Tenth Plague is a Z-machine interactive fiction game written with Inform 7 and is © 2011 by Lynnea Dally. It was an entry in IF Comp 2011 where it took 12th place.
In this Biblical game, you are a sentient cloud of destructiveness. You were created by God to kill the first-born son of every household in this Egyptian city, except God's chosen, who are to be spared. Parts of yourself are already performing their duty elsewhere in the city; this part of you only needs to kill five male children.
This solution is by David Welbourn.
In this game, you play a sentient cloud of destructiveness. You were created by God to kill the first-born son of every household in this Egyptian city, except God's chosen, who are to be spared. Although you have some small choices in how to perform your duty, you do not have the choice to avoid your duty. You will be destroyed instantly if you attempt to flee the city (or even backtrack too far), if you spare any of your targets, or if you cause the death of any non-targets.
Parts of yourself are already performing their duty elsewhere in the city. The part of yourself that the player controls will only need to kill five male children.
Outside the slave's hut
Although the door is locked, there are enough cracks to allow your gaseous form to ignore it.
> in.
Inside the slave's hut
Your first target is the sleeping male slave and he has no defense against your attack. Your default method of killing is strangulation. The female slave will not wake and cannot be woken.
> kill male. out. n.
Outside the merchant's cottage
Your second target is the merchant's son. There's a party inside the cottage, and the game won't let death (that is, you) crash the party and insists you need to lure the son outside instead. That seems a bit weird, but whatever. There's no obvious way to lure the kid outside, though, so go east.
> e.
A manger
On a technicality, you're allowed to kill this cow because it too is a first-born male. (So it should really say "bull", shouldn't it?) And because of the Jewish dietary laws, you have to cut its throat instead of killing it any other way. Fortunately, you don't need a knife, but can manifest a talon at will. And more fortunately, the cow's death makes enough of a commotion that the merchant's son obligingly comes out to the manger. Then kill him right away before he can raise any alarm.
> kill cow. cut throat. z. z. kill son. w. n.
Outside of the shipwright's dwelling
Your third target is the shipwright's son, but they've used pitch to seal off all the cracks in the door, so you can't get it that way. Huh. (I guess that means we can now abandon the subtle and sneaky approach we thought we needed for the merchant's place.) It'd be nice to just manifest an axe the way we manifested that talon in the manger, but the game doesn't work that way. So, try the Santa option: enter via the roof.
> ne.
Construction docks
> s.
Shipwright's roof
> d.
Inside the shipwright's dwelling
A complication: the boy's parents won't let you kill him, and dad has a burning torch. This somehow blocks you from any attacks where you need to solidify yourself. So just enter the kid as a gas and suffocate him from inside.
Alternatively, you can try to get dad to accidentally set all that pitch on fire. GO TO DOOR is the unlikely command to do this. Then while everyone's trying to avoid the fire, you can kill the boy any way you like.
> enter son. u. n. sw. n.
Outside the chosen's house
No killing here; God's chosen people are to be spared. The holy ward of lamb's blood keeps you out regardless, so you can't even try.
> n.
Outside of the architect's house
Your fourth victim is the architect's son. They've put lamb's blood on their door too, so you can't get in this way, but they didn't eat the lamb, so it doesn't quite count. You need to remove the mark first, then get in and perform your duty.
You can try to remove the mark with the lamb's wool, but the women inside stop you. So go up to the roof, but leave the lamb's wool here; as a thing of gas, you can't handle solid objects very long.
> take wool. drop wool. u.
Architect's roof
To distract the women, block off the chimney. The house will fill with smoke. Be careful: everyone inside will suffocate if you don't work quickly through this section. And you're only permitted to kill your targets, remember.
> take slab. put slab on chimney. d.
Outside of the architect's house
While the women are distracted, you can easily wipe the mark off the door. Make sure you open the door as soon as you can, to let fresh air into the house and prevent unwanted deaths.
> take wool. wipe mark. open door. in.
Architect's house
> kill son. out. n.
Guarded entrance
The guard presents no obstacle to you.
> n.
Royal nursery
The pharaoh also presents no obstacle; he's entranced. You can kill his son easily. When his son is dead, he opens the east passage to his treasury.
AMUSING tells you about the COM command. Use COM at the beginning of a session to make various Node objects appear in the game. Examining a node gives commentary from the author.
> kill son. e.
*** You have won ***
> amusing
Note that you can't hold onto anything for very long.
This walkthrough is provided free of charge since I wrote this walkthrough prior to January 2015 when I began my Patreon account. I've since reformatted this walkthrough to use my currently preferred style. I hope you enjoy it!
I'm still creating new walkthroughs! 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.