The other week I was contacted by a fellow digital antiquarian re an erratum in the “Adventure Family Tree” (managed by Nathanael Culver and hosted by Mike Arnautov). That page had listed under “No known download”:

BROO_XXX: “Enhanced” version of WOOD0350, with “added locations, text added, puzzles reworked,” by Nigel Brooks. […] This version was later renamed “A Serf’s Tale, A Retelling of the Original Adventure”.

In fact, wrote our correspondent, A Serf’s Tale is very much alive and well; the ZX Spectrum tape image survives, and is playable in any Spectrum emulator, such as in JSSpeccy on spectrumcomputing.co.uk. Ctrl+F “speccy” on that page, or (modulo link-rot) click here, to play A Serf’s Tale online.

So I spent a few days trying to beat A Serf’s Tale — and eventually succeeded, with the help of several vintage walkthroughs and hint files. Spoilers galore below the break.

A Serf’s Tale was written by Nigel Brooks and Said Hassan, publishing under the name “Smart Egg Software” (although some in-game messages still refer to their old name, “Adventure Software”). AST is basically WOOD0350, but with a few very interesting additions — and two very annoying ones!

The back of the game box explains the game’s title, as well as filling in some backstory that I’d normally expect to get from the in-game help text.

You’re a lowly farmhand who unearths the mildewy journal of a past adventurer. Tempted by visions of wealth and fame, you set out across the Empire into the wilderness! […]

You set out on your quest and travel for many uneventful weeks before arriving at a lonely Waystation upon the dusty road. This marks the boundary of the wilderness. Here, you reprovision yourself using the last of your coins, staying one night to chat with the friendly landlord, and then press on across the moor. It is possible that you were overheard while discussing your map, for two rough-looking characters leave shortly after you, tracking you to a lonely spot where they rob you of everything…

This backstory leads us to AST’s first annoying change versus Adventure:

The unskippable cutscenes

You are standing in a clearing beside a small brick building,
surrounded by trees. A dusty road leads north. Between the
trees the hazy sunlight captures swirling motes of dust and
busying insects in its rays. A little stream flows out of the
building and south down a gully.

What now? IN

Try a compass direction.

What now? E

You are inside the well house. Cool, clear spring-water rises
from a rocky trough in the floor and flows through an opening at
the base of the south wall.

A rectangle of light stretches from the doorway, illuminating
some steps set against the far wall beneath a trapdoor to the
ceiling.

What now? INVENTORY

You are carrying:-
a pair of leather breeches (worn)
a leather jerkin (worn)

What’s this? No lamp or keys! To gain access to the cave, you have to visit two very out-of-the-way places: the southeast and northwest corners of the map. This is not clued anywhere that I’m aware of; there’s no logical “puzzle” to solve here; with no possessions you simply have no way to get past the locked grate, and the solution is to map the entire above-ground area (including a Witt’s End–style marsh that kills you after a certain number of turns, and at least two distinct rooms with identical descriptions) until by going N, E, E, E, SE, SE, SE you find yourself dropped into a cutscene:

What now? SE

You cross a little gully, climb a hillside and find yourself in
a vast, park-like area of the forest, filled with great,
thick-stemmed, majestic trees.
[more]
Then suddenly, you hear angry shouts, and the sounds of sword-
fighting. There is an agonized cry, and then... silence.

You creep slowly forward. Between the trees you find a
man, dead, run through, his shirt bloody!
[more]
Clutched in his hand is a part of your map... he was one of
your assailants! You take the map, and in doing so disturb the
body. Hidden beneath his arm are your keys. Stuffing these into a
pocket you start off through the trees, running until your heart
pounds and your legs are aching.
[more]
You are in a pleasant young wood beside a valley.

What now? INVENTORY

You are carrying:-
a pair of leather breeches (worn)
a leather jerkin (worn)

and in your pockets:-
a set of keys
a torn corner of a map

This demonstrates another interesting feature of Serf’s Tale: your inventory is divided into your “hands” and your “pockets.” Items in your pockets can’t be used, although that’s not always obvious:

What now? READ MAP

You can see:
a torn corner of a map

What now? RETRIEVE MAP

OK.

What now? READ MAP

From the remaining scrap you can just trace the route north-west
over the moor to the Waystation.

The northwest corner of the aboveground map is normally an invisible wall:

Interminable, granite-flecked moorland rolls unbroken to the
farthest horizon.

What now? NW

The land around you seems bleaker and wilder as you trek
across huge slopes dotted with giant boulders.
[more]
After a while you discover that you have wandered in a great
circle and are back at the roadside.

But if we’ve read the map (and are still holding it), then we can successfully pass through that wall:

Guided by the map, you find your way across the moor and back to
the Waystation.

The Patron greets you and listens with sympathy to your
story. As you are determined to continue upon your quest, he
gathers up some things and accompanies you back to the
roadside.

Finally, as he turns to part, he says ‘These may be of some use
to you. Farewell!’

You can see:
a shiny brass lamp
some sandwiches
a leather flask

What now? GET ALL

Your hands are full.

That message doesn’t mean “You failed to get something”; it’s just observing that you have now reached your limit, as far as non-pocketed items go. That limit is 4. On the other hand, your pants pockets can hold perhaps an unlimited number of items — certainly at least 11 — but only those that are small: keys, map, coin, (dwarvish) axe and magazines, pyramid, jewelry, diamond, emerald, and spices.

Anyway, now that we have the keys and lamp, we can finally enter the cave.

The discs

As you might have guessed, AST doesn’t permit you to use the magic words XYZZY or PLUGH to skip the introduction. But eventually we find the reason for that: AST’s magic words have a material component!

You are in a room filled with debris washed from the surface.
A sediment of mud and rotting vegetation has filled the lower
part of the cave making it possible to scramble up to an
awkward canyon leading west.

Scratched high on one wall are the mystic runes ‘XYZZY’.

You can see:
a black rod

Your presence triggers some hidden mechanism and the ground
seems to dissolve and reform before your eyes until...
[more]
You can see:
a large silvery disc set into the ground

What now? XYZZY

A column of light blazes from the disc momentarily.

What now? STAND ON DISC

OK.

What now? XYZZY

In the blink of an eye...

You are inside the well house. Cool, clear spring-water rises
from a rocky trough in the floor and flows through an opening
at the base of the south wall.

A rectangle of light stretches from the doorway, illuminating
some steps set against the far wall beneath a trapdoor to the
ceiling.
[more]
You step off the disc.

(STAND ON HEAD serves just as well as STAND ON DISC; AST’s two-word, four-letter parser doesn’t care.)

There’s a silvery disc set into the ground in the debris room, and (now) an identical silvery disc set into the ground in the well house. You can stand on either disc and say XYZZY to warp to the other one.

And in the Y2 room, likewise… but this disc isn’t set into the ground!

You can see:
a large silvery disc

A hollow voice intones ‘Plugh’.

What now? GET DISC

OK.

This disc (which reminds me of the “portable hole” in The Multi-Dimensional Thief, although that’s totally different, really) works like one-half of a portal gun: you can tote it around, drop it anywhere, stand on it, and warp straight to the well house using the magic word PLUGH. Er…

The voice says ‘I lied. The real word is...

    ‘GLUPH’

A column of light blazes from the disc momentarily.

This helpfully balances out your reduced inventory, because you don’t have to tote treasures all the way back to Y2 — you can bring the magic to them. There are only a few places where the disc isn’t allowed: the west pit, the troll bridge, and Witt’s End. If you try to take it through one of those rooms, it’ll tingle in your hands and poof! vanish, to be found in the room you just left.

Modified puzzles

Speaking of places you can’t take the disc, you might expect that taking the disc to the plover room (via PLOVER) would let you GLUPH the emerald out. In fact you’re correct — but only because AST vitiates the plover puzzle entirely! Using PLOVER doesn’t vanish the emerald at all, in this game; so you don’t ever need to take the tight squeeze.

The troll complex is also a bit nerfed: specifically, the bear is gone — nicked the troll’s lunch and escaped! — so you merely need to throw your sandwiches to the troll. The bearless chain is easy to unlock, and when you return to the bridge with it, the troll races off to find the escaped bear. (Or pay in spices, if you didn’t remember your keys; but I don’t think there are any food items in the game besides those two, so a third crossing would be impossible.)

Most adventurers probably don’t notice, but Don Woods’ dragon is a technical tour de force. You can reach the dragon’s secret canyon from either direction; behind the scenes there are really two different locations — “dragon seen from the north” and “dragon seen from the east” — and a little bit of code to teleport all the items from one to the other. When the dragon dies, the items and player are teleported again to a third location — “canyon without dragon.” A Serf’s Tale eliminates the need for all this machinery by moving the dragon around the bend, to the bottleneck between slab room and mirror canyon, which can be approached only from the south.

Adventure’s “several diamonds” have become a “large diamond” and moved one step westward; the Ming vase is now a “delicate porcelain figurine” with the same fragile qualities. The rare coins have disappeared entirely. Instead, there is a non-treasure coin buried in the straw in the well house’s attic; that’s the coin you’ll need in order to recharge your lamp.

It is a fully sealed dwarvish mining lamp. A stamp on the side
reads ‘Made in Moria’.

New puzzles

Like PLAT0550, AST does something interesting with the reservoir.

You are at the edge of a large underground reservoir. An opaque
cloud of white mist hangs above the water. The lake is fed by a
stream which gushes from a hole in the wall about ten feet
overhead, splashing noisily somewhere in the mist.

What now? SWIM

Try a compass direction.

What now? N

You are standing waist-high in the chilly waters of a large
underground reservoir.

Something glimmers under the water.

What now? N

You swim out to the middle of the reservoir. There is a
strange patch of light below you so, taking a deep breath, you
dive down to investigate...

You are swimming above a submerged passage that glows
with an eerie light.

What now? D

An eerie phosphorous light fills the submerged passage, emanating
from millions of tiny marine creatures that line the way as
you swim through.
[more]
You are in a secret, half-submerged grotto. Stalactites
hang across the room, meeting stalagmites in several places to
form huge pillars. A stone door is set into the west wall.

You can see:
a golden conch

The door is a one-way passage to the oyster cul-de-sac — beautifully fitting! I think this area is by far the most successful and enjoyable of AST’s additions to the game. (I was disappointed only that I couldn’t BLOW CONCH.)

The other new puzzle is by far the worst addition, in game-design terms. The game is bookended by terrible unclued puzzles: at the beginning the cutscenes, and at the end this “scarab complex.”

Step 1: Go get all 15 of the treasures mentioned thus far, and put them in the well house.

Step 2: Go to Y2, then E to WOOD0350’s “jumble of rock” — but notice that in this game it’s a “jumble of soft earth and loose rock.” So we can DIG, then go DOWN:

You are at the end of a long winding earthen tunnel that
stretches away to the west. The roof is supported in places by
wooden props.

A little further on:

A smell of decaying timber fills the tunnel which looks as if it
could collapse at any moment.

Press on from here and the tunnel will collapse:

The walls begin to crumble and loose rocks shower down upon you.

Great clumps of earth follow, piling around you. The timbers
groan and buckle and finally the roof collapses, burying you
alive!

Instead, you have to find some way to prop up the tunnel. Now, the second time you crossed the troll bridge, a piece of timber fell off into the chasm below. Suppose, before crossing, you type GET TIMBER. That item isn’t listed in the room description, but it works! Take that “six-foot timber prop” back to the sketchy tunnel and PLACE TIMBER (or PLACE PROP, or PROP ROOF — but it’s a bit guess-the-verb-y no matter what), and then you can continue northwest:

You are in an ancient vaulted chamber. Massive cobwebs are
strung across the ceiling; dust lies upon every surface. In the
centre of the room a three foot pedestal rises from a square
stone plinth.

You can see:
a large silver scarab placed upon the pedestal

What now? EXAMINE PEDESTAL

You see nothing special.

What now? GET SCARAB

As you take it the pedestal creaks and starts to slide down
into the ground!

You now have exactly one turn to stop the trap, or else the tunnel will, again, collapse. One thing you can do to survive is just put it back:

What now? PLACE SCARAB

OK.

(What an anticlimactic message!) From this, an astute adventurer might make a connection to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)’s iconic opening scene and deduce that what we’re supposed to do here is replace the scarab with something else of approximately the same weight. Now, this pedestal is (A) already moving, and (B) sinking, so it might seem both late and counterproductive to add any weight to it at all. But let’s try it anyway.

What now? PLACE FLASK

What?

There is a loud click as the pedestal vanishes...
The walls begin to crumble and loose rocks shower down upon you.
[...]

This unhelpful message (followed by instant death) ought to indicate that we’re on the wrong track. But in fact this is the intended solution — we just need to randomly guess the item that weighs the same as a “large silver scarab.”

Adventure metagamers will have already guessed the answer: since the golden eggs weren’t used for the troll puzzle, they must be used here!

What now? PLACE EGGS

OK.

(Again, so anticlimactic!) Now we leave the tunnel, fee fie foe foo the eggs back to the Giant Room (presumably collapsing the tunnel when they vanish), and re-collect the eggs. Now we have 15 treasures in the well house, plus the scarab.

Step 3: READ SCARAB. Engraved on its belly are the letters * 5 MAGE DEN. This is the fifth part of a message sequence whose first four parts are found by reading the black rod, the magazines, an impassable door at Volcano View, and the plaque in the Dark Room. Put them together and they spell * N SW W SE MAGE DEN.

Step 4: Recall that you saw a big * on the floor in the room where the pirate keeps his treasure chest. Go back there and N, SW, W, SE (leaving you somewhere in the maze); then say MAGE DEN.

Step 5: …Did I mention you need to be carrying the scarab? If you deposited it safely in the well house with the other 15 treasures, nothing happens. If you’re still carrying it, though, then upon saying MAGE DEN, you receive the final cutscene:

From far away you hear a thin crackle, and a gong sounds.

A sepulchral voice says ‘The Cave Closing mechanism has been
activated. All employees to the Main Office... Will visitors
please leave by the nearest exit. Thankyou.’

As the last echoes fade the scarab's eyes glow red and there
is a blinding flash of light!

When your eyes refocus you see that a door has appeared in the
far wall, so you step through, hoping to find a way out...

Before you stands the Patron! ‘My friend!’ he says, ‘I am
truly the Wizard Eru Tnevda. At last, after generations of
waiting, someone has passed my test!’

Some dwarves enter. They are smiling and slapping each other
on the back. Then you see the troll. He twiddles his thumbs
and says bashfully ‘No hard feelings, huh?’ Behind him the
dragon nods in agreement.

‘Only you have the ingenuity’ the Wizard says, ‘to embark upon
a yet greater quest!’ and smiling, he beckons you to follow.

...But that's another story!

You then receive a final count of rooms visited and treasures deposited, and the game ends. (The treasure count seems off to me: I think it’s taking whatever count was displayed the last time you said SCORE and adding 1 to that. So if you never checked your score, it’ll just say “1”; or it can go as high as “17”.)

That’s an absolutely lousy guess-the-verb instant-death series of puzzles, followed by an awfully fiddly endgame. But after all, it was 1986, and it was Adventure.

A complete walkthrough for the game is here.

A final challenge?

Recall that A Serf’s Tale was authored by Nigel Brooks and Said Hassan. Enter either of their names (NIGEL or SAID), and the game responds with:

That was clever of you! Now take the timber prop to the room with
the pedestal.

The first several times I read this message, I thought it was supposed to be a hint to the scarab complex. But if so, it’s a terrible hint, because it’s impossible even to discover the pedestal room unless you’ve already solved the puzzle of propping the tunnel ceiling. It’s sort of an anti-hint.

But then I’ve begun to wonder… Was the message intended not as a hint but as a challenge to the player? It seems impossible to enter the pedestal room while still carrying the prop; but maybe a clever enough player can do it. (Back in 2019 I wrote about a clever way to bring the bear and oyster back to the well house in MCDO0551.)

If you come up with a way to take the timber prop to the room with the pedestal — please, let me know!

And remember, you can try out your solution here.