The Ice Cave
| The Ice Cave | |
|---|---|
| ◄Eamon adventure #264► | |
 | |
| Author | Jon Walker |
| Released | January 1987 |
| EAG number | PC1 |
| EDX number | 23-01 |
| EDX set | The Lost Treasures of Eamon |
| Native format | MS-DOS |
| File | Eamon 264 - The Ice Cave.zip |
The Ice Cave is an Eamon adventure written by Jon Walker in 1985 for PC.
Background
The Ice Cave is the first original adventure for Eamon 2.0, Jon Walker's MS-DOS Eamon port, and was written by Walker himself. When PC-SIG took over distribution of Walker's Eamon, The Ice Cave was one of the four disks supported by the company, along with The Beginners Cave, The Quest for Trezore, and Assault on the Clone Master. The actual game appears half-finished, with puzzles and locked doors suggested by room descriptions absent from the game itself.
The Ice Cave, like The Lair of the Minotaur, is one of the few Eamon adventures to take into account the sex of the player, with the sex of the player's significant other determined by that of the player.
Premise
The adventurer returns to his or her home in the forest in which the adventurer has been living with his or her partner—either "Lovely Lil" or "Gorgeous George," depending the character's sex—to find the house locked and the significant other abducted by the adventure's antagonist, Broomhandle the Witch, described as the player's "old enemy."
A message is scrawled in the dirt reading "Ice Cave." With this clue, the adventurer is expected to head north to the ice caves of Eamon to rescue the abducted love interest.
Walkthrough
You begin the adventure just south of your cabin in the forest.
- The most substantial challenge you have is getting into your own locked house. The keys can be found by going straight south through the forest, to the meadow, and checking beneath a rock in the field.
- As you return north, feel free to explore the forest and meet a less than overwhelming monster and companion, then unlock your unremarkable cabin door and head straight through.
- Defeat your supposed life long enemy, Broomhandle the witch (again not a difficult battle), then continue north and east along the path to the Ice Cave itself.
- If you're playing the original PC version you can walk past the huge iron gate, while in the Eamon Deluxe conversion it lies in ruins; either way it presents no barrier, so you are free to continue on straight into the caves, defeating a bear along the way.
- When you exit the cave and come to a tree with a yellow ribbon, climb up the tree to find your significant other and finish this short adventure. Pulling the ribbon (the only use of that special command) will cause George/Lil to fall from the tree and die, your adventure to fail, and a prompt to appear asking you to either restart or quit.
Reviews
In the Eamon Deluxe Newsletter the adventure gets a rating of 3 out of 10 with a difficulty of 1 out of 10. Frank Black's review is largely negative, owing to its simplicity and apparently unfinished nature. The review suggests that despite the fact that the adventure is "worth checking out at least once for the sake of nostalgia," the original version (rather than the Eamon Deluxe revision) deserved an even lower score.
Location
The forest in which the adventurer lives lies immediately east of the Main Hall, likely placing the eponymous Ice Cave somewhere to the northeast of the hall.
Trivia
- The Ice Cave reintroduces the character of Lil from The Lair of the Minotaur, though she appeared in that adventure as "Larcenous Lil."
- The Ice Cave is rebranded as The Ice Cave Deluxe in its release in the Eamon Deluxe set The Lost Treasures of Eamon.
External links
- Eamon Adventurer's Guild Library Master List
- The Interactive Fiction Database: The Ice Cave
- Interactive Fiction Reviews: The Ice Cave
- Zip file containing the MS-DOS files