MONSTER RALLY
Temple Software, 1983
=====================
Solution by Exemptus - July 2024
Overview and general hints:
---------------------------
This game is a bit of an outlier in the series written by Chuck and Dian Crayne
in 1982-1983, as it shares a codebase with the others, but also a number of
significant differences. It is a much larger game (exactly 258 rooms) and the
similarities with Colossal Cave adventure are more diluted. It is still a pure
treasure quest, this time located in a village fraught with monsters and its
surroundings. We need to explore, find all the treasures, store them in our ship
and sail into the sunset.
The vocabulary is pretty much par with the other Temple Software games, but
this time we can EXAMINE things (and we can use X as abbreviation). The game is
also quite buggy: some actions crash the game if used with the wrong direct
object, or even without one, due to missing logic in the parser (try typing HIT
by itself as a command and see for yourself). In addition, there are two places
where exits from the room are incorrectly declared.
Classic conventions pretty much apply: some places are dark and require a light
source, this has a limited life in turns when lit which can be replenished with
batteries, but requires sacrificing a treasure; there is an overall limit in
turns that seems to be random; if we carry treasures in the dark we may be
robbed and afterwards have to find the thief's hideout to recover them and gain
a new treasure; there are several mazes (traditional ones, fortunately); and
monsters attack us in the dark unless we carry a weapon to get rid of them. One
unusual feature is that instead of inventory slots each object has a weight and
we can only carry so much.
Dark places are lethal, but not immediately. Any command can kill us when in the
dark, not just moving, unless we move out of the dark, but this happens after
the first command given. So we can go into a dark room, retrieve an object in
there (this will work), then immediately get out into the lighted location again
without having to turn on the light source. This saves a couple of turns of
light, which may be useful. But if we are going to issue at least two commands
while in the dark, we must turn on the light first or we'll likely die. You can
get lucky, but it's not something I advise.
Dying, as in Colossal Cave, is not definitive, as we can be reincarnated three
times. This, of course, costs points, so better not to die.
Also, there is a central location that acts as a hub from where we can instantly
teleport to certain places. Liberal use of this feature is needed to beat the
time limit: if we are not careful with time management, our ship will sail on
its own and we'll be unable to complete the game.
There are 226 points in total: 225 treasure points plus one Last Lousy Point.
115 of these points are obtained by storing the 23 treasures, 5 each, and the
rest are gained by solving puzzles. Once we have 225 points and we are in the
ship, the adventure is finished automatically after a few turns. But it won't be
easy: not only the game can be softlocked in a number of interesting ways
without any warning, but the random nature of some of the timers can also
prevent a given playthrough from successful completion if unlucky.
The Last Lousy Point is problematic. In theory, the game logic grants it a few
turns after we store the very last object, and enough turns have passed for the
ship to sail (at least 600). But too many turns will make the ship cast off
without us and we'll lose the game, so it's necessary to finish the game within
a window of approximately 150 turns, between 600 and 750 (actually, this might
be random, as these figures are based on empirical observations). Some times the
ship refuses to sail on game completion, or it sails far too early, or the Last
Lousy Point is triggered early by mistake, or not triggered at all. The code is
a bit sensitive to characters typed and that can apparently wreck the internal
state sometimes. Your mileage may vary.
So, if you're up for it, good luck, and please type carefully.
Walkthrough:
------------
[We begin in our cabin within the ship. The location to store the treasures is
in the lower deck, so we have to get back to the ship each time we want to store
one of them. Our first task will be getting to the village on foot. We could
teleport there, but we don't yet know this is possible, and besides, in the way
we will pick up some useful objects and even a treasure.]
W [Main deck]
[This is one of the locations where the teleport SQUARE works: it will instantly
get us to the village square, even if we haven't been there before. We won't be
using it just yet.]
N
N [Dock; we notice the ship is called "Demeter", which will be useful later]
W
N
E [Waterfront area]
E [Notice the barrel of wine here for future reference]
W
N [Cobbled street]
[Here the main village street starts, with a number of shops and places to each
side. There is a tobacconist at the east and a chandler at the west. We won't
need to enter the latter. It is only used if the lamp runs out of batteries, but
we will avoid that possibility.]
[By the way: from this point, at some time a cackling hunchback, called Igor,
will throw an axe at us when we enter a room, at a random time. This will only
happen once and he will miss, but we will need to pick up the axe and carry it
with us at all times, since we will be randomly attacked by golems in the dark
and throwing the axe at them is the only way to dismiss them. So GET AXE the
moment this happens and keep it until the end of the game.]
E [Tobacconist, a package of dry leaves is here]
GET LEAVES
X LEAVES ["Mummy's Own Tana leaf Herbal Mixture"]
W
N
W [Candy shop]
N [There is a chocolate bonbon here]
GET CANDY
S
E
N
E [Dry goods shop]
S [There is a blonde wig here]
GET WIG [We wear it on the spot]
X WIG [A woman's blonde wig, suitable for a movie star]
N
W
N
W [Green-grocer's]
N [A rubber mallet is here]
GET MALLET
S
E
N [The police station is to the E, but we don't need to go there]
N
W [Old town hall, a fine marble table is here]
GET TABLE [This is a treasure]
E
N [Village square]
[This place is our centre of operations. There is a policeman here that asks us
where do we want to go. The question is not rhetorical, as we can just say the
name of a place and we will be transported there. For some places, we will need
to have reached them on foot first before we can use the instant transport - if
we say, for instance, CASTLE right now, the policeman will tell us that we'd
regret going there now and we should explore a bit first. From most locations we
can transport to in this way we can get back here as well by saying SQUARE.]
[We will start by storing our first treasure and unloading other things here.]
DEMETER [This takes us back to the main deck of the ship]
D
W [The ship's hold, where treasures are stored]
DROP TABLE [Score: 5]
E
U
SQUARE [Back to village square]
DROP MALLET
DROP LEAVES
DROP WIG
[We keep the candy because we are going to use it right away.]
E
E
E [Front door of a farmhouse]
S [A farm kitchen; a girl is rolling pie crust here]
[The girl will prevent us from entering the other rooms, so we have to get her
out of the way.]
GIVE CANDY TO GIRL [Score: 15]
[Now we can proceed into the S room. Inside there is a book that we need, but
the room is dark and we haven't got a lamp yet. It will not matter because we
can get the book in the dark.]
S [It is pitch dark here]
GET BOOK [This should work]
N [Do not linger]
N
SQUARE [Back to base]
READ BOOK [It says that tana leaves are used to preserve mummies]
DROP BOOK
[Now we are going to get the lamp, which is in a hut within the forest, and get
back. The forest is a maze, but we can bypass most of it by directly
transporting there. This works even if we haven't been at the hut before. The
hut can also be reached from the Square by going W, S, W but this is
inconvenient, as it drops us in the middle of the forest maze.]
HUT [In front of a small hut in the forest]
N [The hut is extremely dusty; the lamp is here]
[Make a mental note of the dust, as it will matter later.]
GET LAMP
S
SQUARE [Back to base]
[With the lamp in hand we can go more places. Time to start dealing with
monsters. Checkpoint time: if you haven't yet been attacked by Igor and hence
don't have an axe, you need to wander a bit first until you are. I recommend
going S and getting into some of the shops again. Once you have the axe, you can
go on.]
GET LEAVES
NW [Garden gate]
S
W [There is a shovel here]
GET SHOVEL
E
N
N
NW
W [This is an Egyptian museum]
S [Dark, so we'll turn the lamp on]
ON LAMP [There's a mummy here, and it's alive!]
[Fortunately we have the tana leaves, following the clue from the book.]
GIVE LEAVES TO MUMMY [Score: 25]
E [There's a charm here]
GET CHARM
W
N
N
N
N
SE [Maid's room - there's a sheet of music here]
GET MUSIC
NW
OFF LAMP
E [Outside again to the back porch]
[Now that we are outside, let's examine some of the objects more closely. We did
not do this inside to save light turns.]
X CHARM [It has an engraving of a man falling off a building]
X MUSIC [It is a hymn to an unknown god]
E [Garden with flowerbed]
DIG [We find a brooch, buy an old gypsy woman snatches it and runs away]
[Our score is now 35. The brooch can be retrieved, but we'll need to explore the
Castle first. The sheet of music is interesting as it gives some clues: if you
try to PLAY MUSIC, it says that you have nothing to play it on, suggesting a
musical instrument. Since hymns are sung, if you say SING it will answer that
you should join a church choir and play in the chapel. This should be remembered
for later.]
S
S
S
S
SE
DROP MUSIC
DROP SHOVEL
DROP CHARM [The charm is a treasure, but it also has another use]
[We are now going to explore the Chateau area, where there are several treasures
and some interesting things to do, particularly in the mines. It is important to
take into account that the mines is one of the places where we can be robbed if
we have treasures in our inventory or in the same location, and we *need* to be
robbed in order to find one of the treasures, very much a la Colossal Cave with
the pirate. If we happen to get into the thief's hideout before he robs us, we
will be silently softlocked out of full completion. This is something common to
other games by the same stable.]
CHATEAU [Another instant transport, to the Chateau's courtyard]
[Actually this location can be reached by going NE, S, W, W, W, W from the
Square (or also NE, NW, NW, N, N, N) but this saves a few turns.]
N
N [Dark]
ON LAMP
[From this point on, while in the dark within Chateau and Castle as well, we
can be randomly attacked by golems who will throw knives at us. The knives will
mostly fail and disappear, after which it is a question of repeating the
sequence THROW AXE AT GOLEM, GET AXE until the golem is gone. The knives have a
low probability of hitting, in which case we're dead and have to restore. So I
recommend saving before going into these areas and after each encounter. You
have been warned.]
E
S [There is an ornate clock here]
GET CLOCK
N
W
W [Though the room doesn't mention it, there's an exit N as well]
N [A porcelain coffee urn is here]
GET URN
S
S [Kitchen; there's a large raw soupbone here]
GET BONE
OFF LAMP
S
E
E
E
E
E [Blacksmith's; there's a silver bullet here]
GET BULLET
N
SW [To Square again]
DROP BULLET
DROP BONE
DEMETER [Let's deposit our two new treasures]
D
W
DROP CLOCK [Score: 40]
DROP URN [Score: 45]
E
U
SQUARE
[Back to the Chateau, but this time we'll take some auxiliary objects with us.]
GET BOOK
GET SHOVEL
CHATEAU
N
N
ON LAMP
N
N
N
W
S [A piece of rare coral is here]
GET CORAL
N
E
S
E
N [Master bedroom; there is a bookcase here with a missing book]
INSERT BOOK IN HOLE [The bookcase moves revealing a passage behind]
E
D
E
N
E [A carved piece of jade is here]
GET JADE
[It is convenient to get robbed around here or in the following locations, but
don't sweat it. Be patient if it doesn't happen yet, as it is totally random.]
S
SW [Igor's hideaway: he's not here but the ground is soft around]
DIG [A coin appears; score: 55]
GET COIN
X COIN [One pfennig]
[The coin is a treasure, but also it can be exchanged at the Chandler's shop for
extra batteries for the lamp. Of course, that deprives us permanently of the
corresponding points.]
DROP SHOVEL [Not needed anymore]
NE
N
W
S
W
U
W [To the Master bedroom again]
S
W
S
S
OFF LAMP
S
S
SQUARE [Back to base]
DEMETER
D
W
DROP COIN [Score: 60]
DROP JADE [Score: 65]
DROP CORAL [Score: 70]
E
U
SQUARE
[Right: now we are going to explore the Castle, which has to be reached on foot
the first time. We will need both the charm and the bone in order to do so.]
HUT
W
W [A large grey timber wolf is here, blocking access to the castle]
GIVE BONE TO WOLF [Score: 80]
N
ON LAMP
[It is important to remark that if you are robbed within the Castle while
holding the charm then it needs to be retrieved at once. If this happens, exit
the Castle then skip to the section about the Church later on. Go into the
Sepulchres, find the hideout with the treasures then exit, store as needed and
come back here.]
E
S [A pearl-handled revolver is here]
GET REVOLVER
N
W
N
W
N
U [There's a bracelet here]
GET BRACELET
D
S
E
E
N
N
N [There is a broom here]
GET BROOM
S
S
W
N
N [Upstairs landing]
W [Some iron keys are here]
GET KEYS
E
N
E [An expensive Persian rug is here]
GET RUG
W
N [Here the west door is fastened with a locked iron screen]
UNLOCK SCREEN [With the keys]
W
S [A small gold ring lies here]
GET RING
N
E
N
E
S [A cheap tin flute is here]
GET FLUTE
N
W
N
N
N [Balcony]
[This location is outside, but we won't bother with the lamp. It says that we
could jump to the other balcony at the East, but if we try to do it without
having the charm, we'll lose our footing and fall to our death. The charm's
engraving should have warned us of its utility.]
E [East balcony]
S
S [A pearl necklace is here]
GET NECKLACE
N
N
W
S
NW
D
W
N
E
OFF LAMP
S [Outside castle again]
SQUARE [Back to base]
DROP BROOM
DROP FLUTE
DROP KEYS
[If you were robbed in the Castle, this is a good time to retrieve the treasures
and get another one. You may want to leave some treasures here in order to
lighten your inventory then store them later. I'll assume this is the case. Do
make adjustments as necessary: since the theft is random, there's no way to say
what you may have in your inventory now.]
GET MUSIC
CHURCH
[This gets us to the altar in the church, which can also be reached just going N
five times from the Square.]
E [East chapel]
SING [There's a statue here that moves, revealing a passage to the N]
[We need to hold the music sheet for this to work, which calls back to the clue
about singing in the chapel]
N
ON LAMP [We are in the Sepulchres of the Ancients, which conform a small maze]
W
NE
N [An ancient temple; despite the description, there's no E exit]
W [Here is a chest of jewels]
[At this location we will also find all the treasures we were robbed of. Make
several trips if you can't carry everything back to the square. If the charm is
here and you never got to the East Balcony in the Castle, get back and do so.]
GET CHEST [And anything else that may be here]
N [Back of the churchyard]
S
SW
S
S [Back to square]
DEMETER
D
W
DROP CHARM [Score: 85]
DROP RING [Score: 90]
DROP RUG [Score: 95]
DROP BRACELET [Score: 100]
DROP NECKLACE [Score: 105]
DROP CHEST [Score: 110]
E
U
SQUARE
[If there are any treasures left in the Temple, get them back. You will have
noticed we didn't store the revolver, although it is a treasure: it has a use
first. Checkpoint now: You should be at the Square carrying the lamp, axe, music
and revolver only, and your score should be 110 points. Ready? Let's go back to
the Castle for another treasure and the final use of the music sheet.]
CASTLE
N
ON LAMP
W
S
E [The spiral stairs, but we're going down this time]
D
D
E [A tiny chapel with an altar and an organ is here]
PLAY MUSIC [The organ moves and a passage east opens]
DROP MUSIC
E [These are the tombs, another small maze]
S
S
W [The crown of St. Arnheim is here]
GET CROWN
W
OFF LAMP
S [Old churchyard again]
S
SW
S
S [Back to Square]
DEMETER
D
W
DROP CROWN [Score: 115]
E
U
SQUARE
[Right. Now we are going to put the revolver to use. We have a silver bullet, so
it is the natural ammunition for it.]
GET BULLET
LOAD REVOLVER [Loaded with a single silver bullet]
[The bullet suggests a werewolf may be in the game, and there is one nearby in
fact, but there is another possible (and wrong) use of the revolver: we could go
to the Chandler's, say SHOOT SHOPKEEPER, then we will be smacked upside the head
by the policeman and sent to jail, which has no immediate exits and a slogan
scrawled on the wall. If we READ SLOGAN, it says "HELP, I am an American! Call
the CIA". Then we can say CIA as a command and we will be sent a package through
the window with a hacksaw in it, with which we can CUT BARS and escape N and W.
This gives us 10 points, but the revolver and bullet will have been confiscated
and are nowhere to be found in the game again, which prevents completion. Why
go to these lengths just to provide a softlock is odd, since shooting the
shopkeeper is something that does not come to mind naturally when a lycanthrope
is actually in the game, and is the correct way to use the gun. One of several
odd quirks of the game, I guess.]
W
W
W [Gypsy camp; a wolf is prowling around here]
[The wolf is, as you guessed, a werewolf, and he will not allow us to go
anywhere near the wagons in the camp.]
SHOOT WOLF [Score: 125]
[We mortally wounded it, which makes it change into a man and is taken away by
the Gypsies.]
L [Look around again, as the bullet is on the floor, though flattened]
GET BULLET
[This flattened bullet is a treasure, but since it's deformed now, we cannot
re-use it. This guarantees we can't do the trick with shooting the shopkeeper
now. Yes, I thought of mending it at the Blacksmith's, but that doesn't work,
which is just as well because otherwise we couldn't store two of the treasures.]
N
N [Inside a wagon; there is a ruby here]
GET RUBY
S
S
W
N [Inside another wagon, a bottle is here]
GET BOTTLE
S
E
S
S [Another wagon, which has the brooch we had found and got stolen earlier]
GET BROOCH
N
N
SQUARE [Back to base]
DEMETER
D
W
DROP BULLET [Score: 130]
DROP REVOLVER [Score: 135]
DROP RUBY [Score: 140]
DROP BROOCH [Score: 145]
E
U
[Now we are going back to the square on foot, since we need to fill the bottle
on our way.]
N
N
W
N
E
E [At the dock dive we saw before with the barrel of wine]
FILL BOTTLE [The bottle is full of wine now]
W
N
N
N
N
N
N
N [Square]
[Now we go back to the Mines area, but we'll go in through a secondary entrance,
open the way to a new area, retrieve some treasures and exit via the Chateau.]
GET FLUTE
WINDMILL
[Haven't been here before, but this is reachable from the Square by going E, N,
W.]
N
ON LAMP
[Inside the windmill we face a monster blocking every move. There is an upstairs
floor and another way down, which is the one we'll take. The monster can be
appeased easily, however.]
GIVE FLUTE TO MONSTER [Score: 155]
U [There is an emerald here]
GET EMERALD
D
D [A jagged cavern; we are in the Mine area below the Chateau, though this is
not obvious from this side.]
S
NE
E [New tunnel]
S
W [This is a cell with a badly build west wall and an embedded stone chalice]
[The chalice can't be taken as it's part of the wall, but there's a clue as to
what to do. If we X CHALICE we will be quoted from Poe's "The Cask of
Amontillado", which involved the entombing alive of someone behind a wall in a
chateau. And guess what kind of wine we have.]
POUR WINE IN CHALICE [Score: 165]
[The wine goes out of the chalice through some cracks and dissolves the mortar,
so the wall crumbles. We won't be needing the bottle again. By the way, the
bottle can also be filled with water at the farmyard's pond, but that does not
serve any purpose.]
DROP BOTTLE
W
S
NE
S [Large cool cavern, with a frozen corpse and a Faberge egg]
GET EGG
[We are done here. East of here is an ice cave with a crack in the wall through
which we can see jungle, which is a hint that there's more to the game. We'll
proceed there shortly, but the way in is elsewhere. Let's go back.]
N
SW
N
E
E [Lab again]
S
W
S
W
U
W
GET BOOK [The swung bookcase closes]
[The reason for this manoeuvre was to retrieve the book, which is a non-obvious
treasure. Of course, once retrieved, the bookcase closes and this entrance to
the Mines area is shut, so we had to open the Windmill entrance first for this
to work.]
S
W
S
S
OFF LAMP
S
S
SQUARE [Back to base]
DEMETER
D
W
DROP EGG [Score: 170]
DROP EMERALD [Score: 175]
DROP BOOK [Score: 180]
E
U
SQUARE
[Finally, we are going to explore the Jungle area and Pits. If you go to the N
end of the Forest, you fill find a wall with some large doors there, which
require the keys to open, and beyond there's the Jungle. From there there's a
way up a cliff and down the pits for more treasures, but the problem is that
it's a one-way trip, as there's no going back the same way. The way back is
through the hut, but it needs to be open first, or else we'll get trapped in the
pits and the game will end there in ignominious defeat. So we need some
preparation for the trip and several objects. First of all, we'll retrieve a
very necessary one at the farm.]
FARM
SW
SE [There's a head of lettuce here]
GET LETTUCE
NW
N
W
W [Back to Square]
GET BROOM
HUT
N
SWEEP FLOOR [Score: 190; a trapdoor appears under all the dust and we open it]
DROP BROOM
[We don't go down this trapdoor, since there's no way to go very far in this
direction: we need to come from it instead.]
S
SQUARE
GET KEYS
GET MALLET
GET WIG
[Checkpoint: we carry the lamp, axe, mallet, wig, lettuce and keys, and our
score is 190.]
HUT
NE
N
N
N
W [By the forest wall, in front of the doors]
UNLOCK DOORS
DROP KEYS
N [Jungle]
NE
W [There is an idol here]
GET IDOL
N
SE
NE [There is a huge brass gong here]
[The gong will bring a Kong-sized gorilla, but he is dangerous. The idea is to
wear the blonde wig, which makes the gorilla mistake us for a blonde film star
and carry us up the nearby cliffs.]
HIT GONG WITH MALLET [Score: 200; the gorilla appears and takes us to the cliff]
DROP MALLET
DROP WIG
E [Into the caves]
E [There is a pink diamond here]
GET DIAMOND
[There is no going back down the cliff, so the only exit from here is down the
hole in this cave, which is one-way only and takes us to the Pits, another maze
to navigate; eventually it will exit by the hut, which is why we left the
trapdoor open.]
D
ON LAMP
SE
S
W
D
S [There is a giant slug here]
[The slug blocks the other exits, so we need to bypass it. But we have just the
thing.]
GIVE LETTUCE TO SLUG [Score: 210; the slug takes the lettuce and opens the way]
[Fun fact: once the slug is munching the lettuce, it can be taken as an object
and dropped anywhere. This is not useful in any way, but hey, if you want to go
slugging it out, know that you can.]
NW
D [A gold nugget is here, the last treasure]
GET NUGGET
U
SE
E
OFF LAMP
U [At hut again]
S
SQUARE [Back to base]
DEMETER
D
W
DROP IDOL [Score: 215]
DROP DIAMOND [Score: 220]
DROP NUGGET [Score: 225]
[And we are done. Depending on the number of turns elapsed, which of course can
vary due to the need to deal with the random events, the ship may be near its
time of departure. If we linger ashore for too long, there comes a time when we
hear the whistle marking the ship's departure, and then we have to get on board
again. If this time comes before we have gathered all treasures, the ship will
just cast off without further ceremony, leaving us at land and defeated. But
since we have 225 points, we can just trigger the departure ourselves. This
should grant us the Last Lousy Point as well, although due to bugs, I have
confirmed that this may not trigger correctly, so cross your fingers or restore
from an earlier save and try again.]
E
U [Main deck]
N [Just continue moving through the ship and the ending will trigger]
[At this point, just as we are going ashore, sailors come on board, cast off the
line and keep us on board, and the ship sails. We now have 226/226 and the rank
of Adventure Grandmaster, so congratulations. End of game.]
