Trizbort.io

Preliminary export to TADS

2018-04-20T00:00:00Z

Trizbort.io is now able to export your map straight to TADS .t format. The export includes rooms, connections and objects in the rooms. Notes and blocks play no role in TADS (or any other adventure design system). Under the hood, Handlebars templates are used to generate all the code, which makes it simple to add additional code generators (with an understanding of the language involved first).

Here is a sample snippet of TADS code generation.

#charset "us-ascii"

#include 
#include "advlite.h"

versionInfo : GameID
  name = 'Deadly Cave Adventure'
  byline = 'By a Trizbort.io user'
  version = '1'
  desc = ''
;

OutsideCave: Room 'Outside Cave'
  description = "You are standing outside a dark, forboding cave. "
  north = EntryChamber
;

+ lamp: Item 'lamp'
  description = "An old-fashioned oil lamp. Rusty but servicable. "
;

me: Actor
  location = OutsideCave
;

gameMain: GameMainDef
  initialPlayerChar = me
;

A Zork map in Trizbort.io

2018-04-23T00:00:00Z

A good test case for Trizbort.io is drawing up a map of Zork. The original map contains lots of ideosyncracies for map drawing: angled connections, (nested) objects in the rooms, one-way passages, connectors that lead off the map, and a shaded block around the White House.

Open this map directly in Trizbort

This map was drawn with Trizbort.io:

And here is the result of the TADS code generation:

#charset "us-ascii"

#include 
#include 

versionInfo: GameID
  name = 'Zork'
  byline = 'by Trizbort.io'
  version = '1.0'
  desc = '"'

gameMain: GameMainDef
  initialPlayerChar = me

+ me: Actor
  location = WestOfHouse
;

WestOfHouse: Room 'West of house'
  ""
  north: NorthOfHouse
  south: SouthOfHouse
  southwest: StoneBarrow
  west: Forest1
;

+ Item 'Mailbox'
  ""
;

NorthOfHouse: Room 'North of house'
  ""
  west: WestOfHouse
  east: BehindHouse
  north: ForestPath
;

BehindHouse: Room 'Behind house'
  ""
  north: NorthOfHouse
  south: SouthOfHouse
  west: Kitchen
  east: Clearing
;

SouthOfHouse: Room 'South of house'
  ""
  east: BehindHouse
  west: WestOfHouse
  south: Forest3
;

LivingRoom: Room 'Living room'
  ""
  east: Kitchen
;

+ Item 'Trophy Case'
  ""
;

+ Item 'Lamp'
  ""
;

+ Item 'Sword'
  ""
;

Kitchen: Room 'Kitchen'
  ""
  west: LivingRoom
  north: Attic
  east: BehindHouse
;

+ Item 'Glass Bottle'
  ""
;

++ Item 'Brown Sack'
  ""
;

++ Item 'Block of cheese'
  ""
;

Attic: Room 'Attic'
  ""
  south: Kitchen
;

+ Item 'Rope'
  ""
;

+ Item 'Nasty Knife'
  ""
;

Clearing: Room 'Clearing'
  ""
  west: BehindHouse
  north: Forest2
  south: Forest3
  southeast: CanyonView
;

Forest2: Room 'Forest (2)'
  ""
  south: Clearing
  east: Forest4
  east: Forest4
  east: Forest4
  northwest: Clearing
  west: ForestPath
;

Forest4: Room 'Forest (4)'
  ""
  west: Forest2
  north: Forest2
  south: Forest2
;

StoneBarrow: Room 'Stone Barrow'
  ""
  northeast: WestOfHouse
  west: InsideTheBarrow
;

InsideTheBarrow: Room 'Inside the Barrow'
  ""
  east: StoneBarrow
;

Forest3: Room 'Forest (3)'
  ""
  north: Clearing
  northwest: SouthOfHouse
  east: CanyonView
;

CanyonView: Room 'Canyon View'
  ""
  northwest: Clearing
  west: Forest3
  south: RockyLedge
;

RockyLedge: Room 'Rocky Ledge'
  ""
  north: CanyonView
  south: CanyonBottom
;

CanyonBottom: Room 'Canyon Bottom'
  ""
  northnorthwest: RockyLedge
  north: EndOfRainbow
;

EndOfRainbow: Room 'End of Rainbow'
  ""
  southwest: CanyonBottom
;

Forest1: Room 'Forest (1)'
  ""
  southeast: WestOfHouse
  east: ForestPath
  north: Clearing
;

ForestPath: Room 'Forest Path'
  ""
  south: NorthOfHouse
  west: Forest1
  north: Clearing
  northeast: UpATree
  east: Forest2
;

Clearing: Room 'Clearing'
  ""
  south: ForestPath
  west: Forest1
  east: Forest2
;

+ Item 'Pile of Leaves'
  ""
;

UpATree: Room 'Up a Tree'
  ""
  southwest: ForestPath
;

+ Item 'Bird's Nest'
  ""
;

++ Item 'Jewel-encrusted Egg'
  ""
;

Premilinary export to Inform7

2018-04-25T00:00:00Z

Trizbort.io can now export maps to Inform 7 format. It can deal with rooms and connections - even in cases where the connection is angled, .e.g. going west takes you from A to B, but from B you need to go north to get to A. Work is in progress on one-way connections and objects.

Here is a sample snippet of Inform 7 code generation.

"Untitled map" 

Part West of house

There is a room called West of house. 
The player is in West of house.
North of West of house is west of North of house.
South of West of house is west of South of house.
Southwest of West of house is northeast of Stone Barrow.
West of West of house is southeast of Forest 1.

Part North of house

There is a room called North of house. 

West of North of house is north of West of house.
East of North of house is north of Behind house.
North of North of house is south of Forest Path.

Part Behind house

There is a room called Behind house. 

North of Behind house is east of North of house.
South of Behind house is east of South of house.
West of Behind house is east of Kitchen.
East of Behind house is west of Clearing B.

Part South of house

There is a room called South of house. 

East of South of house is south of Behind house.
West of South of house is south of West of house.
South of South of house is northwest of Forest 3.

Part Living room

There is a room called Living room. 

East of Living room is west of Kitchen.

Part Kitchen

There is a room called Kitchen. 

West of Kitchen is east of Living room.
North of Kitchen is south of Attic.
East of Kitchen is west of Behind house.

Part Attic

There is a room called Attic. It is dark.

South of Attic is north of Kitchen.

Part Clearing B

There is a room called Clearing B. 

West of Clearing B is east of Behind house.
North of Clearing B is south of Forest 2.
South of Clearing B is north of Forest 3.
Southeast of Clearing B is northwest of Canyon View.

Part Forest 2

There is a room called Forest 2. 

South of Forest 2 is north of Clearing B.
East of Forest 2 is west of Forest 4.
East of Forest 2 is north of Forest 4.
East of Forest 2 is south of Forest 4.
Northwest of Forest 2 is east of Clearing A.
West of Forest 2 is east of Forest Path.

Part Forest 4

There is a room called Forest 4. 

West of Forest 4 is east of Forest 2.
North of Forest 4 is east of Forest 2.
South of Forest 4 is east of Forest 2.

Part Stone Barrow

There is a room called Stone Barrow. 

Northeast of Stone Barrow is southwest of West of house.
West of Stone Barrow is east of Inside the Barrow.

Part Inside the Barrow

There is a room called Inside the Barrow. 

East of Inside the Barrow is west of Stone Barrow.

Part Forest 3

There is a room called Forest 3. 

North of Forest 3 is south of Clearing B.
Northwest of Forest 3 is south of South of house.
East of Forest 3 is west of Canyon View.

Part Canyon View

There is a room called Canyon View. 

Northwest of Canyon View is southeast of Clearing B.
West of Canyon View is east of Forest 3.
South of Canyon View is north of Rocky Ledge.

Part Rocky Ledge

There is a room called Rocky Ledge. 

North of Rocky Ledge is south of Canyon View.
South of Rocky Ledge is west of Canyon Bottom.

Part Canyon Bottom

There is a room called Canyon Bottom. 

West of Canyon Bottom is south of Rocky Ledge.
North of Canyon Bottom is southwest of End of Rainbow.

Part End of Rainbow

There is a room called End of Rainbow. 

Southwest of End of Rainbow is north of Canyon Bottom.

Part Forest 1

There is a room called Forest 1. 

Southeast of Forest 1 is west of West of house.
East of Forest 1 is west of Forest Path.
North of Forest 1 is west of Clearing A.

Part Forest Path

There is a room called Forest Path. 

South of Forest Path is north of North of house.
West of Forest Path is east of Forest 1.
North of Forest Path is south of Clearing A.
Northeast of Forest Path is southwest of Up a Tree.
East of Forest Path is west of Forest 2.

Part Clearing A

There is a room called Clearing A. 

South of Clearing A is north of Forest Path.
West of Clearing A is north of Forest 1.
East of Clearing A is northwest of Forest 2.

Part Up a Tree

There is a room called Up a Tree. 

Southwest of Up a Tree is northeast of Forest Path.

Code generation for Alan and Quest

2018-04-25T00:00:00Z

Trizbort.io can now generate code for the Alan (both versions 2 and 3) and Quest adventure design systems, complete with rooms, connections and objects. The resulting code is ready for compilation with Alan, and can be imported straight into the Quest editor.

Alan 2 snippet:

LOCATION WestOfHouse NAME West of house
  DESCRIPTION
    "You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door."
  EXIT north TO NorthOfHouse.
  EXIT south TO SouthOfHouse.
  EXIT southwest TO StoneBarrow.
  EXIT west TO Forest1.
END LOCATION.
START AT WestOfHouse.

OBJECT Mailbox NAME 'mailbox'  AT WestOfHouse
END OBJECT.

Alan 3 snippet:

The WestOfHouse Isa location
  Name 'West of house'
  Description
    "You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door."
  Exit north To NorthOfHouse.
  Exit south To SouthOfHouse.
  Exit southwest To StoneBarrow.
  Exit west To Forest1.
End The WestOfHouse.

The Mailbox Isa object At WestOfHouse
  Name 'mailbox' 
End The Mailbox.

Quest snippet:



  
  
  
    9bb19c30-fec2-492b-b3f3-3a94e624b662
    1.0
    2018
  
  
    
    You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

Theme Support

2018-04-30T00:00:00Z

Trizbort.io now supports themes. Not only can you set fills, borders, text colors for rooms, notes and blocks, set colors for connector lines and text, but you can also apply a complete set of colors and settings in one go (a theme). At this point, we have the "default" theme - it's the default, as you might have guessed - and the obsidian theme, which is a cool name for really dark.

All color settings get saved along with your map, and they're also imported from Trizbort desktop.

Castle of Doom Mapped

2018-04-30T00:00:00Z

Trizbort.io is now able to export maps to high-quality .PNG format. As a sample, @john_metcalf's map for Castle of Doom (ZX Spectrum 48K, Giant Byte, 1986) follows. This map was drawn in five minutes, then the "Obsidian" theme was applied to prettify it. Castle of Doom is a dark game, after all!

Open this map directly in Trizbort

Colossal Cave Mapped

2018-08-02T00:00:00Z

Trizbort.io wouldn't be an adventure game mapping package if it didn't include a full map of the colossal cave.

Open this map directly in Trizbort

A map of The Hobbit

2018-08-03T00:00:00Z

The Hobbit (1982) was an adventure game that influenced the genre in many ways. It attempted to give game characters a degree of articifial intelligence. They could roam through the world freely, and even attack each other, sometimes leading to the game becoming unwinnable.

The map to one of the most famous games in text adventure gaming history, The Hobbit, is now available as a Trizbort.io sample map.

Open this map directly in Trizbort

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Mapped

2018-08-03T00:00:00Z

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a 1984 interactive fiction game written by Douglas Adams and Infocom's Steve Meretzky. It became one of the most celebrated text adventures ever made—selling 59,000 copies in its first year and topping 166,000 in 1985, making it Infocom's best-selling title.

The collaboration between Adams and Meretzky proved remarkably seamless. Though Adams originally wanted to program the game himself, he was paired with the more experienced Meretzky, who authored over half the content while matching Adams' distinctive comedic style so perfectly that Adams himself later admitted he couldn't tell which parts each had written.

The game is notorious for being both maddeningly difficult and brilliantly funny. The Babel Fish puzzle became so infamous that Infocom sold T-shirts proclaiming "I got the Babel Fish!" In 1996, Computer Gaming World ranked it #42 among their top 150 games of all time, and the BBC's 20th Anniversary Edition won the Interactive BAFTA Award for Best Online in 2004.

The map to this legendary game is now available as a Trizbort.io sample map.

Open this map directly in Trizbort

New Trizbort.io features

2019-08-27T00:00:00Z

There've been many updates to Trizbort.io over the past months, and I'd like to take a moment to list some of them here. Since Trizbort.io is now on Github, there have been wonderful contributions from several developers, making the application steadily better.

Important bugfixes

Panning the map - Previously, the map could only be panned by holding down the mouse wheel. This may not have been the best design choice, since it's not obvious, and not everyone has a clickable mouse wheel. It's now possible to drag the map by holding down the right mouse button, as well.
Chrome file loading - It was reported that Chrome would only allow the user to load a map once, then allow no further loads. This has now been fixed.
Object containment relationships - It's always been possible to organize objects in a containment relationship (e.g. the wooden chest contains an envelope, which in turn contains a small key), but it wasn't obvious how it should be done in the user interface (hint: dragging an object into another object). Worse, dragging failed to work on Chrome. This has now been fixed, and a tutorial has now been added to point out the dragging possibility.

New features

Code generation for object containment - Authoring system languages that support object containment now have their code exported with containment relations (TADS, Inform, Quest). Also, the YAML export feature takes object relationships into account.
Image export - The full map can now be exported to an image of any size, large enough to accommodate all the map elements, i.e. you can now make a poster out of it. There was a bug with export only working if there was a room in the precise center of the map, but that's been fixed. Curved paths are neatly contained within the map, and not chopped off.
Navigation - The application main menu has been reorganized to provide a better overview of the available options.
Tutorial system - Originally, Trizbort.io came with no instructions, and users were expected to simply figure out how it all worked. We've now added a tutorial system that pops up occasional messages with helpful hint. In particular object containment was a non-obvious feature.
YAML support - Trizbort.io can now export maps to YAML, which can be useful if your development pipeline can easily consume YAML (rather than JSON, which is Trizbort.io's default save format). I've read about a team using Trizbort.io to create maps for their adventuring system, and they wrote a Python script to convert JSON to their format. Perhaps this will be useful to them.
ZIL support - Trizbort.io always claimed that one day it would support ZIL code generation. There is now an implementation for that.

Mud Warriors

2020-04-21T00:00:00Z

Mud Warriors is a 2020 text adventure by Ryan Veeder that bills itself as "war stories from the after-school program." The game opens with prose that reads like a gritty war novel in the vein of All Quiet on the Western Front or Heart of Darkness—except it's actually about kids playing in the mud after school.

What starts as an amusing parody becomes something more thoughtful as the story unfolds. Veeder employs a clever narrative device where the ironic contrast between the serious prose and the innocent setting is itself used to ironic effect when the story turns out not to be entirely a joke. Players often find themselves going from laughing to genuinely reflecting on what they've experienced.

The game focuses on atmosphere and storytelling rather than puzzles—examining the scenery is enough to progress. The well-crafted conversations between the young "warriors" make it a worthwhile journey despite its brevity. As Emily Short once wrote of Veeder's work: "He really wants you to have a good time."

Here's a map for Mud Warriors.

Open this map directly in Trizbort.io

Return to Eden

2020-04-23T00:00:00Z

Return to Eden is the second installment in Level 9's acclaimed Silicon Dreams trilogy, released in 1984. Following the events of Snowball, you play as Kim Kimberley, who has crash-landed on the planet Eden after escaping a sabotaged starship. Eden is a lush agricultural world maintained entirely by robots, but something has gone wrong: the robotic inhabitants now consider all humans to be vermin that must be exterminated.

The game is renowned for its rich world-building and clever puzzles. You must navigate Eden's diverse environments, from fungus farms to robot cities, while avoiding the mechanical guardians and uncovering the mystery behind the planet's hostility. Level 9 was famous for their advanced text compression technology, allowing them to pack remarkably detailed prose into the limited memory of 8-bit computers.

Return to Eden remains a classic of the genre, showcasing the British developer's knack for combining science fiction storytelling with challenging gameplay.

Here's a map for Level 9's Return to Eden.

Open this map directly in Trizbort.io

The Colour Pink

2020-04-24T00:00:00Z

The Colour Pink is a 2005 interactive fiction game by Robert Street, written in Inform 6. It placed 6th out of 36 entries in the 2005 Interactive Fiction Competition.

You play as a spaceman sent to investigate an out-of-contact colony on an abandoned planet. Your mission is to find out what happened to the scientists and report back to the Captain. But what do you do when the world turns pink and your communicator stops working?

The game features a clever morality system with seven different endings. You begin on the Path of Daedalus, where you're expected to solve problems in clever, peaceful ways under a pink sky. Choose violence or harmful solutions, and you'll shift to the Path of Diomedes—the fantasy world transforms accordingly, with the sky turning blood red. The puzzles are old-fashioned adventure fare: fiddling with machines, exchanging items, and conversing with NPCs through a multiple-choice dialogue system. Well-clued and not overly difficult, reviewers have praised it as "what adventure gaming is all about."

Here's a map for The Colour Pink.

Open this map directly in Trizbort.io

Introducing hand-drawn maps

2020-05-06T00:00:00Z

One feature that Trizbort.io was lacking was a hand-drawn style for its maps. A friendly developer named Paolo Sfredda has now created this functionality, among much else.

Here is a list of changes:

Hand-drawn theme.
Multi-layer canvas: the canvas now only updates when you make a change (rather than running on a timer) so that Trizbort.io is now much faster.
Toolbar buttons remain highlighted once selected.
Shift + Enter centers the map.
The current map name and author appear in the header.
The mouse pointer gives visual feedback when over a room, note or block.
Bugfix: there was a bug drawing object lists with child objects
Bugfix: object lists would be duplicated when copy-pasting a room

To use the hand-drawn theme, go to Settings -> Render settings, then pick Hand Drawn from the list of Quick Themes.

Try it out!

New features and bugfixes

2020-05-12T00:00:00Z

Over the last week, new features were added to Trizbort.io with help from dfabulich and Paolo Sfredda.

These include:

The map you're working on is saved in the browser's local storage when you close Trizbort.io. When you reopen that app, the map is restored and you can continue editing where you left off. There's no need to constantly export to file.
Backspace deletes the current selection
Room popup no longer remains visible after you delete a room
Mac-specific shortcuts were added, such as Cmd-A (select all), Cmd-C (copy), Cmd-V (paste) and Cmd-Z (undo).
You can create a room in a direction by pressing shift+direction. If a room already exists in that direction, the selection simply moves there. That way, it's much easier to edit a map entirely with the keyboard.
Trizbort.io is now available on secure HTTP.
Support for HiDPI retina displays was added.
Clicking a connector dot previously created a very small connector. Now, a connector is only created when you actually drag the mouse.
New render settings were added for hand-drawn line styles, font type, and font size.

Try it out!

Major Trizbort.io Update

2026-01-21T00:00:00Z

There's been a major update to Trizbort.io with numerous new features, improvements, and quality-of-life enhancements.

New Features

SVG export

You can now export your maps as SVG files, giving you scalable vector graphics that look crisp at any size. Perfect for including maps in documents or printing at high resolution.

Inform 6 code generator

Trizbort.io now supports code generation for Inform 6, adding to the existing support for Inform 7, TADS 3, Quest, Alan 2/3, and other systems.

Markdown support

Note texts, room names and subtitles, and object names now support limited Markdown formatting, giving you more control over how your text appears on the map. Note text also respects linefeeds now.

Map scrolling

Navigate your maps more intuitively with mouse wheel zooming. Scroll up to zoom in, scroll down to zoom out. In addition, the map canvas now features scrollbars for easier navigation, especially useful for larger maps. These scrollbars appear only when the map is too big to fit inside the viewport.

Toast notifications

A new notification system provides helpful feedback when you perform actions like saving, exporting, or when errors occur.

Connection names in code generation

Connection names are now properly included in generated code, giving you more accurate output for your adventure game projects.

Improvements

Cleaner map rendering

Removed the jitter effect from hand-drawn style rendering, resulting in cleaner, more stable-looking maps. Previously, the hand-drawn lines would change form as the map was panned or zoomed.

Redesigned UI

Animated menu transitions for a smoother experience
Tooltips throughout the application for better discoverability
Keyboard shortcuts have been refined to not interfere with text input
Keyboard help has moved to the status bar
Improved tool panel layout
Better image export quality on high-DPI displays

Under the hood

The entire build system has been modernized, moving from Grunt (old!) to Vite. This results in faster development builds and a more maintainable codebase for contributors.

Try it now

Head over to the app to try out all the new features. As always, your maps are saved locally in your browser, and you can export them as JSON files for backup or sharing.

Humbug!

2026-01-22T00:00:00Z

Humbug is a text adventure game created by Graham Cluley in 1990. It was Cluley's second and final text adventure, following Jacaranda Jim, and gained widespread attention when it appeared on the cover disk of PC Plus magazine in December 1990.

You play as Sidney Widdershins, sent to your grandfather's crumbling estate at Attervist Manor for the Christmas holidays. Upon arrival, you discover your grandfather mysteriously caught in an unwakeable slumber. Lurking in the shadows is Grandad's evil neighbour, Jasper Slake — a particularly sadistic dentist who is after the manor. Your quest: uncover the secrets of a hidden time machine, find buried treasure to save the estate, and wake your grandfather from his enchanted sleep.

The game features over 200 interactive objects and is filled with quirky characters, including an octopus performing rituals and a clockwork shark. Strategy Plus Magazine praised it as "the most entertaining text adventure since Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," noting its "optimum balance of challenge, charm, silliness and sophistication."

While considerably more challenging than Jacaranda Jim, the game maintains a playful, witty tone throughout. Graham Cluley — now better known as a cybersecurity expert and blogger — placed Humbug in the public domain in 1997, making it free to download and play.

Here's a map for Humbug.

Open this map directly in Trizbort.io

Let's play: Uncle Zebulon's Will

2026-02-01T00:00:00Z

Let's play Uncle Zebulon's Will, a small but solid text adventure.

It's pretty amazing that TADS ("Text Adventure Design System") has been around for such a long time. Looking at the intro for Uncle Zebulon's Will, we're told that TADS is copyright 1993, 2012 by Michael J. Roberts -- thats's 19 years. TADS (well, TADS3) is still used today to develop text adventures, so that makes it 33 years. Uncle Zebulon's initial release year is 1995, first written then when TADS was celebrating its second birthday.

On to the game. For an intro, we're told that:

The news of your uncle Zebulon's death came as a shock. You've been out of touch lately, and since you left for college a year ago you haven't heard a word from him. During your childhood, however, your eccentric uncle - once the black sheep of the family, an unsuccessful alchemist and self-proclaimed wizard, reputed to be a very wealthy man - was your favourite relative. Perhaps you were his favourite nephew as well. You miss his stories of distant realms and the magic gadgets he loved to demonstrate...

I looked up the name "Zebulon", and it is not a made-up name: it is a Hebrew name meaning "exalted house," "dwelling," or "honor". In the Bible, Zebulon was a son of Jacob and Leah. I wonder if knowing this will help solve the game in any way? (EDIT: No, not at all)

At all events, our brave protagonist must visit the deceased uncle's house:

You leave for home immediately on receiving the message, but the trip is long and you're delayed by the inevitable train strikes. When you finally arrive, you find your family in a state of frustrated confusion. Not only is your uncle's will written in a quite unsuitably sarcastic tone, seriously insulting most of your relatives, but it turns out there isn't much of an inheritance to fight over; despite a thorough search of your uncle's house, no fabulous treasures are found. The bequests for you and your cousins are almost pathetic: one small memento each, to be selected after everybody else have made their choices. Yet what is there to lose? At least you'd like to have one last look at uncle Zeb's house; maybe you'll find some treasure overlooked by the others, perhaps something magical...

After that introduction, I'm placed in the garden of the uncle's house, neatly restricting the story's action to the house alone. In this starting room, the first thing I like to do is see what's implemented, and what's not. I'll look at everything and see if there are any response. The depth of the implementation helps to understand what can be expected further on.

You are standing just inside the gate of uncle Zebulon's garden, on the weed-infested gravel path that leads east up to the porch of the house. On the north side of the lawn, almost hidden behind the huge, unkempt rosebushes, is the garden shed. The bright summer sun glistens on the wet grass, and the air, fresh from the recent rain, is alive with the buzzing of insects and filled with sweet fragrances.

Looking at the garden, I get:

Uncle Zebulon wasn't very much of a gardener, so the garden isn't exactly a showpiece: the lawn is shaggy, the flower beds full of weeds, the rose bushes would need some trimming. Still, it's a pleasant place on a summer morning like this.

Interestingly, I can look at:

> x garden
> x flower beds
> x rose bushes
> x flower rose beds
> x rose lawn

... and all give the same response. Clearly this was implemented as a large collection of nouns and adjectives, all belonging to the same object. It leads to my being able to combine adjectives and nouns nonsensically. However, I can understand that there is no need to implement a separate object for each decoration item.

What is missing is the actual gate mentioned in the room description. I can't look at that, but I can try to leave:

You shouldn't leave now - you haven't even claimed your inheritance yet!

It is quite lovely that when I try to go south (a direction with no exit from this room), I'm told:

> S
You can either enter the porch (to the east) or the shed (to the north), or leave the garden via the gate (to the west).

I wonder if the game will do this for every room. We're really seeing two good uses of what TADS calls a travel barrier: when the player tries to go in a direction, rather than saying "You can't go that way," the game will explain why. Here, it doesn't actually tell me why, instead giving me alternative options.

Going north into the shed, I get a long room description, prefaced with:

The shed door opens only reluctantly, with a creaking sound from the rusty hinges.

That particular messages only happens once, the first time I enter the shed. That is a nice touch.

The garden shed has been ransacked: its long room description mentions that my dear uncle was though to make gold here, as alchemists do, and while there was no proof of him ever having succeeded, but people seemed to think so. The game goes out of its way to tell me there's a statue of a three-eyed dog - it's pretty strongly telegraphed that this'll be important.

A note on a workbench tells me that old Zebulon actually did not succeed in making gold:

"I'm a great step closer to the goal: I have discovered an acid that actually transmutes noble metals into base ones. If only the process could be reversed!"

... but we can be sure that this acid will be a puzzle.

I'll look at the dog statue first. It does indeed have three eyes, and one of these contains a blue glass lens, which is stuck. I am beginning to suspect that there may be other lenses to be found. Turning the dog's left ear causes a beam of light to shine through the lens and onto the workbench.

Finding nothing further, I head back to the garden and toward the porch of the house. I find it guarded by a mean-looking demon sitting in a rocking chair.

The demon is picking his claws with a rather nasty-looking dagger.

I love how that's phrased: the demon hasn't even opened its mouth yet, but already it's clear that it's not to be messed with. Looking at it, I get:

If you remember your Basic Demonology classes correctly, he must be a member of one of the lower castes of familiar demons, usually employed as servants by wizards.

Well, if I went through Basic Demonology, then apparently in this game's world there's quite a bit of wizarding going on, which puts uncle Zebulon's alchemistic tendencies in a new, much less odd light. Oh well. Walking past the demon, it stops me and tells me I'm allowed to take only one thing from the house. It also gives me a letter. I'm not allowed to pass before taking the letter from the demon - another great use of a travel barrier.

The letter is from Zebulon, and he writes that while I was his favourite nephew, I'm still being tested to see if I'm worthy of my inheritance. Follow the rules by the letter and you may find that new possibilities open up. I don't yet see any rules spelled out in this letter, so perhaps that's a clue pointing somewhere else.

Onwards, and into the house.

The house is quite empty; in the foyer there's just a lead coin on the floor. The lead is a major clue to my mind: this story is about an alchemist, and the note in the garden shed mentioned converting noble metals to base ones. There are doors in all directions, so I guess the action will be mostly inside the house.

There's something to be said for the back story of Zebulon's relatives ransacking his house for valuables: most everything has been removed from the rooms, saving the author the trouble of describing refrigerators, sofas, stoves, etc., and focusing solely on the objects needed for the story.

In the kitchen I find a carrot and a blue bottle containing a silver coin. I take the silver coin out of the bottle, which has an unsually wide neck.

Once again, going into a direction with no exit, I get:

The only exit is the door back to the hall, to the south.

It's still a smart feature, making mapmaking (yes, I'm making map, even though this is a tiny game) less frustrating.

In the study, I find a green glass lens (well, it's obvious where that's needed, thinking back on the three-eyed dog with the blue lens stuck in one of its eyes) and a crystal ball.

A piece of paper details what's probably the main sequence of puzzles in the game:

The FIRST PORTAL deceives us all
By making pairs of singles
A perfect match! Yet all illusion
A total likeness! And yet
As different as left from right
Forever kept apart by glass
Until the touch of magic stars
Turns glass to air
And image to reality

When the light of the Moon illuminates
The Sun that never shines
Then open will the SECOND PORTAL
A dark, forbidding one, that scares
And rightly so! Yet victory
Awaits the one who enters it

The THIRD and FINAL PORTAL stands
In a lone and dreary waste beyond the worlds
Gateway to great adventures
Guarded by Gods of Time and War and Love
An offering for each, and you may pass
Each gift should match one guardian.

The crystal ball can be gazed into, and shows Zebulon putting coins in a bottle. Is this a built-in hint system? I put my lead coin in the bottle, but nothing special happens. Or perhaps this is a way of taking multiple items from the house without the demon on the porch stopping me?

A little further on, in the living room, I find a green bottle labelled "fill me". I have a rising suspicion that whatever I put in the green bottle will appear in the blue bottle. Let's put that to the test. Indeed, that is exactly what happens. This'll be a way to sneak small objects past the demon.

I also find a magic wand, revealed as soon as I sat in the only armchair present - something the game strongly encouraged me to do. Pointing this at the carrot turns it into a tomato: I'm told it is a wand of vegetable polymorphism! There's also a large mirror in the living room. Remembering what Zebulon's notes said about the "first portal", I'll point my wand at that, too. Success! The mirror turns into a portal. Hm... this is surprisingly easy so far.

Reluctant to step through this portal right away, I decide to exlore the last remaining room of the house first: the attic. Here, I find a packing crate and a bronze plate. Inside the crate is a red lens, so now there are three lenses in the game: blue, green and red. The bronze plate bears an engraving:

GOLD The Sun, Ruler of the Daylit Sky
SILVER Luna, Mistress of the Night
MERCURY Wing-footed Messenger of the Gods
COPPER Venus, Carnal Love
IRON Mars, Blood-red Bringer of War
TIN Jupiter, Ruler of the Gods
LEAD Saturn, Lord of Time Itself

More references to metals. I also remember Zebulon's notes mentioning gifts to be made to "the gods of time, war and love", so it's clear now what these will be.

That's it for the rooms of the house, though I haven't gone through the mirror portal yet. I think I've collected everything there was to be found; it also seems that the puzzle-solving will have to be done in the garden shed. An obvious puzzle blocks me there: the demon will let me leave with only one object. It's clear to me now that this object will have to be the blue bottle, into which I can teleport things by putting them into the green bottle.

Let's put the demon to the test by carrying multiple objects. Indeed, it won't let me pass. I'll carry just the blue bottle then, put I'll put a coin inside it. That, too, the demon detects, and won't let me pass. Carrying only the blue bottle is OK, though. This is an important choice, as I'm not allowed to exchange it later!

First, I'll teleport the green lens and the red lens to the blue bottle, which I've left in the shed. I'm pretty sure the lenses are useful only there, and won't have to brought back into the house.

I insert the lenses into the three-eyed dog's eye sockets and they fit perfectly. Turning its left ear causes a beam of light (which is now, unsurprisingly, white, as it is a mix of red, green and blue) to shine onto the workbench, producing an image of uncle Zebulon. Funnily enough, the image has a caption "TEST PICTURE".

The image doesn't do anything but sit there, and I can't speak to it. I'll turn the dog's other ear. It turns out that this changed the channel on whatever kind of project this is: I go from Zebulon's face to an aquarium with fish, then a depiction of Zork, a starfield showing Gemini, with the twin stars Castor and Pollux, and eventually the moon, which is projected onto the bronze stand on the workbench. This points fairly strongly to the second portal mentioned in Zebulon's notes. Now I'll just need to find "the sun that never shines" and teleport it here. It'll have to be small sun to fit into a bottle, though.

Having nothing more to do - I am reluctant to teleport anything else out here, since I may not be allowed to bring it back into the house - I decide to go through the mirror portal. This takes me to Moor gnittis, which is clever, though thankfully this word reversal isn't applied anywhere in the room's description. I find a small glass flask here, containing greenish liquid. Leaving the mirror-image sitting room through the door doesn't take me into the foyer, but rather into a "Tower room".

The tower room is actually the top floor of a tower with windows in all directions, looking out over a strange landscape - likely another world. In the distance lies a city, with is "curiously devoid of life. If only you could get there to investigate..." Hold your horses now, I've only just arrived!

There's a pedestal here, bearing a model of the solar system (which is a bit odd, since I thought I was on another world now, in another star system, but perhaps I'm just on another planet in this solar system). The sun in this model is represented by a small golden ball, which is obviously what I need for the shed puzzle. I grab it.

There's also a scroll. I read it, and it's from Uncle Zebulon congratulating me on having made it this far. All I've done is wave his magic wand at a mirror, which any of my relatives could have done, but oh well. He writes that this is the world of Vhyl and the city is Cyr-Dhool, and that I'll want to get there. The portal to Vhyl is hidden though, and more puzzle solving will be required to get there. Good thing too, because I wouldn't want to think of my other uncle Phlatulentos the Third finding the magic mirror and blundering into the magical city.

There aren't any more rooms, so I'll just take the little gold ball representing the sun to the shed (by teleporting is there using my trusty green bottle). Placing the gold ball on the bronze stand in the shed causes a cold draught, and the door slams shut. Well, this was supposed to open a "second portal"... which I suppose it does, because after a few turns, the gold ball explodes, and a large hole appears in the workbench. I'm also showered with 15 points, so the game is pleased with my progress.

Fearlessly (and saving my game), I jump into the hole. I takes me to an endless desert plain, in the middle of which sits a marble basin, three Greek statues looming over it. These are statues of Venus, Mars and Saturn (who get their Roman names although they're Greek statues), which is convenient because they're in the short list of gods and their favourite metals I found on the bronze plate:

COPPER Venus, Carnal Love
IRON Mars, Blood-red Bringer of War
LEAD Saturn, Lord of Time Itself

There's also a gold coin in the basin, which I am prevented from taking. The basin bears an inscription:

"IN ME, O STRANGER, IS BOTH OBLIVION AND ADVENTURE; DRINK MY WATER AND THY QUEST SHALL END IN SAFETY; SACRIFICE AND THOU SHALT CONQUER."

Drinking the water causes amnesia, and the next thing I know I've left the house, gone to college and become an accountant, albeit one with a nagging feeling that I've missed out on something exciting. Clearly this is a game over scenario, as no one wants to be an accountant. UNDO!

I've got a silver coin and a lead coin, while what I need is copper, iron and lead. I remember the small flask with greenish liquid I found -- I figure that's acid, and it may help me transmute my coins. After all, that's what alchemists like uncle Zeb did for a living. I go back to the house and start dipping coins.

Dipping the lead coin into the acid dissolves it completely, which is probably not good at all. Dipping the silver coin transmutes it to iron though, and that's probably good! I still don't have any copper coin, though.

Finding the copper coin was a bit of an odd puzzle. I looked through the items I had that hadn't been useful before. Among these was a tomato. The only obvious thing was to eat it, and it is was a copper coin. I don't see why this was so.

Going back to the basin, I throw all three coins in. Each Greek god speak a few works, and each brings life to the desert plain I'm on: the smell of the sea is on the sudden breeze, palm trees appear in the distance, and thousands of stars come out.

The gold coin that was lying in the basic was apparently just a hint: I never get a chance to take it, as the game now ends immediately.

And thus ends the story of uncle Zebulon's will. Many adventures await you in the city of Cyr-Dhool - but that's another story!
***** You have won *****
In a total of 404 turns, you have achieved a score of 75 points out of a possible 75, and visited 12 locations out of 12.