Key & Compass presents:
The Prairie House
by Chris Hay

• Map
• Walkthrough
• Extras
  • Achievements, Characters, Credits, Inventory, Themes
• Thank You to my Patreon supporters
• Support me on Ko-Fi
• External links:
  • This game at IFDB, and IFWiki.
  • Follow me at Bluesky, Ko-Fi, Mastodon, Patreon, and Wordpress.

Map

Walkthrough

You are first invited to choose a theme, that is the color palette and fonts used by the game. I chose the Sunrise theme.

If you don't like your choice, the CHOOSE THEME command lets you change the theme at any time,

? 1 –to– 8 (repeat until you choose 8 when you're done changing themes)

After the prologue, you're at...

Sampling Site

> i. x key. x map. x permit.

> s.

Open Prairie

> x sunflower. x orchid. x bluestem.

> take sunflower. (+1)

> n.

Sampling Site

> x bin. x samples. x corer.

> take all. (+1)

> n.

Prairie Approach

> x grass. n.

Car (at site)

You automatically drop everything but the car key.

> x papers.

> start car. drive.

Car (at house)

> take all. (nah, leave it all here)

> out. n.

Front Porch

> x rug. x planks. x door.

> open door. (You need a key; the papers in your car should help tell you where it is.)

> s. s.

Car

> read papers. (too dark!)

> start car. (+1. You see a deer!)

> read papers. (The key is under the planks.)

> turn off car.

> out. n.

Front Porch

> look under planks. (You find the house key.)

> take house key.

> n. (You unlock the door and enter...)

Entryway

...then lock the door behind you. You put the key on a wall hook.

> x stool. x shovel. x boots.

> w.

Kitchen

> x sink. x cupboards. open them. x mug.

> e. e.

Dining Area

> x table. x bedroom key. take it.

> n.

Living Room

> take obituary. x obituary.

? 1 (yes, do read it; +1)

> x snakeroot.

> w.

Hallway

> x photos.

> w.

Bathroom

? 1 (yes, do freshen up)

You leave the bathroom when done.

Hallway

> n.

Study

> x bookcase. x armchair.

> take book. (which?)

? 1 (You learn that snakeroot plus water has medicinal value. You also hear something upstairs.)

? 2 (You learn that info from dreams is important. You also hear growling nearby.)

? 3 (You read about ghost cats. You also hear a creaking sound upstairs. +1 for reading all the books.)

? 4 (stop reading)

> s. e. u.

Stairs Landing

> x window.

> w. (You use the key to unlock the door.)

West Bedroom

> x nightstand. x cross stitch.

> x bed. x blanket. x pillow.

> e.

Stairs Landing

> e. (locked—and you don't care right now)

> w.

West Bedroom

> sleep. (no: too hungry)

> e. d.

Living Room

> take snakeroot. eat it. (no: infuse it first)

> s. w. w.

Kitchen

> take mug. fill mug. (with water)

> put root in mug. (You make an infusion!)

> drink mug. (You're not so hungry now.)

> drop mug. (oops!)

> e. e. n. u. w.

West Bedroom

> sleep. (You sleep.)

West Bedroom

It's now morning. The candle and matches from your dream are gone.

> e.

Stairs Landing

The east door is open now.

> x window. e.

East Bedroom

> x bed. x note. (+1. It's a farewell poem.)

> take note.

> w. d. w. n.

Study

Instead of a coyote or key here, you find a ripped newspaper page.

> take page. x page.

? 1 (yes, do read it; +1)

> s. s.

Entryway

The shovel and boots are missing.

> s.

You lock up the house and drive home. You are the last person to ever sleep there.

*** The End ***

Your achievements are listed, then the game starts from the beginning.

Extras

Achievements

Instead of a score, there are achievements, which are recorded in the save files and they carry over from one game session to the next. They are listed when you end the game.

(Sorry, but I don't know where the save files are created on your machine. The save files might be done with cookies for all I know.)

The ten possible achievements are:

• Collected your samples. Take both the samples bin and the soil corer.
• Picked a wildflower. Take the sunflower, not any of the others.
• Scared a deer (and yourself). Happens when you start the car near the house.
• Read background docs. In the car, when near the house, start the car (for light), then read the house papers.
• Read the obituary. It's in the living room.
• Read all the books. In the study, try to take a book, then choose 1, then 2, then 3.
• Drank the snakeroot infusion. See mug and snakeroot.
• Dreamt of a coyote. During the dream, when in the hallway, look at the creature: it's a coyote.
• Found poetry. Read the birch note.
• Read about a grave mystery. Read the newspaper page.

Characters

• A deer is startled when you turn on your car's headlights at the house.
• A coyote ghost confronts you in your dream.

Mentioned:

• Anastasiya (Nastya) Zapornowski used to live in this house. She loved wildlife and being independent.
• Nastya's family is mentioned in the obituary: mother Diana (deceased), father Georgiy, and brother Vanko.
• Grygoriy is the gravekeeper at St. Michael's church. He discovered the opened grave.
• The priest and town officials are also mentioned in the newspaper article.
• The prairie preserve committee own the field house after Nastya's death.
• Ukrainian Canadians, the Anishinaabe collection of American Indigenous tribes (particularly the Ojibwe), and ghost cats are the subjects of the three books in the study.
• A family and a grandma are in the hallway photos.
• Someone must've been using the east bedroom in secret, took the boots and shovel while you slept, and dug up Nastya's grave. But who was it? Feel free to speculate!

Credits

This is the response to CREDITS:

 -------
 CREDITS
 -------
 
 The Prairie House
 (v1.0.0, 2022)
 
 Engine : Adventuron Version 1.0.0 Beta 75f
 [Personal Use Only] by Chris Ainsley
 https://adventuron.io/betabeta/
 Parser type : Sometimes this game may require
 more than two-word commands.
 
 Written by :
 Chris Hay aka Eldritch Renaissance Cake
 
 Art and Music by :
 Kelsen Hadder (@kelsenhadder / Hadd_)
 
 Fonts :
 Most are by DamienG - homestead (Prairie theme),
 byteletter (Gothic theme), zx times (Canada
 theme), zx sierra quest (90s theme), panda
 (Nature theme), cushion (Sunrise theme); One
 font by Brandon Schoepf of Tepid Monkey Fonts -
 November (Spoohouse theme)
 
 Palettes :
 Mostly by Chris Hay / Eldritch Renaissance Cake
 (Prairie, Gothis, Canada, Nature); 90s was
 modified and built on from panstasz' World of
 Horror palette "Neon Slasher"; Sunrise is by
 SoundsDotZip (modified slightly); Spoohouse is
 by Hadd_ (he modified this one from his original
 Spoohouse).
 
 Special thanks to Garry Francis for playtesting
 an earlier version of this game, and to the
 Adventuron Discord community for answering my
 coding questions and providing moral support!

Inventory

Items are listed in the order they're acquired in this game.

• car key. You're carrying it.
• When in the car, you need this key to START CAR. Now you can drive from the site to the house.
• Later, START CAR so you have enough light to read the house papers. TURN OFF CAR when you're done.
• site map and research permit. You're carrying both of them.
• Feel free to ignore them. You automatically drop them inside the car when you first enter it, and you're no longer willing to pick them up again.
• samples bin and soil corer. They're both at the sampling site.
• Take them. You automatically drop them inside the car when you first enter it, and you're no longer willing to pick them up again. You aren't willing to drive from the site without them in the car.
• sunflower. It's on the open prairie.
• This is the only flower you're permitted to take, and you earn an achievement for it. Just keep it.
• house key. Find it by looking under the boards of the front porch, but only after learning it's there by reading the house papers in the car while the car's on.
• The house key unlocks the front door. When inside the house, you automatically hang this key on a conveniently-placed hook and you're no longer willing to take it.
• When you leave the house in the morning, it's strongly implied that you automatically use the house key to lock it up, and that you also hide the key back where you found it.
• bedroom key. Find it by examining the table in the dining area.
• The bedroom key unlocks the door to the west bedroom, but not the east bedroom.
• Note that the bedroom door is not implemented on the inside; don't worry about closing the door and locking it before you sleep.
• obituary. It's in the living room.
• Just read it. You don't need to take it.
• piece of snakeroot. Snakeroot is in the living room. When you try to take it, you break off this piece of it, leaving the rest in the living room.
• Put this root into a mug of water to make an infusion.
• mug. Find it by opening the cupboards in the kitchen.
• In the kitchen, fill the mug (with water) then put the piece of snakeroot into the mug to make an infusion. Drink the mug; you are no longer that hungry and can sleep.
• lit candle and matches. They're in the west bedroom at the beginning of your dream sequence.
• Take them. The candle's light lets you see in the extreme dark. The matches are available so you can re-light the candle if it ever goes out for any reason.
• When you wake in the morning, both the candle and matches are gone.
• birch note. It's in the east bedroom which is unlocked in the morning.
• Read it. Take it so you can show it to the authorities later.
• newspaper page. It's in the study in the morning.
• Take it and read it.

Themes

The game offers the player a choice of seven themes which can be changed at any time with the CHOOSE THEME command. The theme determines the color palette and the fonts used, and when uppercase is applied to the output.

The artwork was also matched to each theme by reusing the theme's color palette. That means there are seven versions of every image in the game.

Interestingly, the concept of offering themes was the initial seed for the game; the story and gameplay ideas came later.

Here are screenshot samplings of the seven themes:

Thank You to my Patreon supporters

This walkthrough was funded via Patreon with

• the support of Robin Johnson, Ville Lavonius, Andrew Schultz, Kenneth Hon, Carl Muckenhoupt, Mark Musante, Phil Tatro, and Daniel Stelzer;
• the generous support of Janice M Eisen, Matthew Foxley, and Thomas Insel;
• the very generous support of Karl Ove Hufthammer, Lance Campbell, and DrkStarr;
• the extremely generous support of Emily Short, Allen Garvin, Jesse McGrew, Jacqueline Ashwell, Jennifer Rexrode, and Durafen;
• and the invisible support of several anonymous patrons.

Ko-Fi is a way to send me small one-time donations. Every little bit helps, and thank you!