Discussion:
Snowball (Level 9) Question (spoilers)
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Marcus Harvey
2016-07-02 22:34:42 UTC
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I'm once again re-playing Level 9's Snowball and I have a question that's really bothering me.

There's a section in the game with a bunch of rooms that are obviously holograms and I remembered there was a way to dismiss them with a wand. I couldn't find the wand for the life of me and getting impatient I decided to consult the official clue sheet now at http://ifarchive.jmac.org/if-archive/level9/hints/clue-sheets/Snowball.clues.

Here's the relevant clue sheet entries:

57. Holo-wand: where it is (243), details (273)

243. On the Silver Tray.

But this is not correct. The electro-flute is on the silver tray (dropped by a robot that you release earlier). Indeed looking at the clue sheet again we see:

43. Flute: where it is (243), details (312).

As you can see, 243 is the answer given for both the wand and the flute!

Despairing I turned to the (bare bones) walkthrough available at http://solutionarchive.com/file/id,702/ and other places. Here's what it says (I added room names):

DOWN (the Forest Glade is really a hologram!!)
E (grey room, lit by flickering candles)
E (solid black room filled with a glaring white light)
IN
TAKE WAND

Bather's the thing. There is NO "IN" direction given in the room description, which reads:

You are in a solid black room filled with a glaring white light. Despite the intensity of
the illumination, you know it does not show everything clearly. Yet increasing the
brightness would only dazzle. The only visible exit is west.

So my question is. How am I supposed to know to go IN (or DOWN also works) in that room to find the wand? Is there some way to suppress the glare? The dark glasses don't work for sure.

Anyone know?
namekuseijin
2017-09-11 17:27:12 UTC
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Post by Marcus Harvey
Anyone know?
you're being serious in your assumption that there is any other human being out there playing a huge text maze from the 80s right now?
k***@yahoo.com
2017-09-11 20:10:29 UTC
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namekuseijin
2017-09-12 16:56:26 UTC
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Post by k***@yahoo.com
Post by Marcus Harvey
Anyone know?
you're being serious in your assumption that there is any other human being > out there playing a huge text maze from the 80s right now?
Well, I for one am still stuck in "a maze of twisty little passages, all alike".
Yuppers, just me and the PDP. Well, and one hell of an electric bill...
Just kidding. Sorry, never played that one (or any from Level 9?). Loved the ones from "Legend Entertainment" (I'm a big fan of both Steve Meretzky and Pohl), and a lot of the newer games are quite good, and obviously Infocom.
Infocom was entirely another level next to the usual fare for the age. Even Zork is almost like a Shakespeare play next to the likes of Scott Adams and, yes, the huge mazes of Level-9. That's what they really are: a huge maze in text with very little plot of fun to keep going. Nice time waster back then, no fun at all today besides perhaps as a historical curiosity of weird hobbies back then...
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