Episode A3
We returned to the Twopit Room with water in the bottle, in order to water the plant we met last time. A little water caused the plant to grow into a beanstalk and demand even more. We trekked all the way back out of the cave (meanwhile depositing a treasure in the building for the first time) to refill the bottle at the stream. Watering the plant a second time caused it to grow even taller, up to the hole above the pit. But our suspicion was not confirmed: this is apparently not the same window on pit where we saw the shadowy figure.
The new path led us to a new place, the Giant Room, where there is a nest of golden eggs and a mysterious inscription: FEE FIE FOE FOO. The way north was blocked by a massive, rusty, iron door that could not be opened—our idea was that we needed the giant to come and open it for us. Taking the golden eggs did not summon the giant, as we had feared. The FEE FIE FOE FOO magic word seems like it teleports the golden eggs out of our inventory and back to the Giant Room—what use is that?
On passing through the Y2 room, we experienced something new: a hollow voice saying “PLUGH”. This is a magic word that warps us between Y2 and the building outside. In a side chamber of the Hall of the Mountain King we found some rare coins, which were immediately stolen by the pirate.
From the west end of a long hall, we stumbled into a maze of twisty little passages, all different. This not being our first IF rodeo, we started dropping items to mark rooms we’d been to. Random exploration found us in a dead end with a vending machine that promises fresh batteries in exchange for coins—if only we hadn’t lost the coins to the pirate. There are a lot of rooms in the maze, more than we had items for. But wait a minute—these rooms are not as identical as they seemed at first! The room descriptions vary: “maze of twisting little passages”, “maze of little twisting passages”, “twisty little maze of passages”, etc. We continued mapping things out, but finished the episode still lost in the maze.
New personal best: 73/350 points, novice class adventurer.
- a3.txt game transcript
Topics mentioned:
- Colossal Cave Adventure
- Zork
- NetHack
- Schoolhouse Rock!
- “Conjunction Junction”
- speedrunning
- gravity
- Occam’s razor
- Interactive Fiction Database
- biohacking
- King’s Quest
- Jack and the Beanstalk
- Mickey and the Beanstalk
- Mixed-Up Mother Goose
- Jack Be Nimble
- Trollhunter
- plugh
- C-3PO
- How to Solve It
- “Mr. Brightside”