Part 1 - Down the lane
We’ll start as every parser game protagonist should:
>X ME
You are, as always, you, except when you aren’t. If you want to examine your inner self further, I’m afraid that will cost more than 200 Zorkmids.
>I
Treasures:
nothing
Treasured Food and Drink:
nothing
Everything else:
a map
a watch
emotional baggage
Okay, so as in many old-school games, it looks like there are some specific treasures which we need to collect, which tallies with what we were told about scoring. But “treasured food and drink” is a category I don’t think I’ve come across quite so often!
>X MAP
The map shows all the places you can fly the Quotient jet to including:
> Airstrip (HQ)
> Lunken Airport (Cincinnati or CVG)
> Burke Lakefront Airport (Cleveland or CLE)
> Andrews Air Force Base (DC)
> Arusha Airport (Africa or ARK)
> Spaceport.
> Hidden Airbase (Oxford)
To fly the jet, say FLY TO location, as in FLY TO CVG
I assume we need to find the jet first, but let’s just check:
>FLY TO HQ
You need to be in a jet to fly somewhere.
>X WATCH
You glance at your watch, and see the time and weather.
9:04 am
>X BAGGAGE
You’ll collect old memories over time. You can think about them whenever you want. You imagine this as an old duffle bag.
So is this a way of giving us an inventory of memories, as well as a physical inventory?
Enough about us, what do we have here in the location?
>X CAMERAS
These cameras are state-of-the-art. Infrared, motion detecting, high res, any buzz word you can think of, these have it.
>LICK CAMERAS
That’s not a verb I recognize.
>TAKE CAMERAS
That’s hardly portable.
>X MAILBOX
It’s a non-descript mailbox mounted on an old cedar post.
What are the odds that the mailbox contains a leaflet?
>OPEN IT
You open the Mailbox, revealing a Leaflet.
Pretty good, it turns out!
>TAKE LEAFLET
You take the Leaflet and examine it carefully.
It’s a tri-fold leaflet addressed to “secret agent”
>READ IT
WELCOME Agent!
Congratulations on being selected to join Quotient. Why am I at the end of a lane leading to an old farmhouse? Well, this is no ordinary farmhouse. Your first step is to find your way into Quotient Headquarters! Once you find the secret headquarters, you’ll get a chance to meet Martin, the founder of Quotient. He will brief you on the rest of your mission! Type HELP if you need more help. Good Luck!
“Quotient, The Game” is a text adventure game based on the books The Quantum Contingent and Quantum Time. “No computer should be without one!”
*\*leaflet and mailbox based on the original ZORK, one of the first interactive fiction adventures*
The name of the mailbox appears in bold rather than it italics, but that doesn’t mean it’s portable, does it?
>TAKE MAILBOX
That’s fixed in place.
Okay, so, enough messing around in what seems to be an introductory location; let’s go!
>W
Lane
The long lane is lined with large willow trees whose branches sway smoothly in the breeze, their branches sway smoothly, calming one’s nerves with only a glance. These massive centurions are actually part of the sophisticated security system guarding the route to this remote, hidden fortress near Greenville, Ohio.
You can go east or west on the lane.
>X TREES
These large oaks separate the path from the massive cornfield to the north.
I guess this is an extremely low-key puzzle, since the possibility of going north wasn’t previously mentioned. If the trees are “part of the sophisticated security system”, maybe their role is to slightly screen the route to the north from a casual glance?
>N
Corn Maze
You stand at the entrance of a vast cornfield maze. Tall stalks surround you on all sides, you can go east, north into the corn, or south to the lane.
At this point, I remember that when @simpsong00 first released this game, I dipped into it briefly and, two rooms into the game, became lost in a corn maze. I don’t particularly enjoy drawing maps; I don’t mind mazes with relatively normal connections that I can picture (my spatial memory is pretty good; I was able to navigate both mazes in Curses and the statue puzzle in Lydia’s Heart without drawing a map) and I don’t mind mazes where the solution doesn’t require mapping the maze at all (like the maze in Hunter, in Darkness). But I’m not a fan of the “twisty little passages” type of maze where the connections are consistent but seemingly random. I have no idea which type of maze this will be, but I’m going to put it off for now until we see some indication that we might actually need to venture in.
>S
Lane
The long lane is lined with large willow trees whose branches sway smoothly in the breeze, their branches sway smoothly, calming one’s nerves with only a glance. These massive centurions are actually part of the sophisticated security system guarding the route to this remote, hidden fortress near Greenville, Ohio.
You can go east or west on the lane.
At some point I’ll remember to put the transcript in BRIEF mode so that you don’t have to keep reading the same room descriptions again and again as we move around.
>CLIMB TREES
Little is to be achieved by that.
>U
You can’t go that way.
From here, you can go north, east, and west.
This might just be a connecting area, then, so let’s keep moving.
>W
The Gate
The gate is open. There is a sign mounted by the gate.
The lane goes west toward the house and east back toward the Security Checkpoint.
You can see pile of leaves here.
>X SIGN
Let em grow up
At this point, a picture of a sign reading “let em grow up” also appears. I didn’t know beforehand that this game had graphics, or I might have stopped to consider how to handle them in this text-based medium. For now, I’m afraid if you want to see what the sign looks like, you’ll have to delve into Quotient, the Game for yourself!
It occurs to me now, editing this transcript after the fact, that I failed to take note of, or interact with, what is almost inevitably going to turn out to be a pile of 69,105 leaves. We’ll have to go back and investigate it in a later session.
>W
Headquarters Entrance
You stand before a massive old home with tall clay-shingled clapboard turrets stretching up into the sky. An expansive old-fashioned porch sprawls across the entire front of the mansion. Wooden porch swings dangle from chains, rocking gently in the sweet-smelling breeze scented by the surrounding old-growth lilac and magnolia bushes.
The house is directly in front of you to the west. There are steps down into a cellar here, a yard to the north, some parking to the southwest, and you can go back up the lane to the east.
So finding the headquarters wasn’t the most challenging part of our secret mission. Although we’ll have to figure out how to get inside, and there seem to be a lot of areas to explore in the immediate vicinity.
>X TURRETS
Tall Circular towers, like you’d see on an old Victorian house, or as defensive towers on a castle!
>X SWINGS
The porch swing looks like a great place to read a book or unwinding after a long day of spy work.
>SIT ON SWINGS
Oh, this is so relaxing. A great place for coffee and connections.
yourself are now seated on the porch swing.
It will later turn out that a message like this pops up every time we enter or exit a supporter, which I assume is the result of some kind of reporting rule intended to handle a much more specific situation but accidentally made much more overzealous. Do we get the same thing when we place inanimate objects on the swing?
>PUT LEAFLET ON SWING
Dropped.
Apparently not.
>STAND UP
yourself get off the porch swing.
Headquarters Entrance
You stand before a massive old home with tall clay-shingled clapboard turrets stretching up into the sky. An expansive old-fashioned porch sprawls across the entire front of the mansion. Wooden porch swings dangle from chains, rocking gently in the sweet-smelling breeze scented by the surrounding old-growth lilac and magnolia bushes.
The house is directly in front of you to the west. There are steps down into a cellar here, a yard to the north, some parking to the southwest, and you can go back up the lane to the east.
On the porch swing is a Leaflet.
>X BUSHES
The massive lilac bushes are filled with fragrant bunches of flowers like grapes, whereas the magnolia flowers look more like stars filling a green bed of leaves.
>SEARCH BUSHES
You find nothing of interest.
Not sure yet whether this is the type of game where SEARCH things is going to be different to EXAMINE, although the help text did take pains to point out to us that EXAMINE is not the same as READ.
Can we get inside the house?
>W
The Farmhouse
You cross the porch of the old Victorian home and enter the dining room. A grape chandelier hangs above the long table. From the north window, you can see the lawn, the hammock and the fields past the hammock to the north.
You can go east to exit the house or continue west into the kitchen you see in the next room.
To one side of the room is a large oriental rug.
You can also see a long wooden table (on which is a jigsaw puzzle) and a Deck of Cards here.
Something about the Deck of Cards reminds you of days gone by.
This all seems pretty unassuming for the headquarters of an international spy agency so far.
>X CHANDELIER
The glass grapes are grouped into bunches. The are purple and stretch along a long cast-iron frame.
>X WINDOW
It gives a view of the cornfield and hammock.
>X LAWN
Beyond a short stretch of clear ground, past the hammock, the Cornfield is thick and uninhabited for as far as you can see.
As I mentioned earlier, the text is actually full of italic and bold text highlighting all of the things in each location which we might want to try interacting with. The rug, oddly, is not highlighted, but it’s so obviously concealing a secret passage that we’ll attempt to check it out anyway:
>X RUG
This beautiful oriental rug has a red hue and two piecing blue strips emanating out from the center like hands on a clock. Silver circles adorn the edges.
>LOOK UNDER IT
There’s an escape tunnel under the rug.
>X TUNNEL
A hidden tunnel, complex to navigate. You’d need Martin to get through this tunnel successfully.
According to the leaflet we found in the mailbox, Martin is the founder of Quotient, and presumably the person we’re currently supposed to be looking for. Having been told that we can’t enter the tunnel without Martin, of course we immediately try:
>ENTER IT
You need Martin to lead you through the escape tunnel.
Never mind. Let’s carry on working our way through the remaining contents of the room.
>X TABLE
It appears to be made of cherry with inlaid birds-eye maple. The table has a trestle design, allowing room for a large dog to sleep underneath.
On the long wooden table is a jigsaw puzzle.
>X PUZZLE
A puzzle of many different movie and show posters. This one is nearly finished, missing only one piece that you could never find.
>SOLVE IT
You haven’t got the final piece.
>BREAK IT
Violence isn’t the answer to this one.
>X CARDS
It’s a regular deck of cards with Star Wars themed backs.
The top four cards are:
A King holding a blue light saber.
A Queen, petting a Lion underneath a deep red sky.
A Jack wearing a brightly polished pendant.
And an Ace, adorned with the face of a shimmering clock.
This is clearly a clue to some kind of puzzle, but exactly what, I can’t speculate yet.
>TAKE IT
You take the Deck of Cards. and examine it carefully.
It’s a regular deck of cards with Star Wars themed backs.
The top four cards are:
A King holding a blue light saber.
A Queen, petting a Lion underneath a deep red sky.
A Jack wearing a brightly polished pendant.
And an Ace, adorned with the face of a shimmering clock.
[Your score has just gone up by two points.]
As per the help text, we automatically examine items upon picking them up, which means that if we want to avoid reading all the text twice, we should be embracing our hoarding instincts and grabbing everything in sight without bothering to look at it first. But also, our score went up when we picked up the cards, which means:
>SCORE
You have so far scored 2 out of a possible 214, in 45 turns, earning you the rank of plain ole you.
This includes 2 points for each of the treasures you have collected, including:
Treasures: a Deck of Cards
Treasured Food and Drink: nothing
No further achievements.
We were told that each non-food-and-drink treasure also contained some sort of clue, which tallies with the pictures on the deck of cards which are clearly hinting at something. As to why there are also edible treasures that don’t contain clues, maybe there’s a thematic reason for this which will be explained later in the game?
When we first saw the deck of cards, there was also a hint that we might have acquired a new memory, so let’s check our mnemonic inventory:
>X BAGGAGE
You’ll collect old memories over time. You can think about them whenever you want. You imagine this as an old duffle bag.
In emotional baggage is days gone by.
>X DAYS GONE BY
As if. All you can really do is THINK ABOUT it.
>THINK ABOUT DAYS GONE BY
The place does feel familiar. In fact the rug reminds me of one from a TV show that hid a trap door.
Ah, just in case we hadn’t picked up on the need to look under the rug already.
>TAKE RUG
The rug is too heavy to lift.
>W
The Kitchen
A large kitchen with attached family room. A zebra head is mounted over a river rock fireplace.
You exit to the east.
You see a classic all-american can of rediwhip here.
You can also see a paring knife and a loaf of bread here.
This stuff seems less obviously part of any puzzle, but I’m sure its purpose will become clear in time; let’s check it out.
>X ZEBRA HEAD
The zebra head is mounted as you might expect a wild animal head might be mounted in a game lodge. Surprisingly, this one appears to have a smile.
>LOOK IN IT
You find nothing of interest.
>X FIREPLACE
The fireplace is made up of smooth, gray river rocks. The edges of the rocks protrude from the light-colored mortar. A stunning piece of art and craftsmanship in its own right.
>LOOK IN IT
You find nothing of interest.
>X CAN
It’s the classic spray can of Whipped Cream.
>TAKE IT
You take the Can of Rediwhip. and examine it carefully.
It’s the classic spray can of Whipped Cream.
[Your score has just gone up by two points.]
The lesson about “don’t stop to examine, just grab” still hasn’t landed yet, but let’s make sure we do a better job with the rest of the portable objects in the kitchen:
>TAKE KNIFE
You take the paring knife and examine it carefully.
It’s a small paring knife. It is very sharp.
>TAKE BREAD
You take the loaf of bread and examine it carefully.
It looks freshly baked!
>EAT IT
You take a bite of bread. That hit the spot!
That sounds like we still have the bread, which is good, because if eating it was going to destroy the whole loaf, we probably shouldn’t have done that. Let’s check:
>I
Treasures:
a Deck of Cards
Treasured Food and Drink:
a Can of Rediwhip
Everything else:
a loaf of bread
a paring knife
a map
a watch
emotional baggage
days gone by
Turns out that the Rediwhip (I’m assuming that’s just a brand name for squirty cream in a can?) counts as a treasure. Why? Who knows! Maybe Martin can explain, if we can find him somewhere.
Have we done everything in the kitchen?
>LOOK
The Kitchen
A large kitchen with attached family room. A zebra head is mounted over a river rock fireplace.
You exit to the east.
It looks like we’re done with everything there is to do for now inside the house, so we return to the Headquarters Entrance, pausing to retrieve the leaflet which we left on the porch swing, and then head southwest to:
>SW
Parking
There is some parking here off the driveway, just past the house.
A fire pit is to the north, or you can return northeast to the entrance.
A large three-legged turtle waddles by slowly.
>X TURTLE
A large three-legged turtle, wearing a tiny turtleneck with the name Shelly on it.
“Shelly” is an obvious pun, as is the fact that the turtle is wearing a turtleneck. But what’s the deal with having only three legs? There’s a turtle in one of the Infocom games (Sorcerer?) but is this related?
>RIDE TURTLE
That’s not a verb I recognize.
>PET TURTLE
That’s not a verb I recognize.
>TAKE TURTLE
I don’t suppose the turtle would care for that.
Maybe inspiration regarding the turtle will strike later; for now, let’s continue our exploration.
>N
Fire Pit
You pass by the back of the house and stumble upon a fire pit surrounded by a meticulously maintained fairy flower garden. There is a small ornamental fairy in the garden.
You can go north or return south to parking.
The Tardis communicator, a small electronic screen you can examine is here.
Okay, two things here that seem like they merit some close investigation:
>X FAIRY
The inanimate, ornamental fairy appears to be twirling around, dancing, and enjoying life. The unique thing about this fairy is the shiny pendant hanging around her neck.
>X PENDANT
You can’t see any such thing.
>TAKE FAIRY
That’s hardly portable.
So I think this is just a statue of a fairy rather than anything more … magical. The pendant is apparently important, but not implemented, so maybe we’ll find something that refers to it elsewhere and need to take that as a clue that we should be doing something with the fairy?
For now, we’ve also found something which the help text told us to look out for specifically:
>X COMMUNICATOR
I am TARDIS, the incredibly intelligent quantum computer Quotient uses. This communicator connects me to you every time you examine it.
Oh, wait, so this isn’t directly related to the actual TARDIS from Doctor Who; it’s a device to communicate with a computer which happens to also be named TARDIS, presumably because Quotient was founded by nerds.
>TAKE IT
You take the Tardis Communicator. and examine it carefully.
I like to pontificate. I am based on ChatGPT11. Just examine me to hear my wisdom. If you must, you may also ask me questions as you would another person. ASK TARDIS about ENTANGLEMENT
[Your score has just gone up by two points.]
>X IT
Do you think I’m going to help you? I’m feeling kind of wonky. You should reboot me.
Can we do that?
>REBOOT COMMUNICATOR
I only understood you as far as wanting to reboot.
>REBOOT
How would you like me to do that?
I guess we might need to find the actual TARDIS computer (wherever that is) rather than just the communication in order to be able to reboot it. But we were given a suggested topic of conversation:
>ASK TARDIS ABOUT ENTANGLEMENT
In quantum mechanics, we have the concept of entanglement. This is where two particles are mysteriously connected. The state of each particle depends on the other, but neither condition is clear until one is observed. I’ll keep it simple. Pretend we have one orange sock and one purple sock. We wrap them both up and you return to America. As soon as you unwrap your sock and look at it, you immediately know that my sock is the other color. The two socks are entangled. By observing your sock, you know the color of my sock. Einstein called this spooky action at a distance. With quantum communication, I have the potential to move data at faster than light speed by using entangled atoms. If I can force my sock to be orange, then I know your sock will have to be purple. It is a phenomenon known as nonlocality. As far as the universe is concerned, they are no longer distinct socks, they are a single interconnected system, they just happen to be in different places in the universe. Unfortunately, as soon as you observe the state of the source “sock”, the entanglement is broken, and hence, faster than light communication fails. But Cassie is trying to find a way to force a state without breaking entanglement.
My physics education stopped short of quantum mechanics, but as I understand it, this is an essentially correct layperson’s explanation of quantum entanglement. The description of what Cassie (whoever she is?) is trying to do in the last sentence would (I think) be a world-shaking scientific breakthrough. But of course every global intelligence agency needs a genius inventor to funnel world-shaking scientific breakthroughs into producing cool spy gadgets.
Anyway, maybe TARDIS can help fill us in on some other stuff?
>ASK TARDIS ABOUT MARTIN
He’s the boss. A very capable fellow who has connections around the world, including at the White House. He and Cassie used to go out, but the whole human emotion thing is beyond my programming.
>ASK TARDIS ABOUT CASSIE
She is a Professor at Oxford university, a brilliant Quantum Scientist and an world renowned expert on time, as in the time continuum. In fact, she calls her lab the continuum.
Okay, so we have a mini brief on two of (presumably) the members of Quotient here. Finding Martin is our current mission (hopefully he’s somewhere at least vaguely in the vicinity); I imagine there’s a good chance we’ll run into Cassie at some point as well.
(Probably an irrelevant coincidence: according to @mathbrush, “a world-renowned expert on time” is how Gustav Ernst is described in Andy Phillips’ game Time: All Things Come to an End. Gustav Ernst subsequently reappears as the antagonist of Inside Woman, the game from my previous Let’s Play!)
>N
Smokehouse
An old ivy-covered smokehouse surrounded by a bowling ball garden.
You can go east, west, or south. (or just type EXITS at any time to see which way you can go.)
A rusty shovel is here. It looks like it would only work in sand.
Am I meant to know what a bowling ball garden is? Is this just a thing that is immediately familiar to everyone else? Does it just mean that there are some bowling balls lying around on a patch of grass? Is everyone who visits my home silently judging me for not decorating it with one of those ball return racks where they emerge from the floor after you bowl?
>X BOWLING BALL GARDEN
The bowling balls are many different colors. There are 4 in total, an 8 lb, 15 lb, 16lb and 23 lb.
I’ve never seen Lost, but I’m pretty sure I recognise that sequence of numbers as a reference to something from it. Is that just a coincidence?
>TAKE BALLS
They are an integral part of the garden, and are just for your visual pleasure.
>TAKE SHOVEL
You take the shovel and examine it carefully.
Looks like an ordinary shovel to me.
Time to move on; I’m slightly confused as to whether we’re inside the smokehouse, or just outside it. Let’s see where we end up if we go west.
>W
Darkness
The old barn is very dark inside. A small sliver of light peeks through the roof and splinters into small slivers providing little illumination. A flashlight would help.
Wouldn’t be an IF treasure hunt without a light source puzzle.
>E
Smokehouse
An old ivy-covered smokehouse surrounded by a bowling ball garden.
You can go east, west, or south. (or just type EXITS at any time to see which way you can go.)
>IN
You can’t go that way.
I’m going to assume for now that this means we’re already in the smokehouse.
From here, you can go south, east, and west.
>E
Yard
A large yard with a hammock, and a place where a great bonfire once stood.
You can go west or south. A cornfield lies to the north.
Desmond, Sarah’s husband, the CTO at BrightStar, and a key ally in the mission against the Quantum Contingent is here.
You can also see some kindling here.
We’ve found Desmond! But who is Desmond? Do we know him? And for that matter, who is Sarah? What is BrightStar? Who (apart from, presumably, the bad guys) are the Quantum Contingent?
>X HAMMOCK
A hammock! A great place to rest after sleuthing.
>LIE IN HAMMOCK
yourself can’t lie on Hammock.
We were told that the TARDIS communicator might be a useful source of information, so let’s see if it can shed any light on some of those questions from a couple of paragraphs ago.
>ASK TARDIS ABOUT DESMOND
Desmond is Sarah’s husband. Not a spy, but a nice guy who like s’mores.
>ASK TARDIS ABOUT SARAH
Sarah is the penultimate agent. If you couldn’t pick me to be on your team, you’d pick Sarah.
>ASK TARDIS ABOUT BRIGHT STAR
I’m at a total loss. Did you reboot me yet?
My phone autocorrected “BRIGHTSTAR” to “BRIGHT STAR”, so let’s try again:
>ASK TARDIS ABOUT BRIGHTSTAR
hmmm, I am a very capable computer and I still don’t know what you are asking about!
That sounds like a generic “I don’t know what that is” message.
>ASK TARDIS ABOUT QUANTUM CONTINGENT
I’m at a total loss. Did you reboot me yet?
So does that. Are we actually meant to reboot TARDIS in this game, or is that just something it likes to say when it can’t be bothered to tell us about whatever it is we’re asking about?
Let’s see if Desmond himself comes up with anything useful:
>ASK DESMOND ABOUT SARAH
She’s my fiancee, she knows a lot more than me.
The game describes Desmond as “Sarah’s husband”, but Desmond says Sarah is his fiancee. This could be one of these things where the PC just thinks of them as being married because they’ve been together forever, even though they haven’t actually tied the knot yet … or Desmond has lost his memory and regressed to a point in his life before his wedding. Are we likely to be able to determine which of these is true?
>ASK DESMOND ABOUT S’MORES
Desmond looks at you quizzically, “I don’t know much about that.”
The only other fact we’ve been told about Desmond fails to produce anything interesting.
There was also some kindling here:
>TAKE KINDLING
You take the kindling and examine it carefully.
This would burn if you had a small fire to get it started.
I don’t think we’ve seen anything that we could use yet to light the kindling on fire, although there was a promising-looking fireplace inside the house where we might want to light a fire if we had the wherewithal to do so.
>S
Headquarters Entrance
You stand before a massive old home with tall clay-shingled clapboard turrets stretching up into the sky. An expansive old-fashioned porch sprawls across the entire front of the mansion. Wooden porch swings dangle from chains, rocking gently in the sweet-smelling breeze scented by the surrounding old-growth lilac and magnolia bushes.
The house is directly in front of you to the west. There are steps down into a cellar here, a yard to the north, some parking to the southwest, and you can go back up the lane to the east.
And we’ve now come full circle. The only directions left to explore are into the corn (accessible either from the yard or from the lane), or down into the cellar.
>D
Old Cellar
On the side of the house, two old-fashioned cellar doors angle off the ground. After humming a quick tune and smiling for the hidden cameras, the vault-like locks on the doors release. Heavy tempered steel doors swing open to reveal rickety steps leading down to an old brick and moss-lined cellar. You cautiously head down into the cellar
I assume that the tune we had to hum in order to unlock the cellar doors was part of whatever information we were given when we received our invitation to join this global, independent spy agency.
Speaking of which, how does an independent spy agency work? The obvious interpretation is that Quotient is a for-profit enterprise, which means that either they (we?) accept contracts to spy on people’s secrets for money, or else do the spying speculatively and then try to monetise the results. Both of those sound kind of sketchy and likely to end up with Quotient working for less-than-morally-impeccable people at least some of the time. But I’m pretty sure that Quotient are supposed to be the good guys, so I’m going to go for the alternative interpretation, which is that Quotient is like International Rescue, bankrolled indefinitely by some philanthropic billionaire and able to devote all of its spying resources to fulfilling their chosen social mission, which is hopefully something like preserving democracy or combating authoritarian regimes. Or fighting against the Quantum Contingent, whoever they turn out to be?
Where was I? Oh, right, halfway through the description of a cellar:
You return outside by going back up the stairs.
An old set of shelves is here, filled with seashells.
Two old paint cans are here side-by-side like a set of dilapidated bongos.
>X SHELVES
A heavy set of shelves that looks like it might conceal something.
This feels like a half-formed attempt at a tongue twister: “she stacks seashells on the old shelves.”
>X SHELLS
A beautiful selection of old conch shells, lightning whelks, alphabet cones and lion’s paws.
>SEARCH SHELLS
You find nothing of interest.
>TAKE SHELLS
That’s hardly portable.
>X CANS
These look like they’d make drum sounds if you tapped on them.
Entirely sincerely: I do love it when a game tells me to do something like this.
>TAP CANS
You tap the top of the old paint cans with a rhythmic sequence, causing the set of shelves to slide sideways, allowing you to pass down to a secret passage.
>ENTER PASSAGE
You can’t see any such thing.
I guess “pass down to a secret passage” is telling us which way to go, then?
>D
Darkness
It is pitch dark, and you can’t see a thing.
The secret door locks behind you.
Oh no!
It feels like I’ve written a lot in this first proper installment, so I’m going to leave it at that cliffhanger for now. I’ve already played a little further than this, so by all means start making suggestions for things that we should try, but they won’t be the very first things we do in the next segment. But I get the sense that there are a lot of incidental puzzles scattered around this game (it calls itself a treasure hunt, after all), so having as many additional pairs of eyes as possible looking for connections or hints that I might not have picked up on would be very welcome!
Hopefully that’s not too spoilery, but it is required to be able to get back there and it feels like deducing that there’s an opening there isn’t meant to be a puzzle.