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

Yeah, whatever. Get to HAMMERing.

Again, worst puzzle in the game.

The Sphinx room clues are staring-you-in-the-face obvious compared to the tiny handle for the holy water dispenser.

The troll is still the worst.

Gah, what was the command you had to open the holy water dispenser? If I recall correctly, neither PULL nor OPEN worked. Also HIT, the default for "opening" stones didn't work. You had to use USE, which never before was applied to a non-inventory item.

I take option "D," but would like to substitute "hrseshoe" and "throwing" for "punching" and "knuckle sandwich."

“Kitty, after I’m done with you, You’ll need to lick your wounds AND your bottom!” you cry, brandishing your Hammer, and making a private note that that sounded a lot better before you said it out loud.



Apparently, the Sphinx doesn’t take kindly to being poorly threatened with a hammer. Rather then walk all the way back to the Sphinx room, you decide to rewind time. This time opting to charm the Sphinx, rather then killing it.



“Who’s a pretty kitty?” you ask, rhetorically, brandishing the mirror, “”Who’s a little puss-puss?”



How observant of you.

You pilfer the Scroll and the model comet from the room. You just never know when you’re going to need a replica of a comet. You also read the Scroll, since that’s just what you do.


Legend says it is a portal to another land.

You question whether or not that ties into the Warlock Lords plan to destroy the world with The Behemoth, but then ignore such a thought, since it was likely just a little bit of flavor text. You ascend the ladder.


Yes, in the moonlight, she is even more beautiful.

You stand captivated for a really, really long time staring at the beautiful woman tied to the wall of an evil wizards tower, briefly reminiscing about the various romance novels you’ve read in your youth, and consider the various benefits to being the hero who saves her. Many of these thoughts are quite graphic, and use the word “heaving” a lot. You stand there so long with a semi-dazed expression on your face that the mysterious woman clears her throat to get your attention again. Well, you think she cleared her throat, honestly, it sounded more like a growl. You walk over to help her.


The Wolfs powerful jaws rip your throat out!

In retrospect, you should have paid a bit more attention to the skeletal remains on the floor before you did that. You opt to ignore the voices in your head clamoring for punching, and instead try to shoot the Silver Arrow at the werewolf.




You quietly tuck your crossbow away and never see or mention it again to anyone. You take the bone (which, it turns out, is a Blade?) and head back down to the 3-doored chamber. Heading through the Center Door this time.





The path leads to a room with two exits, and you head right.



You were always taught to kneel before royalty until they tell you to rise. After several minutes on the floor you recall that every King you’ve ever met has been a bit of a dick and you don’t care about offending him, or his court. Besides, he’s a skeleton (you now realize), so it’s not like he’ll complain too vocally.

A few seconds later you realize that you’re in Castle Shadowgate, and if a skeleton is going to raise complaints anywhere, it would be here. You quickly attempt to make amends by giving the Skeleton the scepter you got from torching the mummy.


You can now see a ring shaped hole

You shrug and decide to put the Ring-Shaped Ring into the Ring-Shaped Hole. You’re good with shapes like that.



Well fancy that. Rather then creeping down a staircase hidden beneath the remains of a long-dead king, you decide to retreat, and give that Wyvern a good talking to.



The time has come to vanquish the beast, and take that gem-thingy he’s guarding that rightly belongs to you! Or, it will rightly belong to you after you kill the dragon and take it. You attack by:

A) Swinging your Mighty Sword! Snicker-Snap!
B) Puffing your Mighty Bellows! Diggy-Dug!
C) Punching with your Mighty Fists! BAM-POW!
D) Cowardly throwing things at him while shrieking! Eek!

Death Count: 22
Injury Count:
Bruised Rump
Half-Deaf
Severely burned hand
Partial Mutation
Cut on Finger

Punch the wyvern! KABLAM!

I'm not seeing a lot of HAMMERing going on in that list. Just to be safe you should probably leap from the tower.

Bellows. I mean, obviously.

I poked around this game for a while after beating it, trying to figure out if that line about "a portal to another land" meant there was another area of the game to be unlocked. You know, if Zelda hadn't included a whole other world as a bonus, I bet we wouldn't have been so willing to believe that game designers in general would do twice the work just for the sake of an easter egg.

In retrospect, of course, it's just a very vague hint about the throne room...

Just to be safe, we should have punched the skeleton in the snout to establish superiority. Then set his rug on fire to rub it in

Quick, tell SPRITE and GIRL to cast MANA MAGIC on your sword!

Every time I replay the game, that always gets me.

Swing your blade (being careful to avoid the claws that catch, and the jaws that bite), remove the wyvern's head, and with it go galumphing back to the secret passage.

It's interesting how, when looked at in the context of a game world where the player's various discoveries through accidental death aren't necessarily canon, solving that werewolf puzzle involved kicking open the door and immediately shooting a distressed woman in the face.

Yeah, that puzzle always kind of struck me as being a bit... off.

There are at least vague hints though, like the fact that she can't SPEAK (which is honestly about the only time I thought SPEAK would do anything) and that there are what appear to be skeletal remains on the floor.
Granted, it wasn't a skeleton at all, but it sure as hell looked like a bone.

I thought it was a bone with a sharpened edge? Perhaps? Maybe? Possibly?

At this point, my memories of my Shadowgate playthrough end (it's a sad thing!) and I'm perfectly willing to believe that the wyvern is the real distressed damsel.

Wait - what are the skeletal remains?

The damsel puzzle is one of those great designs where you have to die to it first before knowing the right thing to do. Ah, Shadowgate.

Y'know, I recall a very immature me, sitting there and clicking carefully on the chained woman, and giggling at whatever commands I'd use on her crotch.

The Blade always looked like a bone to me. Albeit not a human one, but a bone nonetheless.

Don't worry, that's on the checklist.

Yeah, but in this case I don't mind because it's a good scare and it only takes a few seconds to reload the game. I think it's one of the best moments in Shadowgate in spite of being a cheap death.

Right - In general I think Shadowgate endures because death is such a meaningless penalty and is, in fact, entertaining. I mean, sucked into deep space? Attacked by a werewolf? All pretty awesome. The worst puzzles are the ones that don't nudge you in the right direction (without Nintendo Power, there's no way I'd have gotten 'EPOR')

Since the voices in your head were unable to democratically reach a general consensus, you shrug and decide to try every option in order and see what works. You raise your Sword and charge forth, chortling on this, your most fantabulous day!



(incidentally, fantabulous is a recognized word, according to Microsoft Word 2003)

Of course, a Once-Through sword only works if you can get it in the one hit. So the sword works exactly as well as just trying to ignore the Wyvern did.

You remember the stories of a great hero who descended deep into the earth, and destroyed many dragons (and two-legged balls) by filling their lungs with so much air that they would rupture, and deduce that the same strategy would be applicable here as well. You grasp your Bellows and trying to inflate the dragon to death!



You’re mildly relieved that the Wyvern didn’t kill you for trying that, but you’re no farther ahead.

Fed up, you decide to resort to fisticuffs against the great beast. Naturally, the 2-story dragon has a bit of a physical advantage over you in hand-to-hand combat, so you attempt to distract him first. After a moment, a small hunting-bird flies past. You point to it and call the Wyverns attention to it with a triumphant cry of “FALCON!”.



Then you punch it.



The Wyvern clearly doesn’t appreciate the use of an internet meme against it. It kills you EXTRA hard for even attempting it, and as soon as you rewind time, it kills you again, unprompted.

Out of ideas and QUITE intimidated by the beasts power, you shriek and start heaving every item in your backpack at it. The metal Blade and the scroll labeled 5 do nothing at all to the Wyvern, but the Star…




You stand perfectly still for a few moments while the ash from the exploded Wyvern settles around you. Wordlessly, with a more then slightly bewildered expression on your face, you slowly put you hands down, pick up the talisman and leave the rooftop.

You return to the observatory to see if you can get any more of those miniature super-novas. You search behind the star map, since that’s a logical place for stars to be tucked away.



You don’t find any portable solar-flares behind the poster, but you DO find a small, pink, rod hidden, quite out of sight, from the eyes of company. You’re not about to comment on finding that, and steal it, mainly because of your obsessive compulsion with regard to stealing objects, not for any other reason.

You decide then to go back through the center room and enter the door on the Left, since it’s the only room you haven’t entered yet that doesn’t involve crawling underneath the mummified remains of a king.



The door leads to a balcony with a notch in it for a lightning rod. You decide to stick the rod you just picked up into the hole, while humming soft jazz to yourself.


You are startled to see a skeletal hand rise from a hole that has formed at your feet.



As you take the Wand, the skeletal hand begins to descend. The hole then closes up, as if it had never been.

I… okay? You… you got a wand, I guess?

You go down the staircase, again bewildered, although less so then you had been from the exploding dragon.



The Lookout has a sack and small chest. There might be something else interesting about the ledge, but your eyes are conditioned to look for treasure first and non-treasures only if everything has already been pilfered.



The Sack contains a Large Coin, and several Gold Coins. Maybe now you can pay off that Troll? Assuming you hadn’t killed him for SURE when you threw him into the hole he lived in.

Your pockets full, you decide to go for the chest.


You find yourself knee-deep in the moat. It seems the alligators really enjoy your company!

This WOULD have been a great lesson showing you’re the inherent failings of a life of greed, but snatching up everything that isn’t nailed down is usually the only way to progress through Castle Shadowgate, so the Aesop is more then slightly broken.

You have the feeling that the Wand you snatched form the Inexplicable Floor Hand is the key to getting your hands on the Staff of Ages that you need to stop the Warlock Lord. You also figure that the hole beneath the King isn’t the kind of place you should go down without the Staff. Not because you’ll be killed, but because you don’t want to backtrack from one end of the Castle to the other.

Back in the Bridge Room, you decide finally face your fear and cross the ridiculously dangerous bridge. You decide to down some pharmaceuticals from various unmarked bottles. Specifically, Bottle 2.



You’re not sure if that means you’ve literally raised into the air, or if you just feel like you have. An attempt to cross the bridge proves that it isn’t a colorful metaphor.



Just past the Bridge you face down a giant snake. You shriek with abject terror and remain paralyzed with fear, waiting for the voices in your head to give you instruction.

Do you:

A) PUNCH THAT SNAKE!
B) Scream, like a little girl. A little girl with pretty bows in her hair.
C) Do that thing like Charleston Heston did, but backwards?
D) Run out of the room and throw yourself off the bridge. Being dead is better then being scared of snakes.


Death Count: 25
Injury Count:
Bruised Rump
Half-Deaf
Severely burned hand
Partial Mutation
Cut on Finger

Violence is useless! We must scream and run away!

Kill yourself.

I remember this having something to do with that acid fountain...

Yes, that's it! Go back splash around in that fountain a bit, then return. Snakes have no interest in skeletons, so you'll be able to pass safely.

I don't know how much Bottle 2 you have left, but you should definitely poor all of it all over the snake, then run away screaming like a bitch across the rickety bridge.

YES! Option C! Scream at humans about how they haven't screwed it up just yet! Backwards, of course.

Or you could just pet the snake. I'm kind of an expert on snakes, so I know that as soon as you pet their tounge, they totally become docile and relax. So go on, pet the snake.

EAT (USE?) snake in one gulp. I bet he'll appreciate the ironic reversal.