Curse of the Sasquatch is a text adventure for the TRS-80 written by Greg Hassett. Greg was very prolific in 1979 and published Sorcerer’s Castle Adventure, Enchanted Island, and lastly Voyage to Atlantis. I played through and reviewed all three here on the blog. The link that I provided will also have links to the other two game reviews as well.
The adventure starts off with a bang as it appears I’ve been taken to Alaska to find and trap the legendary bigfoot.
You begin the game by awakening in a small shack. Someone or something carried you there. My question was who and why?
I search the shack and soon find a secret door behind the fireplace. I go down a ramp and I am suddenly plunged into darkness without a light source. There is unfortunately no way to save the game so I have to begin again.
Curse of the Sasquatch – Take Two
I choose to pull the lever this time and I am dropped into a dark cavern. I find a growling tape recorder and a flute. The tape recorder throws me a bit. There seems to be no way to interact with it. Is growling a name brand or is there a cassette tape stuck that the recorder is eating? Or is it playing growling sounds? Perhaps this question will be answered at a later time.
I continue on and come to a dead end – or is it? One item in my inventory interacts with another in the environment and I’m able to climb up onto a ledge where there is a ladder. I climb the ladder up into an Adventure Workroom filled with cassette tapes, wadded up balls of paper, and broken pencils. I thought ‘oh! Cassette tapes! Maybe now that I have the recorder I am supposed to play one of them.‘ I take one of the cassette tapes and a wizard suddenly appears and exclaims that I am not allowed to take anything from this area and he kills me instantly.
Curse of the Sasquatch – Take Three
I begin again, search the shack, make my way to the secret room behind the fireplace, pull the lever, take the ladder, but don’t attempt to go into the Adventure Workroom again. I take a different direction in these underground caverns and come upon, wait for it, a twisty maze! Hooray! It’s late and I’ve had a rough day at work so I decide to shut things down and attempt the maze in the morning or the following day
Curse of the Sasquatch – Day Two – Take Four
I make my way through the maze and come out the side of the mountain onto a snowy ledge. I find the body of a dead monk here who just so happens to be carrying a Zippo lighter. No really. I now have the light source I needed and then realize that I forgot to grab the key after making my way through the fireplace. Aaargh!
Curse of the Sasquatch – Day Two – Take Five
I make sure to grab the key again this time, obtain the flute, recorder, ladder, make my way through the twisty maze and find the dead monk again on the snowy ledge. I take the poor soul’s Zippo lighter, find my way back to the shack, and I am able to uncover more of the map thanks to my newly found Zippo lighter. I venture back back through the fireplace, down the ramp, and now that I can see I am able to grab a life-size blow up doll of bigfoot (don’t ask). I deal with both a cobra and a man-eating tiger and obtain an axe for my troubles.
I then become “stuck” for some time wondering what to do next and then noticed when trying to use the ladder in a location the response I receive is; “not in this location” Hmmm I slowly and methodically begin to go to each of the map locations to see where I can use the ladder and finally found an area where I can do so and it opened up a significant portion of the map for me.
There is a bit of a plot twist here and the game turns a corner. I use the axe to chop a tree into firewood and then find a building. Inside the building are large, fake bigfoot feet for making footprints and a barrel of oil. There is also a puddle of oil on the ground and an oil can. I grab the oil can and fill it with oil from the puddle. The game is very unforgiving where inventory management is concerned and only allows you to carry just a few items. This entire time as I find an item I’ve had to decide which item to drop. I’ve dropped the axe now as an example in order to get the oil can. It now seems as if I’ve uncovered some kind of plot to scare folks away or keep them away. For what purpose? Is there some kind of oil scheme going on here?
I make my way out of the building and find a statue holding an axe that squeaks; “ill me”. Hmm I use the oil can to oil the statue which suddenly becomes animated and tells me; “the flute is to be used thrice” before running off. (Was that supposed to be the tin woodsman from the Wizard of Oz?) The flute is used three times… Drat! The flute had been one of my items I’d discarded due to inventory management. I leave the area and make my way back down the mountain and revisit my locations until I find the flute. I make my way back up the mountain and explore the building once again because I seem to have become “stuck” again. I had pushed a knob in the building and pulled a knob in the building and this time I turn the knob and the floor drops out from under me. I find myself in a damp basement and it was at this point that an entirely new section of locations opened up to me.
I find an elevator in the basement and an elaborate bedroom with a closet. In the closet is a fake bigfoot costume. I also find more barrels of oil in the basement. This is starting to seem like Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods or an episode from Scooby Doo. All that is missing is the character of Red Herring. There is a shelf in the closet and when I climb up to the shelf I receive an odd message; “the shelf is big enough to hold you and it seems to shake when you whistle…” Now why would I be whistling? So that seems like a “nudge” or a clue to me and the tin woodsman told me I need to use the flute three times. A flute sound and whistle seem synonymous so I blow the flute.
The shelf suddenly dumps me into a master control room that seems to control or manipulate an oil well or system. No matter what I do I seem to be trapped in this room. I can return to the closet shelf and then back to the control room but I can go nowhere else. There are no controls to manipulate in the room nor any objects. I seem to have “softlocked” myself somehow. Arrrrgh! Did I mention there is no save game feature?
Curse of the Sasquatch – Day Two – Take Six
So I’ve obviously missed something. The only item I didn’t use was the tape recorder which I now know was placed there to emit growling sounds. Mystery solved. I have not yet used the firewood either and in the shack when I first began the game it did suggest I start a fire but I had forgotten about it. So I move about the game environment repeating everything I had before but this time I avoid turning the knob in the building.
I place the firewood in the fireplace and start a fire using the monk’s Zippo lighter. No really. The smoke from the fireplace reveals a secret panel in the ceiling of the shack. If only I had a ladder. Oh wait I do! I climb onto the roof of the shack and I find a note and a trap. The note reads to use this trap and some bait (not included) at the place the big foot frequents. The master control room had described black footprints on the floor and that the sasquatch must go there a lot. The bait must be the life-like bigfoot blowup doll? I take the trap and the doll and the flute and then suddenly find I can’t go through the fireplace because of the fire. I do get a game message the storm has subsided so I move all about outside to see if my location options have changed. I wait to see if the fire dies down. I try to put out the fire using several different adjectives none of which work and this is where I am now stumped.
Curse of the Sasquatch – Day Two – Take Six – much later
I spent roughly 45 minutes doing everything I could think of and this is where I had to resort to finding a walkthrough to get me past this spot. Aaargh! I am very glad I did this because it seems to be a stupid parser problem. Somehow I was supposed to know to type GO MOUNTAIN (these are the types of crazy things that can drive you crazy with these older text adventure games – do not get me started). So with no guilt at having to use a lifeline over something like that ( I would have NEVER discovered that no matter how much time spent with the game ) I continue on. I play the flute and get dumped into the control room. I drop the trap and drop the blow up doll and return to the closet. When I come back…
I would have liked to have read at the end “..and I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”
Curse of the Sasquatch was a bit of a departure for Greg Hassett There were no treasures to find or score to deal with but there was an actual plot here with a bit of a twist to it. The logic for parts of the game seem to be “off” to me ( a life sized bigfoot blowup doll is the bait? ) and who dumped me in the cabin at the beginning of the game but it still seems an improvement to me over his earlier entries. His puzzle solutions ( the man-eating tiger and cobra are two examples ) are reminiscent of his earlier works but this game entry seemed to start to follow the trail that Scott Adams had blazed already.
The no save quandary caused me some frustration as starting over and over took some patience and perseverance but that comes with the territory. I am now looking forward to Hassett’s other two games he published in 1980 as I’m wondering if he has now turned a corner with this offering.