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Key & Compass presents:
Gone Out for Gruyère
by B F Lindsay

Gone Out for Gruyère is a Glulx interactive fiction game written with Inform 7 and is © 2019 by B F Lindsay. It was an entry in IF Comp 2019 where it took 30th place.

In this surreal game, your girlfriend Natalie has asked you to buy some gruyère, but you're barely out the door when a vortex scoops you up and into a room with shadowy exits in every direction. And before you can escape through the brightly-lit hole in the floor, it's promptly plugged by a massive wheel of gruyère cheese who begins to insult you at every turn! How will you get out of this one?

This solution is by David Welbourn, and is based on Release 1 of the gama.


Map

d Up aTree TownCenter Keg Room SaloonFront SunnyPark FoggyStreetCorner Exitatious StoneBridge Annex BasementLab climb tree MysteriousBlackness

Walkthrough

Exitatious

The premise is really quite bizarre. I make sense of it by first assuming that the player-character lives in a world that is just like ours except it also has magic. I also assume there's magical characters like imps and brownies and fairies in his world and they sometimes like to make mischief with humans. So, maybe one of those imps read your mind about going out for gruyère and decided to have fun by kidnapping you and shapeshifting itself into a cheese wheel?

> x me. (Carrying nothing)

> d. (A wheel of cheese blocks the hole!)

> x cheese. (It laughs at you!)

You can't really do anything about the cheese just yet, but you should at least try:

> eat cheese. ask cheese about itself.

> hit cheese. search cheese. take cheese.

> push cheese. pull cheese. turn cheese.

> climb cheese. sit on cheese. open cheese. smell cheese.

Okay, let's explore:

> n.

Saloon Front

You just need to wait until everyone leaves, then get the rope from the tree:

> x manorx horseorx tree.

> x crowd. (You see a dark man in a loft over a stable to the east.)

> x dark manorx loft. (Has poncho, cowboy hat, cigar.)

> x mayor. (Accused is Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez.)

> x saloon. (Looks closed.)

A mayor finishes speaking and a man with a riding crop steps forward.

> z.

The dark man shoots the rope and he and the accused make a getaway with the town in pursuit.

> d.

Town Center

> climb tree.

Up a Tree

> untie rope. (+1; you escape back to...)

Exitatious

...and the north exit is gone.

> i. x rope. (It's about 7 feet long.)

> ne.

Sunny Park (in the thicket)

Again, watch and wait until everyone's gone. The prize here is a fuseless firecracker.

> x blue boy. x red boy. x firecrackers.

The boys throw the firecrackers near you! They're loud! The boys run.

> x dark spot. (You take a firecracker that didn't pop.)

> x firecracker. (Missing a fuse.)

> ne. (+1. You see a police officer as you walk casually back to...)

Exitatious

> e.

Stone Bridge

> x man. x bridge. (The man is a bridge gnome.)

> x stone bridge. x stream. ask man about bridge.

> e. (He asks a riddle.)

> say hole. (+1; he gives you a hole as a prize and you return to...)

Exitatious

> x hole.

> w.

Foggy Street Corner

> x man. x machine.

> look under machine. (You get a red matchbook.)

> x matchbook. (Only one match remains.)

> e. (+1)

Exitatious

> se.

Basement Lab

The machine here can enlarge things or restore things that were previously enlarged. Although you can enlarge the rope and the matchbook, it's only useful to enlarge the firecracker.

> read notebook. x device. x case. x large switch. (three settings)

> open case. put firecracker in case.

> close case. set switch to multiply.

> x firework. (3 feet long and 6 inches wide.)

> open case. take firework. close case.

> put rope in firework. (The frayed rope won't go in.)

> nw. (+1; the exit back to the lab is gone.)

Exitatious

> nw.

Keg Room

> x casks. x barrel. open barrel. look in it. (brandy)

> taste brandy. (can't)

> put rope in barrel. (It's now soaked in brandy.)

> close barrel.

> se. (+1)

Exitatious

You need to refer to the big hole (the portable one) instead of the gaping hole (in the floor).

> put rope in firework. (Yes, you can do that now.)

> put big hole on cheese.

> put firecracker in big hole.

> s.

Mysterious Blackness

This location is the other side of the portable hole. My apologies for skipping all the fumbling experimentation you can do with the hole that would help you figure that out.

Currently, because you put the firework in the hole, you see it dangling above.

> x me. (You are void of form here.)

> x net. take net. (Something about transdimensional power transference?)

> put net on firework. (+1. That works and you're back in...)

Exitatious

> light firework. (using the matchbook)

> sw.

Annex

Wait for the explosion.

> z. z. SPACESPACESPACESPACE (+1)

> x wrap. take it. ne.

Cheesy Hell (formerly Exitatious)

> x cheese. take cheese. eat cheese.

> put hunk in wrap. (+1)

> i.

> d.

Turns out Natalie wanted mozzarella. Oops.

*** At least you beat the cheese. ***


Extras

Characters

Mentioned:


Credits

From the Credits menu accessed via the ABOUT or HELP commands:

I would like to thank Brian Rushton for his encouragement to create this short game, and his patience in testing it. I would also like to thank Roger Durrant, Stian Rødven Eide, Mike Carletta and Mike Spivey for their diligence and persistence in testing this game, and their valuable comments.

Also thanks to my girlfriend for putting up with my goofs and my intermittent burying of the head in my projects, like this one.

And thanks to any and all of you for trying this work of IF!


Endings


Inventory

Note that whenever you visit the Mysterious Blackness, you lose your body and all your material possessions, but you get them all back when you leave the Blackness and return to the Exitatious.


Score

You have so far scored your-score out of a possible 9, in several turns.


Thank You to my Patreon supporters

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.