At the Front Gate Time: 4:31 pm
You were celebrating the arrival of the not-quite-second-half of the 21st century with your buddies in your gaming basement when the bad news arrived: Crazy Uncle Scott had finally given up the good fight and passed off into gaming nirvana. He was an unusual man, with a firm belief that the world went to hell in a hand-basket with the arrival of text messages, always claiming that their phones were smarter than them! So he bought himself a huge mansion and spent his last days there pining for the glory days of yore, when websites were nothing more than acres of bright blue links thrown willy-nilly onto a computer screen.
Somehow, though, he took a shine to you, and you were smart enough to hide your smartphone whenever he came calling. Nevertheless, it was quite a surprise to learn that he left you exactly half his will. And even more of a surprise to discover that the lawyer's language was precise: not half his massive fortune in Geekgold, but literally half his will. Along with a short note explaining that to collect your full inheritance, you must retrieve the second half of Crazy Uncle Scott's will from his old estate, Alden Manor. The very name brings chills to your spine: that place is haunted!
But the true horror lay in the closing passage of the note:
An Interactive Geek Horror
Copyright 2014 by Dave Bernazzani, Dean Svendsen, Jonna Hind and Steven Robert
With input and playtesting from Dr. Paul Dale, Peter Moreau, Amy Hackley, Eetu Immonen, J. Cale, Leonie Caljouw, George Buss, Adam Duncan
Release 21 / Serial number 140115 / Inform v6.31 Library 6/11 S
(If this is your first time playing, be sure to type HELP)
And so it stands before you, a house that could have been cozy, if not for the peeling blue paint, the flying gargoyles encircling the roof, and the looming twelve-foot tall fence with 'WARNING: Electrified' painted in blood red letters. The yard on this side of the fence continues to the east and west. The main gate, dutifully keeping you out of Alden Manor proper, lies directly to the north. If you wish to give up on this grand adventure, there is a path leading south back to civilization.
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