Alexandre Dumas, 1844 — a TIFE Core Adventure — how to play.
Press RIDE FOR PARIS on the cover. Two optional switches sit above that button: story narration, which reads the game aloud using your browser's own voices, and period ambience, which is synthesised at run time. Both are off-by-default choices and no sound is produced until you press the button.
You start in the yard of an inn at Meung-sur-Loire with a gentleman at the
window laughing at your horse. Type LOOK to see where you are, and
HINT whenever you would rather be told than guess.
Type a command at the ❯ prompt and press ENTER, or use the
button bands below it. The ACTIONS band carries the standard verbs and this
game's eight extra ones; DIRECTIONS shows the exits that exist right now; SYSTEM
holds the information commands; CONTEXT fills with valid targets once you pick an
action, so the whole game is playable without typing at all.
Everything is reachable by keyboard alone: TAB moves between the prompt, the buttons and the panels, and the focused control is outlined in gilt.
| Movement | N S E
W UP DOWN IN
OUT, or GO NORTH |
|---|---|
| Looking | LOOK, EXAMINE thing,
SEARCH thing, READ thing |
| Handling | TAKE thing, DROP thing,
OPEN thing, CLOSE thing,
USE thing |
| People | TALK TO name — ask more than once; people
have several things to say and the order matters |
| Waiting | WAIT — sometimes the correct move |
| Information | INVENTORY, JOURNAL,
QUESTS, ACHIEVEMENTS, STATS,
SCORE |
| System | HINT, SAVE name,
RESTORE name, TRANSCRIPT, RESTART,
HELP, ABOUT |
Beyond the standard parser, this game understands eight verbs of its own. They are on the ACTIONS band in oxblood.
| Verb | Also accepts |
|---|---|
DUEL | FIGHT, DRAW, ATTACK |
PLEDGE | SWEAR, OATH, VOW |
ENTRUST | ASSIGN, DETAIL |
LISTEN | EAVESDROP, OVERHEAR |
DISGUISE | HOOD, CONCEAL |
RIDE | GALLOP, SPUR |
SAIL | CROSS, EMBARK |
PRESENT | OFFER, DELIVER, HAND |
PLEDGE is the one the story is built on. Use it when you have
just fought beside somebody, and again when somebody who has never been promised
anything to her face needs to be.
The game is strictly turn-based and waits for you indefinitely. You act; the world answers; anything that was going to happen as a consequence happens; then the next room description, if you moved, is printed last.
A turn is only spent on a command that does something in the world. Looking, checking your inventory or journal, reading the objective list, asking for a HINT, and restarting all cost nothing. There is no clock in this game. Nothing gets worse while you think, read, or explore, and no puzzle can be lost by being slow.
The DIRECTIONS band always shows exactly the exits available from where you stand, so you never have to guess a direction. Some exits are shut until the story opens them, and when one is shut the game says why in plain language rather than refusing silently.
The panel on the right headed THE ROAD is the map: it lists the five regions and the places in each, marks where you are, and leaves undiscovered places as dots. Two region boundaries are one-way — you do not ride back to Meung, and you do not return to Paris until you have crossed the Channel twice.
| Region | Places |
|---|---|
| I. The Road from Gascony | Inn Yard, Inn Kitchen, Meung Highroad, Paris Gate |
| II. The Hotel de Treville | Rue des Fossoyeurs, Treville Antechamber, Treville's Cabinet, Carmes Deschaux |
| III. The Queen's Secret | Bonacieux's Shop, Rue de la Harpe, Louvre Stair, Queen's Oratory |
| IV. The Road to the Sea | Chantilly, Crevecoeur, Amiens, Calais Harbour |
| V. England and the Ball | Dover Quay, Buckingham's House, O'Reilly's Shop, Hotel de Ville |
There is no combat system and no hit points. A duel is a single decision:
DUEL whoever you mean to fight, and the outcome is settled by whether
the story has made it survivable yet. Drawing on five men with one wounded friend
is not brave, it is arithmetic, and the game will tell you so in the room
description before you can do it.
Points come from three places, and the total is 150:
Two of those four objects are in regions the story closes behind you, so they are missable on purpose. Missing them costs points, never the game.
You win by putting twelve diamond studs into the Queen's hand at the ball at
the Hotel de Ville on Monday the tenth. Ten of them are in London; two of them
have to be made. The winning command is PRESENT STUDS, and the game
will refuse it, courteously, if you are carrying fewer than twelve.
Five places in this story will kill you. Every one is described plainly in the room text before you can reach the fatal command, and most are described a second time by a character or a readable notice. If a room tells you that a stair takes one man and a cellar holds four, that is not colour — that is the game being fair with you.
There is no other way to lose. You cannot run out of time, you cannot make the game unwinnable, and you cannot lock yourself out of the ending. Death always prints a way back: RESTORE a save, or RESTART.
SAVE keeps a quick slot; SAVE amiens keeps a named
one. RESTORE amiens brings it back, including your conversation
history and how far each objective had got. The SAVE MANAGER button in the footer
lists every slot with its room, score and move count, and can delete them.
Saves live in this browser on this device under the key
tronsoft_tife_the_three_musketeers_save. Clearing your site data clears them. Restoring a save
made before a death clears the death.
RESTART begins again at Meung and costs no move. After the story
ends you can still RESTORE, RESTART, read the TRANSCRIPT, and check your SCORE.
The ACCESSIBILITY button in the footer offers six profiles — standard, low vision, blind / screen reader, hard of hearing, motor assistance and cognitive support — and every individual switch behind them: narration, captions for sound cues, visual sound indicators, high contrast, larger controls, reduced typing, simplified layout, reduced motion, contextual hints and screen-reader optimisation. Text size is a slider. Choices are remembered on this device.
If narration does not start, use TEST NARRATION in that panel: it reports the exact reason, including whether your browser has any voices installed at all.