The Queen's Footsteps
A version in the Italian language is available as I passi della regina.
Today is August 27th, 1904. Nine months ago, you, Emilia Vittorini, joined the Italian Archeological Expedition in Egypt led by Ernesto Schiaparelli, the director of the Egyptian Museum of Turin. You are now back in Genoa, Italy: your steam ferry arrived three days ago with 25 wooden boxes containing Queen Nefertari Meritmut's grave goods, a real treasure! They left Genoa by train, heading towards Turin, yesterday evening. While they were in transit, you were invited to a sumptuous reception organised by a wealthy art lover, Eugenio Collovati, count of Raligotto, but it would be hard to say that you appreciated the evening.
But the reception was yesterday: now, you must catch the train to Turin and check that the treasure arrived safely. I will be your eyes and ears. Good luck.
SYSTEMS
C64, VIC20+32K, C128, Plus/4, PET models with at least 32K of RAM, Amiga, CPC 664 or CPC6128, MSX, ZX Spectrum 48K, MS-DOS, Macintosh 68k, CP/M, Olivetti M20, RC2014, Commander X16, Atari 800, Apple II, Atari ST.
INSTRUCTIONS
The Queen's Footsteps is a text adventure game that you can play on your vintage computers. A text adventure is a game where all the interaction takes places with textand you instruct your alter ego by typing command at a prompt. The rest is done by your fantasy!
Here are some important commands:
look: describe again the location where the player is present
examine object: describe the specified object
north or n or go to north: moves to the north, if possible. Other directions are s, e, w, up, down.
The command bye allows to exit from the game and restart well... it restarts it. You can take objects that you "notice" and you can have a list of carried objects with inventory.
The following abbreviations are available:
- l for look
- x or ex for examine
- i or inve or inven for inventory
The game is divided in four parts. When you complete one of them, you will get a code that allows to immediately jump to the beginning of the next part. Write down that to resume the game in the future. Passwords are important, write them down!
On some platforms, you can save and load the game (use save and load).
You can freely download a digital version of the game with no restrictions. A physical distribution of The Queen's Footsteps can be pre-ordered on the poly.play webstore: https://www.polyplay.xyz/navi.php?qs=footsteps
HINTS
Draw a map! Examine every object mentioned in the description, it may reveal other details of the story or contribute to the general atmosphere. Think outside the box: to open a locked door you don't always need a key! In general, while playing the game, do not adopt "use" to perform an action, try to be more specific: "pour water on fire" may be better than "use water with fire".
SOURCE CODE
The whole source code of The Queen's Footsteps is available on GitHub: https://github.com/DarwinNE/The-Queen-s-Footsteps/
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- The Queen's Footsteps is Open SourceJan 29, 2024
- The Queen's Footsteps playable on the web!Aug 30, 2023
- Cambridge Z88 portJun 06, 2021
- The Queen's Footsteps for the Atari STFeb 25, 2021
- New platform: Apple ][Dec 19, 2020
- New platform: Atari 800Dec 16, 2020
- All platform files updated to rev. 1.1.1Dec 12, 2020
- Updated C64, C128 and CP/M versions to rev. 1.1.1Dec 09, 2020
Comments
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How are parts 2 and 3 loaded in the MSX version of a single CAS? Is it normal that when you finish loading part 1 the cassette does not stop?
Hello!
In theory, the version of the game in a single .cas file should contain the loader and the three parts. If the cassette does not stop automatically when part1 is fully loaded, try stopping it manually. If you try to load from there, part2 should be loaded. If you are using an emulator though, it is probably much more convenient to use the distribution with the three .cas files separated.
Let me know,
D.
Bought the physical C64 version, and I just started playing it with my wife (It's her first text adventure). She's enjoying it a lot, which says a great deal as she's not a video game person unless it's Columns or PuyoPuyo. Currently at the part where we got the reply telegram, and have some stamped paper. Really good map, very logical.
Does the save system save to the disc, or do I need a separate disc to save on?
Hello,
I'm glad you and your wife both appreciate the game!
When I played to similar games, I used a second disk I swap when I want to save. However, there is some space left in the game disk, if you want to use it for the saves, you can do it.
Cheers,
D.
Wow, that nostalgia!
:-)
Played and finished this game on my Amiga 1200. I really enjoyed it to the max, the dark story behind the Queen's Sandals (although similar seen on the movies, ex. The Ninth Gate), was very well executed and kept my interest till acquiring the Sandals and escaped from the library's window.
The descriptions are very good, and the possibility to examine thoroughly the scenery and the background to reveal objects or secret entrances/passages in order to progress further in the story is a big bonus. Therefore, you cannot finish this adventure with only the objects listed in the "You Notice:" section under the description.
Another bonus are the various verbs you have to use in order to complete the game, and not just type USE for every action you want to do, which in my opinion is how text adventures must work. Although I was expecting more verbs, or at least synonyms of the verbs currently in use. There were many times that I was scratching my head which verb to use in order to perform an action, regardless if my thinking was right at the end.
The puzzles were nice, not hard but logical, which is what it matters the most in text adventures. Especially I liked the Fibonacci sequence puzzle (although I was expecting it much harder).
Also, I don't understand why PUT is similar to DROP, which I've seen in quite a few adventures. In my opinion this is wrong or misleading of the verb. For example:
SPOILER ALERT
In the sewers, after you acquire the wooden stick, you have to put some grease on it in order to make a small torch to put away the rats. My first thought was to PUT GREASE ON WOODEN STICK or PUT WOODEN STICK IN GREASE, but nothing worked. All the program wanted is to type GET GREASE!
END SPOILER ALERT
Another point which I found it very confusing, the verbs LOOK and EXAMINE are identical in adventures, but when you try to LOOK an object, you just get the room description! There were some other similar occasions of course, but I think the point was taken.
I found some bugs here and there. One obvious bug is at the first part, when you take the Headed Letter with Stamp from the officer, you cannot examine it nor drop it etc, till you find the blue ink and write the phoney order.
Also, on the third part, in the Nightmare Room, if you try to go WEST, you will face some rats blocking your path. The description says: "You will not set foot in there unless you...", which "unless you" is typed twice.
To sum up, as I said in the beginning, I enjoyed the adventure to the max. I have already started Two Days To The Race as I'm expecting the same enjoyment as the aforementioned adventure.
Already following you Davide, for more similar text adventures in the future, please keep up the good work you do there.
Thank you very much for your review, Samurai!
I'm glad you enjoyed the game, I hope you will appreciate Two Days to the Race as well (you will notice it is a shorter game).
I wrote a page about the background of the game you may appreciate: http://davbucci.chez-alice.fr/index.php?argument=varie/queen/background.inc&lang... You find my email on the website, don't hesitate to send me a message with the final password, I will add you to the hall of fame on my blog.
Concerning the verbs, I was recently myself too thinking that having PUT and DROP as synonyms does not always fit very well to the game. I will take into account that for my future adventures. Concerning EXAMINE and LOOK, I'll think about it.
I apologize for the occasional "hunt the verb" situations. I think you have already played version 1.1 of the game. I improved it thanks to the feedback I got by many players (and the Amiga Future review as well). There is always margin for improvement and it is very useful to have more feedback.
Thank you and I hope you will enjoy Two Days to the Race as well!
D.
Thanks for the link, was an interesting historical link. I've already sent my comprehensive e-mail to you (maybe you should check your spam folder).
I haven't received anything. Sometimes, emails are deleted directly by my provider, especially if they contain attachments, sorry for the inconvenience. Try to write again a short email, I'll send you another address where anti-spam is less aggressive.
I have re-sent it again, if you didn't receive anything, please send me another email address.
Still nothing. Did you remove the AVOIDSPAM part in the message? If yes, replace what follows the "at" with a well known email provider from the big G :-)
Will this game work on the new "theC64" maxi?
Hi,
I haven't tested it, but given that TheC64 emulates a real C64, there are no reasons why it should not work. By the way, testing on the VICE emulators is part of the normal development flow of my games.
If you are in doubt, you can download for free the digital version of the game and try it.
Cheers,
D.
Thanks for the quick reply! I'll try it out. I just realised that even if I can't get it to work on "theC64", I can probably use the "Commander X16" emulator and still play it. I'll go ahead and download. This game looks exciting.
Thanks!
Indeed, that's one possibility. If you want, you can download the amazing VICE emulator for the C64 (but also the VIC20 and C128) and use it to play to TQF. I personally like the C128 version because of the 80 columns.
Cheers,
D.
Awesome. I'll have to download that as well. It's so amazing that this game is supported on so many platforms, so that there is always at least some option out there.
Hello,
I use OpenMSX, too (version 0.15.0). If you prefer to use the rom files (in the "rom" directory of the archive), you just have to select "Load ROM... (slot A)" in the emulator, then select one of the three files (for example "MSXqueens1.rom") and then "Autodetect (guess)" for the choice of the mapper type. The game should start automatically.
The address 0x4000 is the starting address of the ROM to be mapped in the emulator. If you select "Plain rom starting at 0x4000" in the mapper type, the game works, too. However, the emulator seems to guess correctly the address with the simple "Autodetect".
Hope it helps,
D.
Thanks Davide. I wasn't able to get to work so i have run it on my c64 and its going well. I like the look of the font in that version.
Just wanted to come back and say i really enjoyed this. I found the commands needed to be tough to guess. I was correct in what to do but I wasn't typing it the right way. More generic commands such as "use X" didn't seem to work as much as i thought they would. Great story.
Thank you for your kind comment!
If it can help future players who will read the comments, in general, I would advice to avoid to adopt "use" altogether in the game, to prefer more specific actions. One can complete the game using verbs such as take, tie, jump, talk, wear, read, examine, throw, put, give, drive, try, break, pour, turn, touch, plus the common directions, etc...
Sometimes, "use" is recognized as a synonym of a more specific action, sometimes it doesn't.
Cheers,
D.
P.S. if you finished the game, write me privately (there is an email on my blog) with the final password, I'll add your name to the hall of fame on my blog.
By the way, I would like to add that someone has put together an online MSX emulator where the game can be played:
https://homebrew.file-hunter.com/index.php?id=queensfootsteps
Cheers,
D.
i'm having an issue getting the rom to run in openmsx. What does it mean in the instructions "to be loaded from address 0x4000"?