SpecVic Mini-Adventure

This is a crap game written by Digital Prawn but not entered into any CGC compo. It is intended for the 48K Spectrum. It is actually written in VIC-20 BASIC and runs under James Smith's excellent "Twenty Commodes" VIC-20 emulator for the speccy. As it runs on an 8-bit system emulating another 8-bit system, it is very slow to play!

Instructions

Your ultimate goal is to enter the "Realm of Sargon", defeat the evil king and collect a silver item of treasure.

Verblist for this game is:-
N, NORTH, E, EAST, S, SOUTH, W, WEST, GET, TAKE, SEARCH, X, EXA, EXAMINE, LOOK, ENTER, GO, FOLLOW, IN, LEAVE, EXIT, OUT, OPEN, UNPACK, EAT, PLAY, DIG, CLIMB, U, UP, D, DOWN, JUMP, KILL, HIT, ATTACK, I, INV, INVENTORY, QUIT, READ
(not all are needed)

The following verbs had to be omitted from the game due to memory limitations and are NOT needed:-
DROP, SCORE, HINT, HELP, CLOSE, PICK, ASK, SAY, TELL, TALK

Other limitations:-
All input must be in upper case (CAPS lock is on by default).
All output is in uppercase.
Only one or two word commands are understood.
Inputted words are truncated to three letters internally to save memory.
There was not enough room to include a list of "obvious exits" for each room. So just try N,E,S,W from each location. There are no diagonal directions in this game.
Alas, quite a few in-game descriptions were sacrificed to fit the entire game into the 6.5KB limitation. This game could be subject to further optimisations and improvements at some point. There are clearly some opportunities for reducing this game's memory footprint a little further.

Technical Info

Jimmy's "Twenty Commodes" emulator provides a virtual VIC-20 with a 3K RAM expansion. This system has approx 6.5KB available to VIC BASIC programs at power on. This small adventure game uses almost all of that memory (Peaks at somewhere between 6.4KB-6.5KB in fact). By running the game and then QUIT-ing, then typing "PRINT FRE(0)" in VIC BASIC, it is revealed that there are usually less than 200 bytes of VIC RAM remaining, and even most of that is temporarily used within the program for things like dynamic string allocation when using the INVENTORY command.

Stats for version 0.1 of the game:-
In-game locations: 15
In-game objects: 25
In-game unique responses: 35
Total number of verbs in database: 42
Average command response time: around 7 seconds
Game init time: 15 seconds
Game development platform: ZX SPIN emulator

Help & Spoilers

Stuck in the game? Firstly, the "cheat mode" is revealed below, and then the complete "standard" solution. These spoilers are hidden, so drag the mouse over to reveal the text within.

Cheat mode:-

Developing and testing the game would have been very slow without a "magic debugging command".

I left this in the released version in case of further development.

The debuggging commands have the form:

XYZ 508134nn

where nn is replaced with a two-digit number. If nn is in the range 01-15, then it specifies a room number to jump to within the game.

If nn is in the range 51-75 then it specifies an in-game object to be placed into the player's inventory

All other ranges are invalid and do nothing

Examples:-
WHAT NOW? XYZ 50813451
This will place the boxed VIC-20 into the player's possession if they accidentally left it on the train at the start of the game.

WHAT NOW? XYZ 50813409
This teleports the player straight into the first location of the "Realm of Sargon", completely bypasing the first part of the game.

Of course use of these commands to win the game does not count as winning it properly!

The full solution (optional commands in square brackets):

GET VIC
OUT
[READ SIGN]
OPEN GATE
N
[EXAMINE PATH]
DIG PATH
N
SEARCH HEDGEROW
ENTER GAP
GET MUSHROOM
E
SEARCH TREES
FOLLOW PATH
ENTER HUT
UNPACK VIC
EAT MUSHROOM
PLAY VIC
W
KILL MONSTER
W
JUMP
GET BASKET
JUMP
E
E
GET ROOK
W
W
JUMP
CLIMB
[EXAMINE SARGON]
OPEN BASKET
N
DIG SNOW
D
GET FIRCONE