Hugo 2: Whodun(n)it? - Part 1
Returning the favour somewhat, dr_dos's recent post reminded me of something. It was the sequel to Hugo's House of Horrors, funnily enough. Like everyone who had them, I got them from some free shareware catalogue that was like the Internet in CD form, with a heap of hundreds of obscure little titles, only four of which were ever much good. I played through it with a couple of friends and never really got very far for reasons that should become very obvious - I do vaguely remember completing it much later, but I'm sure that was still before we had the Internet and I refuse to believe that I did it without a walkthrough. After years untouched in my retro folder, the post from last week inspired me to dig it up again.
Originally this was meant to be a quick summary in the style of the first post, but I have to admit that it... went into slightly more detail than I had originally intended. I think I might now have become a Let's Player by accident. Nevertheless, let me guide you through the mind of a Sierra-fan adventure game writer.
Here's the title screen it presents to you when you start it up - "Hugo II: Whodunit?" with one N, but when you're dealing with a smashed-together Frankenstein's monster of a word like "whodunnit" it's best not to get distracted by the details. David Gray's EGA artwork shows a man with some wads of tissue paper glued to his face and a hat from a box of pantomime props as a disguise, stuffing an envelope into his giant overcoat. It sets the scene perfectly - nothing like this happens in the game.
The game opens with a PC speaker rendition of "English Country Garden" tweeted to you over a view of Great Uncle Horace's 4-colour country house, where surprisingly little of the game is going to take place. I'll let the game itself explain the plot...
It always seems a bit weird to me when England is referred to as part of Europe. It's definitely floating around that sort of area, but as a whole the countries of Britain like to consider themselves as separate. Maybe it's because of their historical dislike of their French neighbours.
As amply demonstrated here.
The front room of the house looks rather like the one in the haunted house from the original game, just with more hideously garish wallpaper and curvy stairs. I suppose there's only so much you can do with that perspective.
This is actually something that I accidentally discovered when writing this up - if you hang around too long in the first room then you get increasingly annoyed lines from the maid, telling you that your room is ze third door on ze right, until zis appears.
Incidentally, you can't go anywhere else from here - the maid matches your horizontal position on the screen to block you like an expert player of British Bulldog.
Eventually, Hugo and Penelope go up to their rather sparsely decorated room with a different type of perspective-defying wallpaper, and Penelope has a bit of a lie-down fully clothed with her shoes on. It's just her standing frame, rotated ninety degrees to the right.
Meanwhile, Hugo is invited to go and look at the bookcase, complete with suspiciously glowing book. I think you can tell where this is going...
Golly my goodness, lawks a mussy and other noises like that. I love the Britishness that comes through in the writing style of these games - it's clearly where the author is from, but oddly there are a lot of American spellings throughout (as well as the placement of England in Europe, which I don't think anyone from there would ever do).
On a bit of further research, it turns out he's like me - he grew up in Britain and then moved to the US, and probably took on a whole lot of language there that I'm trying to resist at the moment.
So, back to the game, and in a surprise Kojimaic twist, you're not going to be playing as Hugo in this game at all but as the equally useless Penelope.
You're not allowed out of the room yet, but with most of its contents completely uninteresting, the keyhole of that door on the left looks like a decent place to start looking. Watch out, here comes the plot.
And you will do this by wandering around aimlessly and overcoming a series of increasingly irrelevant obstacles. Let's make a start.
Namely, at the bookcase that the previous protagonist disappeared through.
The mysterious room beyond the bookcase is some sort of uninteresting study, but there's no sign of where Hugo's got to. You can talk to the parrot if you like and it'll recite the murder scene again.
Always check the drawers! Somehow a book of matches is immediately obviously useful but you can't touch the pen or any other items in the room. That's probably just as well, because the matches are the item in this game that have caused the most nightmares for players the world over - the reason why will become self-evident.
Uncle Horace's house appears to suffer from the same Dutch Door Disease that infests the buildings in Silent Hill - most of the apparent entrances to rooms are locked or jammed. Entering the room to the left, the only place that's open to you, brings you to a room with a balloon that floats annoyingly away from you. After fighting the stop-start keyboard controls to catch it...
Thanks a lot.
We can't do anything more here, and with all traditional exits investigated and rejected, the only option is to use the dumb-waiter in the wall of the previous room and descend to the kitchen.
The kitchen is also fairly unremarkable (not to mention unnaturally neat) and the only thing in any of the cupboards is a clove of garlic, which Penelope chucks out onto the floor when your search the cupboard (no other synonyms will work, in another example of the game's American-British duality). Well, if it's been mentioned it must be useful.
We're outside! Forget that comment about the kitchen being unremarkable - it has the least consistent windows from inside and outside ever. Anyway, even though it's not obvious at all from the screenshot, I seem to remember discovering accidentally that going right instead of down from here will lead you to...
...this screen. All right, it looks like there's a fair bit of room between all of those plants, so I'll just walk over and...
...Bastard. All right, it seems that perspective doesn't work like it seems after all. And how do you get killed by touching a Venus fly trap, anyway? They're not exactly deadly unless you're under an inch tall and being digested inside it. It's like suddenly dying from touching washing powder with your bare hands. Let's try again.
Bastard
Bastard
Bastard
Bastard
Wahey, I'm through. And though experience should stifle my optimism, it looks like the path over to the right is a bit clearer...
All right. I can't remember why I would place so much importance on finding a magnifying glass, but I got it in the end. Let's get out of here.
There are a few more locations open for us to explore now. There's the shed...
...this rather locked-looking archway, and...
...oh, in the name of Roberta Williams. It's this screen. I remember this part all too well - allow me to demonstrate how it works for anyone who hasn't had the misfortune to discover it themselves...
If at any point you stop walking by hitting the thin-air sides of the bridge, the useless Penelope drops the book of matches in the water, therefore making the game unwinnable.
Not that the game has the courtesy to tell you this, of course - instead it invites you to just pick them up and carry on so that you can discover the problem for yourself a few more hours later. This is a man who thought that Sierra had some really good ideas.
So that means you have to walk over that two-pixel-wide zigzag path forced through the perspective of the bridge and try not to hit the sides...
asdfghjkl
m'bolaetaoin n n
grrflbastard
Right, I'm fed up of this, let's try a different approach.
Yes! By dropping the matches yourself and only moving a tiny bit when they're not in your inventory, then picking them up again when they're on the edge of reaching distance, you can leapfrog them over the bridge and survive with the power of fire intact. With that obstacle over, let's venture boldly forward!
Curses, damn and blast you with the fiery flames of hell.
nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn
"Stingeroo". Honestly. All right, clearly this isn't working - perhaps I should go back and see if I've missed anything.
Back to the garden shed - it looks like there's finally a living soul inside.
Something that you notice if you play more than one of these games is that the bases of the sprites tend to get a lot of re-use. There are three basic character templates - Hugo, women, and fat blokes - and the lecherous Super Mario over here is based on the third template.
Eating the garlic while he's trying to kiss you sorts him out.
This is about as helpful as the game gets.
Oh, thanks - make things a bit more difficult for me, why don't you. Here's an alternative idea:
There's no way to find out what the buttons actually do without experimentation, but there's no disadvantage to pressing them all. With the gate open, I wonder what's inside?
I don't know about you, but I've got a terrible feeling about this.
Where am I now? Those things are far too regular to be hedges - it's like I'm stuck in a particularly hideous B&Q wallpaper section.
And there's no sign of escape... Excuse me a minute.
Right, that should do it. (Incidentally I find it quite frightening that even though I hadn't played this game in years, I still got the size of the maze right and placed the entrance in the right place to fill it without moving anything.) I suppose it's too much to hope that there would be anything useful inside?
Wow, a gun!
And a bottle!
And a... actually I'm not sure what this is meant to be. Typing "look" makes it clear that David Gray knows his adventure games, but reveals precious little else.
All right, I take that back - thanks very much.
Now all I have to do is escape...
More hours later...
At last. I think I'm beginning to realize why I haven't played this game in years. At least the path to the right is clear.
You can bet I left the matches safely over on the far side of the stream after all the effort it took to get them there the first time.
Yes, yes, yes, I know.
As we know, millions of years of evolution have given insects the survival instinct of flying straight at anything that looks bright, not to mention repeatedly battering themselves against windows. Useless creatures, the lot of them. On we go.
You can't see behind the window, but this old man looks familiar. Clearly, we're going to have to get ready to answer some riddles...
Ah. Thanks, Penelope. I think you've still got a long way to go as far as learning about this whole adventuring thing goes, but as we've just seen demonstrated, ignorance of how things are meant to work is sometimes the best defence.
Well, well, well. Speaking of genre-savviness, there's only one thing to do when you see one of these in an adventure game...
Actually, perhaps not. Foiled again.
I'll get you, text parser.
Well, that was a waste of time. You may note that among the lack of interesting items that the well contains, there isn't even a place where water might have conceivably gathered. We might as well turn around and see what lies in the other direction.
You can't get the man's wand (or, as it more closely resembles, giant daisy). In this game I doubt it would be of much use anyway. Moving on.
Hey, that's not fair! You move into a new location, and suddenly a snake zips over and bites you.
That's strange, though, I don't seem to be dead yet. Moving further right on the top path leads you here, where trying to move further along the clearly open area will just dunt you into the wall.
Oh, I suppose I'd better pay attention to that after all... what was that bottle I found earlier?
Well, that should take care of things. Now for this insultingly easy puzzle...
"Kennel" is accepted here but the game refers to it as a "doghouse". Just in case you care. I seem to have forgotten to take a screenshot of the result, but just believe me when I say there's a stick of dynamite in it. It would hardly be the most unlikely thing that the game's thrown at us so far.
The snake is perfectly docile now that it's satisfied its requirement of making your life difficult for the day. It follows you about and blocks you a bit, but it doesn't bite you.
What's a poisonous snake doing in the English countryside, anyway? Perhaps the wildlife has significantly changed since David Gray last visited.
On the bottom path now - a phone box! Finally I can tell someone about the murder and leave the rest of the game to them.
"Sorry, can't come over just now to clear out your bleeding uncle, got too many cats stuck up trees, so I'll be along later." This is pretty much an accurate portrayal of the usefulness of the British police, but he still seems remarkably calm that there's been a murder. Perhaps Uncle Horace lives in Midsomer.
How indeed? Well, I've never had Livejournal give me a "Post too large" error before, but my verbosity has finally got the better of me - stay tuned for Part 2!