Veil of Darkness - Unspoken Curses (Request for Assistance)

 By Zenic Reverie

Discussing the current events with Deirdre

Last we left, Engatz had returned a bloody hammer to Kirill, completing the first task in a prophecy. He responded to the name Kairn with disdain, informing me that was the name of the ancient vampire that lords over the valley. Deirdre offered a token, her scarf, to Engatz in hopes that he would continue to fulfil the prophecy, freeing the land of Kairn's shadowy influence. They exchnaged further pleasantries, hoping for a continued relationship far away once these events were far behind them both (potential foreshadowing detected). On the topic of celebrating, she mentioned how we could break open a rare vintage wine locked away in her father's cellar. Before I headed out, I asked Kirill about wine, but he made no mention of his stock, only pointing me to the local tavern.

What's your story? - Michael

Intro: Ilmari
The rest: Michael

It has been quite a long since we've received answers to our What's your story? -questions, but we were just contacted by a longtime commenter of the blog. He goes by the name Michael, but judging from his profile picture, I suspect this might just be another alias.

I knew I'd seen him somewhere!

Without further ado, Michael, the stage is yours!

Missed Classic: Lurking Horror - Amputated Content

Written by Joe Pranevich

It has become something of a tradition for me to dig into the “what ifs” of each Infocom game as I finish it. Unlike most of what we play, we are fortunate that so much Infocom material has been saved (in some cases “leaked”) to allow us to study their work in a way that would not otherwise be possible. With Lurking Horror, we find a game that struggled against too much content, almost from the very beginning. Dave Lebling had big ideas, and the game’s code is sprinkled with comments lamenting the size restrictions of the original ZIP engine. 

Lebling spoke about his wish for more space in an interview with Brass Lantern in 2002:

Stephen Granade: If you had the chance to redo any of your Infocom games, which one would you change? What would you do differently, or would you avoid the game entirely?

Dave Lebling: [...] I'd have loved to have done "The Lurking Horror" as a larger-size game (it was almost the last of the "small" games which had to fit in 84k bytes of disk space). Some good scary stuff got cut out of it or never implemented due to the size restrictions.

So what is this “good scary stuff” do we still know about? Let’s dig in.

Simon the Sorcerer: No Money Mo' Problems

By Will Moczarski

Obviously it has been some time since I last played Simon the Sorcerer so I decided to start over and make a proper map. I enjoy mapping a lot so it hasn’t been a big hassle and when I started mapping I wondered why I hadn’t done it before. The world seemed so much more coherent now. Also I had always been confused by the close proximity of the dwarf mine and the goblin jail so only then did I discover that they were completely separate environments at all, sharing but one common feature: they’re both situated underground. 

The 2 hours I spent retracing my previous steps were also well spent because I discovered a couple more items and things to do. First of all there’s a small rock on the screen called the “centre of the forest”. It’s not that small but it’s the same colour as its surroundings which is why I have missed it. This time I accidentally hovered above its hotspot with the cursor and thus was able to pick it up and discover the secret message underneath: “beer”. This didn’t help me at first but then I noticed – as mentioned above – that the dwarf mine is not the goblin jail. To be fair it would totally make sense geographically but I must have read the dialogue inside the dwarf mine in passing only because the guard clearly tells me that I’m not a dwarf. Reading my previous post (and some of my older notes) I actually wrote down that I should find a way to dress like a dwarf to enter the mine but somehow I still must have confused dwarves and goblins somehow. Amateur hour at the adventurers guild, right?

When you do read the dialogue more carefully the guard gives you another hint: dwarves have beards. I need to get (or grow) a beard somehow. It’s a good thing that I was already carrying a beard at this point. Why? Because I examined the “Drunken Druid” more closely, too, and figured out that there was a dwarf who was so drunk that he’d fallen asleep so I could cut off his beard with the scissors. Now I don’t mean to harp on it but...well, maybe I do. This is one more puzzle that reminds me a lot of another one from Monkey Island 2 (sawing off the wooden leg when one of the three pirates is asleep). When I cut off the beard I had no clue what I might need it for but after the conversation with the guard it all became clear. 

Missed Classic: Personal Nightmare - Won! (and Final Rating)

By Morpheus Kitami

Ah, metahumor is always great in a serious horror game...

You know, this all turned out a lot easier than I thought it would be. In the sense that this was some unfathomable tanglement of impossibility.

I can talk to Peter in his house, fat lot of good that'll do, and no, he isn't pointing a gun at me

Guess it's time to stake out people's houses. Susan stays at home until about 11:00, then heads over to the right. At midnight she enters/walks past Peter's house. Walking past is a glitch, because she won't appear on the next screen. Well, better go back to the Inn. I keep forgetting it's name of The Dog & the Duck, so much so that I'm not even sure that's right.

This is a pretty cool effect, though the death isn't terribly impressive

As I walk towards the inn, suddenly the scene changes and I can see two headlights. Clearly, whoever ran over Jimmy is now after me. The first time I just get run over, but pretty quickly it's clear that I can move around, with north and south dodging, west and east just resulting in him chasing me. For what purpose? I try to think about how I could possibly solve this.