Cracking the Serenia code: Day 1

Already hitting the sauce.

What could cause this mad blogger to hit this stuff so hard?

Well, lots of stuff could do that. But what happened this time? Only one way to find out:

Disclaimer: Those who care not about dorky things like adventure games are encouraged to read this damn thing anyway. If you get bored, don’t worry. It just means you’re normal. Some may wonder, “Why are you doing this to me?” This is explained here, on my last post: (click pic for link)

 

Sure is empty 'round here. None of these buildings are dubbed interesting by the narrator. LAME.

After starting, I see what looks like the desolate main street of some town. “Serenia,” the game calls it.

North is a good direction, so I type N, and see a giant rattlesnake sitting next to a rock.

This snake is a jerk.

My first instinct is KILL SNAKE, although I know it won’t work and is highly likely to lead to my demise. To my surprise, I get a WITH WHAT? as a response in place of my mangled death. So, I type INVENTORY. Hey, I’ve got a pocket knife. Okay, let’s slice this bastard up. USE KNIFE.

Ack. My knife is apparently not big enough to kill giant, mutant rattle snake. The snake blocks my path to the north, and I apparently have not the resources nor the mental faculties to saddle around it somehow. So here’s my first puzzle. I must eliminate snake.

There’s a rock next to the snake. The only time I’ve ever killed a snake, I did it by accident with a bicycle. That was a whacking death. A rock can cause a whacking death. So, I try to GET ROCK. Apparently, I am a weakling, because the rock is deemed MUCH TOO BIG.

So my knife is too small, and the rock is too big. Like Goldie Locks, I’ll just have to find something that’s just right.

Going east leads me to a screen with an orange blob and assorted rocks, cactus, sand, and sun. I try GET ROCK, to discover that there is a scorpion behind this one. It kills me.

Every rock in Serenia comes complete with one scorpion.

OK, re-incarnate. I’m back in the same place. This time, I try LOOK ROCK. I get an extreme close-up of the rock, and I can see the bastard scorpion behind it. My attempt to KILL SCORPION is thwarted by the humanitarian Williams’ programming — they deem it “cruel.”
But it’s revenge … Oh, well. A voyage further east reveals another orange rock, which apparently has a scorpion behind it too, because that rock killed me as well as the last one did.

This goes on for a while. Considering that I’ve seen nary a wizard, nor princess, and am in a desert full of deadly rocks, I begin to think that the Kracker Jack people who dubbed themselves responsible for this “1987″ release think this is funny. Maybe, they put an endless desert loop in place of the game because their sense of humor is awful. So, I bring up the Internet — not the Internet Fairy, mind you, just the Internet, to see if this is how the game is supposed to behave.

Could these evil hackers be taking me for a ride? Revenge from the '80s ...

After all, there’s no medieval crap around, and every goddam rock I pick up turns out to be deadly. I’m pretty sure I’ve got to bludgeon this sunnuvabitch snake, but maybe that’s just what I’m supposed to think.

So, I take a break and find an online review, which calls this game a horrible experience, citing, specifically, the mundane nature of the first puzzle — the snake. The reviewer reassures me that one of these fucking orange blob rocks will have no scorpion behind it. I’m not sure I believe him. But OK, I’ll give it a shot. I’m pretty sure my version of the game isn’t some Kracker Jack practical joke, so I go wandering all over the damn desert, typing LOOK ROCK and seeing evil little red scorpions behind each one.
Finally, I found a rock that, when I LOOK it, says that YOU SEE NOTHING SPECIAL (a phrase I will grow to loathe — at this moment, though — wonderful).

In the process, I discover that, while I left town by going north, getting back to town involves going east. This is confusing, but who cares? I’m about to slaughter a snake with a rock.

After painfully finding my way back to the snake, I type USE ROCK (knowing from my past two Sierra experiences that is the way one goes about killing things with other things while playing hi-res adventures).

The snake is vanquished, falling into what looks like a very peaceful slumber of a death.
After determining that I may not use my knife to remove the rattle for use in some future, bizzare, highly illogical puzzle, I triumphantly go NORTH.

It turns out that I am thirsty, and I remember having a flask full of water, so, naturally, I DRINK WATER, and am told that I am MUCH BETTER. While wandering around the desert, I find a stick, locket, a cracker stashed in a hole in a cactus(?), and two notes with strange marks on them (I dislike them immensely. They will probably be important).

More $^&@#$ snakes ...

I find any number of blue snakes passing by, and the only way to get rid of them is to bonk them on the head with my newfound stick and drive them away. I bump into one snake trapped under a rock. I can rescue him, or smash him with a stick.

I try the former first, then the latter. It seems the latter is more useful — he’s a rather nice snake, unlike the giant mutant snake from a few screens earlier. He thanks me, and tells me that the secret word is “hiss.” I type HISS, and become a snake. I can’t find any more use for my reptilian state than I can for the cryptic notes I’ve found, so I just go north

The locket has the word LUCY written in it. It seems like I should say LUCY. I do. My reward? EVERYTHING YOU ARE CARRYING DISAPPEARS. Damn. After wandering around to see whether my zen-like state of posessing nothing will help me in some way, I encouter a snake. Since I no longer have my whacking stick, I cannot drive it away. It slays me.

Re-load. I’ve got a final coming up and this is how I’m spending my time. Crpies, the older I get, the dweebier I become. When I’m 60, I’ll have a pocket protector. Mckee, if you’re reading this, this is all an elaborate hoax. I’m studying dilligently for your class. I am not sidetracked by a 1980 adventure game that hates me. This is written by a different Angelo Lanham. I know the Angelo Lanham in your class, though, and he is the Cat’s pyjamas. Give him an A, even if he fails the midterm.

Back to that snake’s magic word (by the by, he identified himself as a King Snake before he slithered off) — Why would I want to turn into a snake? Maybe, to get into small places your average Interactive Fiction narrator cannot fit into. I found one of the notes in a small hole, so I backtrack there. HISS. I’m a snake! Now, GO HOLE.

Shiite. I’ve been notified that I don’t fit. But there was a snake that came out of that hole. If I’m a snake, why can’t I fit? Am I an obese snake?

Oh well. I’m not going to easily GO HOLE. Time for more wandering. After aimlessly meandering in a generally northern diretion, I encounter a chasm, on the other side of which is the smallest brown cottage ever invented. Next to the cottage is a tree.

The chasm. Get used to it.

After bouncing around a dithered-yellow desert for what may have been 15 minutes or a half hour, this house looks wonderful. But the chasm, unfortunately, goes WAY down.
Attempts to climb down it are met with death. It is too wide to jump, and even in this location, LUCY just takes away all your stuff. Attempts to climb down the chasm as a snake after HISSing are no more successful than attempts made when you (presumably) are a human.

The preferred brand of Angelo Whiskey, perfect for curing depression, for celebrating, when you've had a good day, when you've had a bad day, and kicking of major holidays, like groundhog day.

This is so like life, isn’t it? I like to call these sort of logjams “Time for Whiskey.” So, after having mixed a Manhattan, I continue bouncing around the desert, to no avail. The Manhattan didn’t make the buildings on Main St. any more useful, nor did it help my navigational skills. So I mixed another. And another.

My inventory currently includes a rock, an empty flask, a stick, two notes, another rock, a cracker, a locket, a loaf of bread, and, strangely, a blanket.

At the time of this writing, I have no idea what to do. The rocks already served their purpose — respectively, they killed and rescued snakes. The flask gave me water, is now empty, and seems like it’s probably useless. The stick is my snake whacker. Unless I’m supposed to do something with the endless onslaught of blue snakes besides hit them and send them away, this is my method of snake dealing. My pocket knife seems useless. Both notes are filled with gibberish.

The cracker’s relevance is as much a mystery as is the fact that I found it in a fucking cactus. The locket reveals to me the world LUCY, which only robs me of all these wonderfully useful items I have accumulated. The loaf of bread, I found, may be consumed (and so may the cracker, for that matter), but it seems prudent to hang on to it(and the cracker, as well). I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the blanket.

I am horribly stuck. There is nothing to do here but wander around a strangely rendered desert full of identical scenery. It seems like the next step is to get to that wretched brown cottage. So how in hell am I supposed to cross the chasm?

Further, being a snake seems to help nothing. What’s a weird person like me to do? Can’t visit the Internet fairy. I promised not to. Do you have any solutions? Let me know, or I’m likely to go insane.

Honestly. I’ve tried everything.

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Tags: adventure game, chasm, Geek, IF, Interactive Fiction, the hell with this, Wizard and the Princess