Pyramid of Doom: Finished!

I’ve stored 13 treasures. On a scale from 0 to 100 that rates a 100. Well done.

So for the 13th treasure, I checked in a few of Voltgloss’s hints he provided on my last post. I had a hunch I was stuck on something not worth banging my head over.

I was not wrong.

…

Ok, what is it with early adventure games and goofy giant oysters? There was the one in Crowther and Woods Adventure that could be pried open with a trident (and only a trident), the one in Adventure 500 you just had to drop near water, and the one that waged mortal combat in Spelunker.

With this game, early on you find some “dried camel jerky”. There are some nearby starving rats who will gratefully eat it, and subsequently not attack you. I assumed that was that.

However, oysters like dried camel jerky … too?

WHAT SHALL I DO? FEED OYSTER
Oyster makes a slobbering noise
Visible items: Small Nomad, Pistol, Archway, Giant Oyster, * BLACK PEARL *

I can’t adequately express my state of mind about this puzzle so let me throw around some question marks: ? ???? ?? ?? ? ? ?? ? ? ???? ????

I mean (?), I guess a super-huge oyster (????) might eat something other than plankton (??), so this sort of (??????) makes sense (??).

No, no it doesn’t. But at least it was the last puzzle!

Progress update: I am shifting Warp, which I previously dated as 1979, up to 1980. I was always a bit tentative about it (I discuss the issue in my first post) because while the coding technically started in 1979 nobody outside the authors touched it until 1980. I also shelve HAUNT by John Laird (which has a copyright date span starting at 1979, but wasn’t really in a recognizable form until 1980) in that camp.

This leaves me with either 5 or 6 games to go to be entirely done with the 1970s:

1977

a3 by Peter Langston

1978

Library by Nat Howard
Tut by Peter Langston (this a binary arithmetic tutorial in the Wander system and may not be worth a post)

1979

Enchanted Island by Greg Hassett
Adventure 550 by David Platt
Adventure 501 by David Long

I might loop back and snag a few “supplemental games” which aren’t exactly adventures (like a full post on Hunt the Wumpus, and an obscure related game from the same year called Caves) but probably not until I’ve already started 1980.