Key & Compass presents:
In The Spotlight
by John Byrd

• Walkthrough
• Extras
  • Characters, Credits, Endings, Inventory, Score
• Thank You to my Patreon supporters
• Support me on Ko-Fi
• External links:
  • This game at IFDB, and IFWiki.
  • Tweet about this walkthrough on Twitter.

Walkthrough

In The Spotlight

Examine everything:

> x me. x skin. i. (Carrying nothing.)

> x light. x black string. x white string.

> x scissors. read name. x wad.

> x matchbook. read ad. read fine print.

> open matchbook. x matches. x scrawl. ("Swingers welcome")

A little experimentation:

> pray. (God says you need to tie the strings together and to solve this puzzle yourself.)

> take black string. pull it.

> take white string. (Can't reach it while holding the black one.)

> climb black string. (It's too thin.)

> drop all.

Here's how to hold both strings:

> take black. take scissors.

> tie black to scissors. swing black. (It swings in a wide arc, because of the weight of the scissors.)

> take white. take black.

> take scissors. (This unties it from the black string.)

This is the main goal:

> tie black to white. (Something falls.)

> look. (There's a paper airplane.)

To win, take then read the airplane:

> take airplane. (+1)

> x airplane.

*** You have won ***

Extras

Characters

• God appears whenever you pray.
• The author breaks the fourth wall by putting the credits on the paper airplane.
• The computer in the framing story seems to be the one who set you this task in the first place by hijacking you into a virtual space. Goodness knows why or how.

Credits

This is the response to CREDITS:

In The Spotlight is copyright 1998 by John W. Byrd. Permission to reproduce this work of interactive fiction is granted only under the following conditions: (a) distributed copies are not substantially different from those archived by the author, (b) this and other copyright messages are always retained in full, and (c) no profit is involved. Okay, so maybe this game is not worth stealing, but I DEFINITELY don't want it to show up in one of these God-awful shareware CD-ROMs. If you did acquire this game from some such collection, please let me know where you got it from and how much you paid for it.

This game is largely based on the inspired work of Graham Nelson and his Inform compiler, as well as Andrew Clover's pluralobj library. Special thanks also go out to David Dyte for making IF '98 possible.

I wrote the rest of the code, but I did not design the puzzle. I first read about the puzzle described in this game in the magazine Science, sometime in the early 1980's. I would be happy to credit the original author of this thought puzzle if the author contacts me at email redacted.

When I was maybe thirteen, I implemented this game in Integer BASIC on the Apple II. Unfortunately, I managed to reformat my only copy of the diskette that contained the game, and as you recall backup copies were not invented until 1991. I was incredibly proud of my parser, which was, no doubt, a thick spaghetti of goto's and substring searches. It's hard to say exactly why I chose to reimplement it now. Maybe I did it to get in touch with the boy I was, staying up late just as I did sixteen years ago, enjoying the same geeky little thrills as my subroutines and objects have begun living for themselves. Maybe I did it out of nostalgia for the genre; nowadays, the videogames I work on have upwards of a million 3-D polygons with lots of esoteric blending and mixing effects, and they still don't approach the resolution of my mind.

Anyway, if, by some miracle, one of my old hacker friends happens to have a copy of my original game gathering dust in an attic, I would be the most thankful person on earth to receive a copy of my old lame code.

Endings

• You have been cast into the everlasting lake of fire
• if you PRAY three times.
• You have immolated yourself
• if you burn your nose, neck, etc. with a burning match.
• You have committed suicide with a pair of scissors
• if you cut your nose, neck, etc. with the scissors.
• You have hanged yourself
• if you tie either string to yourself.
• You have poisoned yourself
• if you eat the matchbook or a match.
• You have returned to your senses
• if you leave the spotlight; go in any compass direction.
• You have won
• if you successfully read the paper airplane.

Inventory

Note: You have an inventory limit of four items. However, the limit isn't checked when you remove the cover or a match from the matchbook.

• a (swinging) black string and a (swinging) white string. They're in the spotlight, dangling from the ceiling, far enough apart so you can't easily take both strings at once.
• You cannot cut or burn either string.
• While holding one of the strings and the scissors, tie the scissors to the string. Now you can swing that string in a wide enough arc that you can take the unswinging string and then the swinging string.
• When you have both strings, take the scissors to remove it from the string you tied it to.
• Tie the strings to each other: in response, a paper airplane falls to the floor.
• a pair of scissors. They're in the spotlight.
• While holding one of the strings and the scissors, tie the scissors to the string. Now you can swing that string in a wide enough arc that you can take the unswinging string and then the swinging string.
• When you have both strings, take the scissors to remove it from the string you tied it to.
• Most things are cuttable, but the strings notably can't be cut.
• a wad of cotton. It's in the spotlight.
• The cotton is utterly useless except as something you can safely cut or burn; either action destroys it.
• You cannot put the cotton in your ears or nose.
• a matchbook. It's in the spotlight.
• The matchbook's cover is an advertisement that you can remove.
• The matchbook contains five matches.
• You must be holding the matchbook when lighting a match.
• an advertisement. It's the cover of the matchbook.
• You can remove the cover from the matchbook if you're holding it.
• You can read the fine print on the ad.
• a (unlit/burning) match. There are five matches in the matchbook.
• You can light a match (while holding the matchbook) and burn something with the burning match, but you don't need to burn anything.
• Most things are flammable, but the strings notably won't burn.
• a paper airplane. It falls from the ceiling when you manage to tie the black string to the white string (or vice-versa).
• Take the airplane to earn a point.
• Examine the airplane to win the game. (The text on the airplane is the game's credits.)

Honorable mention:

• your nose/neck/wrists/clothes/skin. This odd assortment of body parts seem to be implemented as one anonymous body part.
• If you cut or burn your nose, neck, etc., you die.
• your ears. They're part of you, of course.
• I think this exists in case you want to try putting stuff into your ears, such as the cotton wad. But you can't put anything into your ears, as it turns out.

Score

The final SCORE message, when the game ends, is:

In that game you scored your-score out of a possible 1, in some turns, earning you the rank of your-rank.

The only point is awarded as follows:

• 1 point for finding sundry items (the paper airplane).

The known ranks are:

• Unrepentant Sinner. (Death by praying too much)
• Fire Marshal. (Death by burning a body part)
• Schizophrenic. (Death by cutting a body part)
• Swinger. (Death by hanging)
• Pharmaceutical Tester. (Death by eating matches)
• Daydreamer. (0 points)
• undefined. (1 point but the airplane was not read)
• Intelligentsia. (1 point and the airplane was read)

Thank You to my Patreon supporters

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