Mystery Mansion: Capitulation.

Alas, I am giving up on Mystery Mansion. I'm sure I could persevere with it, and eventually get a 999 point game, but to be honest I just want to move on. It stings a little, especially coming off of MUD1 which I also gave up on, but I need to keep moving. Persisting with games I'm not enjoying will be a sure-fire way to kill the blog dead.

When I left off last time, I had accomplished most of what I was capable of in the game.  Now my goal was to put it all together into a single run. Doing that took some planning, as there are certain tasks that need to be done before others. Below I've outlined the order that I tackled things.

Gathering Items: The first essential item is the lantern, which hangs from the mansion's front gate where the game begins. Second is the compass; dealing with relative directions is a real pain so I like to get this early. The third item I go for is the gauntlet to increase my carrying capacity, and then the door keys.

Killing the Vampire: Before going to release the Vampire, it's important to grab the cross from the chapel for protection. After opening the Vampire's coffin, it's a simple matter to lure him upstairs and open a curtain to let in the sunlight. I also tried killing him with a wooden wedge, but the game told me "you have not figured out how to do that yet".

Solving the Murder: To do this, you need to find and carry the murder weapon, then lure the murderer to the location of the dead body. I like to do this fairly early, because once the sun has set you can't access the garden, and if anything you need is in there you'll never solve the murder. The first thing I do here is listen to the radio in the Game Room; a news bulletin plays that tells you that the police are looking for the murderer, which reveals the murderer's identity. If I know where the corpse is, the next thing I do is examine it, which can give clues to the murder weapon. In my last game, the body was doubled over as though clutching its stomach, which indicates that the poison was the murder weapon. If I don't know the corpse's location, I'll just question people until they tell me. It doesn't usually take too long to get all three requirements in the same location, unless one of them happens to be in the garden (which I only go into as a last resort).

Once the murder has been solved, you just have to call the police using the phone in the Entrance Hall. They show up immediately and arrest the murderer.

The Mole Maze: Before you can hit up the Treasure Trek maze, you need the amulet from the Mole Maze. As mentioned in a previous post the mole changes the maze occasionally, but ever since I switched to Bob Sorem's port I've had no trouble navigating it using the map found here. Perhaps the changes aren't implemented properly in Sorem's port, or perhaps I've just been able to get through before the mole starts digging new tunnels.

Getting the Transmitter: If you enter the Bathroom and drop everything - including your clothes - you can go up into a secret lab where you'll find a matter transmitter and receiver. These are very handy for navigating the mansion, and as far as I can tell essential to escaping the Treasure Trek maze. While leaving the lab through the Large Bedroom, you can fix a crooked mirror, where some jewelry is hidden.

The Treasure Trek Maze: To get through this maze you need the compass, gauntlet, keys, and transmitter. First you have to unlock the door and get through before being crushed by a moving wall. After heading down to the Treasure Room, you need to quickly move through the maze to the two Troll Traps and the Den of Death. Doing this run nets you some pearls, an emerald, some pirate treasure, a ruby necklace, some diamonds and a silver goblet. With that done, it's a simple task to BEAM UP to the lab, then BEAM DOWN to wherever you stashed the matter receiver.

Finishing Up: With those tasks done, I collected the Vampire's Ring then went to the Front Entrance to phone for a taxi. As far as I can tell you can't do this until after 10pm. The mansion explodes at midnight, so I waited out front with my treasures. While I was waiting I killed the Warrior, because he's an irritating NPC who will attack you on a whim. After the mansion blew up, I simply headed south and got the following "victory" screen:

All through this you need to monitor your lantern power, and head to the twisty maze to get some batteries when it starts to wear off. I spent a good portion of the game with my lantern turned off, and it was still running out of power near the end.

There are also the various noises that happen once every hour, for which you need to type SCORE POINTS in order to get the full 999. I tried to remember them when they came up, but I'm sure I missed a good number.

In the end, I got 781, which I'm going to have to consider good enough. I scored 90 points for the items I was carrying, most of which were treasures. My inventory was full, so I don't think I could have earned much more here. Perhaps killing the werewolf would have done it; I can see in some walkthroughs that there is one, but I never did find it aside from getting killed in the dark by it one time. You can also kill the wolf in the garden, which I just figured out, by distracting it with food and shooting it. If those two don't account for the 200+ points I missed, I'm stumped. Perhaps there's something to do in the attic, which I accessed by standing on a chair in the closet and climbing through a door in the ceiling. I got up there and got down via the fire escape (which has to be oiled to use safely) but there didn't seem to be any point to doing so.

I also confirmed that you can sleep with the male characters, which gives you the same message as the female ones (so the game isn't assuming your gender or sexuality). You can't do it with the Vampire though, because you have to drop everything, and without the cross he drains your blood real quick. The Elf can't be lured inside, so he's not an option either.

And so, on 781 points, I bid farewell to Mystery Mansion. I could keep trying, but with such an obtuse game as this one I might end up banging my head against it for months with no progress to show for it. It's even worse with games of this vintage, because walkthroughs can be harder to come by. I found some, but none of them gave away everything.

Mostly though, my capitulation is the result of the fact that I just wasn't enjoying the game very much. I was intrigued by it at first, but after solving the mystery portion of it I just couldn't make any more progress. As I've said before, I just think the game is too obtuse for its own good. It's also very disjointed, with a mystery plot grafted onto a treasure hunt. Not that you'd know it, because Mystery Mansion does very little to let you know that the game even has treasures to collect. With just a little more guidance it could have been enjoyable.

Before I do a Final Rating, I present to you the Wall of Shame. These are all of the puzzles for which I sought outside help:

THE WALL OF SHAME

1. Navigating the Mole Maze
2. Finding the gauntlet
3. Opening the Treasure Trek Maze with the amulet
4. Finding the pearls
5. Getting into the Laboratory
6. Calling the taxi on the phone

FINAL RATING: 

Story & Setting: The setting of a mysterious old mansion is a classic one, but this game doesn't do anything new with it, and doesn't do anything to tie any of its disparate tropes together. Why is there a matter transporter upstairs? Why is Dracula in the basement? I don't know, and Mystery Mansion isn't about to tell me. As for the story it's one part murder mystery and one part Adventure-style treasure hunt. The mystery part, at least, is novel, so I'll mark it up slightly for that. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: There are a lot of characters roaming around in this game, all of whom can be interacted with. You can question them, you can shoot them dead, and you can even have sex with some of them. Unfortunately, most of these characters are interchangeable, and their main purpose is mostly to act as murder suspects. It's a step up from most of the adventure games of the era, though, where most of the characters are simply obstacles. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Aesthetics: It's a text adventure with pretty simple writing. The Bob Sorem port has some sound effects that play through the PC speaker occasionally, but those are more startling than pleasant. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Mechanics: For all the frustrations I had with this game, it does things reasonably well. The parser is simple, but I didn't find myself searching for the right verb too often. The relative directions when inside are annoying, but I was impressed that the room descriptions change depending on which way you're facing. Rating: 4 out of 7.

Challenge: For the mystery portion of the game, I think the difficulty was pitched pretty well. It took me a little while to figure out, but with various hints and clues I was able to solve it within a reasonable time. The treasure hunt is absurdly hard though. There are so many actions that could only be figured out through trial and error, or very lucky guesses, and the game gives you no help. And then there's the changing mole maze, which is just cruel. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Innovation and Influence: I don't believe that this game was particularly influential; I've never heard of it, or seen it brought up by early game developers. But as possibly the first ever murder mystery adventure game I have to give it some props. Rating: 5 out of 7.

Fun: I briefly enjoyed this game during the mystery portion, and the mapping phase, but after that it very quickly lost its shine. I think the Mole Maze drained my enthusiasm, and it never came back. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Obviously, no bonus point for this game because I really don't want to play it again. The above scores total 18, which doubles for a Final Rating of 36. That places it 13th out of 27 games overall, and 8th out of 17 adventure games. That seems a little high, but it does earn some extra points for doing some things that I've yet to see before during the course of this blog. It has more ambition than most of the games below it, which has to count for something.

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.  For CRPGs I'm using a Combat category.  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: Obtuseness is a frequent quality of adventure games around this time, and Mystery Mansion has plenty of it.  Solving the murder is enjoyable, but the treasure hunt aspects of the game are far too obscure for my liking. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 1. This is the first adventure game in the blog in which you have to solve a murder mystery, which is a level of sophistication above the treasure hunts that have dominated the rest of the genre.

Mystery Mansion gets a RADNESS Index of 31. This puts it equal 12th, along with The Game of Dungeons v8 and Colossal Cave Adventure II, both games with a solid base and glaring problems.  For adventure games it's equal 7th out of seventeen.

NEXT: My next game is Devil's Dungeon, a text-based Apple II RPG that promises an infinitely deep dungeon. Whoopee, just what I was asking for!

Mystery Mansion: Getting Some Booty

Before I get started, I should note that I've given up on Terry Newton's "practically exact" port of Mystery Mansion. The lack of a save feature became much too frustrating, so I switched over to a C port made by Bob Sorem (which can be found here). It's not exactly authentic, but I was never going to get anywhere in this game without saves. Plus, both ports look and feel the same in play, which I feel says something for the authenticity of both.

My plan at the end of the last post was to explore the tunnels underneath the Front Porch, where I had been previously savaged by a werewolf. This turned out to be a bust; after falling through the Porch (with a light on this time) I found that I was in the basement's Furnace Room, which I had previously explored. There were no werewolves in sight, and now I'm wondering if I might have imagined getting killed by one in the first place.

Since I was down there, I decided to have a closer look at the Cold Corridor, which is accessed through a Secret Room. When you enter the Cold Corridor, a wall move towards you and will crush you if you hang around too long. I hadn't had a proper look here yet, but closer inspection revealed a door to the north. I was able to unlock it and get through, but the closing wall left me trapped in the room beyond. The trick to getting in lay in the fact that the crushing wall retreats when you go back into the Secret Room. I jumped into the Cold Corridor, unlocked and opened the door, and went back to the Secret Room. After the wall retreated, I was able to zip back through the door and down a ladder, where I found the Tricky Treasury.

The Treasury contained some pirate's treasure, and there was also a cavity in the wall. I wasn't able to figure this out yet (but more on it later). I had one more avenue to explore: the Mole Maze.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this in my previous posts, but if you head down from the Storage Room in the basement there is a maze of tunnels that's been dug out by a mole. I had an absolute bastard of a time trying to map this thing out, using the tried-and-true method of leaving inventory items scattered about in each area. It didn't help here, because while I was about halfway through the maze changed. Not only did a mole dig out these tunnels, but he's still around, and will happily dig out new ones just to mess with you. I killed him with a sword, just to see if I could, but I'm not sure if this murder solved the problem or not. In the end I caved, and copied the map made by Jason Dyer of bluerenga.wordpress.com. Using this I was able to penetrate the maze to the Mole's Vault, where I found an amulet. I was also able to find my way back before the mole changed everything, and I chose that as a very good time to save my game. Hopefully I can start all of my games from this point from now on, and never have to deal with this maze again.

Jason Dyer's Mole Maze Map

Having broken the seal, I read a few more spoilers from Jason's page in an attempt to speed up my completion of the game. The first thing I discovered was the purpose of the cavity in the Treasure Room: if you put the amulet in it and turn it, it opens a secret stairwell. As far as I can tell, there is basically nothing in the game that would signal this as a possibility, so I feel okay about this cheat.

The stairwell led down into another maze, the Treasure Trek. I had a lot more success mapping this one out by dropping items, except for one problem: the maze is slowly filling with water, and it's a race against time to get through to all of the treasures. I was able to map it out through trial and error, and I'm pretty sure that I found everything.

There were two tunnels that were flooded no matter how quickly I raced through the maze. The Troll Traps both featured a sleeping troll, and numerous items scattered around. I've marked those on the map that can be taken safely. If you try to take anything else, the troll wakes up and bludgeons you to death.

As for the Den of Death, I wasn't able to find the pearls on my own. The room is filled with nothing but boulders and skeletons, and the first time I entered I couldn't find anything to do here. I didn't even register that the boulders could be interacted with. Looking at a walkthrough on ifarchive.org, I discovered that you could try to move the boulders multiple times, with a bag of pearls eventually being revealed.

Before the boulders could be moved, though, I needed the Gauntlet of Gargantuan Girth. This could apparently be found in the kitchen, by moving a wooden figure of a king. When I went back to the kitchen, there was no chess board mentioned. There were some tables though, and to see the king you need to LOOK AT TABLES. Move it, and the gauntlet will be revealed. (There's also a queen figure, but moving that gets you shot by a row of wooden indians.) Not only does the gauntlet let you move boulders, but it also increases your carrying capacity, so it's real handy.

I guess those wooden indians were distracting me?

It's become very apparent that success at this game requires a very careful study of the room descriptions. I'm all for this in general, but if something is just sitting on a table I feel like it should be mentioned. I guess there's a case to be made that the gauntlet is an optional item, and doesn't need to be located to beat the game, but I don't think it's playing fair to obscure things that should be readily observable by the protagonist.

So I had located all of the treasures of the maze, but I had one small problem: how would I get back out? I was able to navigate back to the Tricky Treasury, but every time I tried to leave I found the path back to the basement blocked by the crushing wall. So, once again with shame, I consulted a walkthrough for the answer.

It turns out that there's a door leading up from the Batty Bathroom. I'd noticed it before, but every time I tried to enter I was told that I "could not quite get through the small door". At first I figured that I needed a stepladder or something, or perhaps a means of making myself smaller. Later on I tried dropping all of my stuff, but that didn't work either. Well, this game has yet another surprise: you can drop your clothes, even though they're not mentioned in your inventory. With that done I was able to squeeze through the door into a mad scientist's laboratory. There I found a matter transmitter and a matter receiver, which could be used to teleport.

What was I wearing, an inflatable fat suit?

Of course, I had no idea how, and none of the commands I tried worked. Perhaps I would have had more success if I'd put myself into the mindset of a late-1970s college student, because the commands BEAM UP and BEAM DOWN were the magic words. BEAM UP serves to teleport you to the lab, and BEAM DOWN will take you to wherever the receiver is set down. Again, I doubt I ever would have tried these.

Armed with the above items, I feel like I can make a run at finishing the game with a good score, but before trying that there's one more thing you can do in this game that I noticed while skimming the walkthrough.

Bad grammar in that first sentence makes it sound like I'm pulling myself into bed.

This one takes some doing. First, you have to take a shower. Then you have to get the maid into a locked room where there are no other characters, and you also have to drop all of your gear and get undressed. She doesn't like doing it with the lights on either, so you have to close the curtains before the above raunchy sequence can occur.  You can also sleep with the Lady, using the same tactics. None of this is hinted at in the game, but since it doesn't score you any points I guess that doesn't matter. I'm not sure what other characters you can sleep with, because I'm a whitebread hetero dude and I only tried it on with the ladies. I might at least have a crack at the vampire to see what happens though.

Also, while we're on the topic of sex...

No word on whether it's pining for the fjords.

It's funny with pretty much every other inventory item in the game as well.

That's enough for this week. As you might have gathered by my frequent resorting to walkthroughs, I've kind of had a gut-full of this game. I suppose that it's not so difficult to figure out how to solve the main plot - the murder mystery - but everything else you can do is ridiculously obtuse. My current plan is to cheat like mad, and knock this game off in one more post. I'll be happy to see the back of it.

Mystery Mansion: A Quick Bit of Gardening

I haven't played much Mystery Mansion in the last fortnight, but in the interests of keeping a regular schedule I just did a quick bit of exploring so that I can at least post something. It's not going to be all that substantial, but it's all I got.

The area that I explored was the Gargoyle Garden, which can be found at the back of the mansion, and accessed either through the Back Gate, or by going out the back door of the mansion from the Library.

A map of the Gargoyle Garden

I mapped the place out, and it is pleasantly skull-shaped. I didn't find anything of particular use here, but what I did find were a number of ways to die.

The most prominent of these is the wolf. There are two areas in the garden which are described as "meadows", and it will always be noted that you can see something moving about in the grass. Enter either of those meadows, and you'll be eaten instantly. Perhaps there's a way to kill these wolves, but I haven't tried anything yet. I suspect it's not necessary.

There are also three Witching Wells, and you can climb down them. Two of them are too slippery to climb back out of, and I never figured out how to escape once I was down there. The other one has hand-holds and can be climbed out of, but all I found down there was a note that had the same message I've seen elsewhere (a reminder that you can type the first letter of a direction instead of typing GO NORTH). I tried to make a wish, but the game doesn't recognise WISH, so alas that idea was a bust.

There are two ponds that you can enter, but the sides are too steep to get back out again. Luckily, each of the bridges has a magic word written on it, something along the lines of WOMIX or WIMOH (they change with every game). If you type in these words you'll be teleported to the Dense Woods, which is the only way of escaping.

There are two Foul Fountains, but they've both dried up. It's possible that something can be done here, but the parser doesn't recognise FOUNTAIN, so I think these are just for decoration.

There are two characters wandering around the garden, a Gardener and an Elf. The Gardener is much like the other NPCs in the game, and you can question him for clues about the murder. The Elf is more irritating. He sneers at your questions, and has a habit of kicking you in the shins or stealing something from your inventory. I haven't tried to kill him yet, but it's very tempting. (Actually, I'm not sure if you can kill the NPCs. I've been attacked and wounded by the Warrior, and I've fought the Dwarf in the maze a few times, but all I was ever able to do was drive him away. The combat system remains a mystery to me.)

There's a note near the Veranda that says that the Garden closes at sunset, so I'm pretty sure there's a time limit for getting things done here. I honestly don't know if its necessary to explore the garden, unless the murder victim and/or the murder weapon are placed there.

Next time around I'll explore the area under the front porch, and try to get rid of the werewolf that's under there. After that, it'll be time to start figuring out some puzzles and putting together a run where I can get all of the points (if possible).

ADDENDUM:

I just killed the Vampire! I was right in my last post, all you need to do is lure him from the Crypt in the basement up to a room on the ground floor, then open the curtains.

Game 27: Mystery Mansion (1978)

The next game on my list is Mystery Mansion, which was programmed by Bill Wolpert for the HP-1000 minicomputer. I'm not exactly sure if this system is comparable to PLATO or the PDP-10 (I'm really not a hardware guy), but the prospect of venturing back into the world of non-commercial adventure games was making me very nervous. I was not prepared for another Acheton, or even another Zork, as much as I loved playing the latter. Games of that size are not what I'm looking for right now, and I was worried that Mystery Mansion would be one of those.

I'm pleased to say that it's not over-large. More accurately, I don't think it's over-large based on what I've explored so far. I don't think size is going to be the problem here. What's really going to stop me in my tracks is just how little the game does to let you know what the goal is.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. The first thing to determine when playing Mystery Mansion is what version to use. The original is out of my reach, as I'm not really up to getting a HP-1000 emulator up and running (guess what, I'm not a software guy either). There are a few different ports, which Jason Dyer helpfully outlines here. I chose the version ported by Terry Newton, which claims to be a "practically exact" port of the game as it was in 1981. Not having ever played the original, I can't tell how close it is, but it runs fine in Dosbox and feels authentic enough to the period. Download it here if you'd like to take a crack.

As you might have guessed from that 1981 date above, this is yet another game that was developed over the course of several years. I've often lamented that these games are often not available in their original forms, but recently I've come around to the idea that those earlier versions were much like today's alpha and beta tests. It may not strictly be true, but it helps me sleep easier at night. With this in mind I considered kicking the game back to 1981, but I've already set the precedent of playing these games in their first year of development. So Mystery Mansion is stuck in 1978, and I'm stuck playing it.

Lust? Whatever you say, Bill.

First off, let's really take in that start screen, because it's setting my expectations of what I'll experience while playing very high. Frustration? Definitely. Triumph? I sure hope so. Hope and despair? Conceivable. Power, lust and greed? I'll give you power and greed as possibilities, but lust? Mr. Wolpert, I can tell you right now that it ain't happening.

When the game begins, you're standing at the front gate of an old mansion. A taxi has just dropped you off, although the game doesn't bother to let you know why you're there. On my first attempt, I noted the highway leading south, and decided to see what would happen if I just kept on walking away from the mansion. Much to my surprise, I could keep walking south for a long time, with signs appearing occasionally to let me know how close I was to the mansion and the "Big City". After a time, the sun set and I was walking in the dark. A little further down the road and I heard an explosion, which sounded like the passages underneath the mansion had collapsed. (Pretty good hearing on my part, considering I was at least 30 miles away.) Eventually, after what must have been hundreds of moves to the south, I was told that the game was giving up on me. It was a game over, but I'd gleaned some valuable information: there's a limited time to explore the caves beneath the mansion, and probably a limited time to complete the game.

The death screen indicated that the game has a score, so upon reloading I entered the SCORE command. The game has 999 points that can be earned, and you begin with 45. Commenter Jason Dyer has informed me that I need to type SCORE POINTS every time I hear a woman scream or a wolf howl in order to score 2 points. I'm grateful for the help, but right off the bat this has me expecting some egregious bullshit from this game. Because let's be real, that right there is some egregious bullshit.

I also tried checking my inventory, another thing I always do at the start of a game. The INVENTORY command didn't work, but LIST did, as did BOOTY. My inventory was empty however.

To begin the game, I started by exploring the areas surrounding the mansion.

A map of the outdoors

The first thing that should be noted is that although the game does call out items and characters that can be interacted with, you also need to pay attention to the room descriptions. There's the lantern in the opening area, for instance: it's only mentioned in the room description, and it's vital for making any progress.

The area I've mapped above represents the road that goes around the mansion walls. The front gate is closed, and the back gate leads into a garden (which I haven't explored properly yet). There are cliffs to the east and north, which are predictably fatal if you decide to head that way. To the west is a dense wood, which is pretty easy to get lost in. I tried mapping it by dropping items, but I couldn't make sense of the results. I think the exits might be randomised. Moving around in the woods will eventually lead to a Strange Stream. Heading down from the stream leads to a cave, with "twisty passages, all alike", which is always a triggering phrase for me. More on that later. Heading up leads to a cottage which contains a map, which can be used to see the destinations of every exit from the room you're in. Alas, it only works in the outdoor areas, but it's great for getting you out of the woods.

At this point I should note that Mystery Mansion uses the same irritating navigation style as The Cottage: when you're outside you can use cardinal directions (N,E,S,W), but when you're in the forest or the mansion you have to go Forward, Left, Right or Back. It's very disorienting, and very, very annoying. Thankfully you can find a compass, which allows you to use cardinal directions everywhere.

There's a note pinned to the mansion's front gate, which gives you a hint. These notes will appear in various locations, and seem to be scattered at random, but there's always one on the gate. Most of the time it will tell you that someone will help you open the gate. There are three characters wandering around in the opening area: a Hunter, a Woodsman and a Warrior. They will follow you about once you encounter them, although they won't enter the mansion. Any one of them will help you open the gate.

It's easy enough from there to enter the mansion, but you shouldn't linger on the front porch. If you wait around for too long (and it tracks actual time, not just commands entered) you'll fall through to some underground tunnels. I've fallen in there a couple of times, and been killed by a werewolf.

The mansion has three levels, as shown below:

A map of the mansion

Each level of the mansion is structured in a neat 3x3 pattern. Most of the rooms in the mansion are dark, which is why you'll need the lantern to proceed (although the candles in the Chapel and the matches in the Kitchen are a short-term alternative; you can't take the lamp from the Living Room, although you can light it with a match). There are various items scattered about, though I haven't found a use for most of them. There are also several characters: the Butler, Cook, Maid, Lady and Master, as well as the Vampire in the crypt.

The compass, which I mentioned before, can be found in the Haunted Hallway on the top floor. (I have no idea why it wasn't already marked on the map.) The scroll in the Library crumbles whenever it's touched, but the book can be read. It reveals the verbs that the game understands, showing a different verb with every game. I just tried it now, and it says "THE BOOK CONTAINS WORDS I KNOW LIKE THE VERB DIG". None of these have been too helpful yet, but they were perhaps more useful to people at the time, who may have been less familiar with adventure games.

The telephone in the entrance hall rings occasionally, and if you answer it you'll receive a hint. It will always ring and tell you to return to the front gate for the lamp if you forgot to take it.

The Secret Passages are the easiest way to navigate up and down between floors, and there are certain areas you can only get to by passing through them. Each room connected to a Secret Passage has a hidden method that opens the way in. Some examples include drinking the wine in the Charming Chapel, sweeping the Haunted Hallway with a broom, or feeding bananas to the monkey in the Butler's Room.

The Cold Corridor off to the left in the basement is a trap, with a moving wall that will crush you. I haven't worked out what to do here. The tunnel leading down from the Dark Pit is another entrance to the maze of twisty passages.

The Vampire in the crypt will kill you pretty quickly after you encounter him, unless you are carrying the cross from the Chapel. Otherwise, he follows you around but does no harm. I haven't killed him yet, but I suspect that if I lead him up to the ground floor and open some curtains it might do the trick.

As for the other characters roaming the house, they will happily follow you as well. After some experimentation I figured out that you can QUESTION them, and they'll give you clue about a supposed murder. There are three clues: the culprit, the murder weapon, and the location. You can also find out the identity of the murderer by turning on the radio in the Game Room.

There is always a corpse in the murder location. The weapons are scattered around the game, but they aren't always in the same place. The goal of the game, or one of the goals, is to find the weapon, and lead the murderer to the place where they did the deed. I managed to do this by accident, which was how I was able to figure out what to do in the first place. In later games I found a note that told me about this, but the first time around I had to stumble into it.

It was the Master, in the cellar, with the club. I knew it all along.

After identifying the murderer, I eventually found another note telling me that I should call the police. This game might be mystifying at the start, but it does provide help here and there. If you call the police on the phone, they'll come and arrest the murderer.

The only other place I've properly explored is the maze of twisty passages, which was nowhere near as large as its counterparts from Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork.

A map of twisty passages, all alike

This maze only has six rooms, thankfully, but it can be difficult to navigate if you don't have the compass. The torch is a light source that eventually burns out, and the battery can be used to extend the life of your lantern. Both of them are placed randomly in the maze, in different areas every game.

I've solved one of the larger problems of Mystery Mansion, but that only left me with 332 points. This means I've only figured out one-third of the game. I suspect that the rest might involve hunting down some treasures, but I only say that because it's the goal of every other damn game I've played so far. My immediate goals are to properly explore the garden and the tunnels beneath the porch. There's a werewolf down there, and I've got a pistol and silver bullet ready to go. Hopefully I can figure out what to do pretty soon, because I don't want to spend much more time with this game.