Below the Root - At last, we're getting somewhere!

Dum dee dum.

All right! Progress of some kind is being made. I spent some time exploring Broad Grund and then I moved on to the left and discovered the Garden Grunds. A couple of interesting things happened, the best of which is that the Wise One taught me how to pense messages in addition to emotions and increased my spirit level.

Jumping puzzles!

 After some vaguely obnoxious but not really difficult jumping puzzles on top of the garden grund, I made my way into this little hut. Inside was a small child.

A neat little piece of PC speaker music played here.

Hooray!

Yeah, you lost me.

So now I can  use pense message and see what people are really thinking. This is extremely helpful. I'd like to get close to followers of D'ol Salaat and see what they're thinking, but I'm not sure it's worth the risk. Maybe later.

        It's actually rather refreshing to play an adventure game I've never played before, with no real idea of what I'm supposed to be doing. The sense of discovery, of figuring things out, solving something, is really pretty excellent. I mean, once I get on into King's Quest and the like, I'll be blowing through like nobody's business because I know everything there is to know. There's nothing new to find, no puzzles I haven't solved. With Below the Root, it's a brand new thing. I guess that's one of my main hopes for this blog, to discover adventure games I've never played and maybe find some good stuff. 

 

Awesome.

I even found ONE GUY out of all the "do you want to rest?" folks that was actually friendly and let me rest in peace.  Forgot to take a screenshot, though.

So, I've been picking up little pieces of the puzzle of Green-Sky one by one, though none of them seem to fit together just yet. It appears I can pense animals, which makes pense message pretty essential, as I can't speak with them because they're, y'know, animals. Here are a few things I've picked up;

Don't know who or what that is.

I don't know if he's talking about himself in the 3rd person or what.

I LOVE YOU TOO

Done and done.

 I'm really happy I can pense messages now. I get a lot more information from people that way. Here's a few examples;

Okey doke.

BUNNY.

Did that, thanks.

Yeah, I'm not sleeping here.

 Now, here, I was hoping I had an idea, but when I offered him a token, I got no response.

That's too bad, buddy.

All right! Back to it.

Below the Root - Damn D'ol Salaat!

I'm getting tired of this screen.

I sort of feel like I'm making a bit of progress. I have had a whole lot of stuff that just seems like useless banter, but I've also received a couple of clues. I'm also REALLY thinking I would like to start over as Pomma, as she's the most skilled in spirit. We'll see, naturally. I'm not sure there's any character progress, because I haven't seen any, but to be fair, I haven't explored everywhere yet.

I admit to a small amount of excitement when I saw this place...

Unfortunately, though I hoped to find useful information or items within the grand hall...

Important people?

Er, not so much.

...there was nothing to be found except this guy and a sad chick that said something along the lines of "yay we have a quester." Great.
        This is just a screenshot heavy post, I think. If I have something new to report, I will. Until then, here's more screenshots.

It's a hut.

Yeah, so far, everyone who offers to let me rest is feeling guile, deceit, or some variation thereof.

More different tree.

Climbing some vines.

Presumably that's a clue. Maybe? Maybe not. I have no idea.

Will do.

Below the Root - Continuing onwards

Turns out if you rest here, you get captured.

So I've made a little more progress in Below the Root, but I'm still not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be doing. Interestingly enough, I've learned that the game is based on the Green-Sky Trilogy by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I might have to pick it up some time. This may not be news to anyone else, but it is to me. Anyway, where was I?
        I've done a bit of browsing on wikipedia on the game and the first book of the trilogy, so I sort of gather I'm supposed to be going (shock and amazement) "below the root," as it were. If anyone winds up reading this, I could sure stand some hints (not spoilers, please) about what to do next.

So one goal is to find a key to the gates, I guess.

I did come across this place, where the guy tells me I need a key. So, I guess I should start looking for one! Come to think of it, I should probably pense him to make sure he's telling me the truth.
        I might actually start the game again with a character that has better spirit skill, because it seems like it would be extremely beneficial to do so. I'm not sure yet. I sort of want to see if I can keep going with Neric, who I switched to from Herd. Maybe I'll have Steve try playing as a stronger spirit character. If I can, y'know, drag him away from Heroes VI.

I think I need vine rope to get across water.

Oh! Here's a tip: If you buy something, MAKE SURE you pick it up before you hit buy again. I lost two tokens that way. Unfortunate.

There's a whole shop section not far from Neric's house. You can buy shubas, which allow you to glide instead of falling, vine rope, which, I believe, is for getting over water, and food. So far I haven't needed food because I keep "dying" and ending up a day older and totally renewed.

Once I have more to talk about, I'll be back. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this:

You, too!

Below the Root - My journey begins.

It starts.

I've played for a few minutes and I still have no idea what's going on, but that's okay. I've read a text file of the manual which is fairly helpful. Let me see if I can get this straight.

        The manual says:

Greetings, Quester!

You have arrived in Green-Sky just in time to discover a hidden
secret of momentous importance that will stop the headlong slide of
our land toward certain disaster.

Last night these words came to me in a dream:
  The green light pales.
  The spirit fades away in darkness lying.
  A quest proclaim!
  Godspeed to all who seek. Bid them haste.
  The light is dying.

Only you can solve the riddle of my dream and save Green-Sky.

So this tells me very little so far. In any event, I like this game and I'll tell you why. It has a neat concept, which may or may not have been a hardware limitation, but I'm inclined to think not. You get to pick from five different "questers" (which blogspot tells me is spelled wrong) and each one is from one of two races, Kindar and Erdling.

Here I've picked Herd, an Erdling male.

The idea is that these two races know nothing about thievery and therefore you have to get permission before you can pick up stuff in other peoples' houses. Again, I sort of doubt that's a limitation within the engine, but how the hell do I know? It's neat and I don't know any other games from the time that do this sort of thing. (King's Quest, to a very small extent, but it's mostly "pick up everything that isn't nailed down.")

        Depending on who you pick, you start in a different place within the land of Green-Sky. They all seem to be about the same to me, I don't know enough to determine whether one's better than the other. The items I have found so far are tokens (money), shuba (parachutes of some kind) and food.

That blue thing on the floor by Herd.

The interface is fairly smiple, but I like it. It's not a text parser and obviously not going to be point and click. It actually reminds me of Infocom and Lucasarts adventure games to some degree. When you press enter, a menu pops up on the bottom of the screen:

Pause speaks for itself, as does take, drop, examine, speak, buy, sell, etc. Worth noting are status, renew, pense, grunspreke, and kiniport. Status brings up a sub-menu containing a few useful pieces of information.

The first NPC I encountered in Green-Sky.

Renew seems to waste a day and start me back in my house. Pense, grunspreke and kiniport are spirit skills. They're the spells of the game. Pense can be used in two ways depending on your race. Pense emotion tells you what an NPC is feeling on the same screen as you, from any distance. Pense message works if you're not an Erdling (I am, currently) and have enough spirit. You need to be facing the character, within talking distance. Then, the power gives you a message from THEIR BRAIN, I assume. Kiniport is, I think, a teleport spell, and grunspreke is supposed to make vines grow. I've had occasion to try neither so far. 

Speak gets you some information. A grund is a big tree you live in.

        To summarize, I don't really know what I'm doing here yet and I have no idea what TO do. I'm still enjoying myself, though. Incidentally, the manual tells me that poem/hint thing was written by D'ol Falla. Here, I apparently got grabbed by a follower of D'ol Salaat. 

Another day gone. You have 50, I think.

I'm guessing these guys don't get along.

Welcome to the machine.

Here we are at the very beginning. Taking a cue from and giving a giant nod to the CRPG Addict, I have decided to blog my way through graphical adventure games, from (almost) earliest to the latest. Occasionally, I intend to throw in some independent games from the last few years that I have enjoyed, and some that I have hated. I don't promise any lack of bias or subjectivity, as I know what I like and it obviously may not coincide with what you like.

        I grew up playing adventure games. The earliest computer game I ever played was the original King's Quest, on my grandmother's old IBM computer. I had to be about 4 or 5 years old. Hell, that game taught me to spell and type. Sierra was the king of adventure games. Lucasarts games were okay, but I REALLY enjoyed Sierra games. King's Quest, Space Quest, the Colonel's Bequest, Police Quest, Quest for Glory, the list goes on. Never played Leisure Suit Larry for some reason. Maybe because I was 5. Anyway, I have a tendancy to ramble. I'll let Steve take over whenever I can drag him away from Heroes VI.

        The first game I'm going to play for this thing is called Below the Root. It's the second game on the wikipedia list of graphical adventure games. The first, Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken or The Portopia Serial Murder Case, is A.) a japanese game and B.) not for the PC. I'd run it on NES emulation, but frankly my video card died and I have some crappy PCI thing in there now that I can't even run NEStopia on. So, on to Below the Root. It's from 1984 and was made by Windham Classics, which wikipedia tells me is a division of Spinnaker Software. We'll get to it in the next posting.