Last time I wrote about Polynesian Adventure, an entry into the Falsoft contest for Tandy CoCo adventure games. It was written by an older couple, whereas today’s selection was written by a 15-year old. The REM statements in the code mention this was written in “early 1982” so we have an idea of the lag on this one (the game was written before the contest was announced).

Justin Paola, a 15-year-old high school student living in Berkeley, Calif., is a frequent caller of his local computer bulletin board systems with his 64K, 2 disk Color Computer bulletin board system. His interests include computer graphics, movie special effects, and adventure games.

I’m assuming the blurbs are honest (unlike the Captain 80 Book which made biographical details up) as this was part of a running magazine as opposed to a one-shot book.

This game has some similarity with the previous game (being set on an island) but also strong contrast (being much more dangerous). Our goal is to land on a jungle island and find a ruby chalice deep underground, avoiding “head hunters” along the way. It’s like if Invincible Island didn’t have as many biomes (and was smaller and easier to solve).

The plane that we land on can be used for escape with the chalice (just type FLY here) although there’s a completely different method of escape available as well. I don’t know why. Playing a weird prank on our pilot?

You start, helpfully, with some supplies. The gun is useless, but not for the typical reason in adventure games (that it is meant as a red herring and violence isn’t the answer). Rather, sometimes at random you’ll get attacked by a WILD CAT and need to SHOOT CAT, but the game doesn’t bother to check if the gun is in your inventory when you do this.

I suppose finger pistols were sufficient.

The SNAKE BITE KIT is for moments where you might randomly get bitten by a snake, although I’ve gone through an entire trip without the bite happening (it’s rarer than the cat, at least). The MAGNIFYING GLASS as far as I can tell is 100% useless, and the MATCHES are used for lighting a torch which happens to be just west of here.

Weird the torch is out on the island, not in your supplies. For the cloth: THE CLOTH IS VERY INTERESTING – YOU BETTER KEEP IT.

The map is wide open from here.

There isn’t much in the way of empty space: it’s one object or interesting thing per room. Just nearby you can scoop up a GOLD NUGGET, JADE NECKLACE, COIL OF ROPE…

…TRANSLATION BOOK, KIWI FRUIT, a WATER JUG (as long as you have the torch lit, it is in a dark part of the jungle) and a SPEAR WITH STRANGE LETTERING.

For the spear, if you are carrying the translation book you can read the spear.

Remember, our only goal is to get the ruby chalice. That might make the jade necklace and gold nugget seem puzzling — there’s not even a score — but one room as “head hunters” and they demand a treasure if you wander in.

The bizarre thing is this isn’t a real obstacle — the map is wide open and you just can avoid this room. Essentially, the game includes a method of preventing death as long as you are trying to get as far as possible without reloading, but via the normal practice of playing adventures there’s no reason someone wouldn’t just mark the map square and never go to the spot again.

To the far north there’s an AIR CYLINDER and a RAFT; holding both lets you INFLATE RAFT (we’ll come back to that). There’s also a ROCK SLAB which “LOOKS LIKE IT HAS SLID OPEN AND CLOSED MANY TIMES” but is too heavy to move.

Solving this took a moment of cross-genre thinking. Maybe we’re in a fantasy game, or at least one where there’s much higher technology than it appears? Using the word XYKO from the spear opens up a cave.

This is the only other section of the game.

Just to the south of the entrance are some hieroglyphics; with the translation book in hand you can read that you ought to be carrying that ancient cloth from earlier before going east of the vipers.

The “written recently” aspect is interesting and puts more credence into the idea that the voice recognition was high tech rather than “magic”.

The aforementioned vipers are hanging out at a pit with a conveniently placed hook.

You can TIE ROPE in order to snag the hook, the SWING ROPE to go across.

There’s a boring corridor next, at least boring if you are holding the ancient cloth. If you aren’t, then you die.

And finally … the chalice! No more tricks, you can just take it and go.

You can then make a beeline back to the plane and win.

Alternately, for reasons I don’t understand, you can inflate the raft, use it on the river at the start, and float out to the ocean.

It’s clear the author (Justin Paola) was thinking of this more as “simulate a region using my computer” rather than a tightly threaded narrative. (A good comparison is Johnson’s Castle Dracula which was designed as a series of scenes fishing for particular reactions from the player.) The editors of Rainbow Magazine had enough fun that they gave it a co-award as runner-up (in the non-graphical category) with a game called Lighthouse Adventure we will play sometime in the future.

There’s a tree you can climb purely for the scenery.

If you’re thinking of your text adventure as world-simulation more than a series of scenes, it makes more sense to have gratuitous mechanics like the head hunters and the raft. (And technically also the water jug — if you’re fast enough you don’t need to bother, but the game comes with a thirst timer.) A scene-minded author like Peter Kirsch would never allow loose ends like that.

From the Falsoft book, an image printed with the source code.

Oddly enough, this may have manifested in Mr. Paola’s later career. After graduating high school, he went to Berkeley (Electrical Engineering, Computer Science) and then to the University of Arizona (remote sensing). He then worked on imaging-related projects like LANDSAT and other geographically linked technologies.

I developed multiprocessor image processing algorithms in a UNIX environment. These included terrain data algorithms such as slope, shadowing and incidence from elevation, and land-use classification from multispectral and SAR imagery. Responsible for terrain delimitation overlay production for large aerial regions in support of DARPA contract efforts.

Thus, his game reflects “simulate a geographic area” more than “create a story”. “Authors whose text adventures reflected on their later careers” might be a bit too niche, but we can also toss the recent Crypt of Medea in there with Arthur Britto’s tricky copy protection and maybe … Strange Adventure and the author going into astronomy? I’m drawing blanks here.

Coming up: Ringen returns.