phoenix/hints/solutions/Parc_walkthrough.txt

                               Walkthrough for

                                    Parc

                               by John Rennie

                           Written by Richard Bos


A few notes, first.

One, and most importantly, this is a very hard and not always entirely
reasonable game. You can die easily. You can lose or destroy a necessary tool
just as easily. Save often, and keep _all_ your save files until you've
finished the game.
Two, the parser is limited, but good. I have not found any place where using
prepositions or indirect objects ("hit tree with axe") is necessary or even
possible. By contrast, the game is good at giving you less to type. If there is
only one object, simply "get" will take it; if there are several, it will
assume the first one listed. Ditto for "drop", which will drop the first object
in your inventory; and ditto for several other verbs. "Get all" is provided
for, as well. Multiple objects (as in "get bread, cheese, and butter") are not,
though.
Three, this is an old-fashioned game. There are a lot of puzzles which you can
only realistically be expected to solve by dying first, sometimes more than
once. Often, your dying message will advise you on how to avoid that death.
Since this is a single walkthrough, such hints will not be found here. I'll
just present you with the correct solutions, omitting the process you could
have used to discover them. If this spoils the game for you, well, such is the
risk of reading walkthroughs. By the way, if you don't want to be spoiled quite
so drastically, you should find a ZCode file with hints for individual puzzles
in the same place where you found this document.
Finally, these notes are for the ZCode version generated from the original
Phoenix source, which is available at the IF Archive. I do not know whether it
works for other versions, as well, or even if any exist.


So, let's be off, then.

You start off outside your rival's mansion. Go east. It's dark. There is, in
fact, a way to get light here, but we're not going to yet. First we're going to
explore a bit, even though walking about in the dark _is_ dangerous in this
game. Take all. That command (and other take commands) work in the dark in most
Phoenix games, even if you've never seen the object you're taking before.
Useful. And no, you didn't get a lamp.
Go north. Try going north again. You are tricked into walking in circles. Close
the curtains. Look... it's dark again. Now go north. Take the figurine. Go up
and east, get the vector, and go west twice. Jump. You're back where you
started. Drop the umbrella, then go east again.
Ok, now it's time to make some light here. What is the first thing you would
normally do in a dark room? Try finding the light switch, of course. Do so now:
turn on the lights. In Phoenix games, that's done using the command "on". Ah,
that's better. But it won't last, so we need another light source.
Go east and southeast. Get all. If you want a hint about your light source,
look up zinc sulphide in a decent encyclopaedia. Go north twice and east. Take
the radium, and the very next turn, wrap radium. If you wait, you die of
radiation poisoning. By the way, it's still not entirely safe - you'll still
die of the same cause after a number of turns - but that number is now much
greater than what you need to solve the game.
Go west, sw, east three times, and ne. Take all and wear the slippers. Go
south, then east. Fly. Surprise! Go east, get crumpet, west, north, east and
down. Get the crucifix, then go south. We're back on the south side of the
chasm. Go west, drop the truss and take the sack.
Go west and north. Take, read and drop the book. Go se, then go up! Take and
read (but don't drop) the dictionary. Go back down, then west twice. Drop all,
then take the cloth and the label. 

Go west thrice and enter canoe. You end up in a sticky situation, but your
reading should help you out here... enter "eskimo roll". Go west and drop the
label.
Go north and west. Kiss the prince. Do not kiss Sleeping Beauty! Go down, take
the fork, go up and nw, get the vector, go nw, then take and wear the tie. Go
east, se, e, s thrice and east. Get all. Go west, north, north. Drop the tie,
fork and vector.
Go n, w, nw, sw, w. Throw record; get all. Go east. Take and tear the manual.
And if you don't understand that scene... it's a computer scientists' in-joke.
Go south, take the box, and go north, ne, north. You could now try taking the
tape, but then you'd have to pay for it, and you don't have any money. Well...
steal tape. Go south, and play the tape. Remember that name. Play the tape
again. Another useful hint. Drop the tape.
Go se, east, south twice and east. Take the coin, then go se. Take the spade.
Now a bit of nice guess-the-verbing: build castle. Drop the spade and take the
stud. Go north, west, north.
Drop all. Get cloth; get label. Stick label. Don't worry, we'll get all those
things back soon. Go north and then run north. You must use the prefix "run" on
that last one. Then go se, and east three times.
Take the crucific, dictionary, figurine and vector. Go east and nw. Aha, there
is our loot! Take the hifi and record. Go east. Drop all, then take back the
cloth. Go west. Get box, coin, fork and vector. Go south and west, drop all,
and take back your cloth.

Go east twice, north twice and west. Get all. East, get butter. Go south, se,
west twice. Get the crumpet, fork and sack, and drop the bag. Go se and south.
Light the fire. Toast the crumpet. Go west. Take the diamond, then the snake.
Go east and drop the butter.
Go north twice and sw. Drop the snake. Then (and only then) drop the sack. Take
the egg. Go ne, and drop the egg and the matches. Go east and nw, get all,
east, drop all, get cloth.
Next, some mazes. Go west, south and west. Take the bag, vector and matches.
Then go sw, s and w. You are now in the vector maze. Take inventory: your
vector is pointing in a direction. Follow it. Repeat this procedure until you
find something. Take that object, and the one you find underneath. Take
inventory again. If, now, you go in that direction you will get nowhere fast.
Instead, take the directly opposite direction (sw if it is pointing northeast,
and so on). Repeat again until you get out of the maze.
Go n, nw, w, nw. You are in the forest, which is another maze. If you drop an
object here, it will be lost in the undergrowth. What's more, there is already
something in there which we want but which is hidden right now. Light the
undergrowth and drop the matches. You could now solve this maze the normal way,
by dropping objects. However, you could also go ne, get the bottle, and leave
by going east, then sw.
Go west and fill the bag. Go east three times. Drop the bottle, sword and
vector. Go east twice and south. Cover the corpse. Take and unload the gun, and
take the bullet. Go sw. Hold breath. Go south. Breathe. Go west and get all,
east, sw, get, ne and north. Hold breath again. East. Breathe.
Go north thrice and freeze bag. Remember what that tape said about the giant?
Let's go find him. Go south and se, west twice, north twice. Go south. Hah!
Fooled him. Go sw. Drop all.

Take the box, bullet and cloth. Go east twice, then north and ne. Get the
camera. Go south, se, east. Take and wear the truss. Try going south. Now bite
bullet. Go south again. A dragon! This must be the one which was mentioned on
the tape. You've remembered his name, or should have. Enter it now, as your
command. Open the box. Get all.
Go sw. Sit on the throne, then break the door. Drop the truss. Go east. Read
that sign - we'd better comply! Drop your cloth (which, I'm sure you remember,
contains radium and is therefore radioactive). Go north, into a dark room where
something is around. We need light, but not our cloth. Well, we've got an
object which can at least make a flash: take a picture.
Go north, get the goblet, go back south twice. Take your cloth. Go west, ne,
nw, west twice, nw and east. Drop all, and take back the bottle and cloth. Go
west, south and west. Drop the bottle.
Take the coin, egg and pill. Go east and north. Insert the coin. Go east. Flush
the toilet and take the chain. Go west, break the lock and get the coin. Go
south twice. Eat the egg. Go east, and wait a turn. Good thing about that
virus... but we'd better do something about it. Eat the pill.
Look. Take the bolas. Go west, north and west. Get the sword. Go sw, then south
twice. Throw the bolas, kill the bull, and retrieve your bolas. Go sw. Move the
manure (nice...). Take the battery, then go back north, ne, north, ne. Drop the
battery. Get the ruby and pistol.
Go east, nw, east. Drop all, get cloth. Go west, south, west. Get all. Go east,
nw, east. Drop the vector and the thermometer. Go west. Close the door. Connect
the battery to the power source. Go south twice.
Empty bottle. You don't have to specify which - the game will choose the right
one for you. Do so again; this time the other reagent goes in. Connect the
battery, this time to the heater. Fill your remaining bottle.
Go south, and immediately throw the bottle. Go south again. "Endgame"? What's
that? Well, let's see. Open the case. Play endgame. Win Parc.

And so you win a motley collection of puzzles, some good, some ridiculous. One
has to wonder how Mr. Ping Narott could stand to live in a house like that.
Interesting, though, to see a Phoenix game in which some puzzles are based on
physics rather than mathematics.