Find the opening location

Playing Forum Games, Wordplay, and Challenges
41

I’m just glad Zork was number 1!

42

28 is Lost Pig!

There might be other games that begin in “Outside”, but I don’t know any offhand—it’s quite a vague way to describe a location, I guess?

(Edit: whereas it fits Grunk’s speech patterns just fine!)

3 Likes
43

I’m posting some more hints, because I have a fear that if any of these go unguessed, someone will discover this thread in several years time and ask for the answers, and I’ll no longer remember what they were!

Here’s what’s still missing:

13. << Chief's office >>
21. Your House
22. In Your Tent
30. No Man's Land
Significantly less oblique hints

Here’s a list of IFDB tags. The number in brackets is how many of the four games above have that tag listed:

beginner (1)
child author (2)
dog (1)
mythopoeic (1)
Inform 5 source available (1)
PunyInform source available (1)
puzzleless (1)
source available (3)
SpeedIF (1)
TADS 2 (1)
tutorial (1)
Winner of a comp (1)

2 Likes
44

All right, I’ve had a sneaking suspicion for a while and now these hints have confirmed it: 22 is Inhumane.

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45

I knew I knew it but I couldn’t place it until that last set of tags. 13 is Detective

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46

Welp, I feel like I don’t really have the right credentials to be answering these since (a) I had to go IFDB spelunking to dig them out, and (b) it turns out I haven’t actually played either of them. For the sake of posterity, however, 21 is Who Kidnapped Mother Goose", and 30 is Yellow Dog Running.

3 Likes
47

#13 has been bugging me. I thought it might have been one of the Scott Adams Questprobe series, but it wasn’t.

The start for #21 (‘Your House’) is so bland that I thought it could be any of dozens of games. Then I noticed the last set of tags. In particular: ‘beginner’, ‘PunyInform source available’ and ‘Winner of a comp’. Nah, it couldn’t be. So I checked through my own games and bugger me if Who Kidnapped Mother Goose? didn’t start in ‘Your House’. I didn’t recognise my own game, but @Morningstar got it.

I thought #22 might have been Infidel (but that was ‘Your Tent’) or Treasures of HollowHill (but that was ‘Artifacts Tent’).

Are they all solved now?

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48

Inhumane is Zarf’s parody of Infidel - written when he was a teenager, I think? - so you were very close!

2 Likes
49

Yep, all done!

All the answers in one place
  1. Zork
  2. Anchorhead
  3. Cragne Manor
  4. The Gostak
  5. Augmented Fourth
  6. Galatea
  7. Make It Good
  8. For A Change
  9. Eat Me
  10. Spider And Web
  11. Counterfeit Monkey
  12. A Train To Piccadilly
  13. Detective
  14. Inside Woman
  15. Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder
  16. Never Gives Up Her Dead
  17. Portrait With Wolf
  18. One King To Loot Them All
  19. Zork III
  20. The Mary Jane Of Tomorrow
  21. Who Kidnapped Mother Goose?
  22. Inhumane
  23. Metamorphoses
  24. The Dreamhold / Lock & Key
  25. A Day For Fresh Sushi
  26. Varicella
  27. Breakfast In The Dolomites / shadows on the mirror
  28. Lost Pig
  29. Wishbringer / Beyond Zork
  30. Yellow Dog Running
4 Likes