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A few months ago, BRW Games published the first novel based on Adventures Dark and Deep, called Swords of the Damned, by Richard Tongue. Unfortunately, as some readers pointed out, it was somewhat lacking in proof-reading, and contained numerous errors.

Im pleased to say that a second printing is now available, which hopefully rectifies this situation. Its been gone-through by our own Mollie Carson-Vollath, she who edited the ADD rulebooks, and I think youll find that the new edition is of a much higher quality.

For the next few days, the new edition will be available for only $6.95, which is more than 20% off the regular price.

A lot has changed since the last update on upcoming projects, and I wanted to let everyone know where things stand. Heres the current plan for 2014, but as Haviland Tuf once sagely observed, "It is in the nature of plans to change."

The Castle of the Mad Archmage™ is right on schedule to be released by February, using the Adventures Dark and Deep™ rules, but usable with most Old School rules. This will be followed by a Pathfinder edition, probably by June, but exact date TBD. Will we see any expansion levels?

You might, rabbit, you might.

The biggest change is that the World of Erseta™ Fantasy Setting is on indefinite hold. I have determined that the world just doesnt need yet another European medievalesque fantasy setting. That said...

In the desire to shake things up and move beyond Arthurian/Tolkien/Conan/Lieber/etc. fantasy, the next project will be a rules supplement based on Chinese mythology and folklore combined with wuxia (kung fu) tropes. Usable with most OSR-type rules, it will bring a more focused approach than the original Oriental Adventures did, avoiding the mish-mash of samurai, Shaolin monks, ninjas, and Taoist magicians. Name to be determined, but I will likely stick with something in the "Adventures xxx and xxx" line.

Along with that will be a setting suitable for play with such rules, fabled Cathai™. More details to come, but the setting will not be tied to the rules. Youll be able to have your kung fu  adventures in whatever setting you prefer, and youll absolutely be able to mix and match your regular mages, fighters, and thieves with their more Eastern counterparts.

Finally, I am really hoping to crank out Adventures Great and Glorious™ in 2014, which will be a rules supplement covering political intrigue, large-scale warfare, long-term campaigning (rules for stretching play out with "campaign turns", children, and the like), and domain-level rulership. Thats been simmering on the back burner for a while now.

Sounds like a lot, doesnt it? Well, I managed to get all three Adventures Dark and Deep™ books out in 2013. Maybe I can get four big projects out in 2014. If not, AGG can always wait until 2015. After all, "it is in the nature of plans to change."

Were in the busy period between Thanksgiving and the Winter Solstice holidays here in the US, which means there may not be much time for gaming for many of us grown-up gamers.  Too bad, because there are some interesting new downloadable titles hitting the wirewaves...


WiiWare -- One new game and one free demo this week.  New tower-defense title Paper Wars: Cannon Fodder -- which sadly is no relation to Sensible Softwares classic Amiga military comedy/strategy game Cannon Fodder -- takes an odd marketing approach, proclaiming itself the "worst game ever" due to its paper cutout-style graphics and self-described "annoying sound effects."  Theres also a free trial demo of Septembers release MotoHeroz.

DSiWare -- Two new games here for the DSi and 3DS.  Castle Conqueror -- Against (listed as Against - Castle Conqueror on its own title screen) strives to give off a Conan the Barbarian vibe, but its yet another tower-defense game and a fairly simplistic one at that.  Theres also Word Searcher 4, a.k.a. Searcher 4 Word (just kidding).


3DS eShop -- One new title this week, and this time its not just an emulated classic Game Boy title. Pushmo is a neat puzzle/platform game that makes good use of the systems 3D capabilities, as the player must push and pull platforms in and out to make a path to the goal.  Nintendo seems to be giving this one some marketing support, so maybe well see more downloadable activity on the 3DS.  The 3DS also gets a system update this weekend that allows users to shoot 3D video using the systems stereo camera.


XBox Live Arcade --  One new, family-friendly title this week: Apples to Apples, an XBLA adaptation of the popular party game that for once doesnt look like it abandons the original concept for the sake of technology.


PS3 on PSN -- One new game here -- Wanted Corp, a sci-fi bounty-hunting twin-stick shooter.


PSOne Classics --  This platform has been fairly lively of late.  Another classic RPG title arrives with Square-Enixs Final Fantasy VI, ported to the Playstation from the SNES in 1999.

Notable on Steam -- Im going to experiment with something new here; I am not going to try to list every title that shows up for PC/Mac gamers on Valves Steam service, because theres just so much going on there.  But when theres something truly new and interesting Ill try to mention it here.  This week saw the release of some major new content for the 2008 tower-defense hit Defense Grid: The Awakening -- the new 8-level package You Monster features GLaDOS, the psychologically manipulative AI personality from Valves Portal games, who changes up the rules between waves to bring new and entertaining challenges to this excellent game, while insisting shes doing nothing of the sort. Ive been wondering when a proper sequel might be in the works -- this $4.99 add-on works for me!

This week, we're tackling a fairly obscure BASIC adventure for the TRS-80 Color Computer -- Killer Mansion, author uncredited, published by T&D Software in 1982.


Past the nondescript title screen, some hyperbolic introductory text explains that we're not dealing with a homicidal building; instead:

YOU ARE A DETECTIVE IN A LARGE CITY! A [sic] INSANE MAN HAS RECENTLY ROBBED A BANK, KILLING THREE PEOPLE AND RUNNING OFF WITH ONE MILLION DOLLARS!  YOU SUSPECT THAT THE CRIMINAL IS HIDING OUT IN A  [sic] OLD ABANDONED MANSION! YOUR MISSION IS TO FIND THE TREASURE AND THE MONEY BUT BEWARE, THE CRIMINAL IS WAITING FOR YOU!!

The interface is all text, but provides a compass rose in the corner of the screen indicating the available exits.  The standard screen layout displays the current location, visible objects, and a command line; if we use the INV command, the screen switches to an inventory display -- then it's impossible to get back to the room display without doing something, like moving to another room or interacting with an object.  Only three characters are significant to the parser, and the BASIC engine is rather slow to respond, so if you're playing via emulation you may want to crank up the simulated clock speed.

I do encourage interested readers to venture into the Killer Mansion before proceeding here.  It's a brief and straightforward adventure aside from one major parser obstacle, and in the interest of history I will be documenting all of the gory details in the following commentary.  In other words, beware that there lie...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****


The story begins in a hallway with a broken light fixture, some cobwebs, and a cracked mirror. LOOK doesn't work with the parser, but EXAMINE does.  EXAMINE MIRROR yields, YOU SEE A WIERD [sic] OBJECT IN THE MIRROR! (pause) YUK! ITS YOU!!  So this game isn't inclined to ingratiate itself with the player.  GETtable objects have to be picked up before they can be EXAMined.  And some things that should logically be portable are not; this can generally be taken to mean that an object is window dressing and irrelevant to play.

A newspaper in the living room features the headline, CRIMINAL ESCAPES KNIFES COP; RUNS OFF WITH LOOT!!  Just to remind us about the plot, and it make it clear that punctuation is really unimportant as far as this game is concerned.

OPEN STOVE in the kitchen results in THE DOOR BREAKS SETTING OFF A BOMB THAT BLOWS YOU OUT OF THE MANSION!! TRY ANOTHER BODY AND ANOTHER MANSION!!  So we will have some unforeseeable deaths to deal with, and in fact this happens if we try to OPEN just about anything in the game.

A MANEATING WATCHDOG in the sitting room presents an issue - THE DOG WILL TEAR YOU TO SHREDS UNLESS YOU DROP SOMETHING RIGHT NOW!! WHAT WILL YOU DROP?  If we try to drop something we actually don't have, the game replies with its usual questionable grammar:  YOU DONT HAVE THAT!! YOUR DEAD!! THE CRIMINAL IS PLANNING ON ATTENDING YOUR FUNERAL!!   Really?  That doesn't seem wise on his part.

Trying something else to appease the dog, like the newspaper, produces THAT IS THE WRONG THING! THE DOG JUMPS ON YOU AND KILLS YOU!  Okay, now this is getting annoying; we can't even leave once we've encountered the maneating dog, so we'll just avoid the sitting room for now.

The kitchen has a counter, a sink, and a scampering rat (who will appear in several other locations and is just window dressing.)  The den has an antique desk and a row of shelves.  OPEN DESK sets off a fatal bomb, of course.  This criminal seems almost suicidally thorough -- one can easily imagine him making an absent-minded late night trip to the refrigerator and succumbing to his own trap.

The layout of the house is a bit strange -- the dining room has a stove in it, we encounter a PANTRY *and* a FOOD STORAGE room, and two DENs.  The trap door in food storage is another bomb trap, of course, and a closet contains a flattened out hat (fixed resolutely in place) and an old chicken bone.  Another storage closet contains a broom and a locked dresser.  A bucket in the laundry room reads (well, EXAMines -- there's no READ verb) MADE IN HONG KONG.


There's quite a bit of reused text, which generally means those items and descriptions aren't really relevant; for instance, every one of the rugs LOOKS LIKE IT HAS BEEN WALKED ON RECENTLY.

The bathroom contains a towel, a rusty faucet and a plunger; the strangely-named FRUIT ROOM has a dirty glass jar and cobwebs.  Trying to enter the COAL STORAGE ROOM south of the COAL ROOM establishes that YOU WERE HIT FROM BEHIND AND KILLED BY THE DANGEROUS CRIMINAL! BEFORE YOU CAN ENTER THAT ROOM HE MUST BE DEAD!   The game's feedback and design often seem to be post-hoc in nature -- it's too bad we had no way of discovering this earlier, and that the game provides no SAVE feature.

A small room contains a half-eaten and unlicensed WHOPPER, as well as more STRANGERS FOOTPRINTS (how do we know they don't belong to someone we know???) and a blood stain.

If we enter the HIDING ROOM -- another odd name -- we find a small key, but are then jumped by the bad guy. A text display indicates a fight (THUD!) and then we RUN! until suddenly, YOUR ONLY CHANCE IS TO USE SOMETHING! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO USE?  I tried GUN, assuming that as a police detective I might be carrying one, but only learned that, according to the game's inscrutable logic, it's no good:  YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT WEAPON TO DEFEND YOURSELF! YOU DIE!!!

At this point, we've explored most of the mansion, and it seems this game's plot is all about killing the bad guy and solving whatever puzzles remain.

Dropping the chicken bone from the closet gets us past the  maneating watchdog, whose affections are easy to buy -- he is now a FRIENDLY WATCHDOG.  To the east is a SECRET ROOM with a CONTROL PANEL bearing red, blue and yellow levers.  This is probably the game's biggest challenge, due to a maddeningly obtuse and inflexible design -- USE LEVER yields CANNOT FIND THAT.  PULL LEVER produces only I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE VERB!  PUSH RED -- I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE VERB.  MOVE BLUE almost looks like progress, as the game replies, MOVED IT BUT NOTHING HAPPENED, but moving the other levers doesn't do anything interesting either.  USE RED is similarly misleading:  OK.. NOTHING HAPPENS!  We actually have to MOVE PANEL -- and then we can choose which lever we want to move.  Ack!

Past this sticking point, we learn that using the RED lever causes us to fall out of the window with skull-crushing force.  BLUE dumps us into the guest room on a bed, but we lose all of our inventory items and might as well quit and start over.  YELLOW tosses us around and ultimately sends us to a dungeon, apparently in a new part of the mansion.

The dungeon's Torture room has an old skeleton, but we can't GET it or EXAMINE it (because we would have had to GET it first.)  We can MOVE SKELETON, though, to find a KNIFE, which we can hope will be more useful than the gun.  The JAIL room contains an ice pick and a locked door, and we can USE PICK to escape this remarkably insecure dungeon and return to one of the dens.  This amazing ice pick cannot be used to open the locked dresser or an intriguing chest, though.

We can't open the desk in the guest room either, it's also booby trapped despite the watchdog guarding the area.  The attic contains a locked chest and another newspaper, with the same headline as the other one.  This criminal likes to collect his own clippings it seems.  And if we try to OPEN CHEST, it also blows up.  Sigh.

The game's poor grammar extends to the inventory limit system -- we can only carry four items, after which we are told YOU CANNOT CARRY NO MORE.  Sigh again.

With the knife, at last, we can kill the criminal -- THE CRIMINAL FALLS BACK, HIS LAST WORDS ARE, 'THEY WILL NEVER FIND IT, IT IS TOO DEEP!'  It sounds like it's buried somewhere, whatever "it" is.


Since the criminal is dead, we can now get the small key and visit the Coal Storage Room, which has a suspicious dirt floor.  A piece of crumpled paper reads, "'X' MARKS THE SPOT."  While there's no such marking visible here, we can use a handy shovel to dig until we find a chest.  We USE KEY -- since we didn't try to OPEN the chest directly, we can safely do this -- and we are done!


So we've found the money and killed the bad guy -- there's no sign of any additional TREASURE as mentioned in the introductory text, but at least it's all over and we can return to the land of decent grammar and proper punctuation.  Killer Mansion isn't difficult, but the design is haphazard and sloppy -- play is very trial-and-error, despite the limited vocabulary.  We just have to try to pick up, use and move everything until something gives, and after we've winnowed play down to the essentials there isn't really much to do; my walkthrough (below the fold, and available at the CASA Solution Archive) wraps the whole thing up in under 40 moves.



**** WALKTHROUGH ****


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It took me about 2 weeks to complete the Rubpix puzzles of the dimension 3x3 and 4x4 (the first 100 level), with the best move solutions. However, I immediately realize that it would probably take months to complete the rest - 6x6 and even 8x8. Why?

At first sight, this Rubpix game is indeed deceptively simple, with simply Up, Down, Left and Right movements. For the first few puzzles, you may find them solve-able, as long as you make some additional movements. However, after considering the possible sample sizes more seriously, you will immediately realize that the complexity of these kinds of puzzles has the potential to grow exponentially!
 
To start with a simpler picture, lets consider the simplest form of the Rubpix game - 3x3. Here, assume that there are 9 unique colors in the puzzle (worst case scenario), with some high school maths, you will come out with an answer that it has basically a total of "9 factorial" permutations - aka 362880 patterns! Yep. You are seeing it right - MORE THAN 300 thousands! In a worst case scenario, the solution of the puzzle could be only obtained after a total of 300 thousands moves! (with a naive move)

Of course, the developer of the Rubpix game isnt that brutal. Most of the time (from observation), the unique colors of the puzzle are usually lesser than 6. Hence, with some humans non-naive filtering, the answer can still be found after not more than 50 moves (Alright, if you take more than that, something is really wrong).


Now, back to the harder question. What if it is a puzzle of 6x6 (not to mention, the horrible 8x8 as well). Taking the example of the Rubpix puzzle Level 101, it has 36 blocks with six unique colors. So... can you guess how many unique permutations are there? There are MILLIONS! Playing this kind of game naively would claim your life!

Anyway, I will only play the rest of the Rubpix puzzles when I am free. If you have solved all of them, you have my respect!