Game 10: Leisure Suit Larry I - Introduction

Because alliteration is funny

The tenth game that I’ll be undertaking is one that the majority (if not all) of readers would have heard of. However, before I talk about that game, it’s worth taking a trip back to 1981, back to a little game called Softporn Adventure. By this stage, Sierra had already made a name for themselves through graphic accompanied interactive fiction games such as Mystery House and The Wizard and the Princess. Someone at the company decided it might be profitable to develop an adult themed game, but a decision was made early on that it would be text based only, most likely to avoid censorship. A man named Charles Benton took on the task and the result is a pretty crappy game that follows a down on his luck party animal that’s trying to get laid. Regardless of how bad it is, Softporn Adventure sold over 25000 copies, which is pretty amazing considering only 100000 Apple II’s had been sold at the time of release. These days the game is most famous for its steamy cover that includes three naked women (the company bookkeeper, a Sierra employee’s wife, and founder Roberta Williams!) in a spa bath.

I'm sure the waiter thought the girls' invitation to join them for a spa photoshoot was going to end differently

Once Sierra’s King’s Quest series had successfully transitioned the adventure game genre from interactive fiction to animated graphics, Ken Williams decided it was time to remake Softporn Adventure using the AGI engine. Al Lowe (Black Cauldron, King’s Quest II) and Mark Crowe (Black Cauldron, Space Quest) were brought in to make the game, but after Al played through the original game in preparation, he realised how out of date the game really was. When he got back to the office, he told Ken Williams that “it’s so behind the times it might as well be wearing a leisure suit”, a joke which kicked off a new approach for the remake. It was decided that the basis of Softporn Adventure would be kept intact (the locations, plot, structure and puzzles are relatively unchanged), but that the game would feature an onscreen protagonist and much more humour.

"Holy Cow! Her boobs are huge!" Who says computer games shouldn't be considered art!

Much time was spent on the creation of said protagonist, with the end result being a 40 year old slightly fat, balding, out of style loser named Larry Laffer. His name was originally going to be Jerry, after one of Al’s friends who regularly visited the office and thought of himself as a fantastic lover, but was changed to Larry so as not to offend the real Jerry. Al then skimmed an encyclopaedia trying to find a suitable surname that began with L, and knew he had the right one as soon as he saw the name Arthur Laffer (an American economist). With that sorted, the duo began work on what would eventually be known as Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. The main challenge that they faced during the development was that Mark was only available for four weeks due to his commitments to Space Quest, and therefore had to work nights and weekends to get the game finished. It took a total of three months to complete, but was delayed until June 1987 while it was beta tested (a first for a Sierra game).

This is actually a really cool cover, despite being pink!

The company was clearly uncertain about how Leisure Suit Larry would be received, and decided to release it with no publicity or advertising. This resulted in the worst first month sales for any Sierra game ever, and Al figured he’d just wasted six months of his life on a complete failure. But word of mouth spread quickly and the game’s sales doubled every month, despite some stores refusing to sell it due to its questionable content. It eventually sold in advance of 250000 copies and is also widely known as one of the most pirated games in history. Sierra claims that they sold more hint books than they did actual games, but who knows how true that is. Anyway, that’s enough history, it’s time to help Larry get laid! As always, I’ll be playing the original 1987 version, in all its 16 colour glory, and not the 256 colour 1991 remake. I’ve downloaded a version for DOSBox along with a PDF manual, and am raring to go.

How can I possibly not get laid!?

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.



Poll Results / 1987 Adventure Game Discussion

The two weeks are up and the “What games should The Adventure Gamer play?” poll is closed. I have to admit that I was pretty surprised at the results, and the options I thought people might go for didn’t even get a look-in. For example, I was pretty sure beforehand that Option 2 would be the one that people would go for, given that it gave the readers some control over what games go on the list without having to create a whole new one. It eventually ran in a distant third!

What games should The Adventure Gamer play?
1. The Wikipedia Notable Graphic Adventure Games list seems good to me – 5 votes (4%)
2. The Wikipedia list with some additions as voted by this knowledgable community – 29 votes (23%)
3. We should all get together and make our own list – 3 votes (2%)
4. Whatever games he wants to. It's his blog! – 47 votes (38%)
5. The lazy bastard should play every adventure game ever made! – 37 votes (30%)

I was getting a bit concerned at the halfway mark when “The lazy bastard should play every adventure game ever made!” was streaking away to a healthy lead. At the time I was trying to come up with positives such as “well they must like what I’m doing if they want me blog about every game”, but in reality there was no way I would ever be able to go through with it. There are simply too many games and many of them are not available to purchase or download, so I was happy when it started to drop off. Noticeably it dropped away and “Whatever games he wants to” overtook it, right after the announced hiatus of The CRPG Addict blog. I can only assume that people started thinking about the realities of what I’m doing, and that making the project unachievable will always lead to an early failure. I obviously plan to see this through to completion, but making it impossible will just lead to frustration and loss of enjoyment.

Friday, January 20, 2012: The day you all started caring about my sanity

Anyway, the most telling fact that I took from the poll is that only 4% of people think the Wikipedia list is good enough, so I’ve decided to follow it less strictly. This is how I intend to approach things from now on:

At the beginning of every year (not the current year, the year the games were made), I will write a post that includes the games on the Wikipedia list for that year. I will comment about which ones I intend to play and why, and I’ll also add any others that I feel have been left off. You guys can then tell me your thoughts regarding my selections and make some suggestions of your own, but at the end of the day, I’m going to play the games I want to (that’s what the readers voted for after all). With the completion of Uninvited, I’ve finished all the games on the list from 1986, so it’s time to look at 1987.

On the Wikipedia List
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
Maniac Mansion
Mortville Manor
Police Quest: In the Pursuit of the Death Angel
Shadowgate
Space Quest II: Vohaul’s Revenge

The Sierra and LucasArts entries are obvious, so there’s no point discussing them. As much as I fear it after playing through Uninvited, I'm determined to play through Shadowgate as well, so that leaves only Mortville Manor as questionable. I’ve personally never heard of it before and it has no votes at all on Moby Games (compared with over a hundred for Maniac Mansion), but from what I’ve read about it, it seems to have some features that are new to the adventure genre. I’ve also found a working DOSBox version, so I see no reason not to play it.

From what I've read, Mortville Manor actually does seem to belong on the Notable Graphic Adventure Game list.

Not on the Wikipedia List
I can’t find any other 1987 graphic adventure games that I feel need to be played. The only other popular one is Roberta Williams' Mixed-Up Mother Goose, but that was aimed at toddlers and would surely be of little interest to Adventure Gamer readers (tell me if that’s one you were really looking forward to). Anyone got anything else they’d like to bring to the table, or do those six games look the goods?

Is anyone out there eagerly waiting for me to find the mixed up rhyme pieces and return them to their owners?

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