Roger Olsen returns with Pyramid; another interactive text adventure published by Aardvark. Roger Olsen & the Aardvark crew were quite prolific in 1980 having published six different text adventures. Pyramid author Roger Olsen also wrote Deathship and Escape From Mars in that same year. Aardvark published four other text adventures in 1980 as well; all originally for the Ohio Scientific: Trek Adventure, Vampire Castle, Nuclear Sub and now Pyramid. I’ve been lucky enough to have gotten to experience all six.
Pyramid was first published for the OSI and then later ported to the Commodore 64/128, Timex Sinclair, TRS-80 Coco, Vic-20 and IBM PC. I played the Commodore 64/128 version. Interestingly enough, even though Pyramid was text only for most platforms, the later TRS-80 Color Computer version added pictures but didn’t change anything else.
I was really looking forward to Pyramid having enjoyed the other five offerings from the Aardvark crew. Alas it appears that I set myself up for disappointment. It appears that Roger Olsen set out this time to make a much more difficult game. In doing so, a couple of the puzzles are exceedingly difficult and the result spoils the flow of the game compared to earlier efforts.
In Pyramid you take on the role of an archaeologist. The game starts in a tent on the site of the excavation. The object of the game is to get into the Pyramid, explore the site, and recover four treasures and bring them back to the tent.
One distinct feature in this game is your knapsack. You can pick up and manage many more items in your inventory thanks to the knapsack. When you pick something up it automatically goes into your knapsack and if you want a list of your inventory items you have to type: LOOK KNAPSACK.
The advertisement on the back of the Pyramid box rings true. Pyramid is very hard. I am a little aghast at the mention of 50-70 hours of playing time but still compared to other entries from Aardvark I felt that this one was the most difficult.
There are what I would call three very difficult puzzles that exist in this game. One puzzle is actually ingenious and very fair – albeit still quite difficult. The other puzzle which we’re going to talk about in a moment borders on what I like to call “unfair play” rules.
This aforementioned puzzle involves actually getting INSIDE the pyramid itself. As an aside, why is that all of the games that we’ve reviewed that involve a pyramid, make it so bloody hard to get into the pyramid? The absolutely terrific Scott Adams adventure Pyramid of Doom comes to mind.
In the beginning of the game while in the desert I am able to find VINES, an AARDVARK (no really – and he’ll actually go into the knapsack as well), a BANANA, and a MONKEY.
There is a heavy locked door in the front of the pyramid that I cannot get into. However, using a shovel, if I dig in a certain location on the map the ground caves in and deposits me into a cave. In this cave there is a stream, a boat in the sand, and some rocks. This is where I was stuck for the longest time. How do you proceed forward you ask? I am ashamed to admit that I had to resort to finding a solution to this dilemma. The solution is to TAKE ROCKS followed by PUT ROCKS. The game will ask WHERE? You then type in STREAM.
Once you do this the water level begins to rise freeing your boat from the sand. Once you hop into the boat you can follow the underground river. Now I’m as familiar with the concept of dam building as the next guy but the game doesn’t describe the rocks as a pile of rocks or a lot of rocks; merely rocks. So TAKE ROCKS and PUT ROCKS as a solution I found to be rather frustrating as a player however I understand the paradigm.
The stream takes you to an ancient cave complex where you find a sword. When you examine the sword you find that it reads property of “ALI BABA” which it turns out is a hint to help you proceed further. There is a bit of parser navigation concerning the altar in the room and magical words that you’ll have to utter but eventually you’ll find yourself teleported to some twisting passages.
There is a bit of a maze here to contend with but you also find a message on one of the walls. If you shift all of the letters back by one, the message reads WALLS HIDE SECRETS. Eventually you’ll find a secret door which will help you to escape the maze that you’re in. It took some time to find it but I finally discovered that by typing in PUSH WALL it revealed the secret passage.
Pushing on a wall to reveal a secret door reveals then the second difficult puzzle in this game. A hole with a locked grate over the top of it. This is another part of the game that I had to look up the solution for. Once I discovered the answer to getting by the locked grate I was a little upset with myself. I wonder if I had given myself a lot of time to ruminate on it if I would have arrived at a solution. It is unclear but what is clear is how ingenious the solution is. One of your inventory items is a pistol. If you open up the pistol and look inside you’ll discover bullets. If you open the bullets you’ll discover gunpowder. One of the other inventory items in your handy knapsack is a book of matches. I am sure you can now deduce how to get by the locked grate. I’ve never seen a solution like this yet in any of the games that we’ve covered. Genius and diabolical all rolled into one.
Once you’re by this obstacle you’ll find yourself at a chasm. If you LOOK CHASM you’ll find a jeweled dagger down on a ledge. This was another difficult puzzle that finally involved using the vine, a banana, and the monkey’s help in order to retrieve the dagger. Once again I had to resort to using a hint here. Roger Olsen was not playing around in his attempt to make this a much more difficult game than his predecessors.
The jeweled dagger is one of the four treasures you’re meant to find. You’ll next find yourself in the throne room and attacked by swarms of ants and this is where pulling the Aardvark out of the knapsack comes in handy.
The four treasures you’re meant to find are: Ali Baba’s sword, an amulet, a deathmask, and the jeweled dagger. You’ll have to contend with a mummy in order to obtain the amulet. Having already played Pyramid of Doom helped me to deal with the mummy as the solutions were the same.
Once you have the four treasures in hand you’ll find that you can make your way out the front of the pyramid via the heavy door that you could not open before. Once you make your way back to the tent and deposit the four treasures you’ll find yourself victorious.
I did not feel very victorious because I had to resort to “cheating” not once but three different times to get myself through the game which has been very uncharacteristic of me to this point. I didn’t even have this kind of problem playing the venerable Zork I the very first time. There were three very difficult puzzles to overcome in Pyramid. They were not the only puzzles but they represent three monumental hurdles. This brings up the question of game design and implementation. Was this game truly so hard compared to anything else I’ve played to this point or is the implementation and execution of the puzzle design flawed? Where the locked grate puzzle is concerned I would venture to say that the puzzle is ingenious and more than fair. Very difficult but makes a lot of logical sense and you had all of the items in your possession to solve it. I think it is asking a lot for a player to think of opening up the pistol, emptying it of it’s bullets, then opening the bullets to obtain the gunpowder but what an ingenious and devious puzzle, and, if we’re being honest, fair and logical. Great stuff. However the GET ROCKS and PUT ROCKS solution to create a dam to free the boat and tying a banana to a vine to get a monkey to crawl down it to get the jeweled dagger both seem like a bit much. I could probably spend an entire blog post talking about adventure game puzzle design vs. real world logic with several examples, and while I may very well do that in a future post, I won’t do so here.
Pyramid does not have many map locations however it replaces size with several devious puzzles which are likely to befuddle and frustrate the average player. Despite my frustrations with Pyramid I can’t help but be impressed with the offerings presented by Roger Olsen, Bob Retelle, and the rest of the Aardvark crew. It is with the completion of Pyramid that we finally close the door on 1980 and in my next blog post it is time for the Retrogamestrove.com Awards as I present the awards for the 1980 Game of the Year for CRPG and Text Adventure categories. Until next time….