Advent Door is a Glulx work of interactive fiction written with Inform 7 and is © 2019-2020 by Andrew Plotkin. It was intended to be a participant in the 2019 IF Advent Calendar project, but the project was never completed, so the game was released independently in 2020.
In this small puzzle game, you play as an adventurer who's seen far too many doors recently. So, of course, now you find yourself in a study without any doors at all. They've been taken away. Can you find enough doors to escape this castle and continue your journey?
This solution is by David Welbourn, and is based on Release 3 of the work.
SPOILERS AHEAD. Reading a walkthrough prematurely can sometimes diminish one's enjoyment of a work of interactive fiction. Please make an honest effort to play the work before reading this walkthrough.
The Study
> x key. take it.
> x desk. x fireplace. x bookshelves.
After a new turns of examining things, a voice says "You're late" and now you have a slab of oak?
> i. x door.
Note that it's an east door. You can only put east doors on east walls.
> put door on east wall.
> open door. e.
An Octagonal Room
On this side, the oak door is now a west oak door. And, of course, a west door can only go on west walls.
> x floor. x pine door.
> x northwest tapestry. x northeast tapestry.
> x southwest tapestry. x east tapestry.
> take oak door. s.
The Shattered Salon
> x barrels. x tables. x crockery.
> x east wallpaper. (roses)
> x north wallpaper. (thorns)
> x west wallpaper. (roses)
> put oak on west wall. w.
The Hung Garden
This east ash door can help us go east from the salon.
> x hills. (The road, villages, and river are gone.)
> take ash door. e.
The Shattered Salon
> put ash door on east wall.
> e.
A Collapsing Corner
> take old key. x it. x boulder. x bricks.
> w.
The Shattered Salon
Hm. Now, let's try to get a west ash door on the west wall of the study.
> take ash. take oak. n.
An Octagonal Room
> put oak on west wall.
> take pine. ("THEY STOLE THE DOORS")
> w.
The Study
> put pine on south wall. s.
The Hung Garden
> put ash on east wall. n.
The Study
> take pine. e.
An Octagonal Room
> put pine on south wall. s.
The Shattered Salon
> take ash. n. w.
The Study
> put ash on west wall. w.
The Waterworks
> x north pipe. x platform. x water.
> x ebony door. nw. (locked)
> unlock ebony door with old key.
> nw.
A Balcony
> x sky. x edifice. x hills. se.
The Waterworks
Okay, let's try to get this northwest ebony door into Collapsing Corner. To do that, we'll first need to re-flip that ash door back into an east door.
> take ebony. e.
The Study
> take ash. e. s.
The Shattered Salon
> put ash on west wall. n.
An Octagonal Room
> take pine. w.
The Study
> put pine on south wall. s.
The Hung Garden
> take ash. n.
The Study
> take pine. e.
An Octagonal Room
> put pine on south wall. s.
The Shattered Salon
> put ash on east wall. e.
A Collapsing Corner
> put ebony on northwest wall. w.
The Shattered Salon
And... now we can take this north pine door to the octagonal room.
> take pine. e. nw.
An Octagonal Room
> put pine on north wall. n.
The Exit
> x portal. enter it.
You're shocked back. The voice has a few things to say first.
> z. z. ("You should go.")
> enter portal.
*** Onward ***
Mentioned:
These credits were posted at https://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/doorsday/about.html:
Advent Door is copyright 2019-20 by Andrew Plotkin (erkyrath@eblong.com). It may be distributed for free, but not sold or included in any for-profit collection without written permission from the author.
This game was written for a collaborative 2019 Advent Calendar project. The theme was "The City of Doors" from the Planescape roleplaying setting. That project was never completed, so I released this game on February 29th, 2020. (An appropriate date for a misplaced day of the month!)
The only other released Advent Calendar game is Gateway of the Ferrets by Feneric.
Thanks to Feneric and the PR-IF meetup group for playtesting.
Doors in this game are portable and can be put on walls to create an appropriate travel connection to an adjacent location.
Note that you can only put west doors on west walls, south doors on south walls, and so on. The only way to flip a door to its opposite orientation is to place the door on a wall then go take the door from the other side.
Also, doors cannot be opened, closed, or entered unless they're placed in a wall.
This walkthrough is provided free of charge since the work it's based on has less than fifteen locations. Please consider it a thank you for your support!
I create larger walkthroughs too! Please visit my Patreon account if you're interested in helping me create more interactive fiction walkthroughs. I appreciate all the help I can get! Thanks again.