It's a sad thing that your adventure ended Here. Let's Play... Shadowgate!

Take everything in every order imaginable, die a lot, swear, then repeat until you find out that you're supposed to leave everything on the ground.


A suggestion: As we never really see the death screen of Shadowgate, how about a quick screenshot of it, crop it down to only the grim reaper's face and edit your posts so that after each death the number of grim reaper faces increases. *g*

EDIT: Or would that cap the screenshot limit?

I like that idea, but we'd be looking at several posts per update of nothing but grinning Reapers.

This.

Kill yourself.

Well, deer like to walk into headlights, and those eyes look pretty similar, so I say go for it.

What if you looked at some website or other to find out just how many deaths there are, then made a grid where a little reaper could be put for every death incurred? I'm thinking of basically a really morbid stamp card here.

Now THAT is an endeaver worth looking into.

Make sure you light yourself on fire before you start walking. That should keep the thing(s) from eating you.

As per the agreement of the cacophony that is your psyche, you decide to meet and greet the owner of those eyes. Surely any creature who lives in a dark, fiery room who can only be seen by their sinister, glowing eyes is friendly.




Dragon flame engulfs your body. You pay with your curiosity with your life

The Dragon plainly doesn’t want to talk to you. You rewind time and decide to ignore him. Maybe you can assemble the skeletal remains into a new bony friend!



Shit, that didn’t work either.




This time you decide to look at the awesome armor and weapons strewn about the room. And in a rare moment of clarity, you make it a point to take the Shield first, preventing your death by incineration.

Good for you.

Afforded a brief respite from being instantly slaughtered by the Dragon, you take this chance to try to pry open that chest.



Nerts, it seems that the lock was welded shut by the numerous times the Dragon spewed flame over it. Oh well, at least there’s some more nice stuff in here you can take.


It’s getting hot, you don’t know how much longer you can stand it.

You laugh at the dragon’s repeated attempts to kill you, you’re safe form his attempted regicide so long as you have the Shield. You take the Spear, Hammer, Torch and the Helmet.


Not even your best friend could recognize your burning body

You probably should have left the Helmet behind. It probably wouldn’t have fit anyway.

Taking all the weapons you could reasonably carry from the Dragons Den, you retreat and run straight through the next three rooms, back into the Lake Room. Your momentum carries you nearly to the edge of the Shark Infested pool, where you trip. Your Crystal Sphere falls out of your pack and lands in the middle of the lake.




The Sphere manages to instantly freeze the lake completely solid, killing that stupid shark, and giving you an easy path across to the Key in the Skeletons hand.

You really want to take your Crystal Sphere back as well, but it’s frozen along with the lake. Clearly there’s only one proper course of action:






Not surprisingly, the lake quickly refreezes.

In a process that takes hours, but appears to be instantaneous due to the magic of Time-Lapse Photography, you use your torch to dethaw the lake allowing you to take the Sphere back. Somehow. Don’t think too hard on the logic of that. The important thing is that you got Crystal Sphere back without breaking the laws of thermodynamics.

You head back into the Mirror Room, since the Hammer you took from the Dragon looks to be heavy enough to break the mirrors, and finally get a sense of closure for your childhood trauma.





You WANT to break all three mirrors, but, since this is Castle Shadowgate, chances are that two of them will kill you immediately. Or all three of them will. Or none of them will if you use some arbitrary item.

Regardless, you wind up your Hammerin’ Arm, and with a mighty scream, you:

A) Shatter the Left Mirror
B) Break the Middle Mirror
C) Smash the Right Mirror
D) Drop the hammer on your foot

Death Count: 11

Oh like I don’t know what everyone isn’t going to pick.

Drop the hammer on your foot.

Then break all of the mirrors with the broom.

Then kill yourself.

The only reason I can think of to not break all three mirrors is if one of them is concealing a portal out into deep space and you will be sucked through and die a horrifying death in an endless vacuum of nothingness.

But that's just ridiculous. Break all three mirrors.

If I remember correctly it's the left mirror that leads to the cold emptiness of space...


Break the left mirror.

Oh! put on the ghost's robe and use the broom to give yourself FAB hair and use the Staff of +1 Burnt Mummy as a mic and prance around in front of the mirrors singing Ziggy Stardust and Believe.

Forget the FOOT, use HAMMER on FACE. Women love that rugged look.

After that, use HAMMER on MIDDLE MIRROR. You can't use it on the right because of that hole in the ground, and years of gaming has taught me that left is evil, so you don't really have a choice.

Use shield on self.

I like that the dragon room isn't recognizable as a puzzle until after you get killed, and as soon as you know what the puzzle is the solution is obvious.

It always scared the hell out of me as a kid because I never knew when the Shield was going to melt.

I'm glad that you adventurers were smart enough to only put the torch near the crystal globe when it was in the frozen lake, and not actually touch it. The last time I played through the game, I did that by accident, and the lights went out immediately. From there, I tripped and fell in the lake, breaking the ice and causing the globe to fall out of my backpack, freezing the water. Again. With me in it.

Ok, that last part didn't happen, but it should have.

I need to see this, sir. Please, have mercy.

Dang, you've been looking at these mirrors for a while.

A sudden thought grips you and you drop your Hammer on your foot. As you trip, you manage to somehow cave your chest in with it.



Anyway, your thought was that there was about a 100% chance that the Warlock Lord would have laid some sort of death trap behind any of those doors, so you had best be prepared. You Use the Shield on yourself as a precaution.



Of course, you consider this to be a silly, if not impossible prospect. Oh well, so much for cautious thinking. You immediately start bashing Mirrors.


Blood flows from your wounds and your body slumps to the floor.

“All right”, you think, as time resets itself, “Proper glass safety. That was a surprisingly logical concern”. You also ignore these thoughts as you ready your hammer for the next Mirror, ignoring any more danger from flying glass.


The lack of air causes you to quickly lose consciousness. The Grim Reaper quickly embraces you!

“That was somewhat more unexpected”, you mutter, as you pull yourself from the Reaper, explaining that you like him, but not in that way.

Via process of elimination, you’ve worked out what the least fatal door in the room is, and one again ready your hammer.


You shatter the mirror, revealing an iron door!

You make a private note that bellowing like a Norse God was the key to not being killed in a completely ridiculous way, and put the Key 3 into the lock.


The heat is unbearable, and you have to turn back

It’s kind of puzzling that you immediately wonder if that room was like Gehenna, when there are other, much more easily understood comparisons you could have made. Anyway, you decide to cool yourself down before re-entering Gehenna.



The most logical way to do this is to wrap yourself in the Wraiths Cloak. Well, the more logical way would have been to use the Crystal Sphere on yourself, but you can’t wrap your head around how to do that. So the Ghosts bathrobe will have to suffice.



The Bathrobe is at least cold enough that you can walk in the room without dying, or thinking about a flaming trash heap that metaphorically represents the Jewish Underworld. There’s nothing else worth noticing about the room, so you open the other door and walk out.


The Firedrake screams triumphantly and gives you an eternal sunburn

Oh… a Firedrake. Didn’t see that one coming.

You decide to throw that Crystal Sphere at him, using the same logic that all fantasy heroes use that Ice is tremendously effective against a creature made of living flame, instead of being useless since it would melt.


The Hell-Spawned flames quickly vanish as soon as the Sphere touches them. With nothing to feed itself on, the Fire Drake immediately follows suit.

Without the Firedrake around to give you an Eternal Sunburn (which is either a euphemism for "burned to death" or a skin irritation which never goes away, ending your adeventure for no clearly explained reason), you can pass into the next room.



Another seemingly harmless room, you barely pay it any mind as you cross the bridge.


It’ll cost you a Gold Coin to cross!

You quickly pat your pockets trying to find a Gold Coin, but your only currency are the Copper Coins you stole from a Mummy, and chances are that the Troll might know the difference between a coin worth a small fortune, and a coin worth so little you wouldn’t stoop to pick it up.

Do You:
A.) Talk to the Troll, explaining that greed is a terrible vice. Give him some informative pamphlets on the subject.
B.) Give the Troll the Copper Coins, hoping he can’t tell the difference.
C.) Ignore the Troll. Anyone who just wants you for your money isn’t your real friend.
D.) Kill the Troll. Kill him and you can take the Gold for yourself!

Pamphleteering will eventually solve all the world's problems, including this one. Go for it.

I have never in my life encountered or even heard of a pamphlet on greed.

Really? Never seen the ones going for donations to churches using the old camel->needle's eye > Rich man->Heaven line?

Nope!

No appropriate Chick Tracts?

I've never encountered a Chick Track in real life. This must be why I'm an atheist.

Near-pointless trivia: If you walk into the fire room, get pushed back, and then kill yourself in the mirror room, the game will put you in the fire room without the cloak. This isn't particularly useful, but hey, sequence break!

I was stuck on the troll bridge for a loooooooong time.

My brother and I called the Nintendo Hint Line!

I think you should cast EPOR on the troll, causing his intestines to rise up through his throat, out his mouth and into the sky.

That troll's a pussy, what's he gonna do? Just walk past him and let him wait for someone more gullible.

Me too, and when I finally got past it, I couldn't work out what to do next.

When i finally returned to the game, Gamefaqs had been invented.

Bellowing like some Norse God, tip the troll over. His severe leg deficiency should make it difficult to get back up while you sneak past.