El Cetro del Sol

Alexander Nunez. 25 years. Since you were 11 you started to be interested in adventure. That passion has finally paid off, as a map of an ancient civilization that lived in the forests has come into your hands. According to this map, this civilization had a temple where it hid great wealth. But it also says that there was a king who had a scepter with which he was able to do unlikely things, such as giving his warriors immunity, or communicating with spirits. He also says that the temple is filled with countless traps. Will you be able to leave the comfort of civilization and venture into the jungles of Central America in search of that scepter?

• Screenplay and graphics: TONI PERA
• Thanks: to PEDRO FERNÁNDEZ and ROBERTO CARLOS FERNÁNDEZ GERHARD for testing, to PCWWIKI (HABI SOFT, ROBCFG AND JEVICAC) for the spectacular cover, to TIM GILBERTS for creating the DAAD, and to ANDRÉS SAMUDIO/AVENTURAS AD for the wonderful work they did with it and for allowing us to use it.
• Adventure Style: PUZZLEFEST. Problem solving prevails over narrative and/or simulation. During testing, special emphasis was placed on adjusting the level of difficulty of the puzzles without changing the type of adventure as conceived by the author.
• Difficulty level: HIGH. Don't get frustrated if it doesn't come out the first time. It is designed to take your time.
• Cruelty scale: HIGH (see cruelty scale in the IFWIKI). As the old adage of Sierra adventures went “Save often, save soon…”, and don't get frustrated if you fail (or die!) frequently. The game is designed so that the fun is in gradually learning how to avoid it.

• Basic Tips

• Conversational adventures are usually games based on EXPLORATION and on the USE or MANIPULATION of objects that are within the immediate reach of the protagonist.
• For the EXPLORATION the player is oriented by cardinal points. The commands GO NORTH, GO SOUTH, or simply the abbreviations N, S, E, W will move in that direction. Occasionally UP, DOWN, ENTER or EXIT will also work.
• The command LOOK (or its abbreviation M) redescribes the location present, while EXAMINE “object” or its abbreviation EX, serve to give a description of that particular object.
• For the USE or MANIPULATION of objects, simple commands of the form “VERB + OBJECT” are used: TAKE “object”, LEAVE “object”, EX “object” (as we saw before), etc…
• The INVENTORY command, or its abbreviation I, gives a list of the objects you are carrying.
• If you meet another character, you can try to talk to him with the SAY command. It works by typing SAY and then putting whatever you want to say in quotes. Ex: TELL CHARACTER “HELLO”
• With SAVE and LOAD you can save and load the game to tape (real or emulated). RAMSAVE and RAMLOAD will do the same thing in the computer's RAM memory, although each time you do RAMSAVE you will delete the game that you had saved in RAM before.
• As a good game created with the DAAD, El Cetro del Sol admits chained commands, the use of “TODO” in the actions TAKE and LEAVE and the verbs ending in LA/LO. Sentences like “TAKE EVERYTHING, LEAVE THE BOX AND OPEN IT” would be valid.
• Knowing this you can start to get by with ease and advance a few screens. As soon as you practice, you will learn for yourself other verbs that can also work, actions that involve several objects such as “USE OBJECT with another OBJECT”, etc…
• … but if you still feel lost or stuck, feel free to ask for help in the usual retrocomputing forums or contact us through Zona FI's twitter. Perhaps you have discovered a bug, in which case we are the first interested in knowing about it (and you will have our eternal thanks)

• El Cetro del Sol (Compressed .DSK file in ZIP format)

• Web Zonafi authors of the game