From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Modern Classics: Beyond Shadowgate (PC)

Chapters 1-3 | Chapters 4 and 5 | Chapters 6 and 7 | Chapters 8-10 | Chapter 11 | Alternate Endings and Closing Thoughts

Chapter 4: The Perilous Woodland Maze

So we're now in the Torlin Forest and at a forked path. We've heard horrible tales of this place, and as we look upon its foreboding trees, we fear that the tales may be true. We feel that we shouldn't be doing this. Following Belezsarr is too perilous, we think. If only the king and his troops were here to help us!

The wisp bluntly tells us that there's no time for self-doubt. And besides, it says, Belezsarr would easily detect and eradicate a troop of soldiers. Only an unassuming being like us stands a chance. It then makes the point that returning home is pointless because death will eventually find us there. We must act, it implores. It says, also, that it'll watch on no matter which choice we make.

Obviously we're going to bravely move forward!

Our goal here is to find our way through the forest and reach the ocean.

We start by traveling the northern path. It takes us to a checkpoint. As we approach the nearby guardhouse, a soldier blocks our path. We recognize that he's a Gwynenthell guard captain. He tells us that the forest is no place for one such as us and that we should turn back. We protest endlessly, and finally his patience breaks and he shouts "Enough!" Then he makes us a deal. He says that if we go to the mine and find his friends and bring them back, he'll let us pass.

Before we head out to do that, we enter into the guardhouse and take its two possessions: a lantern and a heavy coat (which we'll need later on). Then we retreat to the forked path and head west.

Here we come across a grave-populated forest path. The graves belong to people who perished while trying to navigate the magic forest's endless maze.

We learn two things as we read the graves' ornate lettering: If we want to get through the magic forest, we should "follow the wisps." Though, we should never follow the red-colored variety of wisp; they'll malevolently lead us astray.

We continue north and arrive at the mine entrance. We head inside and step into a cramped, dreary mine shaft. It houses a birdcage, which we make sure to take (because cages always come in handy in these types of games). From there, we travel north, to the mine junction, and find that the area ahead is unlit and thus too dangerous to traverse. Luckily, the tree branch that stretches out above us has a lantern hook attached to it. We hang our lantern on it, and resultantly the rest of the mine lights up. Immediately we see some purple stones embedded into a pile of rocks, but we can't take them (yet).

We see, also, that there are two paths. We start by going left, into the terminating hollow. And the first thing we see is a dead body slumped against the wall. It's a Gwynenthell soldier. His corpse is covered in bites and scratches.

Some items are lying on the ground. One of them is a strap labeled "Signaculum M." We pick it up. Its text confirms the soldier's identity. After we take it, we notice that a pair of red eyes has appeared in the dark recess to the north. We suspect that the eyes belong to the creature that killed the soldier.

There are two other objects: a small brass key and a sword sheath. When we take either of them, a second pair of red eyes appears in the recess. And at that point, our adventurer's intuition (and memory of our Shadowgate experience) correctly informs us of what will happen if we pick up a third item without first resetting the room: Our dallying will cause a pack of dire wolves to emerge from the recess and tear us to pieces! So we retreat to the previous room and then promptly reenter the hollow and take the third item.

After we clean out the hollow, we return to the mine junction and head right, into the rope shaft. We see a sledgehammer and take it. Then we climb the rope and pass through the opening in the cave's wall.

We emerge on an overlook and get a nice view of Torlin Forest and the Gatekeeper Mountain (which, fans of the series know, is the mountain that surrounds Shadowgate). Here we find another slain soldier.

There are two obtainable items on this overlook. The first is a leather strap that's labeled "Signaculum B." It confirms the soldier's identity. The other item is the soldier's military banner (a pole with a flag, basically); it's identified as a "standard."

So now that we've discovered what happened to the soldiers, we decide to head back to the checkpoint to inform the guard captain of the bad news. Before we exit the mine, though, we stop in the mine junction and use the sledgehammer to smash the purple rocks free. The game warns us that the rocks are unusually heavy and that our back is going to start killing us if we attempt to carry them around normally. This is a hint that we have to come up with a more convenient way of carrying them around. Fortunately, we have a bird cage that is large enough to hold all of them! So we load the rocks into the cage. This reduces the strain and turns the stones into a single compact object.

We also make sure to retrieve the lantern on the way out (because we're going to need to have two of them).

So we return to the checkpoint and show the guard captain the soldiers' signaculums and inform him that his men are now deceased. In a sorrowful manner, he reflects upon their past exploits and laments their deaths. Then, as promised, he allows us access into the forest interior and takes his leave.

As we head into the unwelcoming forest canopy, we recall hearing that this area is cursed. It's a gaping maw that consumes travelers who don't possess the magic necessary to correctly navigate through it. We discover this to be the case when we attempt to find a path through the forest but keep winding up on the same screen. Basically we're in the Lost Woods from The Legend of Zelda, and we have no clue how to get through it! The only thing that we can do at the moment is turn back and look for clues.

What we do first, though, is head back to Gwynenthell castle's second floor and travel to its southeast area, which contains a door that our new tower key can open.

Beyond the door is the tower landing. It contains two notable objects: a cracked vase with roses growing out of it and a door whose symbols indicate that a library rests ahead.

When we interact with the vase, we accidently knock it over and cause it to break in half (we blame the shoddy craftsmanship and thus feel no remorse for destroying it). The roses fall out of it, and we notice that a sheet of parchment is wrapped around them. We take the parchment and read it. It says, "Creeping vines from water below, countless times the stalks will grow. Words, not blades, will root them out, muster your voice and rally a shout." And thus we learn our second spell: Herbicidia! It's described as an "enchantment" that clears away overgrown weeds that attempt to prevent progress.

Then we head into the library.

The library, predictably, contains a collection of books. Unfortunately, we can only read one of them--a book that's randomly selected from the furthest-most bookshelf. It's called The Travels of Gathel. We read a chapter in which the titular main character, Gathel, sees the chains that hold a beast captive and is told that he'll be rewarded with gold if he removes the silver shackles. He replies that he cannot, for the glitter of gold will drive a man to ruin. "Now quiet," he says, "lest I purify thee with fire!" Then he adds more chains.

The lesson is that we shouldn't be led astray by our desire for riches. It's a great lesson, and we'll be sure to ignore it.

The other books contain more substantive information, but we can't read them. When we try to do so, the only thing that we get is a summarization of what they contain: information on warfare, diplomacy and history.

Oh well.

What's more interesting is the loose parchment that's lying on the floor. We pick it up and find that its title is Principles of Telescope Augmentation, Third Edition. It says that a lens may be used to filter light in a manner that emphasizes magical properties. To identify magical energy, it notes, the lens must be imbued with magic, and a simple temple blessing will be sufficient. It adds that resourceful practitioners report using the lens as a portable magic sensor.

So now we know how to make a magic lens! All that matters to us is the info, so we place the parchment back on the ground.

When we examine the rightmost shelf, the game unsubtly informs us that one of its sorcery books is missing. So we'll definitely have to find that book.

We retreat back to the tower landing and head left, then we travel up four-screens'-worth of spiral stairs (the door at the stairs' midpoint is locked, so we have to ignore it for now). When we get to the top, we arrive at the upper tower. A door is seen resting to the north. We open it and pass into the magic study.

We sense that a magical presence has been at work in this place.

There's a lot that we can do here. First we can peer into the telescope, whose lens has a noticeably faint blue glow that's seemingly a magical property, and get an overhead view of Torlin Forest. From this vantage point, we can see all of the maze-like paths that have left many travelers lost. As soon as we notice all of the sparkling activity, the wisp chimes in and tells us that the sparkles represent its wispkin, which mortals usually aren't fortunate enough to see. It notes that if we could somehow take this contraption, we could see the wisps from up close and find the correct path through the forest.

Unfortunately, we can't take the telescope's lens. So we have to get a hold of one that isn't affixed to a telescope and find a way to imbue it with magic.

We see, also, that the study's old and worn desk has a book set upon it. We open it and attempt to read it, and our punishment for doing so is death. A bright flame erupts in front of us and takes the shape of a fire elemental. It darts toward us, wraps itself around us, and cooks us alive (only our teeth and bones remain, the description disturbingly notes).

So the book is enchanted, which we suspect when we examine it. We find that it's marked with several strange runes and that something is missing from its cover. We notice, also, that the hole has green trim around it. That color seems significant.

At that moment, we remember that we have a green item in our possession: the emerald! We believe that it might fit into the book's hole. So we take the green gem and place it in the book's cover. It fits perfectly!

Now that we suspect that the book is safe to handle, we take it, though we decide not to open it up just in case.

As we continue looking around the room, we notice that some broken candle pieces are lying on the ground. The candle obviously belonged to the wall-mounted candle holder above it. The game's overly allusive description of the candle pieces tells us that there's something up with the holder. So we interact with it and twist it around until it's upside down. And voila: The star chart on the left releases from the wall and reveals a hidden compartment! It contains an ordinary lens.

Well, there we go.

Now that we have a lens, we have to find a way to imbue it with magic.

While we're here, we pick up and read one of the shelf's books. It's one of Lakmir's journals! So this is his study! Apparently he hangs out at Gwynenthell castle and conducts his research here.

The book's words act as an account of his life and his desires for the future. They explain that he toils endlessly, holding a spell of binding around Castle Shadowgate and keeping the evil within contained forever. He knows that the Warlock Lord's staff is lost in the caverns, and despite his searching furiously for it, he lacked the ability to find it. The staff's power is enough to resurrect Talimar. Though Talimar's gone, his influence is not. So someone might fall under that influence and attempt to resurrect him!

We skip ahead to an entry that speaks of happenings surrounding Jair: Rumors of assassinations call him to Gwynenthell. As his servant, Lakmir must follow him, and this is a problem because it means that his binding spell will fade. Talimar was vanquished 35 summers ago, but still wicked forces are still working to resurrect him. This current rebellion might be part of that effort.

Then we read the journal's final entry. It speaks of Lakmir's efforts to unravel the events of Aronde's kidnapping and Elryth's manipulation. It doesn't fit, he thinks. The culprits seem to lack the cunning necessary to mastermind such a plot on their own. He feels that foul deeds are occurring and that he should consult the auguries.

So Lakmir has a much-deeper understanding of the situation.

The information is all that matters to us, so we place the book back on the desk.

Now we turn our attention to the door on the left. We open it and pass through it. It takes us outside, onto the turret.

As we walk onto the turret, we see a startling sight: a sleeping dragon! Fortunately it's chained down.

Moments later, it awakens and intently focuses on us. It looks uncomfortable and agitated, and it continues to tug at the chains that secure it to the tower. We feel that we should calm it down before we try to get close to it.

We speak to it from afar and say hello. It understands our words, surprisingly, and responds in common language. It asks us if we have any "tempies," which it loves. The "gray man" (Lakmir) knew this, it says, and used tempies "to catch Colvin" (the dragon's name is Colvin, and he speaks in the third person). We have nothing of the sort, so we decide not to get close to Colvin at this point. (If we try to get close to him, he'll capture us in his jaws and hurl us over the side of the turret. Consequently we'll plummet to our doom.)

(I have to note that this room has my favorite death in the game: We can, with great enthusiasm, bravely leap off of the turret. As we joyfully plummet, we take the time to wave to the spectators who are watching on! Then we splat against the surface and die! Fun!)

What we do next is head back to the library. We have a sorcery book now, and it probably comes from the room's rightmost bookshelf. So we place the book in the empty space. As soon as we do this, we hear a faint click, and the middle bookcase slides away from the wall and reveals a hidden space. It contains three items: a clay figurine of a griffin, a gold vessel, and a bag of tempies!

One of them, obviously, is of immediate use: the tempies. We hurry back to the turret and give them to Colvin. He screeches with excitement and munches them down. And now that he's relaxed, we can safely free him; we do so by releasing the chain that secures the chain's lock. After we do this, he flies off, into the sky, and shouts back, "Colvin go now! See you again. Bring tempies, yes?" Moments later, a portal appears from thin air. Colvin flies into it and disappears from view.

So we'll likely be seeing him again at some point.

Interestingly, he leaves behind a glass vial. It contains a purple liquid. We recognize the contents as dragon tears. We recall that our great uncle once told us that his forebears drank dragon tears to learn magic (hint, hint). So we drink the dragon tears, and, unsurprisingly, words begin to loudly sound in our mind: "On frozen stone without a path in sight, a single word summons a bridge of light," we hear. Thus we learn a new spell: Polykromus!

Now it's time to enchant our lens. We start that process by going to the temple's inner sanctum, which houses the statue of The One. Recalling the book passage that we read earlier, we decide to make an offering to the statue. It already holds a rod, so all we need to do is place a gold piece onto it. We happen to have one: the gold vessel that we took from the library! We place it on the statue's left hand. Then we put our glass lens on the altar and offer the vessel to the statue.

Suddenly, we feel powerful energy radiating from the statue. We respond by "speaking" to the statue--by kneeling and reciting a prayer and asking The One to aid us in our quest. Reacting to our prayer, the statue glows intensely and forces us to cover our eyes. We hear a loud cracking sound. And when we uncover our eyes, we find that that a miracle has occurred and the statue has been destroyed. We pick up the lens and notice that it now has a faint glow. It has been imbued with magical properties! So now we have the item that'll help us find our way through the forest!

Before we leave town, we stop in the curio shop and attempt to sell one of the other items that we took from the library: the clay griffon. The owner takes interest in it (it's a "rare find," he says) and agrees to buy it. He gives us 20 silver coins. That happens to be the exact amount we need for the arrow quiver! So we return to the weapons shop and buy it. And now we're ready to fight monsters!

We return to the magical forest's entrance and use our magic lens. We see a green wisp pointing to the western path. We travel in that direction and then use the lens again. This time we see a red wisp, and, remembering what we read on the gravestones, we avoid accepting its guidance and travel in the opposite direction. On the next screen, we use the lens and see a green wisp pointing to the north. We head in that direction, and, thankfully, we exit the woods and arrive at a peaceful path.

We move forward and come across a covered bridge (the "Truss Bridge," as it's called). We enter into it and rightfully suspect that something awful will happen to us if we try to indiscernibly pass through it (if we attempt to do so, the obvious trap door will open up and drop us into the rushing river below).

What we do instead is retreat one screen and take the easily-missed right path. This one takes us to the bridge's underside and allows us to get a look at its subjacent workings. Immediately we see a handle sticking out from the bridge's bottom; it's attached to a lever that connects to a mechanism. Obviously this mechanism reacts to pressure opens the trap door when people walk on it. We deduce that we can stop the mechanism from operating by pulling this handle down and locking the mechanism. Unfortunately the handle quickly snaps back into place after we pull it down. So we have to find a way to keep it weighed down. Fortunately, we possess a heavy object that can do that job: the birdcage containing the heavy stones! We attach it to the handle and weigh it down. Now we can safely pass over the bridge!

We exit into a meadow (which is the start of what I call "Monster Alley"), and as soon as we attempt to advance northward, a screeching harpy swoops down from the trees and blocks our path! We respond by pulling out our best defensive weapon: the standard, which acts as a spear. As the evasive harpy swoops toward us, we impale her with it. She's not dead yet, though (as we find out if we try to move past her, at which point the game will inform us that she's slowly regaining her bearings). So we finish her off with our crossbow (after loading an arrow into it, of course). Then we retrieve the pole, which is all that's left of the standard (it turns out to be a crucial item, so it's a mistake to leave it).

Then we move north, onto the next part of the path. There we come across a lone tree. The sound of jangling chains emerges from it. When we try to pass by it, it comes to life and reveals itself to be a raging treant. It's a fibrous foe, so we believe that the best way to deal with it is to burn it with fire. So we throw one our two lanterns at it and watch on as it bursts into flames and burns away. (If we simply try to pass by the treant, roots will slither from the earth and tightly wrap around us. Then they'll pull us toward the treant, which will promptly eat us.)

Then we move forward, into a shady grove. When we attempt to travel east from here, a manticore jumps out from the shadows and blocks our path. Then it looks at us and becomes eerily still. Seconds later, an evil energy begins to emit from its eyes, and it prepares to attack us. Time pressure activates, and we have only a limited amount of time to respond to the threat. If we don't react within 8 or so seconds, it'll fire an intense beam of energy from its eyes and eviscerate us. The death is actually a hint as to how to deal with the creature.

What we want to do is reflect its eye beams with our silver tray, which, as its description notes, is legendary for its ability to reflect incident light. Doing this reflects the energy beam back towards the manticore and causes it to become injured. Aware that it can still sense us, we try to finish it off by plunging an arrow into it. It survives the attack, though, and continues to show a little fight, so we get serious and decisively finish it off with a second arrow. As it dies, it scatters into the wind.

Then we move east and travel to the forest's edge.

Before us is the Tyre River, which we recognize as a shipping lane to Stormhaven. We plan to catch the boat and get some sleep during the next leg of the journey. We ask the nearby merchant if he can gives us a ride, and he says that he can't do so because overgrown hydra weeds are holding the ship in place. He'll give us a ride, he says, if we can clear them away.

Fortunately, we have the means to do so: our Herbicidia spell!

We move to the riverbank and use the spell, hoping that the merchant will witness our magical display and come away impressed. The spell works: It completely clears the weeds away! (If we try to step onto the boat before using the spell, the weeds, predictably, will wrap themselves around us and pull us under the water, causing us to drown.) Unfortunately, though, the merchant wasn't watching at the time (he dozed off), so we fail to make any type of impression oh him.

We inform the drowsy merchant that the weeds are gone (he's thinks that the weeds disappeared on their own), and he agrees to give us a ride. Then he urges us to hop aboard the boat.

Upon stepping onto the boat, we speak with the merchant again. He welcomes us aboard and tells us to move to the foredeck when we're ready to go. So we walk over to it. Right then, the boat pushes away from the dock and begins to sway side to side in the churning waters.

Very soon, though, something goes wrong. The music stops playing, and an eerie silence takes hold as foreboding text displays. It tells us that waves of chilled mist are rolling over the barge deck's edge and becoming so thick that we can't see anything. The mist continues to rise, and eventually it turns into a thick and cold fog. We feel that something isn't right. Then, suddenly, laughter begins to echo through the mist, and a raspy voice hisses. It's Belezsarr! He sees us, he says, and tells us that we should have kept to our own affairs. Then he tells us to suffer and drown!

At that moment, time pressure activates. We have to do something or we'll drown! We run to the barge deck, hoping that the merchant has a solution to the problem, but he isn't there! He has abandoned ship! So we have to come up with our own solution. Unfortunately, there isn't one. There's nothing that we can do because this is a scripted event. All we can do is watch on as water spills onto the deck and the fog envelops the boat.

The boat drifts blindly until it crashes, at which point we're sent flying overboard! When we come to, we find that we're floating in a swamp. When we turn our head, we see the toothy grin of an unusual creature. It appears to be an imp. It says to us, in a shrill voice, "Thanks, thank you! For my new toys! Won't you miss them? Come find them! Yes, follow!" (When we see the creature from a distance, it looks very familiar. In fact, it looks just like the cookie monster from Uninvited! Could it be? Is this the same character? Or does it just happen to look like it?)

The imp taunts us by waving its bag wildly and taking all our goods. So we're left with nothing.

This is where the next chapter begins.

Chapter 5: The Uninvited Cookie Thief

After we gather ourselves, we begin to navigate our way through the rotting swamp. We move north and arrive at a plank path. We see a tree with a grotesque doll strung to it. We take the doll and find that it's actually a straw effigy. Most disturbingly, it was obscuring human bones, which are arranged throughout the tree.

We move forward, past a hill top, and come across a mansion. It seems odd to us that someone would build such a creepy mansion between a desert and a swamp. We don't want to enter into the mansion, but when we see the imp scurrying through its door, we have no choice but to do so. There is, after all, no way we'll survive the desert without our belongings.

The problem is that we're not going to be able to enter the mansion. As we approach it, the imp slams the door in our face. From behind the door, it welcomes us and requests our help. But it doesn't yet trust us, so it asks us to prove that we're altruistic by bringing it a treat--its favorite meal (if this truly is the imp from Uninvited, then we already know what it wants: a cookie!).

So we have find whichever food item the imp desires and earn its trust.

Right then, the imp opens the door a crack and tosses a red stone onto the ground. We don't know what it does, but we must need it; so we take it (it's described as an occult stone that emanates an otherworldly presence). "Where are we going to find food in a desert?" we wonder.

(The door's purple star gives the portico "an ominous and uninviting appearance." And the star happens to look very familiar. In fact, it looks a lot like the one I've seen in Uninvited! You don't think...? Nah--they wouldn't do something that crazy! Right?)

So we have to search the desert and find food somewhere.

We start by heading north, to the barren.

We've heard of this place. It's a wasteland that radiates a demonic heat from a spell long spent. At some time in the past, a powerful wizard delved into the dark arts and cast a hideous hellfire spell that cost him his life. This region was once rife with lush forests and wetlands, and and thanks, to him, now it's desolate. Only shifting sands and inextinguishable flames remain.

We move forward, to the crossroads and find that there are three ways to go. The two side paths are lined with pipes that connect a molten pit to a mysterious structure. At the moment, we can't do anything to interact with this system, so we move north, into a dune.

Here we find a sun-bleached skeleton that is clearly one of the cursed desert's victims; it's clutching a round hand wheel. We take the hand wheel, sensing that it'll attach to the post on pipe system's west side. It we're correct! It snaps onto the post.

We turn the wheel and hope that it'll fire up the pipe system and activate the mysterious structure. As soon as we attach the wheel to the post, though, a searing gust of wind knocks us back and a flaming entity emerges from the lava. It fixes its eyes upon us.

Noting that the straw effigy, one of our only two items, (a) represents a being made of flames and (b) appears to be the type of model that has been used to trap elemental spirits, we throw it at the fire monster. And as we expected, the effigy sucks up the shrieking flame elemental and removes it from the scene; then the effigy crumbles to ashes in our hands. Now we're able safely turn the wheel and fire up the system. It indeed powers the structure to the east.

As we inspect the structure, we notice that it has a small slot at its base. We press our occult stone into it. That's when we learn that the structure is actually a conduit! Suddenly the space in its center begins to waver and distort, and soon a portal generates. And, unbelievably, the image that displays on the portal happens to look remarkably similar to the facade of Uninvited's mansion!

"No way!" we think.

(Actually, that's exactly what I thought when I first saw this portal. "Are we really going to travel to the mansion from Uninvited?!" I wondered while in a state of shock. "Is that really a thing that's about to happen?!"

I wasn't sure. "It could be the case," I also considered, "that this portal is simply going to take me to a mansion that just happens to look like Uninvited's.")

When we pass through the portal, we stumble into a tunnel. We're met with the damp smell of rotting earth. It's overwhelming. What's worse, though, is that the portal disappears! The wisp chimes in and informs us that this is a good news-bad news situation. The good news is that we survived the trip, but the bad news is that the portal is dead. We are stuck here, it says, until we can power up the conduit. While we're temporarily stuck in this place we think, we might as well try to find food for the imp. So we press onward.

We move north and enter into a shelter. We observe that there's small red stone shard in its northwest corner. We don't know what it is, but we pick it up anyway. Then we climb out of the shelter.

We emerge at the hillside and find that the shelter rests below a fortress that has been built into the side of the hill. It's being "reclaimed" (one of the writer's favorite words) by nature; roots and vines grow along the cracks in its wall. As we're attentively examining this area, we look at the dead tree on the right and notice that a red glint is reflecting off of one its branches. It's another ruby shard! We make sure to take it.

(The only other thing that you can do here is look at the Ferris wheel in the distance. Doing so gets you the "What a Spectacle" achievement. Spectacle is a 2020 MacVenture-style PC game that's set in the same universe as Uninvited, and it contains an area called "Spectacle Circle." This is the designer, Christia Moseley, giving one of his fellow developers a nod.)

From here, we move southwest and enter into a dead forest. It's filled with dead trees and thick red flowers. We attentively examine this area, too, and notice that a red ruby shard is cleverly mixed in with the red flowers. We take that shard, too. Then we move north, to the stone path.

To our shock, we arrive at what looks to be a modern road. It has white line markings (broken white divider lines) painted onto it! These markings are completely foreign to us (or to Del, at least). This road appears as though it stretches on forever, so we decide not to travel it. We turn out attention, instead, to the gate on the left.

(As soon as I saw this fence, I immediately got the sense that I was going to see the Uninvited mansion when I passed through it. Still, though, I wasn't fully convinced that such a thing was going to happen. "There's no way that they'd do something that wild and crazy," I thought. "There has to be a swerve coming!"

But then I passed through the gate, and there it was: the actual mansion from Uninvited. It was a surreal moment.

You see: I didn't know anything about the game's development, the crowd-funding effort, or the stretch goals, so this part of the game was a total surprise to me. And I honestly didn't know what to expect from it. "Am I going to get the chance to explore the entire mansion and essentially play through Uninvited in the same way that I did 30-plus years ago?" I wondered in that moment. "Or am I going to simply pass by the mansion's entryway and wind up in a whole different location?"

I had no idea where this was going.)

So we pass through the gate and find ourselves standing in front of a mansion. And much like it did in Uninvited, it gives us the creeps!

And it looks exactly the same as it did back then! The two statues of young Grecian men are there, as is the mailbox. And when we look at the mansion, we sense that it's cold and foreboding and that a great evil rests within it. The only difference is that the camera view is shifted over to the left, and we're now able to get a look at what's resting at the mansion's right side. It's mostly mansion wall. The only thing that stands out to us is the obviously placed bulkhead.

Being the busybody that we are, we open the mailbox and find a key (this causes Del to identify the mailbox as a "key dispensary"); we take it and learn that it's the "bulkhead key." Well, we know where to use that.

Unfortunately, we can't open the front door because an unseen forces is holding it shut and we don't possess the magic pendant whose influence can ward it off evil forces. Sadly, it wasn't in the mailbox (as it was in Uninvited). (So we don't know yet if the events of this game take place before or after Uninvited's.)

So we take the only available path--the one that leads to the mansion's side portion. That's where we get a close-up view of the bulkhead. It's locked tight by a padlock and heavy chains. As we inspect it, we notice some red glint emanating from the space on the right. It's another ruby shard! We grab it and up our collection to four!

We use our bulkhead key to unlock the padlock and open the door. Then we proceed through it and head down the mansion's cellar.

We finds ourselves standing in a part of the cellar that's mysteriously frozen. We're on the other side of Uninvited's ice wall! It hasn't melted yet. So this game's events clearly take place before Uninvited's!

There are two ways to go from here. We take the left path first.

We come upon an altar. It's filled with candles and unholy symbols, and it contains a curious receptacle. A sorcery book rests upon it. We open it and turn to a specific page. The wisp informs us of what its unfamiliar symbols mean. It tells us that they represent powerful "magicks" (they spell it with a k in this universe) that can release enough energy to power the portal. But it doesn't know what else might happen. It reads a passage to us. The passage says to place upon the altar of Motari (another familiar deity from this universe) your vessel and in it sacrifice the three of blood: the flesh to pump the crimson fluid; the bone from whence it comes; and the blood itself.

So this is ritual that we have to undergo to create a power source.

So now we head right, past the cellar's icy area, and into the next room. It's the pit--the one into which we threw Dracan! Some human remains rest in the room's corner. Curiously, the game tells us that a large bone stands out amongst the rest, and this is our hint that we need to take the bone in question.

Then we move north, onto the familiar cellar stairway. When we attempt to open the door at its top, a gust of wind sends us stumbling down the steps, and then a bloody horror appears! It encompasses the entire area! The bloody apparition hovers silently and beckons us to our doom. Fear overtakes us as we struggle to think of an escape. Just then, though, we notice that our pocket is glowing red; we reach into it and pull out the ruby shards. The shards' glow then intensifies, and they start to float before us. And with a blinding flash, they combine into a beautiful red gemstone. It pulses with radiant energy.

The apparition, with a terrifying moan, reels at the sight of the gemstone. Moments later, it gets sucked into the stone and becomes trapped.

The skull is gone, but still we're able to sense its presence. Right as we're about to climb the steps, the wisp stops us and tells us that the stone harbors an evil entity and that it's too dangerous to carry for long. We must get rid of, it says. As Uninvited fans, we know just the place to dispose of such an item: the pit! So we head downstairs and toss the ruby into the pit. Sensing the evil that's its capable of unleashing, we hope that it's never found (this raises some questions, of course).

(I have to note that you will suffer consequences for carrying the ruby for too long. Like in Uninvited, your mind will be taken over by an evil presence, and you'll feel as though you're going insane; you'll be unable to resist this evil force, and thus you'll become a member of the dark forces. And I also have to make note of another cool aspect of this game: area-exclusive Grim Reapers! Each area has a reaper that's tailored to it. This one has the classic red skull that laughs at you when you die. That's such a great touch!)

So we head up the stairway and open the door, which is surprisingly unlocked (you needed Key 2 to open it in Uninvited). The doorway takes us, of course, into the study--the one with the weird curved wall. The couch, which has seen better days, is there as are the stunning and exhilarating mountainscape painting and the well-worn, scratch-filled desk. The only difference is that a spool of thread and a sewing needle rest on top of the desk. We take the needle (and discard the thread). We can't take the familiar blotter on which the needle and blotter were resting.

We can, though, open the desk. Its drawer contains a bunch of papers with names and numbers on them (they're the cards from Uninvited--the ones that list elements' names and atomic numbers); but since they don't play into any of this game's puzzles, we can't take them.

So we travel southwest and, not surprisingly, we find ourselves in the dining hall. As we were in Uninvited, we're impressed by the sight of this luxurious dining room and think it would be a great place to have a big birthday bash.

The room has everything that we expect to see: the painting of the eagle holding a snake in its talons; the painting of a landscape; the chandelier whose finely cut crystals shine beautifully; and the fireplace with the charred wood. Two familiar items rest on the table: the fruit basket (which we identify as a "ritual bowl") and a bouquet, which, we still think, would look great on a tombstone (we're not able to "open" the bowl this time). We can only take the basket; the wisp stops us from taking the bouquet and reminds us that we're here to find food (which is strange considering that neither item, in our minds, relates to food; it's the game's way of stopping us from taking useless items, sure, but still it seems oddly selective).

Next we enter the door on the left and enter the kitchen. We remark, just as we did in Uninvited, that this kitchen looks to be a recent addition; and we sense that it might contain something edible.

This room, too, has all of the expected items: the pans, the knives, and the cookie jars. Unfortunately we can't take or manipulate any of them. Though, we can interact with the big cookie jar, which looks different from the rest; it's adorned with a purple star--the same one that we saw on the other mansion's door! If we try to take this jar, the game stop us and tell us that we don't need to take it; all we need are its contents, it says. So obviously we have to find a way to break it open.

This time around, surprisingly, we're able to open the oven! When we do so, we find a rotten chunk of charred meat. We of course take it.

Sadly, no left or right pathways are available to us, so we can't visit the pantry or the servant's room. Too bad.

So we head back to the dining room and travel through the southern doorway (no eastern pathway appears in the navigation box, so we can't get to the quiet hallway).

We find ourselves in the classic game room. Strangely, we enter into it from the doorway that normally leads to the trophy room. We're supposed to come in from the right! (Yes, I'm that pedantic. I am a purist and a continuity hound, after all).

We can't open the right door, which would now presumably lead to the quiet hallway, because an unseen force bars us from doing so (rats!).

The game room contains all of the expected trappings: the chess board, the gramophone, the locked cabinet, the painting of the ugly person, and the painting of the guy who gives us a penetrating stare (for whatever reason, the two paintings' positions are reversed).

There are a couple of differences here: There's no plate on the floor (the plate on which we place the cookie in Uninvited when we're attempting to lure the dancing imp and get him to drop the key that it's holding), and the gramophone, disappointingly, doesn't play the Shadowgate theme (or even the cookie-monster theme!) when we turn its crank. Instead it plays an unfamiliar (and decidedly non-8-bit-sounding) tune--a jaunty piece that reminds us of a circus from a far-off desert kingdom. (This tune is actually the circus theme from the aforementioned Spectacle, whose developer also worked on this game.)

The most notable difference is that there are chess pieces on the chessboard. When we look at the chessboard, the game tells us that one of its chess pieces is out of place (hint, hint). So in looking to satisfy our desire for perfect symmetry, we move the piece to its rightful place, and this somehow causes the cabinet's door to unlock (in Uninvited, you needed Key 1 to open it). This time it contains a hammer (rather than a gypsy doll). We take it. And being the Uninvited veterans that we are, we know just what to do with such a blunt item: use it to smash open the cookie jar! So we head back to the kitchen and do just that.

When we strike the jar, the hammer and the jar simultaneously shatter to pieces, and we shout "Aha!" (just as we did in Uninvited) as the expected item emerges from the jar: a cookie! Now we have something to feed to the imp!

So now we have two of the items necessary to carry out the ritual. The only thing that we lack is the crimson fluid. There's only one place from which we can get such a fluid: ourselves! We pierce our finger with the needle (an idea we get when we look at the needle and remember how we accidentally cut ourselves when our mother tried to teach us how to sew) and cover the needle in our blood. And now that we possess the three necessary items, we head down to the cellar's altar and start the ritual.

We place the ritual bowl in the altar's receptacle (it fits perfectly and makes us wonder what it was doing in the dining room), and then we drop the old bone, the burnt meat, and the bloody needle into it. After we do this, a blue flame rises from the bowl. The wisp dives into the flame and starts swimming it in. Then it says, again, that there's good news and bad news. The good news is that it now has enough energy to attune the portal; it then uses the energy to create a blue crystal, which can power the conduit and open a portal.

The bad news is that our little ritual opened a gateway to hell, and a lot of angry things are coming through it. "Oh, look," the wisp says, "There's one now!"

We find out what she's talking about after we take the wisp stone and retreat to the cellar's entrance. We run into an old friend: the ghostly woman from Uninvited (the one who looked to us like Scarlett O'Hara)! Unfortunately, we can't do anything to her her. If we try to interact with her, we'll get killed in an expected fashion. She'll turn around to reveal her flesh-devoid face and then tear us to pieces and leave us in a bloody heap. (Note that if you interact with her by trying to speak with her, she'll recite a familiar-sounding line before shredding you: "After all these years, you came back for me, my love," she says. "It is time you were mine forever."

So there's no point in interacting in her (unless you're hunting for death opportunities). Instead, we slip by her, exit the cellar, and head toward the conduit room.

As we start to exit the estate, though, we notice that its front door is suddenly open! Excitedly, we take this opportunity and enter the mansion from the front! And there it is: the foyer that we remember so well. It has all of the expected objects: the rug with the star emblazoned on it, the painting of the great eagle with its talons extended, the painting of a great snake, the couch, the expensive-looking chairs, and the fireplace.

"Does this mean that we get to explore more of the mansion?!" we wonder. Well, no, sadly. The only thing that we can do is briefly observe the foyer. That's it. The fact is that is that this room is actually a death trap (basically an Easter egg that exists only for map completion's sake), and we die a few moments after entering into it. When we do so, a cacophony of screams shatters the silence and all of the house's evil energy descends upon us. "There's no escape," we're told. We know this because we're now staring at the same ghost crew that welcomed us to the afterlife in Uninvited: Death, the zombie, the fruit ghost, and the horned demon. The imp is suspiciously missing, which lends further credence to the theory that it and the imp from the other mansion are one and the same!

So we start the trip back to the conduit room.

When we step upon the dark road, though, a rumbling noise approaches from the distance and two intensely bright lights move toward us. Time pressure activates, and we have a limited amount of time to find safety. We easily do this by moving east, into the forest (moving left will cause us to fail and die). Thus we escape danger. Seconds later, we hear a screeching noise and a woman's scream from behind us, then we hear a tremendous crunch. We caused an accident, basically. But we don't care; all we want to do is get out of here. (If we don't react in time, the car slams into us and kills us. It hits us so hard that our organs are immediately pulverized and we splatter onto the car.)

So we head to the conduit room and prepare to activate the portal. The only problem is that there doesn't seem to be a hole in which to insert our stone. It turns out, though, that we're just being stupid and not noticing that the hole is covered by a mound of dirt! So we clear away the dirt and reveal the hole; then we place the stone into it. At that moment, the portal activates and shows the image of the familiar great barren desert. We travel through it and return to our own dimension.

When we complete the trip, we notice that our wisp friend is strangely quiet and less animated. It doesn't look well.

Seconds later, the stone shatters and the portal fades, and we lose the ability to return to that other dimension. "All of that for a cookie," we think. Then we head back to the mansion and lay the cookie near its front door.

Before we can even communicate to the imp that we brought it food, it opens the door and swipes the cookie. After it finishes eating the treat, it invites us inside and leaves the door open for us. We sigh loudly because we're not excited by the imp's ungratefulness or the lonely mansion's foreboding atmosphere. But we have to get our things back, so we have no choice but to head into the mansion and help the imp solve its problem.

And that's the big reveal: Del is the shadowy figure that caused the crash at the start of Uninvited! He was the one who accidentally created the cursed red ruby and caused the monsters to invade the mansion!

I'm left to wonder, though, how some of these events line up. I have many questions: How did the ruby get out of pit? How did the ceremonial pot got back on the table. Did the ghosts and the hellspawn rearrange some objects and lock some doors in the short time before the siblings entered into the mansion? Did one of them catch the ruby as it was falling and place it in the bedroom's bureau? Is the imp from Tarkus (in Shadowgate's world) the same one we met in Uninvited? And if so, how and when did it get into Crowley's mansion? Did it possess extra occult stones? And when did the disciple's mail arrive? Did the mailman put it there while we were wandering around the mansion? And how did Uninvited's hero not notice the bulkhead or try to open it?

I don't really want answers, though, because mysteries like these are, I feel, best left to the imagination.

Honestly, I don't know how I feel about Del being responsible for Uninvited's events. Technically it's not a retcon because the shadowy figure's identity is never revealed, but still it has a bit of that "series fan comes aboard and adds a fan-fiction element to the story" feel to it. But since two of the original creators are involved in the game's creation, and they're OK with with this twist, I don't have a big problem with it.

And that ends the game's first super-interesting chapter. Its events are contrived as hell, sure, but still it's very cool. It's the first really exciting part of the game. I just wish that it was possible to explore more of the mansion!