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.