Castle of Doom: Cut to Black

Switching to a different version helped, and the black window background is much more fitting.

Back at the starting location of Castle of Doom, showing Seth anything didn’t help, nor did anything that I tried to do to or with that suspicious Bolt I had discovered sticking in a wall back in the Eastern Great Hall. I thought maybe I would have been able to tie the rope around it or something, but nope. Then something else crossed my mind: When casually looked over my last post, I realized I never gave the painting a closer look. It depicts some guy, probably King Arthur, cutting something that looks like an ornate box with his sword. First, that gave me the idea to try to CUT the CARTON down at the Royal Money Chambers, but that didn’t work. The Sword was the right direction though, because when I tried CUT PAINTING back in the Picture Gallery a passage opened up behind it. But my excitement was short-lived—Because at that point, the game crashed back to the moody blue of the Workbench screen. I reset the game, got the key, unlocked the gate, grabbed the sword, and tried again—no luck. I was ready to give up at that point, and to be honest as was a bit relieved, but switching to a different version in my TOSEC archive helped. I’m not sure if this is a fixed version and original was bugged or if the version I played before had corrupted data, but I was able to continue from there, and as a plus, the weird death loops I encountered before (like the guard eternally throwing back into the Dungeon while you were already in the Dungeon) were gone, too. So I guess I’ll just continue from here. And as you can see from the screenshots, the new release has a black window background instead of the blue one, which works much better with the game’s graphics and feels more immersive and not just like some desktop game. Annoyingly, I still have to click the input windows on each new screen, though.

So, cutting through the painting revealed a passage to a staircase leading to the Royal Tower which in turn led me to a Balcony. I was able to successfully TIE my ROPE to the Balcony Railing, but trying to CLIMB the ROPE resulted in hurting my hands and falling down to my death. Means I need something to protect my hands.

Jumping didn’t help either. Interestingly, the game has its own room for player death.

Go home game, you’re drunk (maybe on moat water?).

Strangely, I can see and TAKE the ROPE down back at the gate, resulting in me having the ROPE in my inventory, while it’s still tied to the Balcony Railing. Or did my character just silently cut the rope in two? Anyway, I also was surprised I was actually able to CLIMB the WALL on the starting screen, which I hadn’t noticed before. Up the wall I find a ledge and a tree which is another place I can tie the rope to, but again makes me hurt my hands when trying to CLIMB the ROPE. Not having achieved anything, I started to roam the castle again, and lo and behold, I discovered I actually had overlooked trying to OPEN the CARTON in the Royal Money Chambers (which was no fault on my side as the graphics clearly display it as already wide open), which now produced a silver T-shaped Wrench.

Can anyone blame me not having thought about opening a box that’s already open?

Aaaand that’s about where I’m stuck right now. A wrench seems like a super helpful tool (though strangely non-fitting for a medieval castle), but so far I haven’t found any use for it. The best candidate seemed that Bolt in the Eastern Great Hall, but no matter what verb I’m trying, I can’t get it to do anything. I guess I’ll start another game while leaving Castle of Doom for now. If I can’t find a solution in the next few days, I’ll probably just give up on it and move on to the rating.

Time so far: 3 hours