How to play · Tronsoft Games · TIFE Core 2.3.0
This is a parser game. You type what you want to do, and the game tells you what happens. Commands are short: a verb, and usually something to do it to.
You never have to type at all. Every action is also a button, and the whole game can be finished from the buttons and the keyboard alone.
| NORTH / N | Go north. South, east, west, up, down, in and out all work the same way. |
| LOOK | Describe where you are again. |
| MAP | List every place you have found, and the ways between them. |
| EXAMINE <thing> | Look closely. Most things here reward it. |
| SEARCH <thing> | Look under and inside. Three of the four treasures are found this way. |
| TAKE / DROP <thing> | Pick up, put down. |
| WEAR <thing> | Put it on. On Barsoom this matters more than you would think. |
| TALK TO <person> | Start or continue a conversation. Keep going; people say different things. |
| ASK <person> ABOUT <subject> | The subject can be anything they might know. |
| WAIT | Let a turn pass. Sometimes that is the whole answer. |
Eight verbs belong to this game alone. The game teaches each one before it is needed, and they have their own buttons in the action palette.
Barsoomians are telepathic. They cannot close their minds to one another,
they have never needed to learn, and they have no defence at all against a
mind that came from somewhere else. THINK <person> reads
whatever is in front of you.
It is also how you cross between worlds in the first act, which is how the game teaches the verb long before it matters. Nine minds can be read in the course of the game. The ninth is the only key to the last door in it.
Type HINT. There are 32 ladders and they cover every room in
the game, three rungs each: a nudge, a direction, then the answer in plain
words. Hints cost nothing and are never counted against you.
SAVE and RESTORE take a name, so you can keep as
many games as you like. Use them.
Three places in this story can kill you. Each is warned in the room description and again by somebody who likes you, and each takes a deliberate command after both warnings. This engine has no UNDO, so save before you try something brave.
The ACCESSIBILITY button offers six profiles: Standard, Low Vision, Blind / Screen Reader, Hard of Hearing, Motor Assistance and Cognitive Support. Audio is off until you turn it on and is never required; every ambience is captioned. Nothing in this game is timed.