I decided to try Hobbiton Recall. I’m stuck in the hospital with some grapes, a 5-pound note and a bus ticket, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to make additional progress. The provided walkthrough doesn’t go as far as that.
Given the nature of the interaction and the author’s commentary, a bug seems to be a distinct possibility.
Since the Gruescript source is inspectable, I can see that there is a response to a conversation option with one of the characters that is supposed to move the plot forward, but it’s not doing that in play. The specific block of code is:
verb ask_doctor Nurse_Battersby
has doctor seenkissing: "She's quite right - you can't leave the hospital until I'm satisfied you're cured. Now go back to bed!"
!has doctor blackmail: "She's quite right - you can't leave the hospital until I'm satisfied you're cured. Now go back to bed!"
say "Of course... I'll go and tell her that you're cured and you can leave whenever you like! After all, we're all friends here...aren't we!"
say Doctor Feely says before walking off towards reception.
put doctor hospital_reception
I don’t know Gruescript, but I’m reasonably certain that the problem is in that block.
Yeah, I just had the same experience – the rest of the game appears to be in the file, but something in how those conditions are set is preventing anything in the code block other than one of the “She’s quite right” dialogue statements from firing.
If you are playing locally, it seems as though you can change the code in a running session by saving the game, modifying the file, reloading the web page, then restoring the game. I think the block can be changed as follows to act as a “hot fix”:
verb ask_doctor Nurse_Battersby
has doctor blackmail: "She's quite right - you can't leave the hospital until I'm satisfied you're cured. Now go back to bed!"
say "Of course... I'll go and tell her that you're cured and you can leave whenever you like! After all, we're all friends here...aren't we!"
say Doctor Feely says before walking off towards reception.
put doctor hospital_reception
The way Gruescript seems to work, a colon signals what to do if the condition fails, so the first line in the original definitely seems like a bug (making it treat the presence of the necessary tag as meaning the rule should halt on that line).