A Dad In A Dungeon: Part Four

As my dad nears the bottom third of Legend Of Grimrock, he seems to be becoming more determined, less likely to tell me he's quitting, and more likely to turn to YouTube for help than his horrible, grumbling son. To catch up with his previous adventures head here. And then onward!

Inevitably, I reloaded my save position from before choosing the crossbow and took the book instead. I then found the snail-room and stocked up on snail meat before figuring out what the clicks meant in 'Walkabout'. I think that's what reopened the way back up, but I'm not sure what does what here. For example: do snails spontaneously create or is it something we do?

After popping up to level 3 and down the back stairs to the Blobs on level 4 secured a level rise for our Mage and a replacement crossbow we returned to Level 6. Sadly, we only have two quarrels, unlike Rock, Paper, Shotgun where all is peace and tranquility. (Hah!)

On 6 we decided to have a look at the previously passed over Fire Halls and discovered an apparently infinite supply of those fire-demon chappies, with a side plate of crab next door in the Mage area. (We discovered this when we were rudely awoken, having taken refuge after discovering that the 'Firemen' follow us down the corridor. When we'd cleared the Halls, albeit briefly, we thought we'd have a go with the buttons. Hmmm? Good is not the word.

Now, look here! I like a puzzle as much as the next adventurer, possibly more so than many, if not most. I cut my gaming teeth on text adventures. Those days of amazing graphics painted entirely with words, on an 8-bit computer, were doomed to be somewhat sadly short-lived when the distributors insisted that all games have graphics. Urrrgh! Waiting for a picture to draw so you could get on with the next verb-noun command was almost as excruciating as waiting for Grimrock to reload after we fell down a hole for the trillionth time.

Fortunately, we did not have to go back to redo Level 5. The humiliation of having to ask The Younger Walker to guide the walking-frame of this Older Version across that hall of apparently randomly opening and closing pits below which a whole army of undead bad guys waited for us to drop in would have been devastating.

The arrows and stuff (and possibly a key) that we saw across a pit over to the right might as well be on the moon for all the chance we have of getting to them. Maybe that's the key to the metal door? Some of those doors are SO annoying. You just know there's got to be such amazing goodies within. I managed to open those on Levels 1, 3 and 4 but what the clue on 5 about sleeping with dragons – or something – was about, I have no idea. I tried resting in the only room I know of having a dragon-ish statue, or can remember having it, which may not be the same thing, of course.

I gave up after a while and went down to Level 7. My team now had experience of dealing with The Blobs which succumbed to fireballs and hand to pseudopod combat. In my previous incarnation I had no problem navigating the room with the invisible teleports. But this time, despite finding the way out, I just cannot get to the teleport shimmering so coquettishly on the south-west corner – yet!

A few Fire Demons later, we emerged on Level 8 and quickly found a stair down, so missing most of it so far, headed for Level 9, where stuff happened. It's all a bit hazy now – and after making pretty patterns with luggage on the floor in one room we reached 'The Armory'.

I'll need to go back and do the bits I've missed, but for now I think it is time for my lie-down. This game is tense, or maybe that should be intense? It's fun, in a twisted, masochistic life-shortening, coronary enhancing sort of manner.