too much to ask that the player can see it too?

The robed man reappeared briefly to tell me to hurry up and get rid of Dracan, so I moved into the next cave section. To my surprise I found Dracan lying frozen, but rapidly thawing. You basically get the chance to try one or two actions before he thaws out completely and kills you, so I tried using a few items on him without success (ie. I died a few times) before having a good look at the cavern itself. As it turned out, the solution was really very simple, as there’s a bottomless pit right next to where he’s lying. I simply moved his body over it and dropped it, then listened to his scream as he fell to his death.  It’s here that you need the demon’s key, as there’s no way out of the caves without it. On exiting the caves into the study, I was alerted of screams coming from upstairs that sounded like my brother. Feeling I was on the cusp of completing the game, I rushed up there to see if I could find him. The screams got louder, and when I entered the bathroom off Dracan’s bedroom, the door slammed behind me and wouldn’t open. It’s in this bathroom that I would spend the next half an hour, trying to figure out what it was I was supposed to be doing in there!

There's also a frozen evil sorcerer, but there soon won't be

I figured out pretty quickly that the solution had something to do with the round light fitting, as its description stated that it seemed to have been designed to be gripped, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get to it. Every time I tried I was informed that I couldn’t reach it, so I began thinking of ways that I might be able to reach higher. My first thought was that I could flood the room, but turning on the sink tap didn’t achieve anything and there seemed to be no way to turn the bath tap on. Clicking on the hot and cold knobs was hard enough, given how tiny they were and the lack of cursor accuracy, but then selecting operate after I highlighted one didn’t do anything. I began to wonder whether there was an item I was supposed to have on me prior to entering the bathroom, such as a chair, but had no way to exit the room (apart from restoring). I certainly wouldn’t put it past the game to create a dead end, given that the whole thing is completely unfinishable if you don’t open the mailbox before entering the house. Anyway, I couldn’t think of anything anywhere else in the house that might allow me to reach the light, so started looking at the bathtub again.

I haven't spent that long in a bathroom since the day after my bucks night. There were screams that day too, believe me!

Given the success I’ve had in the game by just trying random things, I clicked one of the knobs and instead of pressing operate, pressed open instead. There may be some types of baths out there that require you to “open” the hot and cold knobs rather than turning them, but I certainly haven’t seen any. Regardless, I was stoked to find the water running and the bathroom flooding as I’d hoped it would. I drowned about ten seconds later! The water rises in level each time you try an action and you’ve got about four actions before the room is full and you die. Clicking on the light on any of the first three water levels results in the same old “you cannot reach the light” messages, but on the second last one it opens, allowing you to climb through the hole just before the room is full. I figured this out after around my 972nd death since starting the game, and eventually found myself in a secret room, with the brother I’ve been looking for sitting in front of me. The description suggested that he was possessed by some sort of demon, so it seemed fairly obvious that it was time to use the cross I took from the chapel. I used it once to cast the demon out and again to send him running.

The only time I was ever certain of what action was the correct one, the game suggests I was guessing.

There you have it! A blow by blow description of the closing moments of one of the more challenging adventure games you’re likely to find. When I finished Déjà Vu, the first ICOM MacVenture game, I felt great satisfaction when I received my Ace Harding School of Investigation certificate, which I earned over a few challenging days. But the feeling I had then didn’t come close to how I felt when I got my Master of the House of Abraxas certificate! I’ve endured over ten hours of bewilderment, trial and error, and illogicality to get that baby and I feel like getting a shirt that says “I Saved My Brother From Abraxas”. There’s very little doubt that the PISSED rating system is going to be harsh on Uninvited, but I really do think that if the puzzles had made more sense (and been a little less obtuse), the game would have actually been pretty good. The atmosphere, and to some extents the story, are effective, and it’s no surprise that more successful adventure games down the track would use the haunted house as their basis (from Maniac Mansion to The 11th Hour). For now, I’m pretty happy to take a step away from the horror and into the sleazy world of Leisure Suit Larry.

Another one for the pool room



Game 9: Uninvited - Logic's Fleeting Visit

Journal Entry 3: “Any hopes I might have had for finding my brother alive are deteriorating quickly. While I have had numerous successes since I last wrote, I still have no idea where he is, or how close I am to discovering his whereabouts. This house holds many secrets, and I’ve come across things I never could have dreamed of. Bizarre creatures, ghostly apparitions, zombies! I thought all these things were the stuff of fantasy and nightmares! Not only do I know they’re real, I’m now finding myself casting spells, as though that’s a completely normal thing to be doing. I’ve gained access to the chapel and the magisterium, and I’m convinced the latter is where a lot of the answers to this mystery lie. Yet despite solving so much, I am still confronted with seemingly unpassable obstacles. A safe that requires a combination, a huge spider that seems invulnerable to my attacks and that bloody creature with the key is still running rings around me! I haven’t given up. I must not give up!”

You may have already guessed, due to my absence for the last couple of days, that Uninvited is remaining a time consuming challenge. At the end of my last post I suggested that the game had at least one hour to show me it was worth persevering with. As it turns out, that next hour was by far my most productive I’ve had with the game, and all of a sudden I was actually able to apply some logic to problems to overcome them. At least I was, once I managed to get into the chapel which was being guarded by vicious dogs. To pass them I had to use my first spell, which was a heck of a lot easier than I’d anticipated. There I was trying to use the amulet and the stars with all sorts of items, in the hope that I’d unlock some ability to play around with magic, and all I had to do was say a few words at the right time. Simply saying Instantum Illuminaris Abraxas (which was written on one of the scrolls I’d collected and is translated as “instant light magic”) caused a bolt of lightning that scared the dogs away, giving me access to the chapel and beyond. Once I got in there, things progressed fairly rapidly.

All bow down and worship our Lord Spiderman!

As soon as I’d broken my spell casting virginity, I followed up with another about a minute later. The other spell I had written down was Specan Heafod Abraxas, which when translated using the book I found in the library means “talking head magic”, so when I came across a marble head in the chapel, I thought I’d give it a shot. The head responded with “please open thy door for this poor family man, but do not let him travel in darkness”, and a door leading out the left side of the chapel opened. Curiosity got the better of me and I went through it to see where it led, and was confronted and killed by a ghost immediately. I restored and this time paid more attention to the words the head had spoke. Noticing the comment about not travelling in darkness, I lit the candles I found in the room and then carried them with me. When I ventured back through the newly opened doorway, the ghost was apparently offended by the flames and flew away. The solutions to these problems don’t exactly scream logic from a story point of view, but at least they make sense from a problem-solving perspective.

So this apparition isn't cliche. It just happens to be "in the shape of a classic ghost"?

My all-conquering gaming session continued when I entered a labyrinthine garden maze. Being an experienced RPG player, I’m pretty used to mapping my way through mazes, so this one didn’t offer much challenge on that front. The only difficulty was that I kept running into zombies that would kill me if I tried to pass them. Remembering the note I received with the amulet at the very beginning of the game (thanks Zenic) that hinted that the undead are frightened by symbols, I tried using the amulet on the zombies with great success. When I came across tombstones in the maze, I thought to try placing the bouquet of flowers I’d picked up in the kitchen on them, which resulted in a wall opening up for me. All of a sudden I was starting to make some real progress In Uninvited and was genuinely enjoying things. I began to wonder whether perhaps I’d been too harsh in my earlier judgements of the puzzles, and that maybe I simply needed to get used to style of thinking that the game requires. Alas, my great run of success was about to come to a grinding halt, as logic concluded its brief visit to Uninvited and went back on permanent vacation.

I'm not sure that George Romero would be all that impressed to be honest.

Imagine if you will, that you’ve made your way through a lengthy maze and worked out how to get into a secret chamber in the centre. Once you’re in there, you see three cages at one end of a corridor with a keyhole separating them, and an oversized bouncing, grinning head shaped creature at the other. You know from a note that a particular item (a diamond) you need is hidden in the centre of the maze, and you can actually see that item resting beneath the gigantic, ecstasy taking cranium. You decide to talk to the peculiar creature and are informed that it’s trying to tell you something, but you can’t figure out what it is. You try using a few random items on it and casting a few random spells, but nothing happens. You then turn your attention to the cages, wondering if the skeleton key you found hidden inside a chair might open the lock. It does, and all three cages open, releasing a snake, a cat and a bird. You then try picking up each of the animals, but every attempt ends in the three of them devouring you due to their immense hunger.

Surely drugs were involved in the creation of this NPC

OK, so they’re hungry! I must have to give them some food, but you don’t have any on you. You reload an earlier game and walk around the house looking for something you might be able to feed them. You pick up some sugar, some salt, some rice, and whatever else you can find, and make your way back through the maze to the cages. You release the animals and try to feed them. Death. Death. Death! Hmmm...maybe you need to release the animals, then go back to the bouncing head, and then...what...push him? Totally flummoxed, you decide to follow an entirely different lead, which was given to you by a very helpful poster named Amy K. Her statement that “you need to do something in the greenhouse first” intrigues you, because you spent a bit of time in there and couldn’t find anything that you could do. This time however, you have more success, and after pouring some water on a very well camouflaged pot filled with soil, some fruit instantaneously grows before your eyes. Aha! Another food item to try feeding the animals! Surely cats, snakes and birds don’t eat fruit though?! No, they don’t, but they sure do like ripping your face off!

Well that's one way to show your gratitude

What to do next? Maybe you have to capture the animals in the cage you saw in the recreation room! That doesn’t make much sense however, as it seems a bit counterintuitive to put animals you just released from a cage into another cage, but what else do you have to lose? Well, your face I guess, but the restore button is always close at hand. You bring the cage all the way through the labyrinth, release the animals, and try to use the cage on them. Hey hey! You’ve captured the cat, and now the bird has taken the snake and flown away. OK, so you have a cat in a cage...what now? Using the cage on the head doesn’t achieve anything. You drop the cage next to the head and open it. “The cat ran away when you had your back turned.” Great! You try catching and releasing the snake with the same result. Meanwhile the grinning head jumps around eagerly, busting at the seams to tell you something of ultimate importance. Finally, in a last desperate attempt, you catch the bird and release it next to the head. The bird flies away...and the head flies after it, leaving the diamond for you to pick up. “The strange creature was utterly fascinated by the bird. It gave chase to eat it.” What?!

(speechless)

This is why I think Uninvited is a crappy game! It doesn’t make any sense at all and feeds you information that diverts you away from the solution instead of towards it. What was the bouncy head-creature so desperate to tell me? “Oh please mister, can you please, please, please find me a bird! I frickin’ LOVE birds sooooo much! Get me a bird and I’ll do anything! You can have this massive diamond that I have here in the middle of this maze! JUST GET ME A BIRD!” Apart from the few puzzles I solved just prior to the maze, the majority of my successes have been met with headshaking and disbelief of how difficult and illogical my path to victory was. To make matters worse, after gaining access to the Magisterium by putting the diamond into the diamond-shaped hole on the door (at least that makes sense!), you are immediately confronted by another “strange, hideous, creature”. This creature is described as being very angry, and it won’t let you past to get through the door behind him. I thought I’d try every item I happened to have in my inventory at the time on the creature just to see if any of them illogically worked and what do you know, the angry creature just happens to LOVE plants with fruit on it! Who designed Uninvited? An H.P. Lovecraft inspired Dr. Seuss?

From the way you're staring at me, I can tell you're a lover of fruit. Am I right??!!

Anyway, I’ve had my whinge and I feel better for it. :) I’ve now played Uninvited for 8 hours and reckon I have to be pretty close to the end, so I might as well complete the job. I’ve spent the last half an hour trying to find a clue that might help me figure out the combination for the safe in the Magisterium. I thought I’d brilliantly solved it when I looked at my notes and saw the catalogue numbers that match the metals Gold (#79), Silver (#47) and Mercury (#80). A parchment told me “Gold, silver and mercury. Together they form a key.” I was so sure that 794780 was going to be the combination, but I tried it unsuccessfully. I’m turning to the audience on this one as I’m so very keen to finish this game and move onto something else. Can someone at least give me a hint as to where the combination might be or how I might figure it out? I’m actually scared to look at my game list in case Shadowgate is coming up soon!

You die for the 859th time and must now accept defeat. Game Over

Game 9: Uninvited - Arachnophobic Phantoms

Journal Entry 2: “This detestable house is sucking the life out of me. I fear for my brother as I have been unable to find him, or to see any sign that he is held captive within these walls. As time goes on I discover more and more rooms, all of which contain numerous items that may or may not assist my cause, but the answers seem to lie mostly within the parchments that are hidden around the mansion. They speak of a man called Dracan, who seems to be the one behind the darkness I find all around me. One such parchment directed me to a skeleton key, which allowed me to open some of the cabinets around here, but many of the items held within are of questionable use. I did however discover the box that contained Dracan’s star, and have successfully retrieved it by putting the box in the fire as another parchment cryptically suggested. If only I knew what all these items were for! I’m certain the amulet and the stars I have hold the key to finding my brother, but their purpose evades me. I have still not, despite many attempts, been able to catch the detestable little creature that mocks me constantly, but I know I must soon, as time is running out. Time…is…running…out!”

I’m going to put it out there. Uninvited is a crushingly hard game! I can’t recall another game that has made me fight so hard to achieve anything at all, only to find myself with no idea how to progress again immediately. At the end of my last post, I’d just removed (i.e. melted) the mysterious woman that was blocking my access to the rest of the house. As it turned out, the rest of the house is massive, meaning I’ve now got stacks more questions with very few answers, not to mention endless items that may or may not be useful. It’s daunting to say the least, and while any small successes I have are celebrated with fist pumps and outbursts of elation, the lengthy periods of failure and confusion that separate them are beginning to break my spirit. Am I giving up? No, not yet! But I am beginning to wonder what I’m going to do when I simply can’t complete a game, even if Uninvited is not the game that breaks me. Hopefully you guys will help me out! For now, let me describe to you my recent experiences and attempt to give you an idea as to why Uninvited is so brutally difficult.

Even fluffy, soft towels are deadly in this house

After Zenic made me aware that I’d missed a vital item (a gold amulet) on the first screen of the game (which you can never go back to), I started Uninvited again and set off more determined than ever to figure out its mysteries. It didn’t take me long to get back to where I was previously, since I’d already mapped every location I’d visited and hadn’t actually achieved very much. I then set about mapping the rest of the house and checking out all the items in each room, guessing as to which ones might have a role to play later on. One thing I did come across that I figured I could do something with was a spider on the veranda. I just so happened to have some spider spray in my inventory, which paralysed the arachnid, allowing me to carry it with me in a live state. Once I’d mapped every room I had access to, I set about re-reading the various books and parchments I’d collected to see if I could find some sort of hint about what I needed to do next. At this stage there were three rooms I couldn’t get access to (the Magisterium, the Chapel and a room off the study) and two locked cabinets (one in the rec room, another in the master bedroom), but everything else was accessible.

I did something! I actually did something!!! :) :)

Other than the book in the library that contains magic related definitions, the rest of the notes I had talked about an apprentice called Dracan, who had obviously gained too much power and become dangerous. One particular note mentioned that the house servant had stolen Dracan’s star, which I assume he required to do something with magic, and hidden it in a box that cannot be opened. Since this was the only note that seemed to contain a hint, I decided to follow it up. I looked through every room trying to find a “box that cannot be opened”, but couldn’t find anything other than the locked cabinets, which I couldn’t do anything with. I eventually figured that the small bedroom off the kitchen could belong to a servant and directed my attention there. After finding absolutely nothing of worth, I just happened to turn the light on. Now before I continue, I should mention that I’d already tried to turn the lights on in numerous rooms throughout the game, only to be informed that there doesn’t appear to be any power, so turning the lights on in the servant’s bedroom was done with no belief that anything would come of it. Well it turns out that turning the lights on makes an apparition of the servant appear in the room (don’t ask me why!), demanding to know who let me in there.

There's no power in the house except for the servants room. That makes sense!

This is one of those moments where the game gives you a glimmer of hope that you’re on the right path, and that things will start to become a bit more obvious soon. However, no matter what I tried to do with the servant, he would kill me instantly. I could see that a panel had moved behind him and that there was something in the wall behind where it used to be situated, but if I tried to move it to my inventory or even just examine it, the servant would kill me. Over the next period of time, I tried to figure out what it was that I could give to or use on the servant that might get him to allow me to get whatever the object was, but there was nothing obvious I could think of. I was then forced to use trial and error, otherwise known as click and hope, “operating” all sorts of items on him ranging from knives to axes and even matches, to no avail. Getting desperate, I used the paralysed spider on the servant, and he screamed and dissolved from view, apparently “flustered and frightened”. The game didn’t give me any information to make me think the servant might have arachnophobia, nor does this solution seem any more logical than using any other item in the mansion. It was just luck!

You know he's just as scared of you as you are of him

I’m not going to continue describing the game in this detail, but I hope the above has given you an idea as to why the game is so difficult. It’s hard enough that there are hundreds of items spread out over multitudes of rooms, and that most of these items play no part in solving the game, but it’s made stupendously challenging because the hints given to the player are simply not sufficient. You can’t really apply logic or clever thinking to these puzzles and instead have to rely on luck and an almost inhuman amount of patience. Remember how I mentioned in my last post that one of the notes hints that a chair knows where the missing key is located? Well, I’ve spent a lot of time with all the chairs in the house over the last few days, getting to know them, showering them with gifts and trying to loosen them up with alcohol, in the hope of getting this information out of one of them. The solution was to cut one of them open with a knife, as the key was hidden inside. Now that hardly follows on from the hint and as you can imagine, was figured out through frustration rather than any sort of brilliant intellectual thought. If the rest of the game is filled with these sorts of puzzles and solutions, then at some point my luck is likely to run out and I’m just going to get plain stuck.

"The chair knows where". Does it still know?

On top of all this (yes, I still have more things to whinge about!), just as in Déjà Vu, there is a time limit in which you are required to finish the game. Thankfully it’s much more generous than in Déjà Vu, but given how difficult Uninvited is, and how much time needs to be spent simply exploring, looking for clues, and trying out different possibilities, it seems an unnecessarily cruel element. My most recent save games have my character clinging to his sanity, trying to keep the demons out. I’m pretty much going to have to start again and rush through everything I’ve done to create a save game that will give me a chance of finishing the game, and will likely need to do this again at some point. Once I’ve done that, I just need to figure out how to get past the dogs at the chapel, where the diamond is that will give me access to the Magisterium, what gold and silver items are required to mix with the mercury to create a key (this is one of the hints I’ve found), what these stars actually do, and how to catch the annoying creature that constantly waves a key at me. Oh, and I haven’t found a use for the amulet that Zenic told me about either, or where and when I’m supposed to recite the magic words, if indeed that’s what they are.

You feel frustration. You feel discouraged. You feel a restart approaching.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably getting the impression that I hate Uninvited. The truth is that it’s an intriguing game with a haunting atmosphere, and I really do want to finish it. I was looking forward to the horror themes prior to commencing and I guess it hasn’t really let me down on that front, apart from some inappropriate use of comedy killing the tone on occasion. The illogical solutions to barely perceptible puzzles are just making the whole experience unreasonably challenging. I’ve racked up five hours in total so far and since I committed to playing at least six hours on every game, Uninvited has at least one more hour to prove to me that it’s worth the effort, which brings me back to my earlier comment about what to do if and when I’m unable to get through a game on the list. I have a couple of ideas about how to deal with it, but would be interested to see what the readers think. For now, I’m going back in...

Here we go again...

Game 9: Uninvited - Conversing With Chairs

Journal Entry 1: “I’m writing in this journal in an attempt to keep my sanity. Perhaps I’ve lost it already!? My kid brother and I had a car accident in the middle of nowhere. I swear I was just trying to dodge a shadowy figure on the road and ended up hitting a tree...hard! When I woke up, my brother was gone, and then I barely managed to escape the car before it exploded. To make matters worse, I entered the only house I could see to try to get some help, and now I’m trapped here! There’s evil in this place, and whoever lives here has been dabbling in dark arts that no-one should mess around with. Pentagrams, books of magic, voodoo stuff...and I’m...seeing things! Ghostly figures keep appearing out of nowhere and some bizarre creature keeps dashing in and out of my view. I still can’t find my brother, but I can only assume he came in here too. I fear if I don’t find him soon it will be too late, so all I can do is read the various parchments left around this damn place to try to figure out what the hell is going on and where he might be.”

Well I guess it had to happen eventually! A few of you have suggested that Uninvited is a challenging game, and one that I’ll more than likely struggle to get through without a walkthrough. I’ve already played the game for over two hours and I haven’t managed to get anywhere at all, so I fear you’re right. All I’ve done so far is checked out all the rooms I can get into without dying and examined all the items within each of them, picking up the ones that seem like they might be useful. I’ve mapped everything out in Excel along with where I found each item, but I’ve not yet managed to find a use for any of the items I’ve found or come across anything that I can actually solve. The only real hints I have to go off are in the various journals, scrolls and books that I’ve picked up, but they don’t give me a heck of a lot to go off. The large book I found in the library contained definitions such as Instantum – sudden and momentary, Projectum – propulsion of an entity etc., and then was able to apply these definitions to a scroll, but all I ended up with was “talking head abraxas” and “sudden light abraxas”.

I'm afraid deep thought and research isn't working out all that well for me so far

I must have died over thirty times already, like when my car exploded with me still in it, when I was torn to pieces by a ghostly woman, when I got trapped for eternity in a prison cell, when I was poisoned by some unlabelled liquid etc. etc. The most frustrating of these deaths has to be the ghostly woman that appears whenever I open any door on the ground floor of the house. She initially has her back turned to me, but no matter what I try to do next, she turns around and rips my face off. Until I figure out what I’m supposed to do with her, I can’t access any more of the rooms on that floor, but I don’t know whether that’s something I need to do early on in the game or later. As expected, the inventory system is killing me! I put items in it by dragging them into my inventory box and letting go, but unfortunately I can only carry a few items before I get a message telling me the item won’t fit and that I should try removing something from the inventory. This problem is majorly exacerbated by the fact you can pick up just about any item in the game, despite most likely not ever needing the majority of them. I filled my inventory within about three screens, so am constantly having to manage it.

Oh great! My inventory is full and now there's a closet full of stuff!

So where am I at? Well, there’s a little creature that keeps running around waving a key at me, but I can’t see any way to get it from him. One of the journals suggests there’s a star hidden away in a hingeless box, but that they’re locked away and only a chair knows where the key is. That’s right...a chair! Well, I unsurprisingly don’t seem to be able to talk to any of the chairs in the house, so the message is obviously cryptic. Other than that, I have a bunch of masks, an enormous axe, some kerosene, a towel with blood on it and various other bits and pieces. I even have a bottle of No Ghost liquid, but when I tried to use the bottle on the Scarlett O’Hara looking undead chick, nothing happened. Oh...um...well I’ll be damned! While writing that last line, I thought I’d try the No Ghost liquid again to make sure I wasn’t making an idiot of myself. As I was doing it, I realised that the first time I tried it I didn’t open the bottle first. This time I did and she melted away like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. I was about to ask for a hint from you guys, but it seems the game has just opened up to me. I’m not convinced that I won’t be back here asking for help shortly, but for now...

Watching the mysterious woman melt away, screaming in horror, pleased me very much

Game 9: Uninvited - Introduction

Our haunted mansion offers world class diving and sunsets

Uninvited is the second game to be released on ICOM Simulations’ MacVenture engine (known as PCVenture when ported to the PC). It was originally released for Apple in 1986 before being ported to numerous platforms, including DOS in 1987. The first MacVenture game was the noir influenced Déjà Vu: A Nightmare Comes True!!, which was the fourth game I played for this blog. That game was a relatively enjoyable adventure game, but was marred by low quality graphics and sound, and an ambitious yet frustrating inventory system. Of particular note when discussing this series of games is the fact that they are the first examples of what would come to be known as point and click adventure games, removing the text parser from the experience (although Déjà Vu did require it in small doses) and allowing the player to control everything with the mouse. This would become the standard for adventure games in years to come.

The original PC box cover

Uninvited moves away from the world of crime and murder, and instead puts the player into a haunted house situation. It’s apparently the only of the four MacVenture games to take place in the present day. I have to admit that the horror theme is much more in line with my personal tastes (while they’re both classics, I’ll watch The Exorcist over The Godfather any day), so I’m looking forward to Uninvited more than I probably should when I consider the low rating I gave Déjà Vu. It may also assist that this time I’m going in having had previous experience with the engine, so I shouldn’t have to spend much time trying to figure out the mechanics of the game or fighting DOSBox, and can instead focus on the puzzles and the story as it unravels. The screenshots I’ve seen look suitably creepy, even in the dodgy CGA colour palette. Speaking of the low quality graphics, it’s worth clarifying that I’m going to be playing the 1987 DOS port and not the 1991 Windows 3.1 remake, as tempting as that is.

People who play in 16 colours are soft!

I’ve found the game, downloaded it and tested it (including the save and load features), and also got my hands on a PDF version of the manual and quick reference guide. A quick skim through both suggests there isn’t anything of note that has changed between games when it comes to the interface, which means that wearisome inventory system is still there. Here’s hoping there isn’t another panic inducing time limit to contend with this time, and perhaps less of a focus on pixel hunting, which is far more challenging when the CGA colour limitations make everything blur together in a swirl of pink and blue. Anyway, there’s no point sitting here worrying about what might or might not be. It’s time to see what Uninvited has to offer. If you don’t hear from me for more than a couple of days, then I guess I didn’t make it out of the house. Whatever you do, don’t come in after me!

Aaaaaaaaggghhhhhh.....(gurgle)