Long, detailed walkthrough for J. Doug McDonald's World (version 1.07), by Volker Blasius. Revision 1, 10mar96. Version 1.00 of World was published in 1987; this walkthrough was written in late '95/early '96. Nobody seems to have bothered during all that time, or the game proved too difficult: I know of only two people besides myself who solved it, and it took me about six years and some help from said two. :-) World was written in C and is pretty much Infocom-style, but one thing is different: in certain situations you must use adverbs to accomplish what you want - this walkthrough will tell you when and how. Typing "help" will get you a brief description of the game and its commands; the hint about the adverbs is hidden in the sentence, "If you do some things carefully, you may live longer." Something like (5/40) in the text below means that the action described will give you another 5 points for a new total of 40. Enough, let's go! --- You are a member of a landing party that is to explore a hitherto unknown planet. Your mothership is in orbit 850 kilometers above you, and it did a photographic survey of the planet, but an odd mirage effect prevented it from getting clear pictures of a large valley near your landing site. You volunteered to explore that valley alone, and you were accepted - quite an honor for a latrine orderly! First examine your equipment, it will give you some hints on what it is used for and what you are expected to do: explore as much you can, collect specimens and artifacts, and photograph everything that seems interesting. Starting out you soon discover from the pass leading to the mysterious valley that it is divided into several alien ecosystems, separated by shimmering curtains like the one that prevents a clear view from above. In fact, when you enter the valley and try to turn back, you find that you have already passed such a curtain without noticing, and that it is a one-way street - you cannot return. So on you go, soon reaching a branch and turning right. When you reach a vein of minerals, take the sapphire (5/5). Continue NE and N and you will reach some step-like rock strata. This sounds inviting, so go up as far as you can and take the fossil you find there (5/10). Go back down and continue W and explore a bit: the stone monument tells you some useless information and the chlorine world proves to be distinctly unhealthy - you certainly cannot enter it. The jungle world beyond the barrier to the north looks earth-like enough, but the barrier slows you down more and more until you can barely retreat to prevent being trapped inside the barrier. Of course you can try to run through the barrier ("run north"), and lo, this works, but for the moment return to the forest world you came from; you will return to the jungle later. W and S from the rock strata you reach the north end of a lake with a big island in its center. This sounds inviting again, so let us go for a swim. Of course you cannot swim with all your equipment and your heavy clothes, so remove everything you are wearing. But walking barefoot in unknown terrain can be very dangerous, and rock climbing is impossible that way, so wear your canvas shoes, and make sure to take the butterfly net along, there might be something to catch over there. (Leaving the sapphire and the fossil behind temporarily reduces your score to zero again, but I keep counting as if you still had them, because you regain your points when you return and pick your treasures up again.) "Swim S" to reach the island and map the maze there until you find the spire at the center - or just walk S, E, and S again. Drop the net, you need your hands to climb that spire, und up you go. From halfway up you can see that somewhere in the south and west of the island there is some kind of coral reef - make a mental note to visit that later. Now is the time to use an adverb: "cautiously up" will take you safely to the top of the spire. Take the key you find in the bird's nest there (10/20) and cautiously down again to the base of the spire. Take the butterfly net you left there and keep mapping that maze, or walk D, E, E, S to reach the eastern shore of the island. You could swim E back to the mainland and walk around the lake to the north shore where you left your belongings, but there was that coral reef somewhere to the SW of the island, and there is no beach on that side, so you cannot walk there. So you have to swim again, but it is not quite obvious how to do it: "swim S" does the trick - there are two paths to the south, one you can walk and one you can swim. At the coral bed you discover a colorful fish, and now you know why I told you to keep that butterfly net: "catch fish with net". Now swim W and N and you are back at the north end of the lake where you left all your belongings. You must hurry now: you have five moves before the fish dies. To keep it alive, you need something full of water to carry it around in, and among your equipment is just what you need: fill the plastic bag with water and put the fish into the bag (15/35). That done, you have time to pick up your things and get ready to travel on. Walk E to the mossy trees and take some moss. You can cautiously (!) cross the chasm to the NE on the fallen tree trunk and run through the barrier you find there into the Mars-like area, but at the moment let's follow a different path. Return to the Bottom of a Chasm (S, SE, NE, NE from the mossy tress) and this time turn E until the path ends at a beautiful waterfall. You see a somewhat prehistoric place with giant horsetails and tiny pterodactyls. This might interest your scientists, so you take your camera out of the knapsack and "shoot" a picture. Take the picture your camera plopped on the ground (5/40) and examine it - it shows a cave behind the horsetails to the east! (Another way to open the exit to the east is to look behind the horsetails, where the tiny pterodactyls are coming from. Both actions require daylight, so if you happen to reach the waterfall by night, you have to wait until at least one of the two suns rises.) Go E to enter the cave, but you soon reach its end. There is a tunnel leading down from there, but it is pitch dark and you have no light source. But there is something else: a ventilation louver; you can see a well-lit hallway through it. The louver is not intended to be opened, so you have to use brute force: "hit louver" or "kick louver" will cause it to crumple up, opening the way into the hall. When you enter the hall and try to walk into the first room on the right, you cannot - it is pitch dark. So try the room on the left, the one with "xlmgilo" on its door: it is brightly lit and turns out to be the control room of the complex. The interesting items in this room are a row of four buttons of different shapes, a video screen, a slot, and a cartridge labeled "Xbtmzm-Cygnan". The function of two of the buttons can be found out easily: pushing the square button turns all the lights in the complex on, and pushing the round button makes the blue sun go nova with all the consequences to be expected: a score of -1,000,000 and a final rank of Menace to the Galaxy. So press the square button and leave the other three buttons alone; two of them will be used later (not to win the game but to reach full score). Leave the cartridge, too; it obviously fits into the slot and activates the computer in some foreign language, but it seems to communicate with a robot in a location you did not visit yet. So continue to explore the complex. East of the control room you find a tool room with a knife, a hammer, and a screwdriver - take the hammer only, you will need it later. North of the tool room is a general storage room, where you hear the faint patter of tiny rodent feet - keep that in mind, it is a hint. Take both the objects you find here, an ordinary bucket and a large, loaded film cassette, about 30 centimeters square and 1 cm thick - does that remind you of something? If you have ever been X-rayed, you have probably seen those cartridges; the film inside is exposed by the X-rays through the aluminum cartridge without opening it, making sure that no stray light blurs the picture. North of the control room you discover the director's office. The game does not tell you, but the desk there can be opened, revealing a lock box made of magnesium. It has two dials, each one numbered from 0 to 999, giving you 1 million combinations to try, unless you can find the correct combination somewhere or somehow. No, you will not find the combination scribbled somewhere, and you cannot force the box open, so you have to devise some other way to find the combination. Hm, the box is made of magnesium, a very light metal, like aluminum, so what about X-raying it? Good idea; all you have to do is to find or build an X-ray machine and a way to develop the film in the cartridge, and that is easy in an adventure, isn't it? Now go N to the hall junction and explore the east hall. To the south you find a small metal chamber with an empty round recess with gold contact springs at the sides and four buttons that do nothing but click. You can't do anything here yet, just keep the setting in mind. Further to the east you find a stout metal door which turns out to be locked. But didn't you find a key in the bird's nest on the island? Yes, it unlocks the door, and behind the door is the Mars-like area you already saw. You will return to it later; for the moment just leave the door open and return to the hall junction. Exploring the rooms to the north, you find a library which contains nothing of any use and more storage rooms. In the electronic storage you notice a good microwave cable, but leave it there; if you need it later, you know where to pick it up. North of that is the chemical storage room; there you find some DEET and two chemicals that are labeled 'nvglo' and 'sbkl' in the strange language you already saw. If you examined all of your initial equipment, DEET should ring a bell: the label on your empty tube of bug dope states that its active ingredient is DEET. So put the DEET into your knapsack; you will need it soon. Across the hall is a darkroom with a lot of equipment. The biggest thing there is a large machine in the center of the room with an inviting, film cassette sized opening at the left end and a hopper on the right end - obviously some sort of developing machine for the film in the X-ray cassettes. The machine has three funnels to pour the processing chemicals into, but only the use of the central funnel is obvious: there is a liquid level indicator below it, and "The level indicator shows too little water." A water faucet is right there in this room, so fill the bucket with water and pour the water into the middle funnel; this is just the amount that was missing. Was that all, or are the other two chemicals missing, too? You have to check, so save your game, put the film cassette into the opening of the machine (which turns the green light on if the water level is correct), and push the button. Our assumption about the purpose of the machine proves right: the machine extracts the film from the cassette, tries to process it, and puts the result into the hopper. But unfortunately our other suspicion was right, too: examination of the film in the hopper reveals that it was improperly processed because of lack of chemicals in the proper places. There are two more funnels and two unknown chemicals in the storage room across the hall, which may give you the idea of experimenting with them, but let us wait until we know how to read this strange language; then the solution will be obvious. So for the moment just restore your game, return to the hall, and continue N. You find another locked door - will your key fit again? In fact it does, so open the door and go up the stairs behind it until you reach the central landing, and then E to a field of sunflowers. South of there is another barrier you can run through into the Mars-like area, but the seed on one of the sunflowers interests you more, so you take it. I hope you saved your game first: the sunflowers resent you taking the seed and by day focus the sun on you, cooking you to death because of your dark clothing, and by night emit the energy stored during the day, much to the same effect. The hint is rather clear: change into light clothing. Your red shirt is OK, but remove the blue pants and wear the tan pants instead; then it is safe to take the seed. Experiment with it a bit and make a mental note of what happens when you drop it, but in the end make sure that you restore a game in which you still have the sunflower seed. The trail to the N takes you to a toolshed, guarded by the bees from several beehives. Now what did that label say? "Berry's Bug Dope; Repels blackflies, bees, ..." So "pour DEET on me" (the container miraculously disappears) and go N into the toolshed (you have 6 moves with the DEET on you to reach the shed). Have a good look at what you find there: a shovel, a pitchfork, and a long piece of wire. Only when the wire is on the ground, the game tells you that it is a long wire, and in fact, it is a VERY long wire as you will see! Another hint to its size is the fact that it will not fit into the knapsack or the bucket. Take the wire and the shovel; you will not need the pitchfork. Return to the staircase and go U and N to the south end of the greenhouse. You see a potted Venus flytrap plant there; it might be one of the specimens you are supposed to collect, so take it (5/45 - finally some more points, it was about time!). Proceed N to the greenhouse center and turn E to explore that part first. After walking E again you come to another one of those barriers, but this one is different: it will not let you pass. Through the barrier you can see a blue world of ponds, and though the game does not tell you unless you check your score, reaching that point and discovering this world earned you another 10 points (10/55). This seems a bit funny; 10 points for just walking into a place without overcoming any difficulties? Maybe there is something more to this blue world? We shall see. Returning W and then turning N takes you to a somewhat eerie place: a field inhabited by a cross between trees and cacti that somehow seem to watch and probe you. Examining or touching one of them connects you to its mind and shows that they are indeed rational creatures who are complacently dreaming and enjoying their quiet lives (10/65). There are two dreams that you may happen to watch: one about the history of their race and one showing that they possess some amazing powers: they are able to control the weather by the sheer power of their combined minds. You see only one of those dreams (unless you restore and try again) and touching the cactus again will reveal nothing new, so have another look at your surroundings. There is an interesting hole high in a rock wall, and a steep incline of scree or gravel leads up to that hole. This has to be explored, of course, but whatever you may try, you cannot get up the incline: the loose gravel slips away under you and dumps you back down on the ground, and you don't have a ladder or similar implement that might help you in this situation. The only remedy is to somehow fix or freeze the gravel, so try that: "freeze gravel". No, it doesn't work, but it gives you a hint: "It is not cold enough to freeze anything here." Can't the cacti change the weather if they want to? So all you have to do is to get in contact with the cacti and ask them to freeze the gravel - but how? I have no logical explanation; I just give you the answer: you have to touch the cactus by day and by night; this will show you both of the cacti's dreams in any order, one by day and the other by night, and after you have seen the second one, your mind will stay in contact with the collective cactus mind (10/75). Then "tell cactus, freeze gravel" and up you go. You don't get far, though: you discover an old mine blocked by a cave-in, but lying there is a violet crystal. Examining it shows that it's a valuable mineral that is used in your ship's drive, so you take it (15/90). Somewhere around here (170 moves into the game) you are beginning to feel a bit hungry, but you can ignore that for the moment. Return to the greenhouse center and go W. You find another barrier leading into the chlorine world you already saw, and again you cannot cross it, but you suspect that somewhere to the S are the jungle and the barrier you already tentatively crossed, so go in this direction. The green frogs you hear and see near the jungle path turn out to be red herrings - you can catch one of them, but you cannot keep it. In the next place you find a rubbery tree that looks easily climbable, so you climb it. Halfway up the tree you discover that the tree could be climbed so easily because there is some gooey latex flowing from the bark of the tree, making a rubbery coating on the bark, and as you happen to have a bucket at hand, fill the bucket with latex and take it with you. Climbing back down to the ground and exploring some more to the S reveals that indeed you are where you expected to be, so return N through the jungle and past the greenhouse. You discover a large microwave dish antenna of unknown purpose, and examining it shows that it is inoperative - the cable connecting the horn collector to the base has been chewed through by some rodent. You remember that you found a new microwave cable in the electronic storage room, but just keep that in mind for now; if later you notice some kind of malfunction you will know what the antenna is used for and can repair it then. The path continues E to a vegetable garden with a tomatao, a head of lettuce and a head of cabbage. The tomato is a particularly red herring - in fact it is poison, so leave it alone. The other two vegetables are edible, though, so take them. If you want to make good use of your food, don't eat until you are told that you are going to faint from hunger soon; eating a food object will always reset you to satiated state, except lettuce, of course, which will set you to half-hungry state. :-) But there is something else in this location, a small hole in the ground, probably the entrance to a rabbit warren. Entering it does not work, but if you try to go D you receive a hint: "You're not a rabbit!" This means you are too big or the hole is too small for you, and you happily remember the shovel you are still carrying around and "dig". The ground collapses, revealing the entrance to a bottomless pit - and let me tell you, it is just that. If you want to have a look inside, save, eat the tomato, and go D (yes, dead souls can wander around in this world, but that's about all they can do). From a ledge you see a tunnel leading E, but you cannot reach it; just keep this place in mind, you will see it again. Restore your game and leave the shovel and the tomato here; you do not need them any more and the shovel is awkward to carry. Going E to the northern part of the greenhouse takes you to the robot that seems to be connected to the computer in the control room. If you left the cartridge in the computer slot, the robot will be activated, but it will not understand you and you will not understand its replies; otherwise it will just stand there deaf and dumb. In any case it is of no use to you now, so leave it until later, but take the potted orchid from the bench (5/95), an interesting specimen. Before you go N from here, save your game. The place you enter then looks harmless enough: a fruit garden with some more food: a giant strawberry and a bunch of grapes. The grape vines seem to be of an unusual variety, though: as soon as you enter the garden, the vines come alive, grow up your legs, and hold you fast - you are hopelessly stuck and have to restore your game. Leave the vines for now; there are two ways to get rid of them and one of these ways is not available yet, so I shall tell you when you have both options. Going E instead takes you to a giant aviary. On a platform halfway up the central pole there is a cat that seems to be stuck: the pole is too slippery to be climbed up or down. This reminds you of something: didn't that latex make a nice, climbable coating on the tree? Fortunately there is a walkway leading up the periphery of the aviary and over to the top of the central pole, so walk over there and pour your latex on the pole. This creates a fine, rubbery coating that lets you go D and take the cat (15/110). Does this mean that the cat is important? Yes, it is. So how can this cat help you? Cats catch mice, and this reminds you of "the faint patter of tiny rodent feet" in the general storage room, so off you go. The moment you enter the storage room, the cat jumps down to the ground and searches the room for mice. It doesn't find any, but it finds another computer cartridge; a Terran one, this time (15/125). Walk over to the control room and insert the Terran cartridge into the conputer slot. The computer comes to life and connects you to the robot you saw in the greenhouse, but this time you can talk to it in English, which makes things a bit easier. You may have guessed by now that the Cygnan language is in fact a very simple code - just compare some Cygnan words with their Terran counterparts, like "Xbtmzm-Cygnan" from the other computer cartridge or the robot's greeting message in Cygnan and English. To translate, just swap letters A and Z, B and Y, and so forth. Here is a translation table for your convenience: A B C D E F G H I J K L M Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N You can give orders to the robot or ask it simple questions; the syntax is, "ask robot, what is DEET" or "tell robot, n". This works both from the control room and in presence of the robot, but you cannot call the robot from a room next to the one the robot is in. I think you examined the robot when you first met it: it has one arm with a tiny clasping device for handling delicate objects and a watering hose as the other arm. To test and practise your new skills, send the robot N to the fruit garden and tell it to water the deadly vines growing there - this happens to kill them, so you now have access to more food. (And it tells you how you could have killed the vines yourself: fill the bucket with water in the darkroom and pour the water on the vines.) Then ask the robot about the chemicals you found in the chemical storage room, and you will learn that nvglo (metol) is used to develop film and sbkl (hypo) fixes film after development. This should help to bring the film processing machine in the darkroom back into working order when you need it. What else could we do with the robot? Its clasper is too delicate for the objects you encountered so far, and watering everything gets boring after some time. So try to send it around and check how far it can go. Very soon you will find that the robot doesn't notice the barrier to the chlorine world at all, it just passes through it - so explore this world by sending the robot around. Beside a pit there is a kind of silicon insect; your scientists will be very interested in that, so tell the robot to catch it. Fortunately the robot's delicate clasper proves to be ideal for that kind of job; it catches the insect effortlessly and holds it without breaking it. When you explored all of the chlorine world, send the robot back to the greenhouse, so you can get the silicon insect for your collection. But before you go, press the hexagonal button in the control room, just for the sake of walking economy. Obviously that really started something: not quite an earthquake, but not far from it; in any case something that would be interesting to watch. While you are walking to the greenhouse to take the insect from the robot you have time to think about where the commotion you started might actually be taking place. Wasn't there a place that gave you points just for having a look at it? There was; this blue world of ponds! On your way there you meet the robot, slightly corroded from its trip into the aggressive chlorine atmosphere, and take the insect from it (15/140), and when you reach the barrier to the blue world you see what you did (10/150): the whole world of ponds has been destroyed and is being completely remodeled. You watch in amazement until the rumble suddenly ceases (50 moves after you pressed the button). Everything is quiet now, but there is nothing much to see: just a barren landscape, shaped somewhat like a golf course, but without any vegetation. Something seems to be unfinished here, but what is going to come next? Well, how did you start it? By pressing that button in the control room. How many buttons were there? Ah, one unused button is left! So walk back to the control room and press the remaining button, the triangular one. This one just clicks, but better check: walk back to the barrier and have another look at the world you destroyed (10/160). Indeed, something happened again: the vegetation has been added, but there are no animals - except a man-size reptile, walking around and obviously puzzling about what happened here. But you still cannot cross the barrier to this new world, and you cannot communicate with the reptile. So you leave this world alone; there is nothing you can do about it any more. Your next target is the Mars-like world that we neglected so far. Enter it through the door at the east end of the hall or run through one of the barriers and explore it by day and by night - especially by night, because the martians only go out at night. There are two independent sequences of actions to be done here; let us start with the easier one. You probably saw the hockey game going on in the bowl by night; when you return to the bowl by day, you see that the puck is still lying in the center of the bowl. Save your game and enter the bowl; you will not be able to get out again. Examining the puck, you discover that it is made of pure platinum - quite a treasure, indeed! But how to get it out of the bowl without entering the bowl? Do you remember the description of the game when you watched it by night? The object of the game seems to be to knock the puck out of the bowl though one of the low spots in the rim. This is your hint: do the same. As you cannot enter the bowl, you have to knock the puck out from somewhere on the rim, and fortunately there are three high and three low spots around the rim: when you stand on a high spot, you are facing a low spot on the other side of the bowl. So all you have to do is to find something heavy to throw, roll, or slide down the bowl and hope that it will knock the puck out the other side. A big rock would do nicely, so visit the place called Red Rocks and try to take one. The game tells you it is too heavy, but if you remove your knapsack and drop everything you are carrying, you can take a boulder and carry it to the bowl. Go to one of the higher areas (NW, NE, S) and throw the boulder into the bowl - by day it will knock the puck to the opposite rim where you can pick it up, by night the Martians will electrocute you for disturbing their game. So do this by day, then walk over to the opposite side of the rim and take the puck that is lying there (10/170). After that you can return to where you left your stuff and reclaim it - unless you left it there by night. The Martians are a very cleanly people, and every piece of trash they find is instantly transported to the city dump. So, if your possessions are gone, go look at the dump; you will find them there. The other problem is how to get into the large building with the round door. The only feature of the closed door is a small metal dimple in the center of the door, so this must be the device that opens the door. The game will not let you touch the dimple, it only gives a hint that this might be dangerous. Regarding that and the obviously electrical nature of the Martians (they give off sparks when they touch something) you should try applying electricity to the metal dimple. If you explored everything and watched the Martians by night, you may know where to find electricity, but there is an even better hint: Go to the disco and wait outside until dark, then shoot a picture of the martians for your collection (5/175). Wait until day again and examine the photo; it shows the crowd in the disco and one of them getting a charge from the knob on the stool in the center of the room - this is what you are looking for. (Taking this photo will not work if you already shot a picture of the Martians at the hockey bowl; this will have given you the same number of points, but not the hint.) To get the electricity from the knob to the dimple in a different part of town you need quite a length of wire, but fortunately you already found that. The ends of the wire are already stripped clean and ready for use, but you cannot tie an end to the live knob without getting a bad shock. You touched only one terminal, so the problem is obviously that you are grounded through your shoes. Changing between canvas shoes and boots makes no difference, so you need something really insulating, like a rubber mat or a large piece of ceramics or glass. Hm, glass... wasn't there a glass window in this room? Yes, but unfortunately it cannot be removed, and it turns out to be very strong, so you cannot break it. Looks like you need some serious glass-cutting tool, best of all a piece of diamond. Did you find a diamond somewhere? If you explored carefully, you did: in the north-western part of this world there is a tower made of an inviting lattice-work, surrounded by an array of mirrors. The first crosspiece is just out ou your reach, but if you remove your knapsack again and drop everything else, you can jump high enough to catch the lowest crosspiece and climb to the top of the tower. If you try this by day, save first: the mirrors turn out to follow the suns and focus their light on the top of the tower, instantly killing you when you climb up there. By night the tower is safe, but before you jump and climb up, take the moss out of your knapsack and drop it on the ground (remember the vase in Colossal Cave?). Up on the tower you notice that one of the six diamonds installed there is loose. Of course you try to take it, but it falls out of its mounting and down to the ground - landing safely on the moss you thoughtfully placed there. Climb back down and take everything you left there, including the diamond (10/185) but not the moss. Now return to the disco, wait until day, and then cut the glass window from the outside of the building (5/190); the pane will conveniently fall into the building without breaking. (The game is buggy here: if you cut the window from the inside, the pane will fall down outside the house, but you cannot pick it up there - your command will just be ignored. The same things happens if you cut the glass from the outside by night: when you can finally enter the building in the morning, the window pane has been removed to the dump, but you cannot pick it up there, either.) Enter the disco, stand on the glass, and tie the wire to the knob. Now take the shortest path to the building with the closed door (N, W, W, NE, N), touch the dimple with the wire, and voila, the lock opens. Save your game, open the door, enter the building and take the glowing sphere you find there (10/200): your light source, finally! You may wonder why I told you to save your game; the reason is not quite obvious, at least not yet. But if you just continue your quest and later try to shoot another picture, the following will happen: The camera creaks, grinds, and finally says "ERROR-F-EEPROM fatal parity error", deposits a badly overexposed photo on the ground, then announces "ROMEXEC-F-DEAD replace entire camera". What may have caused this? Extensive experimentation will finally reveal that a (not necessarily contiguous) total of 45 moves in the same room with the glowing sphere will cause the camera to break with the above error message. This should give you a somewhat uneasy feeling about the sphere and its unknown power source, but for the moment believe me that you are safe; just keep the camera and the sphere in different rooms until I tell you to take them both with you. Apart from the bottomless pit there is only one place you didn't explore yet: the tunnel leading down into darkness south of the louver you destroyed to gain access to the building. So go SE there with the glowing sphere and explore what you find there: an underground world with the maze you have been looking for all along. :-) The maze is rather large and therefore not easy to map, so take a look at my map if you don't enjoy mapping it yourself. You need something from the underground world (though not from the maze) to complete the game, and in addition you need something from the maze to get full points - but don't despair, I shall tell you in detail which way to go. When you explored the underground world to your heart's content, fetch your camera and go SE and N from the back of the cave south of the louver. You are in a mushroom farm now and find a giant mushroom; add it to your food reserve if you want to. Now go N, E, E, SE to the ferret home and take a picture of the ferret family sitting there, watching the televison program your mother ship broadcasts (5/205). Return NW and go N to the ferret nursery. Examining everything there seems to hint that something interesting should be found, but doesn't reveal it until you type, "look in doll house". Take the chocolate egg you find in the doll house and eat it (10/215); inside you will find a silver coin with the likeness of a reptile on one side and the notation &100 on the other. Now walk S, NE, SE, U, and D to the artist's cavern and take a last picture of the paintings you find there (5/220). You don't need the camera any more (it will break soon, anyway), so leave it behind. Now off into the maze again: U, N, NE, W, and N to the sculptors' studio. A small statue of a ferret catches your eye, obviously some sort of religious object. You probably should take it with you, but the ferrets will not let you. Maybe a small diversion will help; check your inventory for something that will cause some commotion. You did experiment with the sunflower seed as I told you, didn't you? Now is the time, drop the seed and take the statue before the ferrets recover (10/230). Two places of interest remain to be discovered; let us begin with the easy one. Save your game first; you will die there, but for the sake of completeness let us take a look. From the sculptors' studio go S, W, E, U, S, and S - do you recognize the place? It is the bottomless pit you uncovered digging in the vegetable garden. There is nothing you can do there, so restore to the sculptors' studio and go S, W, N, U, U, S, SW, W, D, and D to an underground pool. You swam before, so why not try it again here? But save your game first, swimming underground is dangerous! Remove and drop everything except the glowing sphere and wear the canvas shoes to protect your feet against the dreaded poison bugs, then play 'find the word' for some time or just type "swim in pool" - nothing else seems to work. With some experimentation you will soon find a gold mine; take the nugget lying there (15/245) and follow the only passable way to the mushroom farm you already know. Recover your equipment and treasures (N, E, D, D) and leave the underground world; you stole everything you could. Now you have seen every place in this world, but two problems are still unsolved: the locked magnesium box and the dead controls in the metal chamber. Let us first concentrate on the box; it might contain something that will help us with the second problem. We already decided that X-raying the box might show us some useful things, so take yourself to the proper place for photographic experiments: the darkroom. The first thing to do is to rig up an X-ray machine. If you had some kind of radiation source, putting the box between this and the film cassette for the correct duration might give a usable picture on the film. Do you remember what happened to your electronic camera when it was in the same room as the glowing sphere long enough? This may have been caused by some sort of radiation from the sphere, but this radiation isn't strong enough to expose the film in the cassette through the magnesium box in a practical length of time, or you would have been sick long ago. So have a closer look at the sphere: The sphere is about ten centimeters in diameter. It is hollow, with rather thick walls. Inside is a smaller sphere, about one centimeter in diameter. The glow seems to emanate from the whole inner wall it, but is brighter near where the small sphere rests. It is extremely heavy for its size. This suggests that the real radiation source is the small thing inside the glowing sphere, so you need to get at it, even if you must destroy the sphere for it. Save your game again; radiation is dangerous, you know, and you have to experiment a bit to learn the properties of the objects involved and find the correct arrangement of things. How do you break the larger sphere? With a hammer, obviously, and fortunately you found a hammer in the tool room. Hitting the sphere with the hammer destroys it, indeed, and reveals a hot, brightly glowing bead. That it radiates something besides light and heat is quite obvious: with every move in the same room with the bead you feel fainter, and after nine moves you are dead, permanently this time. Reload the game and restore. So the first problem is solved: you have a radiation source that is certainly strong enough. Now check the equipment in the darkroom for places where to put the bead, the box, and the film cassette for exposure. On one side of the room is a heavy metal sink, probably made of steel - this doesn't sound like a good place to expose the film in, but it might do as some sort of radiation shield. To test this, break the sphere again and put the bead into the sink - OK, now you can stay in the darkroom without dying from radiation sickness; good to know because you will have to process the film cassette in the darkroom after exposing it, and putting the bead into the sink is faster than carrying it outside. Restore your game and check the other side of the darkroom. You find a long bench there; on its left side is a rack with vertical slots for sheets of film, in the middle is an enlarger without a lens, and on the right side is a small tray. This sounds just like what you need, so put the film cassette into the rack, the box on the enlarger, and the sphere on the tray. Hit the sphere with the hammer (5/250) and leave the room - the film is to be exposed, not you. How long should the film be exposed? Not very long, judging from the effect of the radiation on you. You can experiment again, but I will save you this labor: three to six moves are fine; more or less will give an unusable over- or underexposed picture. So wait once outside the darkroom, then return and put the bead into the sink. To develop the film in the X-ray cassette, you first have to load the machine with the correct chemicals you learned from the robot: nvglo (= metol) to develop the film and sbkl (= hypo) to fix it. Fetch the chemicals from the chemical storage right across the hall and take another look at the machine: the input slot is on the left side, and the output hopper is on the right side. So pour the developer (nvglo) into the left funnel and the fixer (sbkl) into the right funnel, put the cassette into the slot, and push the button. The machine whirrs and cranks for a few moments and deposits a piece of film in the hopper. Full of expectation you examine the film and much to your satisfaction you see the combination that opens the box (varying from game to game). Set the two dials on the box to the values you saw on the X-ray film and the box pops open. It contains two computer memory chips, but both of them are of doubtful use: one is broken and the other is unfinished. They are round and have gold contact pads around the edge - does that ring a bell? Perhaps they will fit into the empty recess in the metal chamber off the hall leading to the Mars-like world, so go there and try them. Indeed, they fit, but both of them do not work; one because a piece is missing, and the other because some sort of plastic coating prevents it from making proper contact. The broken disc is obviously beyond repair, so you will have to concentrate on the unfinished disc, i.e. you have to finish processing it. Fortunately you don't need a complete chip manufacturing plant - all the difficult parts of the job have already been done, you only need a few obnoxious chemicals to etch away the surplus material and then to neutralize each other. At this point the chlorine world and the slightly corroded robot come to your mind, so give this theory a try. Go to the greenhouse or wherever you left the robot and give it the good disc; its delicate clasper is ideal for handling objects of this size. Return to the control room and send to robot into the chlorine world again. The exact sequence of things to do now is somewhat tedious to find out by trial and error, so I shall just give you the proper sequence of commands to type (verbatim, variations may not work): - [send the robot to the vents emitting green and red vapors] - tell robot, put disc into green vapor - tell robot, take disc - tell robot, put disc into red vapor - tell robot, take disc - [send the robot to the flow of acid] - tell robot, wash disc and the plastic coating dissolves, leaving a perfect, finished chip. Now send the robot to a place where you can meet it, and all that is left to do is to fetch the result of your makeshift technology (25/275 as long as you are in the same room with the good disc) and then return to the metal chamber to test it. The disc now contacts properly, as was to be expected, and the end of your visit to this world is drawing near. Press any of the buttons on the wall, maybe they will work now that the disc is in place. Hm, sort of; at least something happens: a voice announces from a hidden speaker, "Transport failure; interstellar communication link not resonding." This must be the malfunction we are waiting for since we found the damaged cable on the dish antenna, so now we know the purpose of the antenna: it is part of an interstellar transportation device. To fix this new problem is easy: fetch the good microwave cable from the electronic storage, walk to the antenna, remove the damaged cable, and attach the good cable to the antenna. Now back to the metal chamber and.... whoa! Save your game! Something drastic is about to happen; who knows where this machine is going to transport you and what will happen there? Having saved, test the buttons. The violet button will turn you into a cactus on a far distant world; end of game. The orange button turns you into a Martian playing hockey for the rest of your days; again end of game. The blue button transports you to a breathtaking view overlooking Saturn, unfortunately breathtaking because it is in a vacuum - end of game, of course. The white button finally takes you to a place that you obviously can survive in, but having arrived there, check your inventory: everything is gone except the clothes you were wearing and the things you held in your hands, but any containers you held (e.g. the bucket) are empty now. So restore again; this requires some planning. It is obvious that you cannot hold much in your hands, so you have to think carefully what to take. Do not remove the knapsack you are wearing or drop any of your treasures, though: you will keep the points for the treasures you lose during transportation, but the points you lose by dropping treasures before you press the button will not come back. Now check your treasures for what you might need later on and what not. One thing you can guess: think about the living beings you saw on this world. Most of them were just local inhabitants, but one of them obviously did not belong here and seemed to have some supervisory function: the reptile you saw walking around the former blue world of ponds, wondering what might have caused its destruction. Did you encounter that reptile or its picture again? Yes, you did: the coin you found inside the chocolate egg bears the likeness of a reptile. To think that the reptiles built this queer zoo is probably a good guess, so they also built this transportation device, and wherever it will take you, you will probably meet those reptiles again. When you do so, some of their cash might come in handy, so hold the silver coin in your hand. Some food and the bucket to carry things around in also come to mind, but what else? You just do not know, and I know of no way how to deduce what will be needed, so I will just tell you to save you the boredom of restoring and redoing many moves after you found out: keep the blue sapphire in your hand (absolutely needed) and, if you want to experiment, the violet crystal and the gold nugget, too. After these preparations, finally push the white button (50/325) and you will find yourself in a bleak teleportation booth somewhere in the universe. No one seems to be around, so explore your new surroundings. You soon discover that you are in some sort of space station, and you are not alone: when you enter the office complex east of the great hall, you almost bump into a number of uniformed (and armed) reptiles. Fortunately they do not expect you to stumble in on them, so if you immediately go back W they will not notice you. The rest of the station is safe, so have a good look at everything you find, especially the four vending machines in the four corners of the great hall. Only one of them accepts your coin, the armless bandit in the SW corner - so why not try your luck? Put your coin into the slot of the machine and see what happens. This seems to be a very friendly bandit, indeed; every time you play, you win some other coin. This may get boring after some time, but keep playing, maybe something better is in stock - and in fact, eventually you will hit the jackpot and win one coin of every kind (25/350). (This may take well over a hundred repetitions, so type "put coin into slot" once and then "g" for "again" until you hit the jackpot.) Now walk to the vending machine in the NE corner of the hall and buy one of the red candy balls in exchange for your platinum coin. Examining it doesn't reveal anything special, so eat it (25/375). The candy ball turns out to be a language pill, as you already knew if you translated the inscription on the machine with the Cygnan code table we found out earlier - but of course it is much easier to understand the language directly. Now check the other two vending machines. Putting the nickel coin into the slot of the machine in the SE corner of the hall buys you a newspaper. Reading it will tell you that your activities have not gone unnoticed and that the Cygnans are on the lookout for you, so better be careful. The last machine in the NW corner finally will give you a star map for your copper coin; it contains the coordinates of five planets. Better keep it around; those coordinates might come in handy some time. There is not much left to do in this space station: you used all the vending machines, and you are unable to open the large orange door in the northwest corner of the space station and the pink door at the southern end. The only place that you didn't thoroughly explore yet is the outer office east and south of the great hall, but save your game first: this place is dangerously close to the guards who know whom or what to look out for. The mural in this room looks funny somehow, but you cannot do anything with it, so have a closer look at the file cabinets. When you open one of them, it makes so much noise that the guards rush in and kill you - end of game. But remember what the command "help" told you: "If you do some things carefully, you may live longer." So open the cabinet carefully, and indeed, you succeed without attracting attention. You discover a note with an unreadable door combination for a small ship, a readable combination for a large ship, and a mysterious hint, "Do it twice". There is nothing else in this room that catches the eye, but there must be something to this scuffed up mural, so keep looking everywhere, for example behind the cabinet - and in fact you find a green button there. Of course you push the button (after saving your game, I hope), but nothing happens. Now what is the trick that makes this button work? Maybe this hint, "Do it twice", refers to pushing the button? OK, press the button again - and nothing happens. So does the hint on the note refer to something else? No, it doesn't, it just has to be followed verbatim (again using an adverb in a critical situation): "push button twice" does the trick (25/400). The mural slides open and reveals a passage, but it makes so much noise doing so that the guards in the next room are certain to be alerted and come looking. Saving is impossible now (the game will not let you), so just run for your life, and I mean, "run"! The reptiles are faster than you, but they tire quickly, so your only chance is to run away from them and hope that they tire before they reach you. If you just walk around normally, they will soon catch you (end of game), but if you "run n" or go "quickly n", it will take them eight moves to catch you - and that was their limit, they collapse then and you are free. But only for a short time; after eight more moves the guards recover and catch you wherever you are - but perhaps you could hide behind somewhere? The passage behind the mural might be a promising way of escape, so plan your flight in such a way that the guards collapse near the outer office, so that you do not waste too many moves to reach it. An easy way to do this is to run straight across the main hall to the west wall and then N or S around the perimeter - the guards will then collapse at the east wall of the hall. Entering the secret corridor takes you to an airlock with a pink door and a blue door. The pink door cannot be opened - you already know it from the other side, it can only be opened with the keypad - but the blue door can be opened normally, so go S and close the door behind you. Try to save until this command works again; this means that the guards have recovered but did not find you and have given up. You can move around normally again now. Now examine your surroundings. You are in a small space ship, but it seems to be inoperative. There are two empty clips, a yellow one and a blue one. Try to put some of your things into them, maybe even things of matching color - indeed, this produces results! The blue sapphire in the blue clip starts emitting bright blue light, so it somehow seems to belong there. But what about the yellow clip? You have nothing yellow to put into it except the gold nugget if you brought it along, but it has no effect whatever. Checking your inventory you come across the note you found in the file cabinet - didn't it contain a combination for a large ship, too? It does, so go and try this other ship; it must be behind the large orange door with a combination lock in the northwest corner of the space station. The combination on your note (varying from game to game) actually opens the orange door, but you have to find out what to type: "push x" or "press x" works (x = one of the numbers on the note, not a single digit). The large space ship is larger but otherwise very similar to the small ship you already saw. The two clips have different colors here, though, orange and violet instead of yellow and blue. Both of them are empty again, but here you find a yellow rod. The violet clip will work with the violet crystal if you took that one with you, but when you put the rod into the orange clip, a voice from the panel says, "Activator crystal out of tolerance." So the rod is some kind if activator crystal, but is it faulty? Well, it is yellow, and the clip is orange, which is not quite the same; is this the cause of the problem? If it is, the yellow rod may be the answer to your problem with the yellow clip in the small ship, so go and check. As it turns out, this is the missing activator for the small ship. As soon as the blue sapphire and the yellow rod are in their matching clips, the ship comes to life and tells you how to enter the coordinates of your destination and take off. Good thing you bought that star map! So close the door, and take a seat ("sit down" is the proper command; other formulations do not work), enter some coordinates from your map as the ship told you to, and "activate". Altair is only a huge gas planet, similar to Saturn, so try some other place. Auriga is somewhat like Mars and lets you "land", but the Aurigans you meet there (the "Martians" you already know) tell you to go somewhere else to find people that are more like yourself. (To leave a planet you have to "activate" twice; once to get you into orbit, then again to start interstellar flight.) Vega is about Earth-size, but through the telescope the atmosphere looks green, and the ship will not land there because of the high chlorine concentration. Cygnus turns out to be the home of the crabs you saw in the blue world of ponds. Land and meet the Cygnans (25/425); they turn out to be very friendly and would like to show you around, but they live deep in the ocean where you cannot survive. Instead they send you to Deneb, where you would be more at home. Deneb finally looks remarkably like Earth and is inhabited by the reptiles you already know. Landing there you meet administrator Glathryx who explains the meaning of Test Site #6 to you (the world you were exploring) and welcomes you as the representative of the first alien culture his race meets, thus ending the game (25/450). No, "the first alien culture his race meets" is not a contradiction, but you will have to play the game yourself to learn why. :-) --- Volker.Blasius@gmd.de