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Weve made a lot of progress on Castle of the Mad Archmage™, and I wanted to give everyone a quick update. Were still right on track for a February release (maybe earlier). There are only five pieces of art still outstanding, and the manuscript should be coming back from the editor any time now. The map book is done and MAN does it help having the maps in their own booklet. I ran a session of CotMA yesterday (down in the crypts and lesser caverns) and it made a HUGE difference. I think thats going to be one of the best features of the published version.

Although the first publication will be made using the Adventures Dark and Deep™ rules (which means, of course, that it will be usable with just about any 1E-compatible OSR rules set), the keen-eyed among you might have noticed that call for Pathfinder conversion experts that was posted not too long ago. That is because Castle of the Mad Archmage™ will also be published in a Pathfinder version later this year.

I dont have any details in when itll be available - Im still sifting through the responses to find just the right person who can do it justice - but it will happen one way or the other.

The Japanese PC Engine hosted several of Nihon Telenets Valis games -- weve previously looked at Valis II, Valis III and Valis IV, and at last we come to, paradoxically, the final release on the platform: Valis (I): The Legend of a Fantasm Soldier.  This remake of the original MSX game arrived in 1992, published for the Super CD-ROM format by RIOT, and developed by Telenet Japan.  While Valis II and III made it to the US TurboGrafx-16, this one arrived after NEC had largely given up on the US market.  But as much of the onscreen text is in English, this isnt a difficult game for Western gamers to handle in its original form.


The gameplay necessarily takes a step backward here, leaving the multiple-character approach of the numerically "later" Valis games behind for a more linear run-jump-and-attack platform/action game.  But the extra memory afforded by the Super CD-ROM system card allows for significant visual improvements, with more frames of animation in the sprites and more variety in the backgrounds.  Even the status bar at the bottom of the screen makes heavy use of that burnished, horizontally-banded 16-bit look that became instantly popular when more than a handful of colors became available.

The series trademark anime-style intermissions also benefit from more fluid animation, much better lip-sync and fewer pauses for loading.  As the game begins, we see Yuko waking up, getting dressed with a few briefly risque shots, and riding the subway to school, surrounded but fortunately un-harassed by all the dour-looking salarymen:


Eventually, a serious threat manifests as the skies darken, fellow warrior princess Reiko arrives and gives Yuko some cryptic advice (especially cryptic if, like me, you dont speak Japanese), and a demon sent by the warrior Rogles appears.



The Valis sword magically appears in Yukos hands, destroying the creature.  And then the gameplay settles into its familiar pattern -- the first level takes place in an urban setting, suddenly invaded by strange, demonic foes as Yuko runs around in her schoolgirls uniform:


 After destroying various enemies, she fights a boss in the subway after he gives her the usual overconfident verbal taunting in fully-voiced Japanese:


We also get the occasional full-screen image, as in this moment when Yuko, Warrior of Valis changes magically into her normal warrior outfit, which oddly appears to provide less actual protection than her school uniform:


And there are some nice special effects, most relying on simple color-cycling but often looking quite nice, like this rainstorm:



There are, of course, some less technically demanding special effects, like the way all of Yukos outfits feature skirts that tend to fly upwards during jumps:



The difficulty is up to the Valis series usual ridiculous standard, with the occasional cheap hit from an enemy that suddenly appears at the margins of the screen or arrives in tandem with a foe coming from the opposite direction, frequently leading to this image of Yukos briefcase lying forlorn on the sidewalk, apparently a paean to the loss of her future productivity:



But its not hard to convince oneself to hit CONTINUE, if only to see what graphical variety lies ahead, and what power-ups will turn up in tantalizingly dangerous and hard-to-reach spots:


The Valis series was never fantastic, but it has a dedicated body of fans and holds up well today -- its visual style remains attractive, and the CD-quality music is suitably energetic if not particularly memorable.  Ive enjoyed each of these games, with breaks to keep a certain sameness at bay, and will always regard the series fondly as part of my introduction to the anime style, back when the TurboGrafx-16 was the new platform on the block.

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These games were pretty popular, and remain so today, so theyre not as inexpensive or easy to find as some PC Engine games.  But theyre worth owning and playing, and this one might be available for purchase here.

This week, Im returning to a more contemporary series, as we tackle Her Interactives Nancy Drew: Treasure in the Royal Tower, fourth in the long-running series.  The point-and-click detective game was originally published in 2002 but has remained in circulation in budget compilations and still be purchased and downloaded at the Her Interactive website.



The Nancy Drew games are marketed as casual adventures, but in my experience theyre usually fairly challenging and thematically adult without being unsuitable for a family audience. The technology hasnt changed much over the years -- the games use pre-rendered graphics with clickable hot spots for navigation and interaction, and limited animation for fully-voiced dialogue scenes and important moments.  The visuals are presented in first-person perspective, and we never see Nancy herself in this game.  All the spoken dialogue is also presented as onscreen text, along with dialogue response choices.  The games illustrations are credible enough, in 640x480 resolution, though they tend toward the overly-clean, plastic look of early CG, and character animation is often stiff.

Of course, interested readers are encouraged to seek the Treasure in the Royal Tower firsthand before reading through my comments below.  I wouldnt advise using my notes as a guide to the game, as there are several more concise walkthroughs available online and I spent a lot of time beating my head against apparent dead ends until something shook loose.  But thats also part of being an adventure gamer -- just be aware that there will be comprehensive...
***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****



The game offers two levels of difficulty, Junior and Senior Detective; well be playing on the Senior Detective level, which reportedly only affects the difficulty of the puzzles, not the plot.

The game begins with Nancy writing a letter to her (female) friend George -- Nancy is on vacation at a Wisconsin ski resort called Wickford Castle, but a bad storm means the hill is closed and few guests are present (both factors convenient for game design purposes!)  Its an effective intro, as photos of people and landmarks are displayed as Nancy discusses the situation.  Owner Christi Lane is a friend of Nancys dad, though she never appears in this game; we also learn about caretaker Dexter Egan, the eccentric chocolate milk millionaire Ezra Wickford who built the "castle," and Jacques Brunais the ski instructor (and failed Olympian.)

Nancy needs to find a mailbox to send her letter out, which gives us a reason to go exploring, but before leaving the room, we should point at and click on everything of interest.  The desk contains a locker assignment -- locker #310, with combination 5-1-7, probably worth noting.  Nancys card key is for her room, #205, so we should take that along.  Theres a Wickford Castle brochure in Nancys luggage, worth reading for some background -- the castle reportedly features a lot of dead ends and secret passages, in keeping with its original owners mental state.  Ms. Lane is Ezra Wickfords great-niece, who inherited the castle and opened it to the public, except for the mysterious Royal Tower, which Wickford moved here from France and then sealed off.  Wickford also imported a library of antique books formerly belonging to a French revolutionary officer named Le Boeuf.

Theres also a room service menu in Nancys dresser -- the resort seems to have no actual dining room -- and a few detective magazines on a table, with instructions about dusting for fingerprints to extract an access code from a keypad, which we will probably need to do at some point.  The night table has an alarm we can set to move time forward, and a phone Nancy can use to call out to boyfriend Nick Nickerson and friends George and Bess, likely to be useful for recapping and seeking hints.  But nobody is answering the phone at this point, not even the operator, and the only voice mail left for Nancy is a hang-up... odd.  The closet door cant be opened, and the radiator near the window is actually broken -- I thought the constant hissing I was hearing was just poorly-compressed audio on the background music, but once we step out of the room, everything clears up nicely.

It seems a good idea to map out the castle before we get too deeply into the plot.  The castles structure is a bit odd, and matters arent helped by the pre-rendered point-and-click navigation approach -- theres a lot of awkward movement required to get ourselves pointed at something we want to see or interact with.  For example, we can only get back to Nancys room by walking a bit past it and turning around, -- we cant turn to the door when were standing directly in front of it but not facing it.  Long hallways also tend to be inconsistent about hot spot placement, making fast travel difficult to pull off in places.

But we can, with some patience, explore the top floor where the rooms are -- one staircase leading down is too dark to traverse, one door opens on a blank wall.  There are several ways down to the first floor -- elegant steps in the large entrance hall, and a vintage elevator mentioned in the resorts brochure, whose presence is revealed by banging noises as we pass by.  There are also a number of small alcoves decorated with stained glass and tapestries -- we cant interact with the decor, but these areas help provide castle atmosphere.

The whole second floor is built around the entrance hall, which stands two stories tall and cuts across the center of the building.  An interesting round room with portraits and potted plants abuts a staircase leading down to yet another dead end.  We can hear typing coming from somewhere in the vicinity of room #214, but a knock goes unanswered.

The elevator door can be opened -- it appears to be in need of some restoration, and theres a trap door in the ceiling we can open and climb through.  On top of the elevator we see the expected cables, and a wooden crate we cant interact with.  Theres also an open ventilation shaft, its cover hanging askew, but we cant reach it or the ladder next to it from this location.  The elevator is in working order, so we can use it to go to the first floor or the basement.  It also has stop and alarm buttons, though I never had to use these.

I opted to explore the basement first, guessing it might be a smaller area to investigate.  An archway leads to circuit breaks and an elevator reset lever.  We can play with the breakers, even turning out the lights on ourselves, which makes it fun to hunt the switch down again, though its the only active hotspot in the dark and we have to flip it back on before we can leave the circuit board.  A stone staircase leads up to the first floor, but is too dark to climb to the second -- probably the same staircase we found upstairs.

We also find a ski rental and locker room area, with a vending machine and displays of skiing equipment.  The rental office is closed and locked up at the moment, but we can acquire a paintbrush sitting on the counter.  This is apparently Jacques office, but a knock on the door produces no response.

Trying the locker combination takes a little trial and error -- we cant see the locker numbers until we reach the one we can access, and once I found locker #310 I had to figure out how the lock works.  As it turns out, we dont have to turn the lock in any particular direction first -- we have to press a triangular button at the top of the lock for each digit.  And even when we get it figured out, Nancys narration confirms that weve successfully entered 5-1-7 as the combination, but the lock still wont open.  So well have to talk to someone about that.

The elevator appears to have shut down -- maybe because I was playing with the buttons?  The elevator reset lever restores it to working order, so well go up to the first floor.

We land in front of a locked set of double doors, and I ran into a few dead ends before finally emerging at a pleasant sitting room with a fire in the fireplace.  A bookcase contains a few titles about the French Revolution -- the brief sections we can read include a brief biography of Marie Antoinette, from her marriage to the King of France until her execution by guillotine, after her capture by M. Le Boeuf.  Le Boeuf himself is detailed a bit in the second volume.

As we turn around after leaving the bookcase, we are surprised to see another human being, finally!  Lisa is a young photojournalist who tells us that someone broke into the library and vandalized it last night.  Dexter is assuming a guest is the culprit, and its secured more heavily now until the police can arrive to investigate, though Lisa suggests Dexter probably has a key.  The only other guest, one Professor Hotchkiss, claims she has been robbed, though she wont tell anyone what was taken.  Lisa provides further exposition on another scandal -- that Jacque Brunais is "scandalously cute."  Im not sure how sophisticated Lisa is supposed to be, but her voice acting and general demeanor dont create a great first impression.  At least she provides some unintentional adult humor, saying, "I wonder what were going to do with ourselves" while the storm is in force.  But she knows nothing about the secret entrance to the French tower, and claims to speak minimal French and poor Spanish.

The large entrance hall features postcards and brochures for Wickford Castle and the neighboring Le Pierre Chateau in Lakepond, Wisconsin, but no obvious clues.  We also see the front desk, where Dexter Egan is busy coping with the storm -- and Resident Evil fans will have to accept that those tempting red herbs in the corner just cannot be acquired:


Conversation with Dexter allows Nancy to ask him how long hes been here -- "a while" -- and complain about her radiator, and ask for a stamp so she can mail her letter, though it wont go out any time soon with all the snow.  Dexter confirms that the "liberry" has been vandalized, though his pronunciation seems to improve later in the game; the vandal put a hole in the wall, and made a general mess of the place.  Dexters very busy and cant look at the radiator yet, but Nancy can offer to help out by delivering Professor Hotchkiss repaired ski boots from the rental office.  We can try to explore behind the front desk, but Nancy wont go there while Dexter is at his station.

Jacques is in the basement ski rental office now; he doesnt seem to like being in Wisconsin, but his fiancee is studying at UW-Madison, and he likes being close to the Queens Tower, given its roots in his homelands history and Marie Antoinette in particular.  He discourages Nancy from snooping around, and mentions that he crafts wooden hope boxes for keeping secrets.  Asked about the locker combination, he suggests that its actually for locker #311.

With the boots in hand, we can talk to Professor Hotchkiss -- she seems hard of hearing, and suspicious of Nancys motivies even though she cant get her name right.  Shes not willing to talk about the robbery, and wont answer a second knock.

Exploring some more, Nancy gets stuck when the elevator jams between floors -- we have to go up through the trap door and stand on the crate to reach a door above, but its not a secret door, just the normal first-floor elevator door.  Nothing seems different in Nancys room -- theres a second hang-up call on the voicemail, and I took the opportunity to recap the story so far with George and Bess, though I saw no need to ask for any hints yet.

Returning to the basement, we open locker #311 -- yes, Jacques was right -- and find Lisas camera bag... with extra passports and drivers licenses under a number of aliases.  A letter in Spanish is a mundane update from friends, but gives the lie to Lisas earlier claims of ignorance about the language... a discrepancy that might be worth noting.  But shes no longer sitting by the fire, so we cant confront her about it. 

Character appearances seem to be clock-based, so sometimes we have to wait until someone is available or gone.  As it turns out, after weve failed to find Lisa we see that Dexter has stepped away, giving Nancy an opportunity to check his desk.  His to-do list suggests nothing sinister, though an item to "KEEP SEARCHING" is potentially interesting, and a note that he needs to change the alarm code on the library suggests more security than usual.  We can also steal a key from his desk drawer, just in case we need to open a locked door or anything.

We might as well try to open the library, and the key works, but the alarm goes off and before we can find a hiding place or examine anything of substance, Dexter arrives and throws Nancy off the premises.  Whether she simply cant continue investigating the case, or freezes to death outside the hotel with no hope of transportation, well never know -- but its the end of the game, at any rate.  Fortunately theres a "Second Chance" option available, safely depositing us just before we tried to break into the library, so we can pretend it was just a passing thought and continue our efforts elsewhere.

Can we shut off the alarm with the circuit breaker?  It appears theyre laid out by floor, looking at the scrawled notations on the breaker box, but I didnt succeed in doing so, though I did manage to turn the lights in the dark stairwell back on, between the first and second floors.  My attempts did, at least, establish that the alarm shuts off if we close the library doors without entering.  Looks like well need to find that keypad and the code.

Wandering around some more, I find that we can look down at the foot of Professor Hotchkiss room door, and leave the boots there -- as we walk away, we can hear the door opening and closing, though we cant see her emerge under any circumstances I could find.   Returning to the dead-end staircase near the round room, we hear some banging noises that seem louder at the bottom of the stairs, but there are no clickable loose stones or anything we can interact with.

If we had some dust, and access to the library keypad, we could probably use the paintbrush to get a good guess at the code -- but we only have one of those three covered at the moment.  We no longer hear typing from Hotchkiss room, but she doesnt answer the door either.  I made another attempt at entering the library -- the keypad is on the left, provided by "Achilles Security" for a little extra humor, but my attempts to punch in random codes were unsuccessful.

Playing around in the elevator shaft, I got Nancy to say that she sees something below the elevator, but I couldnt find it or get her to repeat the message.  The elevator doors are locked when the elevator isnt present, so we cant sneak in from another floor through the obvious route.

Stopping by Dexters desk, Nancy complains about getting stuck in the elevator.  He admonishes her for climbing around in the dangerous shaft area, and asks her to help get the lights in the stairway on, which weve already done.  Next, he wants Nancy to get Prof. Hotchkiss dinner order -- she wants couscous, and Dexter tells Nancy she needs to order from the menu.  After retrieving the menu from Nancys room (I dont think we were allowed to put it in inventory earlier, but I might be mistaken) we get her real order -- fifty chicken drumsticks.  Nancys next errand is to go downstairs and tell Jacques to get some more out of the freezer -- he complains but complies, and Dexter has promised he will fix Nancys radiator as thanks for all the help.

So is Nancys radiator still hissing?  The elevator needs to be reset again, so its easier to get there via the stairs, and we find that it has indeed been repaired.  Theres also an oil can left behind, which well put in inventory should we run into anything rusty and stuck.  I felt like I was running out of puzzles, and in need of a hint, so in the interest of staying within the game world I had Nancy call Ned Nickerson -- he suggests that there might be another entrance to the library. 

None of the castles many dead ends seem pliable enough to grant entrance.  The professor will talk about her theory but wont leave her room; she wants information about the castle and asks Nancy to find out Marie Antoinettes age when she married King Louis.  This is easy enough to find out from the books in the sitting room -- it appears she would have been 14 or 15 when the wedding took place, as we have a date for her birthday but not for the wedding.  After doing this bit of research, we can talk to Lisa again -- she complains about the pay she earns as a photojournalist, and Nancy can ask her about the multiple identities, though Lisa says she just needs them for her work.

Hotchkiss wants the answer written down -- she slides a piece of paper under the door, and we can type our answer on it; I went with 15, which proves to be correct.  Hotchkiss offers to meet us in the sitting room during her normal "office hours" -- 3 AM to 6 AM.  Its 2:30 PM in my playthrough, so its a good time to use the alarm clock to nap until the appointed hour.  The professor tells us she is a scholar of French history, looking for evidence here -- she gives Nancy permission to look in her room, handing her a pass key, apparently thinking Nancy can be a useful research assistant.  We have to be out by 5:59 AM when she returns to work, however.  It seems that Professor Hotchkiss wants to rehabilitate Marie Antoinettes "let them eat cake" image, whether the facts align with her "theory" or not.

Entering #214, we find some notes that suggest she romanticizes Marie Antoinette a bit.  We can steal her camcorder battery... or better yet, replace it and watch her P.O.V. video exploring the round room.  We confirm that a portrait on the wall is of Marie Antoinette, and then the camera pans down a bit as Professor Hotchkiss gasps -- before the playback stops.  The battery has run down, so we can put it on the charger nearby -- but it will take a while to recharge, 24 hours if Im interpreting the label correctly from a distance, so well have to come back here later.  We also find a letter in the dresser from some distant Marie A. relatives in Germany to the professor -- it mentions a medallion and a stained glass window.  Interesting.

A trip back to the round room turns up nothing obviously gasp-worthy.  But now can we climb the elevator shaft?  Yes -- when the elevator is on the first floor we have access to a landing, and can use the ladder to climb up and navigate past the open vent cover through the shaft to... the library!

Nancy can climb out of the shaft, but it isnt long before we hear keys in the door -- hiding again behind the library-end vent cover, we see Dexter come in and enter a code to turn off the alarm, muttering something about "the old man" before leaving again.  We can climb down and look around -- there are a number of books strewn about which provide some clues and background information.  The Diary of Hans Axel von Fersen indicates that Marie Antoinettes jewels were confiscated by Le Boeuf before she was beheaded.  A book by Professor Hotchkiss waxes rhapsodic over Marie Antoinettes love of the color purple, and mentions four values she allegedly held dear -- loyalty, dignity, wisdom and truth.

A sign above what looks like an erstwhile fireplace reads, "A sly rabbit will have three openings to its den."  It covers a sextant puzzle, but it seems well need some information to set the values correctly.  A book on famous portraits describes a certain painting of M.A., painted in the tower transplanted to Wickford Castle... and that painting turns up here, in the library!  Its on the floor, and the hole in the wall Dexter mentioned earlier appears to have been punched behind its hanging place, though we cant see anything interesting about the hole.

An atlas opens to a page locating Wisconsin at 90 degrees west longitude, and we can pick up some dust from below the hole in the wall using the paintbrush.  Great -- we dust the access keypad, determining that the code is 372 -- no wait, actually, 3*72, I hadnt dusted the bottom row.  We can enter any code we like while the alarm isnt going off, confirming that the right one is APPROVED by the system.

A globe has a longitude dial at the north pole, currently set to 60 degrees.  We move it to 90 degrees west, and the globe can be opened with the handle on top, providing a clue to the sextant puzzle.  Its easy enough -- we set the sextant to -15, 10, and -5 degrees, pressing a button between each setting like the combination lock earlier, and a creaking noise is heard.  We have to look around a bit, but theres a secret panel now open, near the vent entrance on the librarys second level.

Nancy finds a lighter on the desk in the secret room, which we can use to light a candle and remove a key from the melting wax.  There are some insects mounted in frames on the wall, and a couple of scrapbooks about.. Dexter Egan?  They appear to have been kept by Ezra Wickford, who... we now learn... was Dexters adoptive father!  It seems like Dexter became a bit of a juvenile delinquent, then a petty criminal, and was cut out of his fathers will later on, which is why Christi inherited the castle instead of him.  The plot thickens!

Returning to the elevator, we notice a lever behind us on the landing -- one of those odd navigational contrivances, we couldnt really turn to look at it until were facing this way at the foot of the ladder.  The lever is stuck but can be oiled, opening a passage down to... well, its blocked by the elevator right now.  So how do we handle this?  A sign in the elevator indicates its maximum load is 640 pounds, but that doesnt seem useful right now.  Can we use the alarm or stop buttons to halt the elevator partway, so we can still open the basement door and get into the passage?   Nope.

Oh, of course!  We can go through the library now that we have the code, moving the elevator up out of the way and then coming back in through the vent to reach the passage again.  We hear some coughing during our travels -- I think its just Dexter at his desk, making noise so we can notice him earlier in the game -- and manage to make it to the area behind where the elevator was, in the basement.  There are counterweights here -- we can mess with them, but Nancy can get crushed by the descending elevator if were not careful.  A door nearby exits back out to the basement -- its just the elevator exit, and its a one-way trip, so I had to make the whole roundabout journey back to this point again.

When we press the red button near the counterweights, they rise up out of the way and we have a limited time to solve the puzzle behind them before the elevator kills us.  Its a simple puzzle -- we have to pull 6 bars in the right order, and after one bar sticks in place we can find the second bar, then with two stuck find the third, etc. -- but we have to do it fast to make it through a secret panel before the elevator comes all the way down.  It took me a few tries -- what I should have done was park the elevator on the first floor instead of the second, so the weights would just have been out of the way, but I was able to do it the hard way.  The combination changes each time, but its easier to solve it in future trips with the counterweights safely above and not moving.

In this passage, we hear the sound of sawing and discover Jacques hacking at some metal bars.  He says hes doing it for his family honor -- looking for a historical French document his great-grandfather found but left in the tower shortly before it was dismantled to move to Wisconsin.  Jacques has a medallion in his locker, and gives Nancy the combination, planning to meet her there.  A tunnel takes us back to one of the "dead ends" in the first floor hallway -- we can see the faint outline of the secret door now, but still cant open it from this side.  Going to the locker room, Nancy is able to open Jacques locker -- but just before she examines the medallion, someone knocks her out from behind!

We wake up in our room to the sound of the phone ringing -- Jacques is calling to see how Nancy is doing, and is dismayed to learn the medallion is not in her possession.  Nancy also has a few voice mails from Dexter and Professor Hotchkiss; Dexter asks about the red dirt on Nancys shoes when he found her, and Hotchkiss says her room is in disarray again.  Going downstairs to the sitting room, Nancy talks to Lisa, who somehow knows that Nancy has been in the library; she also mentions that Hotchkiss is not well respected by her historian peers.

Returning to the Queens Tower area where we saw Jacques earlier, we find that our old key from Ezras secret room doesnt work to open the gate; theres a dungeon area nearby, but nothing much we can interact with despite the chains and portcullis trappings about.  We cant light the old torches on the walls, but we can take a spike from the top of a halberd held by a suit of armor.  We can also see the partial cut in the bar Jacques was working on, though we cant break or cut the bar either.

We havent talked to Dexter in a while -- Nancy confesses that she found a passage to the tower, and Dexter reveals he already knows about it.  He says that the storm has passed, and Nancy has earned the right to explore some more -- he tells her there is a skeleton key in the maintenance shed that will open the gate, though we have to be careful about the cold when we go out there.  On the way to the basement door to the outside, we can visit Jacques -- he is working, still upset, and doesnt have much to say.

Its definitely possible to freeze to death on the way to the shed -- or in the shed -- or on the way back -- so well ignore a few puzzles in here, opting to just grab the key once weve found it and run.  The key does open the grate, so Dexter wasnt trying to undermine us.

The towers first obstacle is a bit pit -- some shackles on the wall nearby have to be pulled until they match the inverted "V" pattern on the opposite wall, and its one of those largely trial-and-error puzzles as most of the chains are interconnected.  Once thats done, a row of large stones rotate into place and Nancy can traverse the pit.

Next, we arrive at a prison cell -- a game board here challenges us to slide four marked discs into their matching slots.  We can only slide a disc in four directions, and the disc will keep moving until it hits a barrier.  It takes some creative use of the layout to find the right ordering and get everything into place -- only one disc can be moved successfully into its spot without using at least one other disc to help steer it into place.  Once this is done, we hear a grinding noise, and we can travel up a long circular stone staircase to the royal tower!

A stone switch by the tower door removes and restores a section of staircase -- we have no reason to cut off our own path, but it might be useful if we need to keep someone from chasing Nancy up here later on.  This looks like the place, with a portrait of Marie Antoinette dominating the view (this screenshot is from later in the game, but the location looks the same):


There are a few puzzles in the tower -- some symbols on the floor appear to align with Professor Hotchkiss work, presenting 3 symbols flanked by purple griffons with a square keyholein the center.  Theres also a tile puzzle on the wall, requiring us to lay out square pieces in the correct position -- it took me a while before I realized the pieces can be rotated, which made it a lot easier, though the feathered, brown-and-gold pattern is still tricky to work with.  Its easiest to line up all the border pieces before getting the 8 interior ones aligned and placed.  After this is done, the panel opens up, revealing a book -- most likely the journal Jacques great-grandfather had run across many decades ago.

We get some special music when the journal is found, but clearly the game is not over yet.  We cant open the journal to read it, and I wonder if we need the medallion to go into the keyhole.  But I have no real information, so we have to go back to the castle and see whats what.

Dexter knows about the floor puzzle but asks Nancy to call him about it later -- which may be difficult as we dont know his phone number and the Wickford Castle brochure has no front desk contact information either (that cant be good for business!)  The camcorder battery is charged, and we can see the rest of Hotchkiss video -- she mentions that she has a medallion which fits into the wall in the round room, where a peephole provides a glimpse of a stained glass window.  We saw a corner of this window while climbing the tower, but couldnt get a good look at it due to the navigational system in that section, so we may need to use the peephole as well.

Doing so, we can see the stained glass window in full -- it appears to reference Truth, with a symbol of a crown?  Dexters to-do list indicates he has changed the library access code, but he must have changed it before we found it so our access is still good.  We cant use the lighter to see into the hole in the wall, but we can still open Jacques locker to find a note from his fiancee begging for a tangible symbol of his love, probably an engagement ring judging from the diamond flyer also in his locker.  Hes also received a warning letter from the United States immigration authorities, as his visitors visa will soon expire.

Well wait for Hotchkiss 3 AM office hours, to learn that a diamond tiara Marie Antoinette received (but refused to wear for the portrait mentioned in the book we found earlier) disappeared shortly before the Revolution.  The journal excites her -- she agrees to translate it for Nancy if she can have it to publish.  She agrees to translate it by this time tomorrow, so well use Nancys alarm clock to do the time warp again.


The next night, Hotchkiss has completed the translation and found Marie Antoinettes long lost decoder, but she doesnt give Nancy either item or provide much more information.  We have to visit her room again to find the translation, which indicates the soon-to-be-ex-queen had the tiara dismantled and the stones fashioned into three medallions corresponding to her values: blue for Honor, red for Courage, and green for Loyalty.  We know Hotchkiss has a medallion, or had one, but she wont talk about it.

So, it seems we have to find these medallions.  The blue one is easy, as further poking around finds it under a pillow on the sofa in Hotchkiss room.  Dexters not at his desk yet, so well go look at the puzzles in the shed -- except Nancy wont go out there at night, so well go to sleep for a bit.

At 9:00 AM, Dexter is on duty, but he still wont talk about anything new, and Jacques wont either.  Well go out to the shed again -- solving a lever puzzle here turns on the lift, which earns Nancy nothing but an angry dressing down from Dexter.  But does anything change in the shed after we do this?  Not that I can see, and we can still freeze to death.  Poking around the shed does show us another machine, but there arent any features we can interact with visible.

Lisas back in the sitting room, but has nothing to say.  Nancy has no new voice mails.  We can call George and Bess, and asking for a hint gets a suggestion that we need to do some more reading in librarys secret room.  Aha!  Ezra wrote a poem, a farewell message that Dexter never received, in which he forgives his estranged adopted son and mentions secreting a "luck charm" for Dexter "in the back of my old troubled head."  

Now Dexter will talk about the secret garden -- he tells Nancy to look for a wrought-iron gate concealed by foliage, and now we can click on a "No Trespassing" sign near the maintenance shed to access a new path.  Rotating an arrow sculpture turns a bust of Ezra Wickford around, we pull a lever in the back of his head and use the key from the secret room to open a box concealed in the base -- we now have the red medallion!

What about the green medallion?  Well, after much poking around, Nancy finds a voice message from Lisa, of all people, and we can talk to her in person to learn that she saw Dexter going to the shed with a "green ornament thing."  We go to the shed and find it on the machine we couldnt do anything with earlier -- this time, an animated rat wanders through to draw our attention to its location.  So we have all three medallions now... but Nancy is locked out of the castle when we try to return!  We can turn the ski lift on to summon help before freezing to death, and Dexter isnt angry as this second infraction was an S.O.S.

Now were ready to go back to the tower!  We have to re-solve the elevator and pit puzzles to reach the peak, and now we can place the medallions into the floor -- per color/value coding, I guess, if we knew what the symbols meant.  There are really only six possibilities for arranging the three medallions, but none of them seem to produce any interesting results, and were still missing the square center key.  Hmmmm.  Back to the castle, I guess.

Talking to Hotchkiss one more time indicates that she had the green medallion originally, so things have been swapped around a bit it seems, but thats all shell say.  But looking around her room once again, I find the decoder she mentioned earlier -- its just a list of symbols and words, and we cant take it with us so Ill manually note the Loyalty, Honor and Courage symbols.

Returning to the tower, we place the symbols correctly, but... still nothing happens?  I really needed a hint here, but even the walkthroughs I found online werent very helpful -- everyone suggests that we should be able to interact with the painting of Marie Antoinette in the tower at this point, but it doesnt show up as clickable for me.  So I began a long series of experiments, punctuated by tedious trips back to the tower, as I attempted to achieve whatever it was the game wanted so that we could continue.  I tried to:

• Re-read the book on famous portraits in the library
• Re-view the stained glass window through the peephole
• View the stained glass window with each of the three medallions installed as color filters
• Re-solve the sliding disc puzzle (it appears to reset when revisited)

But nothing worked... until I went back to Hotchkiss room and looked at the decoder again, after having looked at the stained glass window through the medallions.  Nancys brain apparently works in only one direction, or she took poor notes on the decoder originally, but now, at long last, our heroine gets it!

The rest of the game wraps up fairly quickly -- we examine the tiled portrait on the wall, seeing that we can break away the purple rose tiles (valuable historical artwork? Bah!) with the spike from the halberd, to retrieve a square key.  Inserting it into the center of the floor lock brings up a gigantic diamond on a plinth.  Victory is Nancys!

But, of course, a final confrontation with a villain is still at hand!  Lisa, who we were seriously beginning to suspect, shows up and sprays Nancy with nasty pepper spray!  Nancy is still able to choke out a few questions, confirming Lisas general villainy as a greedy jewel thief.  (Why she didnt just steal the priceless antique books and paintings lying all over Wickford Castle, instead of waiting around hoping Nancy Drew would uncover a possibly mythical diamond, remains a mystery!)

Lisa finishes her soliloquy and flees the tower with the diamond, but not before Nancy hits the stone switch near the door, removing part of the stairway again and dumping Lisa into the small prison cell at the towers base.  Lisa is arrested, Christi Lane makes Dexter her business partner, Hotchkiss publishes the journal to great acclaim, and Jacques and his fiancee elope, his good name restored by his part in the discovery.  And Nancy gets another headline for her scrapbook, though Im sure shes getting sick of this "girl sleuth" business:


 
Whew!  Unfortunately, Treasure in the Royal Tower proved to be my least favorite Nancy Drew adventure to date -- perhaps because its the earliest game Ive played in the series, or perhaps because it was based on a book, it all feels a bit linear.  The story isnt very player-driven, and many events have non-obvious triggers that mean the player has to wander around re-poking at everyone and everything until something changes.  Many of the puzzles succumb to trial and error or just finding the right clue, which makes them less interesting than they might have been, and we have to spend a lot of time just finding our way around the castle.  I was good and ready for this one to be over with, and Im hoping for a better Nancy Drew adventure next time I check in on the series.

I ended my last post having just entered the library in Venice. Dr. Schneider had told me that my father had been looking for Roman numerals in the library when he simply vanished, so I was about to set off and start looking for them. As expected, the library has rows and rows of books, and each row has a plaque at the end of it with funny little snippets from famous people. At first I thought one of these plaques might give me a hint as to where I might find a certain book (maybe even my father’s diary), but after checking them all out, I was convinced that they were there for humour’s sake alone. Intriguingly, the openings after each section of books has massive Roman numerals all over the floor, which makes my father’s comment about not being able to find them rather odd.


Each of these openings also contained two pillars with lions on top and a stained glass window with obvious religious symbols. All of the pillars had inscriptions on them, all of which had three separate Roman numerals (for example: IV III IX). I checked a few of them out and looked at the numbers on the floor, but couldn’t find any relation or logical deduce anything from it. I did notice that one room had something none of the others had...a cordoned off window. I was not only able to pick up the red cordon, but I was also able to pick up one of the metal posts. I can’t really say why, but the first thing I thought to try was to use the metal post to crack open one of the squares on the floor. Indy responded to my request with “Even if there’s something down there, I have no idea which slab to break open. If only I had Dad’s notes!”


This made me think that using the post on one of the squares was exactly what I needed to do, but I was going to have to find my father’s diary to figure out which piece of floor. I thoroughly looked through the library for any other items or hints, but came up empty handed. All I could think to do was to head back to the United States to try to find the key for the chest in dad’s house. Surely the diary was in there! On my way out of the library, I took a bit of time to explore the Italian plaza. I didn’t seem to be able to talk to any of the people there, but interestingly, when I tried to pick up a wine bottle on the table of two lovers, Indy said “Mind if I take this?” The man’s response was “Indeed I do!! We’re not done with our fine wine yet”, but it hinted that I might need that bottle at some point. I tried a few things at the time, but couldn’t get them to relinquish it.


Determined to find the diary, I flew back to the U.S. and entered the college. I entered the gymnasium change rooms and re-emerged in more casual attire. I was then able to enter the boxing ring and practice fighting. Fighting involves using the number pad, with each button having a different action depending on which way Indy is facing. Since I was facing to the right, numbers 7, 4 and 1 all made me take a step back, numbers 8, 5 and 2 blocked high, middle and low, and numbers 9, 6 and 3 punched high, middle or low. I was able to choose from three different levels of sparring, but managed to knock the boxing coach out on all three (although I had only a tiny amount of health left on the hardest level). Fighting feels fairly intuitive, although if I come up against someone that throws punches up, middle and down, I’m not sure I’ll be able to re-actively block. We’ll find out eventually.


After changing back into my more formal attire, I went out of the college and climbed back in the window of my office (I didn’t want to face off against those angry students again). I felt like there must be something in there that I could pick up or use in some way. I looked at what I had gained since the last time I was in the office, and then started using them with some of the items. For some reason I thought I would try using the sticky tape with the jar of cleaning solvent and it worked! Not only that, there was a key in there!!! Now, there’s probably some scientific reason why putting the sticky tape in the solvent achieved something. Perhaps it simply allowed me to unravel the balled up tape and reveal that there was a key inside? Still, I solved this puzzle pretty much through trial and error, so I’d be interested to hear what others think about it. Anyway, now I had the key to the chest, and I was one step closer to getting the diary!


I rushed back to Henry’s house and unlocked the chest, removing the diary that I knew would be there. Only it wasn’t my father’s diary!!! “This is the diary I made when I was a little boy. It was supposed to look like my father’s Grail Diary.” What? I found a replica of my father’s diary when all I needed was my father’s diary itself!? Harsh! What to do now? Well, since I hadn’t finished going through every item in my office on my recent visit, all I could do was go back there and hope for the best. There seemed no way to make use of the diary I made in my youth and I could only think it might be useful later on to trick someone trying to take the diary from me. I went back to the office and continued to use everything with everything.


Those of you that have played the game will know where I eventually found the diary. You might remember that I picked up the junk mail that was sitting on my desk when I first started playing the game. What I didn’t do was continue to pick up more junk mail until there was none left! It didn’t even cross my mind that I might be able to pick up more junk mail after adding the first lot to my inventory. Underneath it all was a package from my father, which of course was the real diary! After picking it up, Indy put all the other useless mail back on the desk, answering my question about what on Earth any of it wasn’t going to be useful for. I tried looking at the diary but was informed that “I don’t see anything pertinent right now”. I figured it must only be of use when the time is right.


Now that I had my father’s notes, I made my way back to Venice and into the library. As soon as I was there, I tried using the diary again. This time a section of it was displayed that showed an image of one of the stained glass windows along with a cryptic message. “If ye would enter, follow the third on the left.” I walked through each of the library rooms until I found the stained glass window that matched the one in the diary. I then looked at the inscription on the left pillar in that room and found that the third Roman numeral on there was IV. It made sense to me then that I should use the metal post on the square with IV on it in that room. When I tried that, Indy took out the post and knocked the tile out, then jumped into the hole before a Nazi uniformed guard with a machine gun could apprehend him. Excellent progress!


Beneath the library, I found myself in an underground catacomb of sorts. There were skulls all over the wall, and three doorways out of my current room. I chose the left hand door and then found myself given a top down view of what was clearly going to be a maze. I opened up an Excel spreadsheet in preparation to map out my progress, only to find that the application was going to be completely useless. The tunnels went in all different directions, twisting off on all sorts of degrees. I considered getting a pen and paper and trying to draw the maze, but that plan wasn’t ideal given my wife was asleep in the bed no more than two metres away from me (meaning I couldn’t turn the light on). I decided to see how I went, and if things got nasty, I’d stop for the night and map it out on paper in the daylight of the next day. I won’t describe all of my movements in this post, as the maze took me all over the place, including back to my starting position.


The first place of interest that I came across was a room with two skeletons in it. I was able to remove the hook from the end of one of the skeleton’s arms, but couldn’t find anything else to do there. The second place of interest was a room with a torch on the wall. I tried picking it up and manipulating it in every way possible, but was continually informed that “it’s held in place by hard, dry mud”. The third place of interest was a room with a concrete slab in the middle of it. I tried interacting with it, but was continually told that I couldn’t get a good grip on it. I didn’t have anything in my inventory that would make gripping the slab any easier, and using my items on it didn’t work (including the hook). The fourth room of interest was one half full of water, with a large plug at the bottom. Indy refused to enter the water, and none of my attempts to manufacture a device that would pull the plug out from a distance worked (I thought using the red cordon with the hook would have done the trick).





The fifth place of interest had an opening to a sewer and a manhole cover in the ceiling. I’d seen a manhole in the plaza near the library, so figured that was the exit out of the maze. I wasn’t ready to leave yet, so I entered the sewer. This took me to a gate, through which I could see a casket sitting in the middle of a room. I couldn’t get through the gate no matter what I tried, and figured opening the casket would be the reward for solving the other puzzles I’d come across in the tunnels so far. Surely it held the knight that contained the second marker! At this point I gave the maze a thorough going over until I was confident that I’d found all the rooms of interest, then put my thinking cap on to try to figure out how I was going to get through this. I was going to have to figure out how to get the torch, remove the concrete slab, or unplug the plug, before opening the gate.