Let's Play: The Gostak

So ok, we got 32 words here. But there are some patterns, things we can derive from context, grammar, and syntax.

I won’t break this down for every single passage, but just to give you an idea of how this game works linguistically:

  • “For a jallon, louk JALLON” fits into the usual Inform message - “For a hint, type HINT”. The game uses many interactive fiction conventions and swaps out their vocabulary to indirectly hint at meaning.
  • This is a ‘doshery’. The suffix -ery tends to mean ‘the place for’ – ex: hatchery, brewery, fishery, bakery, eatery. So this is the place for doshes, either where they reside or are created.
    – But the delcot of tondam (‘here’ where you are ‘at’, ergo a location) is also described as “where doshes deave” - if it was a place where doshes are produced, constructed, or caught by something else (translating ‘deave’ as any of these) then wouldn’t it be “where doshes are deaved”? It sounds like the doshes are subjects acting on the world in some way. Doshes play, doshes live, doshes grow, or something like that. So I think it’s a fair assumption that doshes are some living thing - though assuming that they map to any real world living entity would be a mistake.
  • Similarly, it sounds like gitches, duscats, and glauds are living things which (at the very least) can frike, glake, and vorl respectively.
  • One more thing I’ll note is that there are some patterns between the words. The doshery lutt is crenned with glauds, and you want to let the drokes discren them. The prefix ‘dis-’ means ‘to oppose’, ‘to not be/to lack’, or ‘to be apart from’ the word it’s a prefix of. Disallow (to oppose allowing), dishonest (to not be honest), discard (to throw a card away). So the opposite of crenning is discrenning. Does that apply to distunk or even distim as well?

I’ll put a dictionary here too - we can add to and change it as we play (there’s also a dictionary someone made and put in the IFDB page, but let’s start from scratch here). I’ve attempted to add the (guessed) infinitives of verbs and singular versions of nouns - unlike actual English, this game is pretty consistent with grammar.

Dictionary

a - adjective
n - noun
v - verb

  • bewl (n):
  • bewly (a):
  • brangy (n):
  • brolge (n):
  • camling (n):
  • chuld (n):
  • Cobbic (?):
  • cren (v):
  • curple (n):
  • darf (n):
  • deave (v):
  • dedge (n):
  • delcot (n):
  • discren (v):
  • distim (v):
  • distunk (v):
  • doatch (v):
  • dosh (n):
  • doshery (n):
  • drague (n):
  • drokes (n):
  • durch (v):
  • duscat (n):
  • fack (n):
  • fesh (?):
  • feshary (n):
  • fetticle (n):
  • frike (v):
  • geln (n):
  • gharmy (a?):
  • gheliper (n):
  • gitch (n):
  • glake (v):
  • glaud (n):
  • gomb (v):
  • gomway (n):
  • gope (a):
  • gostak (n):
  • halpock (n):
  • heamy (a):
  • hoff (?):
  • hoggam (n):
  • interofgan (n):
  • jallon (n):
  • jenth (?):
  • jihoff (?):
  • kiloff (?):
  • kirf (?):
  • koshle (n):
  • leil (v):
  • loff (a?):
  • louk (v):
  • lutt (n):
  • milm (v):
  • mislouk (n):
  • mosteg (n):
  • murr (?):
  • naft (n):
  • oops (v):
  • osta (?):
  • pank (n):
  • pashual (n):
  • pell (v):
  • pellage (n):
  • plazzy (?):
  • pob (v):
  • poltive (a?):
  • potchner (n):
  • rask (v):
  • raskable (a);
  • reb (v):
  • regomb (v):
  • relouk (n):
  • rike (v):
  • roggler (?):
  • rorm (?):
  • samilen (n):
  • sloagy (?):
  • tavidlouker (n):
  • tendo (n):
  • tondam (n):
  • tophth (v):
  • tophthed (a):
  • tunder (n?):
  • tunk (v):
  • tunkage (n):
  • ungope (v):
  • unheamy (a):
  • vorl (v):
  • warb (n):
  • zank (v):
  • zoncha (v):

So, we’re in the Delcot. Crenned in the loff lutt are five glauds. What do we do next? Can we guess at what these words mean? What on earth do we attempt to type into this parser?

>

6 Likes