A German Myst-type click-adventure game. You enter a haunted house and try to find a way to leave.
Link to video
It is not trivial to determine the shortest sequence of actions. Everything is pre-rendered and you can "go" to certain points in a room and turn around in steps of 22.5° or turn around 180°. There is usually more than one screen that allows clicking on a certain item or thing.
The overall route:
Candidate 1 (Enter to the left)
Go to the dining room
Go to the kitchen
Collect a SUGAR CANE from the wall cupboard.
Go to the garage
Collect the HAMMER from the dark corner and CHEST from the backside of the car.
Go to the room with the books
Collect the CANDLE HOLDER and the BOOK.
Click on the BOOK to reveal a KEY #1.
Collect the CRYSTAL BALL in the shelf.
Use HAMMER on the CRYSTAL BALL to reveal KEY #2.
Go to the living room
Use CANDLE HOLDER on the FIREPLACE to receive a BURNING CANDLE HOLDER.
Use the CHEST and enter code 182, you are transported to the start.
Candidate 2 (Enter to the right)
Go to the living room
Go to the room with the books
Collect the CANDLE HOLDER and the BOOK.
Click on the BOOK to reveal a KEY #1.
Collect the CRYSTAL BALL in the shelf.
Go to the living room
Use CANDLE HOLDER on the FIREPLACE to receive a BURNING CANDLE HOLDER.
Go to the room with the books
Go to the kitchen
Collect a SUGAR CANE from the wall cupboard.
Go to the garage
Collect the HAMMER from the dark corner and CHEST from the backside of the car.
Use HAMMER on the CRYSTAL BALL to reveal KEY #2.
Use the CHEST and enter code 182, you are transported to the start.
Rest of the game
Go upstairs
Use KEY #2 on the rightmost door and enter bedroom.
Go to the bathroom
Collect SKIN CREAM from the drawer.
Go back to the bedroom
Look up to the ceiling and use KEY #1 on the door.
When talking to the ghost, use answers 1-3-1-1.
Go to the mirror and use SKIN CREAM on it, then click on it.
When talking to the boss ghost, use answers 1-1-1-1.
You win.
Candidate 1 may be shorter but doesn't really make use of the chest warping you to the start.
Candidate 2 has backtracking from the books room to the fireplace, but makes good use of the chest warp.
It is unclear at first glance which one will be faster.
Perhaps I will try to make a map that visualises the whole game.
Hotkeys:
Hotkey
Effect
CTRL+N
New game
CTRL+O
Load game
CTRL+S
Save game
F3
Toggle fullscreen
F5
Toggle music
Left
Turn left 22.5°
Right
Turn right 22.5°
Down
Turn around 180°
Esc
Skip cutscenes
Notes:
Some locations are not connected correctly:
Going from the dining room at SW (south west) to the foyer places you on the stairs looking at SW.
Going from the kitchen at WNW to the dining room places you in the far corner of the dining room looking at W.
You can go from the far corner of the dining room at WSW, SW, SSW, S directly to the foyer looking at SSW.
You can use the chest without opening it in order to get transported to the beginning whenever you want.
You will be looking at angle ESE (east-south-east). This works as long as the chest is still unopened.
However, using the chest takes about 2-3 seconds.
I've been running into a myriad of problems trying to TAS this game...
Turns out the 16 bit version that comes with the CD-ROM actually doesn't run as is on Windows 3.1 and win32s is required to make it run.
The vfw (video for windows) install that also comes with the same CD-ROM doesn't like any win32s version I tried so there is a "msvfw32.dll is missing" error when starting the game. I tried a lot of things but couldn't fix it. It could be possible the developer hadn't tested compatibility of their software with windows 3.1.
The game requires the sb16 drivers so I can at least get adlib MIDI. Unfortunately it wasn't possible to load the game .cue / .img pair along with the win32s .img disks and the sb16 .ima floppy file so I had to make two back-to-back verification movies.
Aside from the dll error, the game runs but it is nearly impossible to keep track of what input is doing what action. I'm basicly adding a click or key press and wait 10 seconds for it to play and see if it does the desired action, rinse and repeat thousand times. Mouse clicks don't line up with key presses. It is very easy to get an item, then add more input and then suddenly "not" get the item. It's frustrating to notice such things later in the game.
Then there are inexplicable "InvalidOperationException" errors suddenly happening. First it happened when I was just trying to copy the game files over to the .hdd during the verification movie, even though there was enough space. So I opted for running the game from the CD drive. It doesn't cost any time but I still would have prefered the other way... The error happens sometimes in very high density during the actual gameplay part, but I'm not certain if it is related to TAStudio or the game.
I've never had this error happen in other games I ran.
I hope to get the game finished within the next few days.
The TAS is dead. :(
Video playback in this game is messed up after all.
I assumed the game was behaving fine and video playback is functioning, since the intro and the chimney ghost video were playing.
But turns out, after talking to the attic ghost and then trying to enter the mirror right before the end of the game, the game softlocks as it doesn't play the mirror spinning video.
That's a Sunday wasted. The TAS would have been about 15 seconds long.
I could finish by using savegames but it's not something I will want in a submission-worthy TAS.
The game should probably be played in Windows 95 instead.
Link
With this it will be easier to figure out the fastest route eventually.
