| The Treeton Towers Companion |
| The Definitive Guide to The Secret Of Treeton Towers. Origins of the game, behind the scenes, hints and tips, hidden secrets and stuff that never made it. DO NOT READ THIS if you haven't finished exploring the game yet, as full spoilers are included below and your enjoyment of the game will be soiled forever. |
| Origins Of The Game The Secret Of Treeton Towers originally started development way back in 1985 and took about 20 years to complete. Well, kind of..... I first decided to start writing a text adventure for the ZX Spectrum back in '85 using The Graphic Adventure Creator. I can't remember now what the game was going to be called, and only the first couple of screens were ever completed, but funnily enough, I do remember that the first puzzle you had to solve was how to get past BIG FAT GRAHAM, and the solution involved giving him food. That game quickly died a death when I decided to go out and play on my bike instead of wasting my valuable childhood on writing a poxy game, but it's fitting to see that the opening BIG FAT GRAHAM puzzle did eventually make it into the finished game, 20 years later. There were a couple of other projects that entered development hell in the interim. The Acid Bastards was an unusually-titled game for the Commodore 64 that I wrote in basic. Lots of people actually played this unfinished project from the early 90's which wasn't so much a text adventure as a multi-option game involving a bunch of idiots taking Acid for the first time. BIG FAT GRAHAM featured in that one too, as did Alex, although he wasn't an Evil Archaeologist yet. The Acid Bastards was actually about 50% finished but ended up on the scrapheap when I forgot how to write it and couldn't be bothered to re-learn it all. Then there was the ill-fated Curse Of The Pylon Master game from about 2001. I started writing this not long after launching The Pylon Cafe website, to tie in with the Pylon theme. Can't remember much about it now to be honest, I was getting either married or divorced at the time (probably both, simultaneously) so it got left on the backburner and eventually forgotten about. But now, here we are, twenty years after the first attempt, The Secret Of Treeton Towers is now finished. What an anti-climax. No, wait a minute, I'm not supposed to be saying things like that...... The Opening Screens The game was originally going to open with a lengthy 'theme tune', a haunting melody called Who Took The Item From The Midnight Room?, nicked from some German guy's abortive attempt at making a 3-D version of Jetset Willy. I decided though that some players may find the tune a bit long and annoying and switch the sound down for the rest of the game, in which case they'd miss out on the other sonic delights the game had to offer. So I settled on a simple opening sound clip of a door creaking and an evil laugh to set the 'horror' tone of the game and to indicate to players that they should keep their sound switched up. A couple of people have asked me why the player is asked at the beginning whether they are male or not and what difference it makes. The truth is......it doesn't make any difference at all. There was going to be something gender-specific and probably a bit rude within the game but I never got round to writing it and then forgot to take out the opening question. Sorry. As I'm sure you're all aware by now, in the opening sequence of the game you have to climb The Salter Tree, get the pie and give it to Graham the Gatekeeper, a puzzle stemming back 20 years ago on my first attempt to write an Adventure game on the ZX Spectrum. The Salter Tree was originally called The MegaTree, in homage to a screen from Jetset Willy. The homage is still there in a way because when you climb The Salter Tree, you reach Cuckoo's Nest, also named after a Jetset Willy screen and of course now the name of The Pigeon Loft Forum. Inside Treeton Towers The first port of call should of course be The Kitchens to get the pill out of the fridge. My bird Jaime features as the Head Chef. She was initially disappointed with this role, having envisaged herself as playing a sultry lady in The Master Bedroom. She later agreed that the Head Chef role was more fitting though, as she does make the best Chili in South Yorkshire (and that's not an opinion, that's a FACT). The Treeton Towers Bar originally had a lot more stuff going on. You could interact with a pissed-up Barman who was constantly drinking his own profits, and have a chat with a retired Pirate who used to sail with Captain Salter. I dropped all that stuff though as this room was already pretty 'busy' with Archer the Resident DJ and The Irishman and the barwenches and the Llama tied to a chair....... My mate Archer was another one who was 'unsure' about his role within the game (being given a pill in order to hand over his only friend, a tomato) but I'm sure he liked it really. The Irishman was originally going to be another mate of mine but I decided that I had to change it to a figure of hatred who you wouldn't mind wanting to deliberately poison, so an Irishman perfectly fitted the bill. The red-herring Llama tied to a chair appeared purely because I quite like Llamas. It was also supposed to return in the very last screen in the game but didn't quite make it. Some of you probably aren't aware that you can attempt to talk to the Barwenches if ya like...... So, just to clarify, for those Gays who haven't even made it past this section of the game, Jaime the Head Chef won't let you take the Can of Lager until you've given her a tomato, which you get off Archer after you've given him the pill. You then poison the Irishman with the Can in order to get the Policeman's helmet. Going Upstairs Before you can get to the Top Landing, you do of course have to give the helmet to the Policeman. By examining the Policeman first, you get a small clue as to how to reach The Secret Planet.... Off we pop then to The Master Bedroom. You can read Old Captain Salter's last Diary Entry by opening the drawer underneath the table. You can also find something under the bed if you have a look. The Velvet Revolver is in this room inside the Velvet Box, which you have to unlock with the Velvet Key inside the Toolbox in The Tool Shed. Why was everything velvet? No real reason, but I had just seen the utterly gay band Velvet Revolver 'perform' on Live 8..... You can't get into the Loft at this stage, it's too dark and frightening so it's straight off to The Bathroom. The Vibrator found in here was the very last object to be put in the whole game, as I felt the game needed another 'useless' object to make you stop and think about what you were carrying in your Rucksack. The only other carryable but useless object in the game was the Dead Squirrel right at the beginning. By flushing the toilet, you can go down the fire escape to The Courtyard...... The Courtyard Once we've reached The Courtyard, we can go down The Cellars and meet Smales the Architect and the little woolly Ginger sheep. My mate Smales would probably have loved it if he'd been a cigar-smoking hero who had saved the day with a noble self-sacrifice. So, with that in mind, I had his character helplessly chained to a wall, and whose only purpose was to eventually get out of the way to reveal a lever, before he ran off and got killed like an idiot. The doomed sheep was based on my mate Barber who is also doomed and ginger. By trying to talk to the sheep, it did try it's best to tell you it's name. You do of course have to shoot the sheep's head off with the Velvet Revolver in order to reveal the lever that will open the Courtyard Gates. It's no good going further down The Cellars just yet because you'll die at the hands of the Hounds Of Hell. There are only actually two ways of getting killed in the whole game, this one and by drinking the poisoned can of lager. I didn't want to litter the game up with pointless and frustrating death scenes where you'd have to start all over again. After all, it's just a bit of fun! (Crikey, you were even warned that you were going to die if you carried on further down The Cellars....how's that for being nice? Although I bet some of you thought I was bluffing and carried on anyway. Ha!) The Tool Shed is one of my favourite rooms, lovingly crafted into a Police Box. There's even an authentic 1960's TARDIS hum to accompany the room. If ever you were going to try and visit The Secret Planet, then surely you'd try and do it here, eh? You see, the Tool Shed is not really a Tool Shed, it's a real TARDIS! Hooray! There are a number of commands you can use to get the TARDIS moving, including 'Fly Tardis', 'Use Tardis', 'Dematerialise' and my own personal favourite 'Vworp Vworp' which is the noise used to describe the TARDIS taking off in the 1960's Doctor Who comic strips. The best thing about visiting The Secret Planet is that it's got a picture of a woman's fanny on it. Other than that, it's just a special 'hidden' room for the elite gameplayers. Originally, the game was going to have a scoring system, and you would only have been able to achieve the highest possible score by visiting The Secret Planet and completing the game. (Oh, and maybe shaking the hand in The Bathroom, too.) But the Scoring System was a bit gay, so I dropped that idea, but retained The Secret Planet anyway. Treeton Mine and Beyond I like The Graveyard bit with Captain Salter's grave in it which you eventually have to dig up once you've found a spade. The haunting music was lifted from the church scene in the classic Amiga game The Secret Of Monkey Island, one of several tributes scattered throughout the game. The Treeton Mine Maze holds many vital clues, including what to do when you're on the verge of completing the game, how to get to Treeton Island and even an advert for Darren Rea's Sci-Fi Online website. The maze is not nearly as big as you might think, try making a map of it and you'll see what I mean. I always wanted to include a small but devious maze, this one was inspired by The Maze Of Zagor, a legendary maze featured in the first ever Fighting Fantasy Gamebook The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain. Of course, the most important object in the Maze is the pair of glasses that glow in the dark, enabling you to see what's going on in The Loft. These glasses along with the Dog Collar later on, can cause a bit of a bug in the game, as spotted by Darren Rea. You shouldn't wear them at any stage, even though the game lets you, as they won't work if they're being worn. This was, erm, delibarate, as all the best games have small bugs in them and I am genuinely proud and delighted that The Secret Of Treeton Towers sits up there with the best of 'em. It doesn't really matter anyway, cos you can simply REMOVE any objects that are being worn and they will do what they're supposed to do again. Back into The Loft then, and we finally meet the Evil Archaeologist Alex. There was originally going to be a dramatic fight to the death scene here with swords and everything, but I decided that was over-egging the pudding a little bit, and besides, I needed to keep Alex alive for any potential sequel, so I left him sobbing into his game of Risk whilst you nicked his spade and went to dig up the grave. The Final Lap Once you've got the harp from the Coffin, you can go to The Beach, play the harp and The Ferryman will appear to take you to the Mythical Treeton Island. The Ferryman is played by Zakabamzam, A.K.A Richard A Bennett, who had just completed his Web Journal for The Pigeon Loft whilst travelling in South America for 7 weeks. Richard was yet another one who wasn't thrilled by his role in the game (his exact response was "How come Archer gets to be the Resident DJ and I'm just the Ferryman?" We then arrive on Treeton Island to meet Captain Salter himself. I did toy with the idea of having Captain Salter actually dead, and appearing in Ghost form but then I preferred the idea of him faking his own death to avoid paying council tax. That was The Secret Of Treeton Towers, you see? You have to shake the Coconut Tree to get the Scotch Egg to give to Salter before he gives you The Dog Collar to get past the Hounds Of Hell in The Cellars (blimey, I'm even losing myself here.....) Then it's back to The Cellars for the final confrontation with The Hounds Of Hell. They originally were proper hardcore Hounds Of Hell and I had chosen pictures to depict them as sort of blood-thirsty and vicious versions of Scooby Doo. But then I decided that I liked the idea of them being harmless Golden Labradors who weren't really capable of killing anything. (Even Smales the Architect wasn't actually killed by The Hounds Of Hell, examine him when he's dead.) Then there's just the final act to perform to open the Treasure Chest. The answer to this is written on the wall in the Treeton Mine Maze and is another homage to Jetset Willy. The final screen was going to have the Llama return, dragging the chair behind him and talking at length about the sequel RETURN TO TREETON TOWERS. But then the last screen was already wordy enough, so I reduced the advert for the sequel to a sign around one of the Hound Of Hell's necks. So...will there really be a sequel? Well......I dunno. Maybe in another 20 years or so, I'm a busy man. |
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