Labyrinth is a Z-machine interactive fiction game written with Inform 6 and is © 2006 by Sami Preuninger. It was entered in IF Comp 2006 where it took 18th place.
In this puzzle game, you play as Damien Alexander, professor of mathematics. Before waking up in this gaudy and sweet-smelling cubical room, you remember crashing your car while driving with your wife Melanie. My God, is she dead? Where is she? And where are you?
This solution is by David Welbourn, and is based on Release 1 of the game.
The topological map shows only the connections between rooms without regard to compass directions. The connection colors indicate what color the floor is when going between adjacent rooms.
When you only have the TERTIUS magic word, indicated on this map with the triangle symbol, you're limited to three orientations of seven of the rooms, where the floor can be purple, green, or blue.
A Sweet-Smelling Room (purple floor)
> x me. i. (nothing)
> smell. (The room smells like apples.)
> x plaque. (triangle with "TERTIUS")
> x box. (has circular depression in lid)
> x door. open door. (out of reach)
> e.
A Putrid-Smelling Room (purple floor)
> smell. x man. x bag.
> man, hi.
> ask man about himself. (He's Ray. Would you like to play Nim?)
> ask man about nim. ask man about bag.
> play nim.
He dumps a random number of counters.
To win, always take as many counters so that you leave 1, 7, 13, 19, 25, 31, 37, 43, or 49 counters for Ray when it's his turn.
>> take NUMBER. (Repeat until you win.)
+10. Ray gives you something then vanishes.
> i. x disc. x hole.
> w.
A Sweet-Smelling Room (purple floor)
> put disc in depression. (Disc falls off. Box opens. You take a chain. Box vanishes.)
> take disc. x chain.
> put disc on chain. (+10. You have an amulet.)
> x amulet. wear it.
> e.
A Putrid-Smelling Room (purple floor)
> tertius. (+5. The room rotates!)
A Putrid-Smelling Room (green floor)
> tertius.
A Putrid-Smelling Room (blue floor)
> e.
A Vile-Smelling Room (blue floor)
> smell. x plaque. (It has a cryptogram.)
Solve the cryptogram:
"Ohfnet pth rdqh wfdd wthnh ykq cgjs iy oehjp.
"Search the blue wall where you find my scent.
Nhcdhep efnhcqddy kj ptgo fsvgeh, fjs ykq wgdd
Reflect carefully on this advice, and you will
cgjs pth ihfjo kc ykqn hoeflh."
find the means of your escape."
Since the plaque has no smell, it's not obvious what scent the message is referring to. But see what happens when we make this code to clear summary:
FRESHC_TG__DIJKL_NOPQVW_Y_
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
This is a keyword cipher where the keyword seems very likely to be FRESH CUT GRASS abbreviated to FRESHCUTGA after removing duplicate letters.
> tertius. tertius. w.
A Woodsy-Smelling Room (green floor)
> smell. (Like a pine forest.)
> x plaque. (Too far away. Need an orange floor to read it.)
> tertius. w.
A Nasty-Smelling Room (blue floor)
> smell. (Like a wet dog.)
> tertius. tertius.
A Nasty-Smelling Room (green floor)
> x plaque. (square with "QUARTUS")
As you'll soon see, the magic word QUARTUS rotates a room clockwise, and between it and TERTIUS, you're now able to go anywhere in the labyrinth. So let's head back to the Woodsy-Smelling Room and find out what its plaque says:
> tertius. e.
A Woodsy-Smelling Room (blue floor)
The plaque is on the orange ceiling and we want that to be the floor.
> tertius.
A Woodsy-Smelling Room (purple floor)
The south wall is now orange. Since TERTIUS makes the east wall the floor, use QUARTUS repeatedly until the east wall is orange, then TERTIUS:
> quartus. (+5; west wall is orange)
> quartus. (north wall is orange)
> quartus. (east wall is orange)
> tertius.
A Woodsy-Smelling Room (orange floor)
> x plaque. (It's a logic puzzle.)
It may take some (a lot of) guesswork to figure out that the true statements are statements 1, 3, 5, and 8, and therefore, the magic number is 17.
Now make the floor purple:
> quartus. tertius.
A Woodsy-Smelling Room (purple floor)
> e.
A Green-Smelling Room (purple floor)
> smell. (Here's the fresh-cut grass smell.)
> search blue wall. (Nothing.)
The cryptogram also said to "reflect" on its advice, and well, the orange wall is opposite the blue wall, so...
> search orange wall. open compartment. (+10)
> take key. x key.
Now make the floor red:
> tertius.
A Green-Smelling Room (red floor)
> w.
A Floral-Smelling Room (red floor)
> x pod. x screen. (two-digit display, currently "0")
> x keypad. (0 through 9, "Clear", and "Enter")
Use the number you learned from the logic puzzle:
> push 1. push 7. push enter. (+10. The pod fades away, leaving Melanie's sleeping figure.)
> x Melanie. (She's the age you first met her.)
> wake Melanie. take Melanie.
> e.
A Green-Smelling Room (red floor)
Make the floor orange:
> tertius.
A Green-Smelling Room (orange floor)
> w.
A Harsh-Smelling Room (orange floor)
+5: Melanie wakes when you bring her here. You put her down.
> smell. (This room smells of ammonia.)
> ask Melanie about herself. ("Please, let's go home.")
Make the floor green:
> quartus. g. g. tertius.
A Harsh-Smelling Room (green floor)
> s.
A Sweet-Smelling Room (green floor)
Finally, make this floor yellow:
> quartus. g. tertius.
A Sweet-Smelling Room (yellow floor)
The last lousy point is impossible to guess without cheating.
> unlock door with key. open door.
> kiss Melanie.
> play air guitar. (+1)
> enter door. (+10)
*** You live happily ever after. ***
Have you tried:
- Praying?
- Eating/tasting/smelling things or people (including yourself)?
- Saying XYZZY or PLUGH?
- Farting, especially in front of others (don't look at me, my beta-testers asked for that one)?
- Kissing the old man?
"Labyrinth" is my first work of interactive fiction. Many thanks to Graham Nelson for his Inform programming language, to the defective yeti Matthew Baldwin from whom I first heard of interactive fiction, and to Victor Preuninger and Ramon Casanova for beta-testing this game.
I appreciate your feedback! If you would like to comment on the game, or report a bug, please e-mail me at samantha_casanova - AT - glic - DOT - com.
In that game you scored your-score out of a possible 66, in several turns.
The score is made up as follows:
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!
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