Sometimes when Im doing research on something else, I run across an interesting old game I didnt know existed. I was trying to track down an apparently unreleased RPG called
Legacy of the Necromancer a few months ago, and in the process I ran across Lee Chapels 1989 shareware text adventure trilogy by the same name. So this week, were going to tackle the first game in the series --
The Adventurers Museum, a.k.a.
Legacy of the Necromancer: Part I. Mr. Chapel has apparently released the series as freeware in recent years; it can be downloaded for the IBM PC here and elsewhere.
The parser is clearly influenced by the Infocom Z-machine, though it appears to be independently designed and coded, and the games world is almost-but-not-quite the
ZORK universe. All three chapters of the trilogy were released, and this is an interesting homage to the classic Infocom trilogy. As always, and especially for
ZORK fans, I encourage interested readers to try
The Adventurers Museum out before proceeding into the details below; its not an easy game, so you may want to refer to the CASA Solution Archive on occasion. And now, to borrow the games alternate terminology, much of what lies ahead will shortly be...
***** SPOILED BY A GWORL! *****My observations about this game are not going to be structured very cleanly -- the map is quite open, with most of the puzzles lying at one dead end or another, and theres not much of a plot. So the following is generally chronological, but not entirely.
I dont know if its just the way I approach these things -- trying to avoid the most obvious path -- but I discovered almost immediately that we can simply ignore the Adventurers Museum standing right in front of us at the start of the game. We can choose to travel west down the road to the Hawksheart Mountains, or east to Grimwood Forest and Dwarrowdelf, ending the game in a couple of moves, with 0 points. But it is worth exploring the environs to the south, to collect a gold ring, though we wont get much farther without a light source.
The parser is not, as far as I can tell, the actual Infocom Z-machine, but it follows that venerable model in many ways. It supports the
BRIEF and
VERBOSE commands, for example. And if we try to carry more than six items, we tend to fumble and drop a couple of them. There is, however, no
DIAGNOSE verb, and no
ASK or
TALK commands either, so character interaction is necessarily limited.
It soon becomes clear that
The Adventurers Museum may be a little
too directly inspired by Infocom -- as we enter the cave, we are informed that
Its pitch dark here. If youre not careful you may fill in a pit or be eaten by a gworl. In many ways, this game is a bit of interactive
ZORK fan-fiction, though thats not necessarily a bad thing. Dying invokes Tamarya, the Goddess of Death, who sends us away to Vhea, realm of the dead; if we havent yet met the museums curator, the game is over.
To my surprise, theres no puzzle-solving required to get into the museum, we can just
OPEN DOOR. The museums curator directs us to follow him -- we can
FOLLOW CURATOR to do so or just go
W. Here we find a trophy case that once held a collection of famous treasures, a nod to
ZORK, but, we are informed, they have all been stolen and secreted in the nearby cave by a mischievous imp. The curator solicits our help, and gives us a brass lantern and a loaf of bread to aid us on the journey; he will also resurrect us should we die at some point, though we lose points in the process, and it takes so much effort to find and recover our belongings that its usually more efficient just to
RESTORE.
In the museums east wing, a sign on the staircase reads
Closed for renovations, and the curator prevents us from going upstairs, for the moment at least. We cant open his office door to the north, or sneak in while the curator goes in and out. So I guess were off to explore the cave and recover the 20 treasures, now that we have a lantern.
The map tries to give us a sense of vast outdoor space, but our movements are actually constrained pretty tightly. The dead end where the river spills out cannot be entered, as
You would drown before you ever got through the opening.The parser isnt always as smart as it wants to be, either. Beside the pond, we cant take the phosphorescent moss illuminating the room. We can see some fish in the pond, according to the room description, but
GET FISH yields only
You see no fish here. But if we
ENTER POND, we frighten away the fish and thoroughly soak our belongings, disabling the lantern but not damaging the bread (or ruining the matchbook, later on.) Theres a bug here -- damaging the lantern doesnt actually removing our source of visible light, but even though we can see our way around just fine with the broken lamp, we can still get eaten by a passing gworl. So its best to leave the lamp on shore before we swim down and north through an underwater tunnel to find a... hmmmm... crystal trident. Not all of the treasures will have direct
ZORKian antecedents, but were never far from a reference to the Great Underground Empire.
To the north is another pond, leading to a garden area where we can pick some flowers. We can acquire an orb with swirling clouds of white light inside, similar to orbs in the ZORK games. The temple of Tamarya the Goddess of Death is here, along with some jewelry that should be in a museum. But we cant take it immediately, as
You must please the goddess first; putting the picked (therefore dying) flowers on the altar allows us to obtain the jewelry.
The cave system is tricky to map, with lots of overlapping regions, so the usual grid-based approach doesnt work well. But its a layered design, and rooms do ultimately logically connect to each other. The puzzles seem fairly simple in the early going, but become more difficult later on. Many are guardian puzzles -- for example, a snake at the bottom of an oak tree in the garden wont let us climb the tree.
An ivory dagger in the cemetery has the initials
L.H. on it, but I never figured out what that was meant to indicate.
The South end of the bridge that spans the cave near the entrance is a toll bridge; theres no toll due on the way south, but we cant get back without paying the toll taker, a troll. We also cant control what we offer -- the
PAY TROLL command makes an assumption that we may not always agree with, e.g.
(with the orb). We can try to
KILL TROLL WITH DAGGER, but
The trolls skin is like rock and he easily fends [sic]
your blows. We can give the bread to the troll, he happily eats it but it doesnt cover the toll.
The matchbox at the foot of a flight of stairs may come in handy later. In the Statue Room, a statue of a naked man carrying a bow and arrow points to the south exit; while it doesnt seem to be a trap when going
SOUTH, it is a fatal hazard on returning
NORTH; we can
TURN STATUE to face either the eastern or southern exit, but we cant point it harmlessly at the blank wall to the west, so remembering what state we left it in is important. We can navigate around it, in either case, so theres really no need to mess with it; we can just treat the dangerous path as a one-way passage.
The Smithy contains an anvil, a firepit, and an old leather saddle. There are some bars of silver buried in the ashes of the firepit;
EXAMINE ASH yields half a dozen of them, from the mines in the Iron Mountains.
Some hay is in the stable to the east of the Smithy, which is handy for feeding the winged horse in the open area to the southwest. With the hay and saddle in hand, the horse takes us to another area, where we can pick up a wooden bucket near a ruined well. We can also ride the horse at ground level into some areas, but not all, so we will eventually need to dismount.
This games Machine Room has orange, red and blue buttons, and a
candle found in a small cave is actually a stick of TNT upon closer examination. We can push the buttons in the Machine Room, they glow but any other impact is unclear.
RPG-style, we have some resource constraints to worry about. We start getting thirsty at 99 moves, and hungry at around 200 moves. We also have limited air underwater, and the lantern does run out or power eventually.
The Endless Stairway off of the Paint Room seems to be truly infinite, but it obviously tracks the number of moves weve made -- to return to the top, we have to go back
UP as many times as weve gone
DOWN. We can only actually reach the Foot of Endless Stair location via another route.
The mischievous Imp may appear and steal a treasure (or any other item that we have taken from its original location and dropped elsewhere), putting it back where it was originally found or randomly leaving it in a nearby room. This can be prevented, however.
The Witchs Cave has an old crone stirring
a pot of a bubbling brew. Theres no
TALK or
ASK verb here, though, so we cant really interact with her;
YELL is available but not interesting.
The Dead End off of the Dragons Lair contains a crate and an invoice, directed to the Witchs Cave, for
One live basilisk, 20 gp, plus Kings Tax, 2 gp. The Dragon guards a painting.
The Mirror Room is a little more elaborate than the one in
ZORK I. Light bounces around mirrors in an apparatus then vanishes into a hole in the floor, apparently fueling something down there with "a dimly flickering red glow." Theres a silver key here, which unlocks the door to the north of the Large Cavern. But opening the door causes the boulder above to fall, squashing us flat. Hmmmm. We can visit the boulder in the Overview room up above, and try to blow it up with the "candle," but after doing so we cant get back that way, as the passage is blocked by rubble. As it turns out, we can do this almost anywhere, closing off nearby pathways. And doing so in the Overview doesnt actually blow up the boulder; its still completely intact and lethal as seen from below, so thats not the right thing to do.
If we bring the crate to the witch, she opens it and puts the basilisk into her stew. Hmmm. If we try to
OPEN CRATE ourselves, it proves fatal, due to the basilisk, but we can see that its wearing a gold coronet before we die. We cant go south from the Witchs Cave yet, as theres a magic barrier in the way.
We can
WASH FLUTE WITH WATER to remove the bat guano from the platinum flute found in a well-used bat habitat.
We can try to
KILL SNAKE WITH DAGGER; it can be done, but its not easy. I tried unsuccessfully to determine whether our chances improve with more experience; we cant kill it with the TNT candle either. But in the Middle of the Garden it does NOT block the path as it does elsewhere. All it does is prevent us from climbing the tree.
We can
CLIMB VINES from the Edge of Cliff to reach the South Garden, and vice-versa, avoiding the toll bridge altogether if we are careful about not soaking the lantern.
If we drop the lit candle into the Mirror Rooms hole in the floor, a muffled explosion sounds and the mirrors shatter. We cant open the crate with the TNT.
We cant
KILL DRAGON WITH DAGGER either. Its only use seems to be in dispatching the snake, but its not all that useful there either.
Some of the puzzles are obtuse, and some possible scenarios arent specifically handled. The crystal trident apparently
shimmers with all the colors of the rainbow, making me think it might be useful in mirror room, but it apparently is not.
We cant
ASK CURATOR ABOUT anything, but can
SHOW [treasure] TO CURATOR to learn some history about each item. This produced no useful clues on the items I tried, with the exception of the gold ring, which
Makes its wearer invisible to demons. This means we can wear it to avoid the imps, er, impishness. And also means the game doesnt have to get too complicated in handling invisibility scenarios, since it only affects demons. The curator provides no useful hints about the silver key.
In the Large Cavern, where the boulder tends to fall on us if we try to open the door, closer examination reveals that theres a thin wire connecting the door knob to the boulder! But cutting the wire with the dagger still causes it to fall and squash us. I had to consult the walkthrough to learn that this event is randomized -- with luck (also known as
SAVE and
RESTORE) it rolls down, lands inches away and does NOT bounce onto the player.
Beyond the door is a small cave with an ermine robe on the floor. Its a treasure. So is the jeweled sword now found at the Overview where the boulder used to be.
Having breached the walkthrough, I used it to learn that we can
EXAMINE FLOWERS and
SMELL LOTUS in the Flower Garden, which puts us to sleep briefly. Hmmmm. This suggests (correctly) that we can use it to put the bridge troll to sleep as well, and take the axe from his nearby Troll Hut. Shown this item, the curator tells us that King Thorins
"ghost will reward anyone who returns it to its rightful owner."I tried using the jeweled sword to kill the giant snake; success is still random, but it seems to be more straightforward than with the dagger. We can now climb the tree and find an emerald in a birds nest. (We can also play the platinum flute to put the snake to sleep, according to the walkthrough.)
We can
HIT THE DRAGON WITH THE SWORD, which doesnt injure or kill him but does annoy him; he follows us, eventually losing interest away from the Dragons Lair if weve navigated well enough to keep out of his way. We have to avoid running into him again with the painting in hand, and we cant take the painting out via the water route, as it will get damaged, so to escape with this treasure we need to put the troll to sleep so we can cross his bridge.
Consulting the walkthrough again, as I was running out of
puzzles ideas, I found that I had completely missed a passage to the north out of the Dead End near the Dragons Lair. Theres a cyclops skull here, with a ruby in its eye socket, projecting a red beam blocking further passage. I tried to block the beam with various items, to no avail.
The walkthrough did help me figure out what to do in the Mirror Room. If we
OPEN CRATE there (since my attempts to
COVER EYES or
CLOSE EYES were unsuccessful), the basilisk jumps out, kills itself with its own reflection, and shatters the mirrors in the process. How these creatures ever manage to reproduce remains a mystery, but this action now leaves the gold coronet behind,
and apparently turns the cyclops skull into dust? Ah, interrupting the beam does that; this might be the same result I got (but could not assess) from dropping the TNT down the hole, but we need the explosives for another purpose, so this works out better.
Beyond the cyclops skull is a dwarven area, with a Treasury (containing a diamond) and a tomb.
EXAMINE PICTURE in the Tomb depicts the deeds of King Thorin, and his death at the hands of a troll, with his axe being stolen (this seems an odd element to depict in a heroic painting, but...) King Thorins body is in a coffin here;
OPEN COFFIN summons his ghost, and
PUT AXE IN COFFIN gives us the Kings permission to take the huge diamond from the Treasury.
I had 11 treasures at this point, and 156 points scored with a couple of practically useful treasures not put in the case. I was still missing quite a few treasures, it seems. So with a renewed sense of purpose, and the walkthrough in hand, I set out to find the remaining 9 items.
GET WATER doesnt work, but
FILL BUCKET WITH WATER does. We can
THROW WATER AT WITCH to melt her, leaving her hat and broomstick behind. But her invisible barrier persists. Hmmmm. The walkthrough indicates that we have quite a bit more to do here -- we must
WAVE BROOMSTICK to clear the barrier, then explore the Storage Room (and pay attention to its
only obvious exit clue) and open the coffin, grab the silver bell, and navigate to obtain a sapphire bracelet. A flask in the witchs Spellroom contains a strength potion, though I never found a reason to use it. The Purple Room has a sign reading
The postman always rings twice, and ringing the bell twice opens a secret passage, which has nothing to do with the postman and is not much of a puzzle, really.
A note in the Pentacle Room reads, "
EDOC B ROB." Entering the pentacle is not wise, it transports us to the Demon Realm where we are enslaved and the game is over. Saying the magic word written conveniently on the ceiling (
ZOPHIA) summons a demon, who finding us invisible to demons, leaves behind a tapestry, but would presumably do something more dire if we were not wearing the gold ring.
At this point, I had 16 treasures stored in the case. Just a few more to find.
I definitely needed the walkthrough to learn that we can drop the TNT candle down a hole in the Frog Room to blast a pathway to another area to the south, the Cul-de-Sac, containing a sack, naturally, with some gems in it.
The note in the Pentacle Room turns out to be a cryptic clue about the machine room -- it reads
BOR B CODE in reverse. We need to
PUSH BLUE, PUSH ORANGE, PUSH RED to reveal another secret room containing a chest. The chest unlocks with the same silver key used earlier.
Now we have collected all 20 treasures -- and theres no need for a final
SCORE, because as soon as we put the last one in the case the curator appears and hands us a map to
Legacy of The Necromancer: Part II,
The Palace of the Necromancer:
The Adventurers Museum is not a bad game at all -- its a quality effort, very Infocom-like with a solid parser and good prose. Theres not much of a plot, just arbitrary puzzles and treasure hunting, but the same could be said of its obvious inspiration, the
ZORK trilogy. Its fairly difficult, too; without the walkthrough, I would have been stuck at several critical junctures.
Two more chapters await, but it will be a while before I get to the rest of the trilogy.
This is a special Collectors Edition release full of exclusive extras you won’t find in the standard version: Wonderful wallpapers, bonus gameplay and exclusive Book of Mysteries.