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Key & Compass presents:
Rippled Flesh
by Ryan Stevens

Rippled Flesh is a Z-machine interactive fiction game written with Inform 6 and is © 1996 by Ryan Stevens (writing as "Rybread Celsius"). It was entered in IF Comp 1996 where it took 24th place.

In this "interactive goosing", you play as a balding middle-aged man who wakes up in a desolate room, remembering only the number forty, a seductive women [sic], a tropical drink, and darkness. Exploring, you seem to be in a veritable hotel of horrors. Perhaps there's some meaning behind it all, but really, you just want to find the exit.

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


Maps

Map 1: Cursed Hallway

Bedroom DesolateRoom Hallway(1) Hallway(2) Room withDoor (1) Bathroom GlassRoom AnotherStorageroom. Storageroom nw / ne / se WardrobeMaze WardrobeMaze w nw / sw / se

Map 2: Wardrobe Maze

4 1 4 1 4 1 3 x 2 4 1 3 1 4 2 3 Wardrobe(1) Wardrobe(2) Room withDoor (1) Room withDoor (2) Wardrobe(4) Wardrobe(3) 2

Map 3: Motel Hell

Darkness Cul de sac Hallway(4) Room withDoor (2) Stair Well Bar Hallway(3) MiddleStair Well BallroomWest Side BallroomCenter BallroomEast Side HiddenRoom GroundFloorStair Well DeadEnd StraightPath SharpTurn PennyArcadeof Horror EriePlace FutureRoom Lobby Exit Infrontofdoorway. Reception d d u u WardrobeMaze WardrobeMaze

Walkthrough

Desolate Room

The area south of here is a two-room maze of darkness which you can completely ignore. If you really want to see what's there, you have to cheat and PURLOIN YELLOW POSTER since that's the only light-source in the game.

> x me. i.

> verbose.

> e.

Hallway (1)

> x dust. (+5. You see a 3-toed footprint before you sneeze.)

> x window. s.

Bathroom

> x mirror. x stomach. touch stomach. (+5)

> x tub. open curtain. (+5. You discover a corpse.)

Actually, he's not quite dead, but then you hear something approach and you hastily put the body out in the hall and hide in the tub while the others take the body away.

> x blood. x sink. turn on sink. drink sink. turn off sink.

Once you leave the bathroom, you'll be unwilling to return to it.

> n. e. n.

Bedroom

I failed to find any really useful thing to do here.

> x mattress. x highchair. x child.

> ask child about child. take child. (Can't.)

> baby, hi.

> tickle baby. kiss baby. tickle tummy.

> ask baby about breast.

Although a diaper isn't mentioned, there is one:

> x diaper. take diaper. smell diaper.

> ask baby about diaper.

> s. s.

Glass Room

If you wait in the room long enough, lightning briefly reveals a wooden sculpture.

> x thunder. take it. x sculpture. (Monkey-like creature.)

> n. e.

Room with Door (1)

> x plaque. ("NEder SEy No")

> push plaque. x thingy. x door. (locked.)

> n. (The door closes, stuck shut behind you.)

Wardrobe

Use the clue from the plaque, using only the uppercase letters:

> ne. se. n.

Room with Door (2)

You're actually on the other side of the first locked door and it's a different door to the east. Note that there's no plaque here; it's a different room and you can't go west.

> open door. e. (+5)

Stair Well

> x stairs. x lights. d. e. e.

Ballroom - Center

I note that "dance" is not understood.

> x ball. n.

Bar

> x ashtray. take it.

> s. e.

Ballroom - East Side

CAUTION: Don't sit on the red chair! That action voids a puzzle.

> x green chair. x red chair. x blue chair.

Uh, those chairs are up against the east wall. Is that important?

> x east wall. (You find a yellow dot.)

> x dot. smell dot. taste dot. (It's mustard.)

Okay, this is a totally unreasonable puzzle, but the yellow dot on the wall is supposed to be a clue for what to do with the chairs. You're supposed to notice the colours of the chairs, think of the RGB colour scheme (also known as additive colour), and sit on the pair of chairs that are mixed to make yellow.

Unfortunately, the author goofed. If you look at the Wikipedia article on additive color, it's clear that red mixed with green makes yellow.

But that's not what the game wants. Instead, you need to erroneously think that green and blue makes yellow, and therefore sit on the green and blue chairs. If you ever sit on the red chair, the outline will never appear.

> sit on green chair. stand.

> sit on blue chair. stand.

> x outline. open outline. e. (+5)

Hidden Room

> ne. nw. w.

Cul de sac

> x south. x hole. (See punks.) x hole. (See button.)

> e. se. (You hear the outline close.)

> sw.

Hidden Room

> x hole. x hole. sw.

Sharp Turn

> x bone. take it. read it. w.

Straight Path

> x hole. x hole. w.

Dead End

> x north. touch north.

> touch bump. take bump. (+5)

> x hole. (You are now enraged and the wall feels soft.)

> hit north. push north.

Ballroom - West Side

> e.

Ballroom - Center

> x ball. n.

Bar

I never learned what this button does.

> x button. push button. (Refuses to budge.)

> s. w. w.

Middle Stair Well

If you don't have "verbose" mode on, it's easy to miss this patch.

> take patch. x it.

> d. s.

Erie Place

> x wallpaper. x bubble.

> pop bubble. pop bubble. (If necessary, keep trying until it bursts.)

> x hole.

> x dust. x web. x word. xyzzy.

> put bump in word. (+1. A spider chews you out.)

> x spider. ask spider about spider. (Charlotte, but not that one.)

> ask spider about word. ask spider about web.

> ask spider about punks. show patch to spider.

> ask spider about mother. ask spider about beeswax.

> s. (Too slippery.)

> e.

Fortune Room

> x woman. x ball. (There's three possible visions.)

> look under table. (Woman won't let you.)

> ask woman about ball. ask woman about fortune.

> ask woman about name. ask woman about punks.

> x simple chair. x yellow chair.

> give thingy to woman. (She screams and runs.)

> look under table. x pedal. push pedal. (+5)

> w. w.

Penny Arcade of Horror

Although the yellow bricks seem to move, they never seem to move enough to make any difference.

> x poster.

> x small poster. take it. g. x red bricks.

> x shredded poster. take it. g. x brown bricks.

> x yellow poster. take it. x yellow bricks. push them.

> x nickelodeon. turn handle. x old game. x slot.

> s.

Lobby

> x desk. x buzzer.

> w. (Glass wall.)

> push buzzer. (You hear two swishes; presumably the glass wall opening and closing.)

> search desk. (You find a box.)

CAUTION: Stuff put into the box is lost forever!

> x box. look in box.

The loafers are closed, unopenable, and not wearable?

> x left. search left. open left. wear left.

> x right. search right. open right. wear right.

> shake left. x old coin.

> shake right. x new coin.

> n.

Penny Arcade of Horror

> put old coin in slot. push button.

> s. e. (+5)

Exit

> open door. (Stuck.)

> x door. x star. take star. x door.

By now you should've felt a slight breeze from the southwest or scurrying to the southwest.

> sw.

Infront of doorway.

> x door. open door. s.

Darkness

The lights come on at a random time, so just try anything you like.

> sorw. (Repeat until the lights come on. +5. "Happy Birthday!")

Reception

The shock gives you a heart attack, and you die.

> look.

In your last moments of life, you gain some understanding about what happened. These relevations may include, based on what you observed in the game:

*** You have, for all practical purposes, won. Kinda depressing, huh? ***

As near as I can tell, the bricks do nothing and the button in the bar does nothing, You can't go south from Erie Place, west from Lobby, nor south of Exit.

Perhaps there's more to the baby, though. It's not mentioned in any epilogue I got.


Extras

Characters


Inventory

Honorable mention:


Score

You have so far scored your-score out of a possible 41, in several turns.

That's actually 46 points total, but who's counting?


Thank You to my Patreon supporters

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