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This week were returning to the substantial adventure game library of the Sinclair Spectrum ZX, tackling Pete Cookes Invincible Island, published in 1983 by Richard Shepherd Software.  Mr. Cooke was recently profiled in Retro Gamer magazine, and while hes best remembered for his action games, he wrote several text adventures early in his career.  The Speccy was a terrific platform for adventure games, with 48K of standard memory and flexible handling of text and graphics.


Cookes engine uses vector-and-fill illustrations, which take some time to draw, and the parser isnt particularly speedy either, so Im running Invincible Island using the ZXSpin emulator, with the CPU speed artificially cranked up to 14 MHz (though this also makes typing rhythm on the emulated keyboard a little unpredictable.)  The parser is unusual in that it demands full-word entries, and wont accept abbreviations of verbs or nouns, though there is an I command for inventory and the usual navigational shortcuts are supported.  The graphics system is also a little bit unusual -- it does some color shifting, occasionally drawing a fill in one color and then changing it to another using the ZXs attribute-based hardware, and draws some more detailed objects and characters using bitmaps overlaid on the background.

Invincible Island features a very traditional adventure plot -- per the intro, we are cast as an explorer stranded on the remotest island of the XARO.  We are seeking treasure, based on a letter from a Dr. Chumley, and have arrived in a small boat; the goal is to find the treasure and escape alive.  Its not quite clear why were "stranded," since we have a boat, but for the sake of drama well assume we cant simply go back the way we came.

As always, interested readers are encouraged to visit Invincible Island firsthand before reading my comments below.  Its not too difficult, though I did need a few hints along the way, and my notes are intended to describe my playthrough experience in as much detail as I can manage.  In other words, there are...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****




As the game begins, we find ourselves in a small cove with our small boat anchored nearby.  We cant GO BOAT or ENTER BOAT or EXAMINE BOAT to any effect, though it looks suspiciously sail-less in the illustration.  And we have nothing in inventory, so it seems were remarkably ill-prepared for this expedition.

North of the cove is an open plain, prominently featuring a large, rusty chest.  It is, of course, locked, and no other details suggest themselves.  Further north is the edge of a large forest (a maze, perhaps?) -- we can acquire an axe here (GET AXE fails but TAKE AXE works), and theres a sign which we cant READ, though we can EXAMINE SIGN to learn that the strange writing is unreadable.

We can travel north again to find the late Dr. Chumleys camp -- we cant enter the dilapidated tents, but we can pick up an anorak (a winterized jacket) and a spade.  North of the camp (the map seems fairly large, so Im just exploring in one direction for now) we encounter a native resident of the island, watching you suspiciously.  Our intrepid looting may encounter some opposition, then, but he allows us to proceed past him to a hill overlooking a valley, with a deep pit in the ground.  North of this point, at last, we encounter a strong wall, possibly the northern boundary of the map.

Well probably regret this, but we can try entering the pit -- and it leads to a lush green valley, from which we can readily return by going U, so we dont regret it at all.  Oh, no, wait -- thats what happens when we travel D from the hilltop, entering the pit is immediately fatal as we drown in the cold, murky water at its bottom!

Restoring and heading east from the valley, we find the foothills of a mountain range, and a tatty old MAP.  We cant READ the map -- or anything, it seems, as the verb is unrecognized -- but examination reveals its a map of the surrounding waters, which may come in handy later.

We can go U into the mountains, but first well examine an ornate Asian pagoda lying to the east.  The door is locked, and theres no KNOCK verb, so well probably need to come back here.  Heading up into the mountains, you feel cold, so its a good time to WEAR ANORAK so we can reach the peak and recover a parchment there.  Examining it reveals a cryptic message:

    ?L
    KMLE
    TQRMP
Neither a reverse-alphabet or a shifted-alphabet try (assuming L = I, E or R) seems to translate it, and theres no TRANSLATE verb.  Hmmmm.  The native wants nothing do with the parchment, so well probably have to look elsewhere for help.

Returning to the strong wall, we head east and find we can go north again, to a door in the stockade wall.  Its not locked, actually, though the description claims its blocking our path; we can just ENTER DOOR to find ourselves in the courtyard of a temple; heading E takes us back out.  We can climb the temples heavy stone steps by heading U, discovering a jewel encrusted altar (with completely unreadable writing) and a red key.

Heading back south, we travel west of the natives location to find a desert area with three pillars and a torch we can take with us.  Going west again takes us into a dead and silent plain, and further west is a barren and deserted land, with a portable skull.

From the skulls location, we head north and (via the customary vagaries of adventure game geography) abruptly find ourselves at the edge of a clear blue lake.  We cant take the footpump here, so well probably need to bring a raft or something to this area later on.

We can walk further north along the edge of the lake, then head west to a winding river.  South of the river is desert again, with a deep pit in the sand -- this one turns out to be a dried up old well, containing another parchment.  And now we see how this works -- as we acquire various bits of parchment, EXAMINE PARCHMENT reveals more of the original message. It still seems to be encrypted, but maybe it will succumb as we have more text to work with.  (It seems were not supposed to be able to move until we LEAVE the PIT, but it has no illustration and is treated as a sub-room -- if we LOOK again, were returned to the area outside the pit.)

North of the river lies an obviously rickety bridge -- and trying to CROSS BRIDGE despite the warning leads to death via great fall and cracked-open skull.  We cant REPAIR or FIX it after a restore, so well have to come back to this puzzle.  On the way back, I discover that the "you cant carry it" response doesnt mean that the footpump is not portable, only that weve filled the eight available inventory slots, so I am able to DROP ANORAK and TAKE FOOTPUMP.

Hmmmm... as I pass by the native again, you see a swarm of natives brandishing swords and spears in the distance.  That cant be good.  West of the forests edge is a cliff base with a caged yellow canary sitting handily nearby.  While Im trying to figure out what do with the poor bird, the natives now appear to be closing in.  I try to escape to the west, unfortunately walking into a dark cave maze where I can see nothing in the dark -- except for the approaching natives, who must be sporting phosphorescent body paint as they arrive shortly to catch you and stab you to death.

So there is a time limit, or maybe I should avoid bothering the one native too often.  At any rate, Im going to start over and continue mapping -- so far the puzzles dont seem too difficult, we just need to find the right objects and learn our way around the island.

East of the starting point is a sandy plain, with a pit which we can ENTER to once again slip and fall on the ladder and drown in seconds.  So that was a bad idea!  Past that point, after a restart, is more beach, with a pile of stones.  EXAMINE STONES when we dont have them suggests that "you dont have some STONES" -- gee, thanks -- but we can safely TAKE them and note nothing special about them.  (I never did find a use for them.)

Travel to the east again reveals yet more beach; we can DIG without any special tools, but we dont make any headway scrabbling with our bare hands.  This seems to be the southeast corner of the map; heading north from here discovers a small hut, which we can quasi-enter to find a jewelled necklace.  We cant seem to WEAR it, though.

West of the starting point is some green land, with a rusty key available -- we can use it to UNLOCK the rusty CHEST to the north, but a large coiled snake leaps out when we open it, and we immediately feel dizzy, then very dizzy, and then nothing, because were dead.  It seems like most of the danger is right around the starting point!

North of the green land is a native hut, with some food nearby.  We can ENTER HUT to discover a bubbling green potion, apparently in some sort of portable form so we can carry it along.  North again leads to some rolling hills, and north once more brings us back to the canary and the cave maze entrance.

It seems appropriate to fetch the torch and map out the maze, and to bring the canary along in case of poisonous gas.  The canary collapses in the southeast corner of the cave; we cant breathe a little bit later, and eventually we die from lack of oxygen.  Trying again, we find the caves exit in the northwest corner, a one-way passage leading out to the foot of the cliff near the desert.  If were quick about it (or careful, as it seems like some locations are more oxygenated than others) we can pick up a sword and a parchment piece in the cave, then make our escape.

Next, well head into the forest.  A well-lit east-west path borders dark, foreboding areas to the north and south, where you see a pair of eyes watching you through the trees.  DROP FOOD doesnt distract this entity; eventually it leaps out from the trees and smashes you on the head, fatally so.  If we stick to the brighter path, we can reach its end and find a box in an area to the south.  Its too strong to open, however.

The green potion seems to cure the snake venom; theres another parchment piece in the chest, but thats all.  So well have to exercise the adventure gamers woeful prerogative, and dig everywhere we can with the spade... but thats not getting me anywhere either, so far.  Does the red key from the temple unlock the pagoda door?  Yes!


Inside the pagoda is a circular room, occupied by an old wizened native.  We can KILL NATIVE WITH SWORD, and he drops something we cant see.  But this is not only senselessly cruel but stupid, as he is immediately replaced by another elderly citizen, and the murderous mob appears within a few turns to dispatch us.  We cant GIVE him anything to make peace, either, it seems.

It feels like were on the wrong track here.  Can we drop the stones on the box to open it?  Nope.  Decode the parchment maybe?  With the pieces we have, there are a few short words visible -- TRT, FT, RT, RFT.  Hmmmm... the font used for the parchment is kind of stylized, maybe those Ts are actually Cs.  If we assume RFC is THE, then we have a simple two-character shifted code -- A = C, B = D, et cetera.  It looks like we have ? and % and @ characters in the mix too, perhaps around the ends of the alphabet.  And theres the word CRC, which would be ETE -- not really very compelling.  But keeping in mind that the parchment remains incomplete, it does look were onto something... the fragments we have now read something like this, if we treat % as , @ as B, and ? as A:

... PAGE IS ... ETE
... ND YOULL F...
... F THE SUN AN ... HE...
... ENT TE.... MONGST THE
... BONES OF O... ESTORS

So it looks like were getting somewhere with cracking the code!  But it doesnt really give us anything specific to try.

Can we open the box with the axe?  OPEN BOX WITH AXE is understood, it seems, but the box is still too strong.  CUT BOX WITH AXE isnt recognized.  But BREAK BOX WITH AXE works, yielding a yellow parchment.  Now we have more of the message:

WHEN THE PAGE IS ... ETE
LOOK AND YOULL F...
WEST OF THE SUN AN ... HE...
ANCIENT TE.... MONGST THE
BONES OF O... ESTORS

It looks like we need at least one more piece of parchment to complete the page.

At this point, I got stuck, and I needed to consult John Barnsley and Andrew Barkers walkthrough at the CASA Solution Archive -- dang, I was doing so well! -- to learn that I was being misled by the parser.  GIVE FOOD in the presence of the native indicates that the native doesnt want it, but a more explicit GIVE FOOD TO NATIVE garners a more positive response, and earns us a phrasebook in exchange!

Now we can read the sign near the forest, which just indicates that we should stick to the way laid out for you, which weve already figured out, and the altar in the temple, which advises us to search the high and low places but beware of the ancient land for none may follow.  Hmmmm... these ancient messages arent very clear.

Can we GIVE NECKLACE TO the elderly NATIVE, now that we know how this works?  Maybe the unfindable items being dropped by the natives when we try to kill them are parchment fragments.  And yes, now we have another parchment piece -- and with the phrasebook in hand, we dont have to hand translate the content, we just have to find the last piece.

What about the rickety bridge?  Maybe its a matter of weight.  We can DROP ALL -- which still keeps the parchment in hand -- and CROSS BRIDGE successfully to find a wooden package on the beach.  It contains an inflatable dingy [sic], and to the east we find a calm blue lake with a small island in the distance.  Looks like we should have brought the footpump here!  Fortunately, we can cross the bridge with that small bit of weight, and with both items in hand (counter-intuitively, as it seems the footpump should be foot-activated) we can INFLATE DINGY WITH FOOTPUMP.

Now we can DROP DINGY and SET SAIL for the island -- but no, that doesnt work.  USE DINGY?  ENTER DINGY? SAIL DINGY?  FLOAT DINGY?  Ah, we have to CROSS LAKE, and on the island we find the last bit of the parchment!  And this is interesting -- the parchment has reverted to encrypted form, but thats probably because we had to leave the phrasebook on the other side of the bridge.  Yes!  After we reacquire it, we can fill in the remaining blanks -- somewhere west of the sun (by the three pillars, based on the illustration) and the temple, we should LOOK AND YOULL FIND.

LOOK where we found the skull doesnt seem to do anything, but DIGging in the desert east of that location (also meeting the specified criteria) yields a pile of GOLD!  As soon as we take it, though, the mob of angry natives materializes in the distance, so wed better get going!  Its hard to escape in time -- they close in within three or four turns, and we need the navigational map to escape.  Might they be triggered by digging up the gold, not taking it?  No, its the TAKE GOLD that does it.  I just didnt have the skull in hand, as suggested by the walkthrough, so I had no magical protection from the natives -- thats what the BONES OF OUR ANCESTORS bit must be about.

I hurry back to the boat, SET SAIL, and... we get a black screen with no text and no closure?  Is this the intended climax of the game?  Nothing changes if we DROP SKULL, except that the native mob again appears.  This seems to be a technical glitch, as if we drop everything but the gold, we strike out to sea only to die a lingering death from exposure, because we dropped the map before departing!  If we leave with just the gold and the map in inventory, we get the proper victory ending.  Vincimus!



Invincible Island proves entirely vincible in the end, and its not too difficult aside from a couple of quirks and specific parser interactions required.  This one was fun, and I look forward to playing more of Pete Cookes several text adventures in the future.

After a few posts spent in point-and-click territory, this week were returning to the Roger M. Wilcox text adventure archives.  Creatures that Live in The Sun was Wilcoxs eleventh game, originally written for the TRS-80 in 1981 and converted to Windows in 2013.  Mr. Wilcoxs games remain freely available at his website, and theyre well worth checking out, especially for adventure fans that may have missed these back in the day.



Im sure a few readers have noticed the similarity of this game series authors name to Space Quest protagonist, Roger Wilco.  Any resemblance appears to be purely coincidental, but one cant help noting that many of Wilcoxs games feature science fiction motifs, and this one is a time-constrained escape adventure, in which the players ship has run out of fuel just after landing on the suns... surface?  (The author notes that this game was based on a creative writing project he wrote in the fifth grade, so well dispense with any scientific nitpicking.)  Lets hope we can find enough fuel to achieve escape velocity!

As always, I encourage the intrepid adventurer to sample Creatures that Live in the Sun before proceeding here.  For the historical record and entertainment purposes, Ill be detailing my playthrough and giving away everything I discovered.  In other words, there are inevitably going to be some major...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****

At the start, we are aboard our grounded ship, with a closed airlock and a console populated with patriotic buttons (not, like, Whip Inflation Now, but red, white and blue.)  An engine room west of the starting point features a Better-than-asbestos suit -- presumably this means it is both heat-inhibiting and non-carcinogenic -- an empty fuel line, an empty bucket, and Strange dark goggles, suggesting that we may have missed some important equipment training in solonaut school. 

Weve got nothing in inventory, so lets grab everything we can; the fuel line is fixed in place.  We should also SAVE before we start messing with the buttons, if past experience is any guide.  PUSH RED, and the airlock opens -- the suns temperature melts the capsule from the inside out, and were dead.  If we PUSH BLUE instead, a transparent cover envelops the interior of the capsule -- a heat shield, perhaps?  PUSH WHITE produces a warning light, "NO FUEL", so that will probably be one of our final actions at the end of the game.

With the shield up, the sun doesnt damage the ship, but if were not wearing the BTA suit, were vaporized anyway.  We may note in passing -- literally, while dying -- that Its too bright to see!, so thats probably why we have the dark goggles.

With all the right stuff in place, we can see that B.T.A. sheets protect everything -- not quite as high-tech as Id imagined, but I like that this new material is apparently named by the same people who produced Uneeda Biscuit and Better Made Potato Chips.  We can exit through the airlock to reach the photosphere of Sol.

(This all reminds me of the old joke -- "How does the [insert favorite ethnic/national/occupational stereotype] mission to the sun plan to avoid burning up?"; [adopt favorite accent]; "We plan to go at night.")

We can see that the capsule is slowly dissolving in the heat, so time is of the essence.  We can also see a solar disturbance, likely wreaking all kinds of cable service havoc back on Earth.  GO DISTURBANCE yields a Scott Adams-esque misleading prompt: Are you just going to walk through that solar flare?  And while a thoughtful "No" click yields A wise decision, a reckless, foolhardy "Yes" click gets us through without apparent ill effect.

This is an interesting idea -- we find ourselves on a river bank, but its a river of salt (sodium chloride melts at 1474 degrees Fahrenheit, per a quick web search).  We can FILL BUCKET to obtain a bucket of salt, and we can GO RIVER, though there doesnt seem to be a reason to do that yet.  We cant FILL FUEL or FILL LINE with the bucket, though, so we must have to do some further work.

We can POUR BUCKET -- on the surface, it just Soaks into the photosphere.  Actually, it does this anywhere, even inside the ship with the airlock closed.  I spent some more time exploring the river and the bank, but before long, it seems, were notified that Your space capsules non-tempered hyperdiamond casing is disintegrating through! and we are in major trouble... unless we return to the ship and close the airlock, which buys us a little time... except, no, wait, it doesnt actually reset anything, and next time we open the airlock the meltdown continues, eventually melting the capsule and ending the game.

What else can we do?  EXAMINE SUIT reveals a yellow button on its left hand.  PUSH YELLOW does nothing of note in the engine room, but if we try it in the river, A ray of cold shoots from your fingertips, doing nothing.  It seems that it will fire, but do nothing, while the airlock is open, but if the airlock is closed it does nothing at all.

I got hung up here -- my attempts to SWIM and DIVE and FLOAT down the river went unacknowledged, but a peek at the source code reveals that we can FOLLOW RIVER once were in it to reach its end, where a =Deadly gronk gronk= blocks the way.  The freeze ray doesnt do anything about this guy either.  POUR BUCKET here causes an unexpected result -- A silvery line extends from one of the gronk gronks fingers, and hits you, piercing your suit!  Hmmm?   Ah, this happens randomly, it has nothing to do with whether weve emptied the bucket.  (For some reason, I am picturing the Gronk Gronk looking like the Crunchberry Beast.  I dont know why!)

I had to look at the code again to find out that we can FEEL RIVER -- I was trying to do something similar by DIVEing, but anyway -- to discover a Hyperdiamond "eye," marked Medusa H.D. Company.  So this might be useful -- and yes, SHOW EYE turns the deadly gronk gronk into stone (Good work! The Medusa H.D. Company comes through again!)  I assume H.D. stands for Hyperdiamond and not High Definition.

Now we can reach the "solar junction," a crossroads where an Alien blueish-green man is standing (no word on whether this individual is littleish-small.)  We cant TALK MAN, so well explore some more.

A sunspot area features a locked sunspot case (?) that cant be opened at this point.  Another solar flare is decidely not safe to walk through, of course.  And theres a makeshift landing field, where the not-makeshift Solar Challenger (airplane) is parked.  We can GO CHALLENGER to reach the cockpit, where we see green, black and orange buttons, most likely color-coded to prevent confusion on the part of the parser rather than the player, and having nothing to do with The Troubles and/or the Black Irish.

We PUSH GREEN and the plane takes off; we can see a Gronk Gronk Fighter out the window, which based on previous experience we should probably try to dispatch.  We PUSH ORANGE -- and A mechanical voice intones, "What is the password?"   We dont have the password, so PUSH BLACK fires a cold ray, but the fighter evades it.  Fortunately, we can PUSH GREEN to land again.

We can LOOK MAN (or, oddly enough, FEEL MAN) to prompt conversation -- he asks us to defeat the Gronk Gronks fighter (we suspected as much) and also obtain the key that opens the sunspot case.  He then slips something into our hands -- its a Gold Credit Card?  There are no retail establishments on our map so far, but closer examination indicates that its smudged, but we can read an "S."

Back on the Challenger (which was the name of a still-operating Space Shuttle when this game was originally written), we note that obvious guesses PASS and SOL dont work as passwords.  We can WIPE CARD, though, to see "Srill" (briefly, before the card somehow smudges up again.)  PUSH ORANGE and SAY SRILL activates the planes SADAR tracking, allowing PUSH BLACKs cold ray to lock on and do the job properly.

Were getting closer, but this was my second serious attempt, and I had taken too much time -- the capsule was once again melting, and were too far away to do anything about it now. 

Back on track after restoring, we havent found any reason to PUSH YELLOW or POUR BUCKET yet, so we should see if we can find opportunities to do so.  POUR BUCKET in the solar flare area puts out the solar flare, opening up a passage south to an insignificant part of this granule.  Theres a large hyperdiamond here.  We can PUSH YELLOW, and the ray shoots out, this time freezing the hyperdiamond extensively.

I tried to HIT, KICK, PUSH, and SMASH the frozen diamond, but we just need to BREAK DIAMOND to form a hyperdiamond key.  Upon seeing us again, the alien takes us to the sunspot (which was being used as a freezer) and opens the case, revealing a Container of solid fuel, which ought to be just the ticket home.

Moving as quickly as we can, lest our ship dissolve again, we run all the way back to the ship, close the airlock, FILL LINE with the solid fuel, and PUSH WHITE to take off to... ACK!  Not quite, I missed it by just one move it seems!



Doing it ever-so-slightly more efficiently, we get the best ending, marred only by boring transportation!


No treasures, just a fine story to share at the Space Bar after we cool down a bit.  Creatures that Live in the Sun was good fun.  More Roger Wilcox adventures await!

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