Trapped in a One-Room Dilly is a Z-machine text adventure game written with Inform 6 and is © 1998 by Laura A. Knauth. It was an entry in IF Comp 1998 where it took 8th place.
In this one-room puzzlefest, you want to escape from a room with lots of items but no obvious exits. (This was a novel idea back in 1998!) Features some photographs, a dartboard, a slot machine, a puzzlebox, a closet, a couch, a table and chair, a thieving mouse, and a pink fish.
This solution is by David Welbourn, and is based on Release 1 of the game.
SPOILERS AHEAD. Reading a walkthrough prematurely can sometimes diminish one's enjoyment of a text adventure game. Please make an honest effort to play the game before reading this walkthrough.
One-Room Dilly
> x me. i. (Carrying nothing.)
> x lights. x photographs.
> x gold frame. ("901")
> x black frame. ("372")
> x green frame. ("862")
> x red frame. ("497". Also, is clock real?)
> x brown frame. ("917")
> x white frame. ("638")
> x panels.
> open silver panel. (Dartboard revealed. Seven darts taken by mouse behind the couch.)
> x dartboard. ("301", display, red button, numbered sections.)
> open bronze panel. (Locked.)
> x closet. x rod. x box. x block. ("MYRIAD", 9 numbered pegs, "S" and "R" buttons.)
> take rod. take box. (Box falls apart.)
> x door. take door. drop door.
> x table. x chair. look under table.
> open table.
> take door. put door in table. (The door is too big to be the inner leaf.)
> drop door.
> x bookshelf. x books. g. g. g. g.
> x opening. x fish.
> x couch. x afghan. take it. (A lever is revealed.)
> x lever. push lever. (That part of the couch reclines.)
> look under foot rest.
> x hole. (Get darts and a paper scratch.)
> x darts. x scratch. (+10;)
The color mentioned on the scratch is randomized. The color will always be one of the frame colors.
> search pillows. (Find a flashlight.)
> x ceiling. (Looks like an circular door up there that irises open.)
> x walls. x rippling. rip rippling.
> x notched panel. (Pattern of holes and depressions.)
> throw darts at dartboard.
> throw dart at 20. g. (Repeart throwing darts until you always hit your target, no problem.)
Now try to play to 301 exactly. It helps to know that the bull's eye scores 50, but I find it simplest to do it with fourteen 20s, one 10, and one 11.
> push button. (Dartboard resets to 0.)
> throw dart at 20. g. g. g. g. g. g. (140)
> throw dart at 20. g. g. g. g. g. g. (280)
> throw dart at 10. throw dart at 11. (+10; mouse grabs the white key.)
> x hole. x key. unlock bronze panel with white key.
> open bronze panel. x slot machine.
> pull slot lever. (It won't move. Need something in the slot.)
> look behind clock. (The grey nail is ticking.)
> take nail. (+10; outlet cover revealed)
> x cover. x screw. (Need something to unscrew the screw with.)
> x myriad.
> push 2. push 4. push 6. push 8. (+10)
With all O's, a tin solder falls out and stolen by the mouse.
> x hole. x soldier. x spear. take spear.
> unscrew screw with spear. (+10)
> x cover. x screw. x flat device. take it. (You can type numbers on it.)
> put device on notched panel. (+10)
I don't know what number to type yet.
> x vent. open vent. x grating.
> x vent. x lumpy. take lumpy. x doll.
> put grating on vent.
> x yarn. take yarn. destroy doll. (Mouse steals the ribbon.)
> x hole. x ribbon.
> break lights with rod. (One row is now dark.)
> x fishbowl. (You see a four-digit number.)
Figure out the seven-digit number to type on the keypad by combining the clues from the paper scratch and the fishbowl. The first three digits are the number on the frame whose color is named on the paper scratch. The last four digits are the number etched on the fishbowl.
For example: if the scratch said "White", and the white frame says "638", and the fishbowl said "1254", then the correct number is 6381254.
> type CORRECT-NUMBER. (Loud grinding noise!)
> x slot machine. x cubbyhole. move loose panel.
> x gap. turn on flashlight. point it at gap.
> x gap. x switch. pull switch. (It doesn't stay pulled.)
> tie switch to mesh. (+10, using the ribbon)
> type CORRECT-NUMBER. (+10, the ceiling opens)
> x ceiling. x beams.
> take door. stand on table.
This syntax is rather impossible to guess without reading the in-game hints:
> put door between table and ceiling. (+10)
> u. (+10)
*** You have won! ***
> making
> credits
This is the response to CREDITS:
Once again, thanks to Graham Nelson for creating and freely distributing Inform. And a big thank you to all of my beta testers for taking the time to send me error reports which help me to make future versions of the game more enjoyable for others.
- Sarah Dannenbring
- Larry Kwong
- Vincent Lynch
- Sarah Hansen
- Andy Scarfe
- Gunther Schmidl
- Bernd Schmidt
- Gina Simon
- Karen Tyers
Thanks for the help!
This is the response to MAKING:
The premise of a strictly one-room piece of interactive fiction was inspired in part because or my interpretation of one of the maxims in Poor Richard's Almanac by Benjamin Franklin. Paraphrasing, he states that 'nothing is more binding than absolute freedom.' It follows then, that a certain degree of confinement can actually be liberating. Applied to the realm of interactive fiction, I wondered if it were at all possible to create an entertaining game in which the player never was permitted to move to another room during the entire course of game-play. It was with these parameters that I set out to code Trapped in a One-Room Dilly. I decided upon a shorter length to the game to fit the rules for the current Annual Interactive Fiction Competitions, but I still think it would be interesting to see if it's possible to create an entertaining full-length game with this premise.
I started creating Dilly around September of 1997, but did not work on it or any other piece of IF much at all for the duration of the school year. I started seriously coding Dilly in June of 1998 and finished the major structure of it in mid-July of 1998.
Coding Dilly went much quicker than my first piece of IF, Travels in the Land of Erden. This was of course in part to the decrease in the number of rooms that required descriptions and objects, but also because I had a much better handle on the language of Inform than at the outset of my previous project.
The style of Dilly is also significantly different than Erden. The puzzles in Dilly are much more 'game' oriented as opposed to the attempt to create an adventurous world-like atmosphere in Erden. For this reason, having a running score during game-play was appropriate. Numbers are also prevalent in many of the puzzles. And unlike Erden, there is only one solution for each of the puzzles in Dilly. This again corresponds to the game-like atmosphere.
All in all, Dilly was fun to code and let me experiment with different aspects of the language of Inform. My favorite style is still the fantasy, epic-adventure though, and I hope to code a sequel to Erden in the near future.
--Laura A. Knauth
The response to SCORE is:
You have so far scored your-score out of a possible 100, in several turns.
Points are awarded as follows:
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