Journey to the Center of the Earth

A parser adventure for the Tronsoft Interactive Fiction Engine, after the 1864 novel by Jules Verne.

How to begin

The game opens on a cover screen. Two options are offered there — story narration (text-to-speech) and underground ambience — and both are off-by-default choices you can change later from the ACCESSIBILITY panel. Press DESCEND to start. The command line takes focus automatically.

You are Axel, in your uncle's study in the Königstrasse in Hamburg, in May 1863. Professor Lidenbrock has just come home with a runic chronicle, and something fell out of it. Begin by looking at what he was carrying: SEARCH BOOK.

Controls

Every action can be typed or clicked, and the two are interchangeable at any point.

Typing. Enter a command on the line at the bottom of the terminal and press Enter. Articles are ignored, so TAKE THE ROPE and TAKE ROPE are the same. Most verbs have short forms: X for EXAMINE, L for LOOK, I for INVENTORY, Z for WAIT.
Buttons. Choose a verb from the ACTIONS band and the CONTEXT band immediately fills with every valid target for it here. DIRECTIONS shows only the exits that exist. The whole story can be finished without typing a word.
Panels. Exits, location, quest log, character stats and achievements are on the left; world chart, inventory, journal and conversation history on the right. Inventory and exit entries are clickable.

Category	Commands
Movement	`N` `S` `E` `W` `U` `D` `OUT`, or `GO NORTH`
Handling	`LOOK` `EXAMINE x` `TAKE x` `DROP x` `USE x` `OPEN x` `CLOSE x` `SEARCH x` `READ x`
People	`TALK TO name`
Story verbs	`LIGHT` `DRINK x` `SHOUT` `LISTEN` `CLIMB` `SWIM` `BLAST`
Time	`WAIT` — several scenes resolve only when you let them
Information	`INVENTORY` `JOURNAL` `QUESTS` `ACHIEVEMENTS` `STATS` `SCORE`
System	`HINT` `SAVE name` `RESTORE name` `TRANSCRIPT` `RESTART` `HELP` `ABOUT`

Turn order

The game is strictly turn-based and waits indefinitely for you; nothing happens in real time.

You enter one command.
The command is echoed to the terminal.
The action resolves, and its own text — a room description, an object description, Taken. — is printed.
Any consequences the world draws from that action are printed after it: narration, quest and achievement notices, journal entries.
If the command was a real action rather than a query, the move counter advances by one and the panels refresh.

Queries are free. LOOK, INVENTORY, JOURNAL, QUESTS, ACHIEVEMENTS, STATS, SCORE, HELP, SAVE, RESTORE, TRANSCRIPT and RESTART cost no moves. Everything else — including EXAMINE, WAIT and HINT — costs one.

Movement

Exits are listed at the end of every room description and shown as buttons. The world is twenty rooms in five regions, and the WORLD MAP panel charts the region you are standing in, marking your own room in brackets and rooms you have not yet entered as dots.

Movement is two-way everywhere. You can walk back up the whole expedition at any point before the charge is fired at Cape Saknussemm, and the descent is deliberately built so that nothing is lost by doing so.
Some exits are shut until the story opens them, and say so when you try them: the professor will not leave Hamburg until the cryptogram is read and the packs are filled, and will not take the peninsula road until he knows what became of Saknussemm.
OUT is used where an exit is neither a compass direction nor up or down — leaving the courtyard, and putting to sea.

Scoring

One hundred and fifty points, awarded two ways.

Source	Points
Read the Cryptogram	15
Engage a Guide	15
The Shadow of Scartaris	20
Find Water	15
Rejoin the Expedition	15
Cross the Central Sea	20
Return to the Surface	20
Optional — The Field of Bones	5
Optional — Saknussemm's Mark	5
Optional — four collectable specimens, 5 each	20
Total	150

The seven required quests are worth 120 together, so a player who ignores every optional discovery still finishes the story. The QUEST LOG shows progress; SCORE reports the running total.

Winning

You win by climbing out onto the slopes of Stromboli. Reaching it requires the seven required quests, in order — the story gates each region on the one before — so any completed run scores at least 120. A perfect run scores 150 and unlocks all fourteen achievements.

Losing

Three decisions in this story kill you. Each is described plainly in the room you are standing in, warned about by your companions, and covered by the hint ladder for that room before you can reach it.

Going down a chimney in the crater of Snæfell before you know which of the three is Saknussemm's.
Going over the lip of the Great Well before the cords have been made fast.
Going into the water of the Lidenbrock Sea while the reptiles are fighting over it.

There is no other way to lose, and there are no unwinnable states: no object can be dropped, used up or left behind that makes the story impossible to finish. When the story ends, further commands are refused and RESTART is offered.

If you are stuck, use HINT. Hints are keyed to your exact situation and escalate: the first nudges, the second narrows it down, the third gives the command. Asking again gives you the next level.

Saving and restarting

SAVE stores a slot named quick; SAVE cape names it. RESTORE cape brings it back and re-describes the room.
The SAVE MANAGER in the footer lists every slot with its room, score and move count, and can create, restore or delete them.
Saves live in this browser's local storage, under one key, on this device only. They are not carried between browsers, and clearing site data removes them.
RESTART puts you back in the study at move zero with the score reset. It does not consume a move, and it is available after a fatal ending.
TRANSCRIPT in the footer shows everything printed so far and will download it as a text file.

Accessibility

ACCESSIBILITY in the footer offers six profiles — Standard, Low Vision, Blind / Screen Reader, Hard of Hearing, Motor Assistance, Cognitive Support — and every individual setting behind them: narration, captions, visual sound indicators, high contrast, text size, larger controls, reduced typing, simplified layout, reduced motion and screen-reader optimisation. Preferences are saved on the device. TEST NARRATION reports exactly why speech is not starting if it is not.