(Continued from my previous posts.)

I swear I’m not trying to break my blog posts up into convenient chunks this way but … I missed another section of the map. Look, the streets are very bland and it is easy to think you’ve tested an exit when you haven’t. Two cases in point:

East of the room facing the bank is the section I hadn’t gotten to yet; not an enormous chunk, but I did find one amusing encounter, one puzzle that I solved, and one baffling bit of geography.

The baffling geography first: upon going east from the bank area you see a court house. “YOU ARE FACING EAST” and “IN THE DISTANCE YOU CAN SEE THE COUNTY COURT HOUSE.”

Head north and you’ll get the message “YOU ARE JUST PAST BY THE COURT HOUSE.” The same will happen going east from there. In neither case does it seem to be possible to go into the court house. GO HOUSE gets the response “WHY DON’T YOU TRY A DIRECTION?” and GO COURT gets the response “YOU CAN’T GET TO IT FROM HERE”. Diagonal directions (NE/NW/SE/SW) don’t work and don’t seem to be in the game. I have no idea what’s going on here.

What I did figure out is the museum just past the court house, with a *ruby*.

The ruby is protected by a laser (and you’ll get tossed in what I assume is softlock-jail if you go for it). Moving on just a little bit farther is the electrical plant I only saw the backside of before.

Unfortunately what comes next is a game of guess-the-phrase. PULL LEVER, FLIP SWITCH, TURN OFF, YANK LEVER, PUSH DOWN, TOUCH POWER, POWER DOWN, and many more don’t work; the game is hunting for CUT POWER.

ALMOST ALL THE POWER THROUGHOUT THE VILLAGE HAS BEEN SHUT OFF!

By doing this you can grab the ruby safely and stash it with the rest of the treasures in the truck.

One last encounter is the hospital, which I’m pretty sure is just intended to be a dead end, but I can’t take anything for granted.

Maybe we can segue from here into playing The Institute.

The other new area I explored was the sewers, which was, as I feared, a maze, but not a large or terrible one. While I had tried GO DOWN, ENTER GUTTER, PRY GUTTER, FEEL GUTTER, CLIMB DOWN, and numerous other variations, it was a while before I tried GO GUTTER. (In my defense, GO for most things has the game encourage you to try a direction instead. The reason I tried GO out is that message from the court house earlier being special.)

The maze, as I already indicated, is thankfully not terrible, although I did need to drop items to be certain of my map. If you go in a direction and “loop” you need to LOOK in order to see what’s there; it’s almost as if the engine doesn’t want to support the classic Crowther/Woods maze style.

The useful items (besides the “ladder above) are a “ring” and a “wallet” full of credit cards.

There’s also a one way path to the lake which has a *raft* and a rope. Trying to go in any direction says something about needing a water vehicle, which is confusing because the raft is right there. I am 99% certain this area is a matter of guessing the right phrase but I haven’t guessed yet.

Everyone seems to struggle with syntax for launching water craft, including Sierra.

I’ve used all three of the sewer items. First, straightforwardly, the ladder lets you grab the chandelier.

Despite the “knocking down” message you don’t have to worry about breaking it.

The ring is described as rusted. Keeping the blacksmith’s note in mind, I went over there and tried to drop the ring and trade the ring and converse with the proprietor and so forth but nothing happened. Using guess the phrase again, I needed to CLEAN RING, which turns it into a valuable *ring*.

Finally there’s the wallet. I knew the gas station had a price on it, and I found from experimenting with phrases again I could FILL CAN while there, whereupon the owner of the gas station demands that you pay before any more progress is made. BUY GAS then gets the prompt “with what” and WITH WALLET didn’t work, leading to a moment of stunned confusion. The game wants WITH CARD, even though that’s not given as the primary noun in the object.

I’m still only just over a third of the way on the score.

Even given all the treasures I haven’t scooped yet (the *Picasso*, the *raft*, the *boat*, the *Corvette*, the *stereo*) I feel like I’m missing quite a bit. Maybe the mansion and Mr. Smith’s house are loaded, but none of the logical commands I can come up with a crowbar and/or brick are doing anything.

It’s much easier to grind on this sort of game when you know it is playing fair, but with the guess-the-phrase aspect I could easily have done the right command but in the wrong way hours ago. I’ll still stick with it a little longer before breaking open the walkthrough. Surely there’s a way to use the raft, right?