Key & Compass presents:
The Lion in Winter
by Iain Merrick

In this comedic short game, you play as an overweight young man of the Massif tribe. Your dad's left you to watch over his cows, which is bad enough, but now a lion just came into the enclosure and took one away! You better get that cow back and fast or your dad won't let you go to any dances for a hundred years!

This solution is by David Welbourn.

Walkthrough
Extras
- Characters, Endings, Inventory
Thank You to my Patreon supporters
External links:
- This game at IFDB, IFWiki, and ifwizz.
- Tweet about this walkthrough on Twitter.

Walkthrough

The Cattle Enclosure

> x spear. take it. x cows. (lion steals a cow on the third turn!)

> x cow. n. take cow. n.

The Grasslands

> x grass. x tree. x tracks. e.

The Ravine

> x bridge. x ravine. e. drop cow. w.

The Grasslands

> drop cow. put cow in tree. x cow. e. e.

Amongst the Lions

> x cow. x lions. kill lions.

> get on cow. hit cow.

The Ravine

> hit cow. SPACE

At the Dance

*** You have won ***

Extras

Characters

The cows are initially in the cattle enclosure where they belong. After one cow is taken, they're given distinct adjectives:

The terrified cow is the stolen one.
The startled-looking cow is the one left behind. It becomes a smug-looking cow when it's in the tree.

Some scary lions are on the other side of the ravine. When one of them jumps over the ravine, it's styled as the seriously pissed-off lion.

In the epilogue:

The boys and girls at the dance.

Mentioned:

Your cousin Mowgli was kidnapped by monkeys.
Your dad has gone off the kill Englishmen again.
Olaf Stapledon is quoted in the prologue.
Tigers, which you think might be hiding in the grass, even though tigers aren't native to Africa.

Endings

You have died if the scary lions kill you.
Splat if the seriously pissed-off lion catches you.
You have won if you manage to successfully rescue the terrified cow.

Inventory

your dad's second-best spear. It's in the cattle enclosure. Take it.
a startled-looking cow. It's in the cattle enclosure after the first one is stolen by a lion. Take it and put it in the tree in the grasslands. (It makes more sense in context.)

Thank You to my Patreon supporters

This walkthrough is provided free of charge since I wrote this walkthrough prior to January 2015 when I began my Patreon account, and also because the work it's based on has less than fifteen locations (so I wouldn't have charged for it anyway). I've since reformatted this walkthrough to use my currently preferred style. I hope you enjoy it!

I'm still creating new walkthroughs! Larger ones 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.