Back-Tracking: The Scott Adams Graphic Adventures - Adventureland, Pirate Adventure, and Mission Impossible

A while ago, when I was playing Dog Star Adventure, I had the bright idea to explore the different ports for the games that I played.  I still think it's a good idea, and one that helps my blog stand out a little by exploring some versions of games that don't get brought to light all that much. I'm also kind of fascinated by the minor differences that old games have between platforms, so it helps keep my interest up on the blogging side of things.  In the era that I'm currently in it's perfectly viable, as the games - particularly adventure games - are short, and can be blasted through in a matter of minutes once you know all of the solutions.  Later on it's going to be untenable, because the games will just get too big, but I plan to keep it up for as long as I can.

While I was playing through ports of Scott and Alexis Adams' Voodoo Castle, I stumbled across one for the Commodore 64 that had graphics.  Through that I discovered that all of the Scott Adams adventures were re-released with a graphical upgrade, which was something of a revelation for me.  I grew up with a Commodore 64, and amassed a sizable collection of ill-gotten games over the years, but I never encountered these.  I wasn't planning to go back and play through ports of the games I'd already covered, but for ones as significantly different as these I thought I'd make an exception.

SCOTT ADAMS' GRAPHIC ADVENTURE #1: ADVENTURELAND (1982)

The original cover was much more representative
of the game, but this one has it's good points.

This version of the game was released in 1982 for the Apple II, but because I found these games through playing a Commodore 64 port of Voodoo Castle, I decided to play the C64 version.  I just had a quick check, and my usual sources didn't have this for the Apple II anyway, so my options were limited.

For those who need a quick reminder, Adventureland was Scott Adams' first game, and his attempt to get a game similar to Colossal Cave Adventure onto a personal computer.  It's a treasure hunt with a loose fantasy theme: there are dragons but there are also references to Paul Bunyan, so the mythology is a hodge-podge. I liked it at the time, and I think I'd still rate it as the best of his games I've played so far.  My initial post on the game is here.

The opening screen of Adventureland.

I have to admit, I had a lot of trouble with this game at the beginning.  As I explored the opening wilderness, it appeared to me that the graphics had completely replaced the room descriptions.  Nothing was described, and none of the items you could take or interact with were even mentioned.  I was all set to come into this review with a scathing take-down, until I accidentally bumped the Enter key.  If you hit Enter without typing a command, it toggles between the graphics and the room descriptions.  You can actually play this game completely without the graphics, if you prefer, but you certainly can't do it the other way around.

Based on my hazy memories of Adventureland - which I jogged by making a Trizbort map of my old notes - the game hasn't been changed.  If there are any changes, they're almost certainly very minor ones.  I was able to play through this with little trouble (once I got past my initial issues), and even the random elements like the bees dying in the jar didn't give me any hassles.

This is meant to be a hollow tree stump.

For the RADNESS Index, I'd rate this a point higher in Aesthetics.  The graphics aren't spectacular, and there are definite points where they really don't give a good representation of what's meant to be in the room.  They're not all that interactive, either.  But despite all those issues, it's still an aesthetic step up from the all-text version.  As for Mechanics, I'm torn on it.  I found the constant toggling between graphics and room descriptions a chore, but you can actually play the game in its original form if you ignore the graphics.  I'll rate it about the same as I rated the original.  If I take away the game's bonus point for historical significance, that leaves it with a RADNESS Index of 38, just one point higher that the original version.  That seems about right.  It's exactly the same game, with just a dash of extra visual flair.

SCOTT ADAMS' GRAPHIC ADVENTURE #2: PIRATE ADVENTURE (1982)

I don't remember this from the original.

As with Adventureland, the graphical version if Pirate Adventure was released in 1982 for the Apple II.  Again, I'm playing the C64 version.  Adventure International were really trying to ramp up the sex appeal of their games with these covers.  I'm not against it, but it does make me wonder what their sales were looking like around this time.  It seems like a bit of a desperation move.

In this game, you have to explore an island to find some pirate treasure.  It's a lot thematically tighter than Adventureland, but I remember not quite enjoying it as much.  My original posts on it start here.

The opening screen of Pirate Adventure.

Pirate Adventure endears itself to me immediately by ditching the toggling between room descriptions and graphics.  The graphics window stays there at all times, the text is underneath, and it's much less annoying to play.  Unfortunately, that means that you can't choose to play it all text, in its original split-window format, but it's a fair trade-off.

Like Adventureland, this version has barely been changed in terms of its structure and puzzles.  It's major changes come from the addition of graphics, which are a fair bit more interactive than those of Adventureland were.  As the screenshot above shows, the items you can pick up are visually depicted.  When you take them they disappear, and they'll appear in any room where you drop them.  It's similar to Roberta Williams' Mystery House in that respect.

This game has very little in the way of random elements, so it was a simple matter to consult my old notes and get through it.

They had the chance, and they still never fixed "dubleons".

It's a little boring to show two screen-shots of the same place, so here's one from the island.

During lockdown, this is as close as I'm allowed to go to a beach.

The graphics for this are a little better than those in Adventureland in terms of accurately representing your surroundings, but they're still only worth one extra point in Aesthetics.  I'm tempted to ding this for not using the Adams split-window layout, but it earns a point back by allowing any inventory item to be depicted on-screen in any area.  It comes in with a RADNESS Index of 32, two points higher than the original game.

SCOTT ADAM'S GRAPHICAL ADVENTURE #3: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE aka SECRET MISSION (1982)

Who knew the enemy spy in this game was
a sexy lady? Dragging the corpse around to
solve a puzzle suddenly feels a lot more sordid.

Again, this was a 1982 release on the Apple II, but I'm playing the C64 version.  My original post on the game can be found here.

Adams' foray into the spy genre wasn't one of his finer efforts, but it had certain merits in terms of environmental storytelling.  The graphical adventure version, like the others, is fundamentally the same game with a visual overlay.

Starting Secret Mission.  It was still called Mission Impossible on the Apple II
version, though.

This one returns to the system used by Adventureland, where you could toggle the graphics on and off.  It also doesn't show your inventory items like Pirate Adventure.  It does have a cool death screen though.

Back when we were worried about clouds of radiation, not clouds of bacteria.

This game was still pretty fresh in my memory, and the puzzles are pretty simple, so I was able to get through it quickly without the need to resort to a walkthrough.

Defusing a bomb in the comfiest of settings.

As with the others, this one gets an extra point in Aesthetics, and it remains the same in every other respect. It get a RADNESS Index of 28, two points higher than the original.

NEXT: I'll be getting stuck into the 430 point version of Colossal Cave Adventure. As for my next back-tracking project, I have a quick post lined up for Colossal Cave Adventure II and Mystery Mansion, and I've been playing the original TRS-80 version of Temple of Apshai.

Adventureland: Victory!

As of my last post I had gotten a bit stuck in Adventureland, but it turns out that the puzzles I was having trouble with weren't so difficult at all.  To recap the puzzles I had yet to solve:

1) The sleeping dragon, which is the first puzzle you will encounter in the game.  It will probably be the last one you solve, which is a structure that I often enjoy.

2) The bees.  As I mentioned in the last post, I can capture the bees in a jar, but they suffocate and die when I try to leave the room.

3) Getting the mirror without using the honey.  The magic mirror is guarded by a bear, and you can make the bear go to sleep by feeding it the honey.  As I suspected, the honey is one of the treasures needed to finish the game, and this is not the correct solution to this puzzle.

4) The lava flow at the bottom of the maze.  Obviously there's something inside it, but it's too hot for me to approach.

Okay then, let's tackle each of these one by one.

The Bear: The bear is found on a ledge over a chasm, guarding a magic mirror.

I was able to solve this without resorting to a walk-through, but in order to solve it I needed to fail it first.  The hint I needed came from the magic mirror.  I had mentioned in my last post that when I dropped the magic mirror on the persian rug, it gave me a hint: "DRAGON STING".  Later I tried it again, and it gave me an entirely different hint: "Don't waste honey, get mad instead! Dam lava!?"

This provided me with help for two of the puzzles I was stuck on, but for the moment I'll stick with the bear puzzle.  I restarted the game (with some minor grumbling), and played my way back to the bear.  With the clue being to "get mad", I tried typing YELL.

Success!  I had claimed the mirror without losing the honey, though I have to call foul on this puzzle.  While it's not impossible to solve without failing it first, it's not exactly obvious either.  The only way to really do it is to start trying random stuff, and see what works.  I'll give it props for leading in to my favourite joke in the game though.

That "slightly woozy bear" gets me every time.  I suppose he's lucky that he didn't land in the lava.

The Lava: Speaking of the lava, I was able to solve that dilemma with the other half of the clue I mentioned above.  Using some bricks from a wall I blew up earlier in the game, and the command DAM LAVA, I was able to stop the lava flow.  This revealed a glowing Firestone, which was initially too hot for me to pick up.  Pouring water on it cooled it down, and I was able to claim my twelfth treasure.

The Bees: This puzzle was easier to solve than I had thought.  I'd previously thought that the bees died as soon as I left the room, but it turns out that the length of time they survive is variable.  It was enough time that I could use my magic rug to teleport to the dragon, which is where the bees come in useful.  Oh yeah, remember to drop the mud before going to the dragon.  You need the mud to survive the bees, but it makes the dragon wake up and kill you.

The Dragon: With some living bees in my possession, this was a simple matter of typing RELEASE BEES.

I say simple, but if I'm being honest this is the most frustrating past of the game.  Forget the mud when you go to get the bees, and you're dead.  Forget to drop the mud, and the dragon kills you.  Sometimes the mud dries and falls off you before you get to the bees.  Sometimes the bees die before you can get them to the dragon.  All of these factors combine to make what can be an intensely irritating experience.  Generally I'm against random factors in adventure games, and this one of those puzzles that suffers from it.

As you can see from the screen shot, the dragon flies away to reveal some eggs, which are the final treasure.  All I had to do was take my ill-gotten gains to the room below the tree stump, drop them all on the floor, and say SCORE.

Underwhelming, isn't it?  I'm not sure what I expected from a game of this vintage, but this is probably the most disappointing end game screen of the games I've played so far.  But, I have finished it, and that means it's time for a final rating.

FINAL RATING:

A Final Rating, you say?   Yeah, I know, I haven't given ratings to any of the previous games I've blogged.  I was reluctant to do so, given that I'm playing games from very different genres.  But I've been reading a lot of The CRPG Addict, and The Adventure Gamer, and I decided to jump on their bandwagon.  Besides, there's something fun about giving hard ratings to games, and comparing them against each other.  At the very least, it's bound to make someone angry.

As I said, though, I have to rate both CRPGs and adventure games, genres with very different play-styles.  The rating system I've developed is, by necessity, a bit more generalised than those used at CRPG Addict and Adventure Gamer.  I'm rating games in seven categories: Story & Setting, NPCs & Monsters, Challenge, Aesthetics, Mechanics, Innovation and Fun.  Each of these categories is scored out of 7, which is a lovely mythological number, and also has the added benefit of having an exact mid-point.  I'll also award a bonus point based on whether I still feel like playing the game after I've completed it.  This gives me a potential top score of 50, and I'm going to double it just so I an satisfy my obsessive-compulsive desire to make it a score out of 100.

Story & Setting: The story for Adventureland is barely there.  There are thirteen treasures, and for reasons unknown (though we can assume pure greed) the protagonist is out to collect them all.  There's no background, and very little in the game to give it context.  I understand that the technical limitations of the TRS-80 would necessitate this lack of detail, but could it have hurt to throw a little something into the manual?

The setting isn't overly large, and it's similarly low on detail and description.  The text sticks solely to the items and scenery that are important, and leaves out extraneous details.  This makes the puzzles a lot easier to solve, but it doesn't do a lot for the game's atmosphere.  The areas above-ground feel particularly disjointed, with the protagonist moving from meadow to swamp to lake to quicksand with no transitional areas between.  Again, it's a deficiency born of technical limitations, but I can only rate what's there.  Rating: 1.

Characters & Monsters:  Adventureland doesn't have a lot of characters to meaningfully interact with, but there are a few monsters around.  Let's see, there's the sleeping dragon, the chiggers, the bees, and the bear.  It's not a lot, though I do have to give it props for the ability to blow up the dragon, and the bit with the woozy bear.  Rating: 1.

Aesthetics: This category covers the game's graphics, sound and general atmosphere.  Adventureland, being a text adventure with no sound, is not going to score very highly, though I'm willing to stretch higher for text adventures with particularly evocative descriptions.  Adventureland is not that game.  Rating: 1.

Mechanics: This category measures how well the game functions.  For RPGs, that will include things like character creation and combat.  For text adventures, it will include how well the parser works.  Adventureland has a simple two word parser, and only recognises the first three letters of any word.  (This has resulted in amusing situations, such as SCREW BEAR working to startle it from the ledge, as opposed to SCREAM BEAR.)  That said, the basic nature of the parser puts a limit on the number of actions you might think to try, and I found that I was rarely in a situation where I was searching for the exact phrasing needed to solve a puzzle.  I also came to like the split-window interface (with my input in the lower window and the room description at the top) the more I played it.  Having the room description visible at all times is really very handy.

I thought about knocking the game down a point for its random elements, but on further thought they're not so bad.  They're restricted to the mud and the suffocating bees, and really only affect one puzzle, so I'm going to be generous.  Rating: 4.

Challenge: This is a good game for text adventure beginners.  The puzzles aren't overly difficult, and the game is full of clues in the form of signs and the magic mirror, not to mention the HELP command which can be used if you get stuck.  There's only one puzzle that I thought was unfair, and that's the bear.  Even so, that one gives you a clue after you fail.  This makes for a mildly challenging game.  Rating: 4.

(A note about the above rating.  It's not so much about rating how difficult a game is, but rather how well-balanced it is.  A super-hard game won't necessarily score a 10, and a super-easy game won't always score a 1.  Indeed, games that are too easy or too hard will no doubt get low scores here.  Games that are challenging without becoming frustrating will score high.)

Innovation & Influence: Adventureland is the first ever text adventure game on a home computer, so I have to give it a high score here.  It's very derivative of Colossal Cave Adventure however, so it loses points for that.  Rating: 6.

Fun: And now, the most subjective rating of them all: how much fun did I have playing this game?  Adventureland was a mild distraction.  I enjoyed it, but it was short, and it didn't have a lot of jokes (I like text adventures that have a sense of humour).  I'll bump it up a point for the ability to blow up the dragon.  Rating: 4.

I didn't award the bonus point for Adventureland, as I doubt I'll ever play it again.  The above scores add up to 21, which gives me a final rating of 42 out of 100.  That seems a bit high, but it did score very highly for innovation, and given its limitations it achieves its goals quite well.

FINAL RATING: 42 out of 100.

I'm going to go back and rate the other games I've finished; expect that to be done within the next few weeks.  Then I can set about making a leader board, and give you the definitive, not to be questioned rankings of every significant CRPG and adventure game.

ADDENDUM:

Somewhat later in this blog I made the decision to overhaul my Final Rating system, so I'm going back through and fixing all of the games I've already played as of March 2020.  I've ditched the Innovation and Influence category, and replaced it for adventure games with a category for Puzzles.  I've also changed the purpose of the bonus points, saving them for games that are important, innovative, influential, or have features that are otherwise not covered by my other categories.

Also, the Final Rating is a boring name.  The CRPG Addict has his GIMLET.  The Adventure Gamers have their PISSED rating.  Data Driven Gamer has his harpoons.  So I'm ditching the generic name and calling my new system the RADNESS Index: the Righteous Admirability Designation, Numerically Estimating Seven Scores. It's a pretentious mouthful, but I'm going with it.

Puzzles: The puzzles to this game are a mild challenge, and pretty much all of them play fair. There are hints via the magic mirror, and a HELP command for when you get stuck.  The only really obtuse puzzle was the bear.  I'm also tempted to ding this for the randomness of the bees; failure by random chance in an adventure game is usually bad design, and it's one of the few genuine black marks on this game.  Overall, though, this does impressively despite its limitations.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 1. It's the first Scott Adams game, and the earliest significant adventure game on a home computer.

Adventureland's RADNESS Index is 37.  That puts it fourth so far, just one point below Colossal Cave Adventure.  I think that's fair actually.  It's a smaller tighter game, with fewer bugs and loose ends, and puzzles that play a little fairer.

NEXT: Beneath Apple Manor!

Game 7: Adventureland (1978)

Adventureland, programmed by Scott Adams and originally released for the TRS-80 microcomputer, is a milestone on a number of levels.  It's the first ever text adventure released for a home computer (and may very well be the second text adventure ever created).  It's the first game commercially released by Scott Adams, a significant figure in early game design.  And, perhaps most importantly for this blog, it's the first game I'm playing that wasn't designed for a mainframe.  I still have a few games designed for the PLATO system to get through (including Moria and The Game of Dungeons v8.0, both of which I am in the middle of), but I feel with this game that I've turned a corner.  Games designed for home computers should be shorter than those on mainframes, so maybe now I can start getting through my list a little faster.

Before I get into Adventureland proper, I should probably write a bit about Scott Adams.  Adams was one of the pioneers of gaming in the late 1970s.  As I mentioned before, Adventureland is the first ever text adventure designed for a home computer, and even if it turns out to be terrible it's still significant.  He designed a total of eighteen text adventure games between 1978 and 1984, all published through his own company, Adventure International.  Despite his pioneering work, I've often seen Adams disparaged by fans of the genre.  I've played a few of his later efforts (most notably the baffling Incredible Hulk game from the Questprobe series), and found them to be a bit crude in comparison to their contemporaries.  Hopefully Adventureland and his other early efforts will hold up better.

Adventureland was released on a lot of different platforms, but I opted to go with a TRS-80 emulator in order to get the most authentic experience.  It was rereleased in 1982 with added graphics, but I've decided not to play that version.  That's probably a stupid idea for a blog that relies on images, but I'm sticking with it.  I want to play the game as it was in 1978, or as close as I can possibly get to that experience.

The plot of Adventureland is basic to the point of nonexistence: there are thirteen lost treasures, and you have to find them all and return them to a safe location.  No reason is given for why the hero is looking for these treasures, or how they got lost, or what they are.  It's just the objective of the game, and that's that.  It's the exact same plot as Colossal Cave Adventure, and you'll discover as this article progresses that this game owes a heavy debt to its predecessor.

One thing unique to Adventureland, however, is it's screen layout.  The screen is split into two text windows.  The window at the top displays the area descriptions, and the objects that can be seen, while the bottom window displays the results of your actions.  I found this disorienting at first, but after playing for a short time I became accustomed to it.  It's not what I'm used to from text adventures, but it works well enough, and it's nice to always have the relevant room details in sight.

One thing I quickly noticed about the game is that it's parser feels a little less sophisticated than the one in Colossal Cave Adventure.  This is to be expected, I suppose, as home computers were at that time far less powerful than the PDP-10 mainframe that Colossal Cave Adventure was designed for.  Adventureland only accepts two-word commands, and only recognises the first three letters of any word.  It feels limiting, and frustrating in a way that any fan of old-school text adventure games will be familiar with.

That said, the sense of relief I feel to be playing this game instead of Moria is palpable.  There's stuff in this game.  There are things.  Stuff and things I can interact with.  Sure, the interaction is crude, but it's there nevertheless.  I'll run down some of the things I've discovered, and the puzzles I've solved so far.

• The game begins in a forest, with some wilderness areas surrounding it and a small underground dungeon.  The setting has a sort of generic fantasy/fairy tale vibe.  I'm pretty sure that I've mapped out most of the game, and so far I've visited a mere 28 separate locations.  It's not a large game, and the detail is sparse.  It lacks much of the character and sense of place that Colossal Cave Adventure had.  That's probably due to technical limitations, and the fact that Colossal Cave Adventure was based on a real cave system.  Adams does pretty well here, crafting a number of interesting locations to visit, but it's all a bit disjointed.
• The first thing I encountered was a sleeping dragon, but I haven't been able to wake it up without being killed.  It wakes up if you enter the area carrying mud from the swamp, and kills you with fire. I've also been able to blow it up with swamp gas, but that didn't seem all that helpful.

• The first puzzle I solved involved retrieving one of the treasures from out of a pool of quicksand: a statue of a blue ox.  Getting the ox is easy enough, but you can't leave the quicksand while carrying any item.  To get the ox statue out of the quicksand you need to be carrying an axe with the word BUNYON carved on it.  (The axe is found in a pool just south of the quicksand.)  Saying that word while carrying the axe and the ox will transport both items to an area marked as "Paul's Place".  It's not that difficult to figure out, though a knowledge of the legend of Paul Bunyan certainly helps.  Being Australian I'm only vaguely familiar with the story, but it was enough to put me on the right track.
• Getting out of the quicksand isn't as easy as typing a direction.  You need to SWIM, which takes you to a nearby lake, but you can't do so while carrying any item.  Getting stuck in the quicksand with any item other than the ox and the axe is a bad idea, as you'll have to drop them in the quicksand to get out again.  If you do this the items dropped are gone forever, so you might as well restart.
• In the lake is a Golden Fish, one of the thirteen treasures.  I'm able to catch it with a Golden Net I found in the dungeon, but it dries up and dies if you're not also carrying a bottle of water.
• I had some trouble getting into the underground dungeon.  I figured out that you need to chop down the cypress tree in the swamp, and climb down the hollow stump, but I wasn't able to unlock the door at the bottom.  It turns out that you need to climb the cypress before cutting it down, so that you can find the skeleton keys.  If you cut down the tree first the keys vanish into the swamp, and the game becomes unwinnable.  The game does give you a message that something has fallen into the swamp, though, so at least it's playing somewhat fair.
• The swamp is home to creatures called "Chiggers" (which is a word that I'm somewhat uncomfortable typing).  Occasionally the Chiggers will bite you, but the bites are easily cured by taking mud from the swamp.  I'm not sure if the Chiggers are needed to solve any puzzles, but I do rather enjoy picking them up and dropping them in the quicksand.
• I've found some Royal Honey, which is one of the 13 treasures, but it's guarded by north african bees.  When I first tried to take the honey the bees stung me to death, but later on I figured out that the bees don't attack me if I have the mud from the swamp.  Even later I tried taking the bees themselves, and you can do so if you have en empty jar.  Unfortunately, the bees instantly suffocate when you leave the room, so I'm a bit stuck with this one.
• There's a weird bit where you wander into the memory chip of a computer.  There's nothing to interact with in this area, and I suspect that it's just a bit of programmer's humour.  Not that it's very funny, but it is memorably strange.

• There's a maze in the dungeon, though thankfully it's not composed of "twisty passages, all alike".  This maze is dead simple, because it only has six areas, and they're distinct enough that you always know which one you're in.  I panicked a little when I first wandered in, but it wasn't as harrowing an experience as I was expecting.
• I found a Persian Rug in the maze, and a sign saying that the magic word was AWAY.  I've worked out that, by carrying the rug and saying AWAY, I can teleport between the sleeping dragon to the bottom of the maze.  Indeed, this seems to be the only way to escape the maze at all, and it's a very handy navigation tool. 
• I've managed to blow a hole in a bricked up window by igniting swamp gas.  Beyond it is a bear guarding a magic mirror, and I'm not sure if I've solved this puzzle correctly. The bear goes to sleep if you give it some honey, but the royal honey is one of the treasures needed to complete the game.  I feel like there should be another solution.  (It's not the axe.  If you throw it, the bear dodges and the mirror gets smashed.)
• Dropping the Magic Mirror causes it to smash.  In order to drop it safely, you need to first drop the Persian Rug.  When you do so, the Mirror flashes and gives you the following message: DRAGON STING.  Obviously this is related to waking the dragon, but I'm not sure exactly how.  It may have something to do with the bees, but as I said I'm having trouble keeping them alive in my bottle.
• There's a lava flow at the bottom of the maze, and there appears to an object hidden within it.  It's too hot to do anything with, though, so I'm stuck for now.
• The game has a lamp, which is required for exploring underground without falling and breaking your neck.  It runs out after a time, like the one in Colossal Cave Adventure.  If you rub the lamp while it's turned off (it's too hot to rub when lit), a genie appears and gives you a diamond ring.  Rub it again, and the genie leaves a diamond bracelet.  Rub it again, and it kills you for being too greedy.
• Sometimes when you die, you go immediately to Hell, and the game is over.  Sometimes, you find yourself in Limbo, with a chance to choose a direction and return to the game if you pick correctly.
• So far I've been able to claim the following treasures: a Golden Net, a Golden Fish, a Pot of Rubies, a Jeweled Fruit, a Persian Rug, a statue of a Blue Ox, a Diamond Ring, a Diamond Bracelet, some Royal Honey, a Crown, and the Magic Mirror.  So far that means I've found 11 of the 13 items required.  I suspect there's another in the lava, and that the dragon is guarding one, but otherwise I have no idea.  I've also had to sacrifice the Honey to claim the Mirror, which doesn't seem right.

With the majority of the treasures claimed, and only a few unsolved puzzles, I feel like I'm just about done with this game.  I haven't had to resort to a walkthrough either, something that I needed for Colossal Cave Adventure.  So far I'm having fun, and it's refreshing to be playing a game that feels short.  The end is in sight, and that's fine by me.