Vote Now - Puzzle Time Oct 3rd - Oct 14th 'Abduction'

[Ashen]

The rules are simple. I provide a situation and a problem for you to solve, as well as any additional details, and you need to build a puzzle around the situation, by using the provided list of items and a limited number of your own items.

Close Encounters of the Random Kind (3/10 - 14/10 or 10/3 - 10/14 if you prefer)
Scenario:
Ã,  Aliens, hey? Can't live with them, can't walk down the road without getting abducted by them. At least, you can't if you happen to be Phillip Barrow - and for the purpose of this Puzzle Time, you are.
Ã,  One minute, you're walking home from the shops, the next you're in a stinky, darkened room, watched over by a large, unpleasant-looking alien, with an equally large and unpleasant-looking gun. Not a happy turn of events, and one it's up to you to reverse.
Ã,  The puzzle is quite simple: Get Phillip out of the alien hold and, if you want, off the ship. How you do that is up to you. Include as many background details, in-room objects, extra characters and locations as you want / need.

Inventory:
You must start with:
Ã,  Ã, A perilously thin plastic bag, containing at least 1, and not more than 3 of:
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Butter
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  A bottle of cheap white wine
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  A bottle of decent quality vodka
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  2 litres of diet Cola
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  2 pints of semi-skimmed milk
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  A loaf of Thick sliced bread

Additionally, you must use at least 2 of:
Ã,  Ã, A laptop computer (or palmtop)
Ã,  Ã, A bunch of flowers, or a plant of any sort
Ã,  Ã, A DVD (disk, not player)
Ã,  Ã, A bunch of keys on a key-ring
Ã,  Ã, A contact lens case and/or cleaning fluid
Ã,  Ã, Loose change (coins)Ã, 
Ã,  Ã, 

Finally, if you want them, up to 2 items alien technology, but no weapons. NOTE: this is just inventory items, you can have as many in-room objects as you want.

Other Rules:
You must use one 'Sense' interaction, in addition to Look
(i.e. Smell, Taste, Touch/Feel, Hear/Listen)

Well, good luck, voting starts next Thursday. Winner gets bragging rights, and to start the next Puzzle Time.

EDIT: Went ahead and added a few days to the deadline.

[Ginny]

Ooh, sounds like really good rules this time around. Interesting restricitions .

[Ashen]

I'm thinking of extending the deadline, what with the recent downtime, and all. What does everyone think? Would anyone be more likely to enter?




Subliminal Message: Please enter. Oh go on. I'll send you cookies.

[Ginny]

Well, there's still a week left, but I'm sure a few more days will be welcome.
I've been busy with h/w and stuff for school. I'll try squeeze this in .

[Radiant]

Look
  You are in a stinky, darkened room, watched over by a large, unpleasant-looking
  alien wearing a lab coat and glasses, and carrying with an equally large and
  unpleasant-looking gun. A cabinet stands in the corner, and a doorway leads
  south.
Open cabinet
  As you move to the cabinet, the alien steps forward and screams something
  unintellegible, and you quickly back off.
Talk alien
  "fshdjkfshdklfsdndshflhf!"
Look bag
  The perilously thin plastic bag has been sealed shut to keep its contents
  fresh, a new service offered to you by Eight Twelve. Inside are the
  things you bought while shopping.
Open bag
  The bag is sealed shut; you cannot open it. It goes to show how useful
  new technologies are to keep you from being productive.
Throw bag on ground
  As you throw the bag to the ground, the bottle of vodka breaks.
Inventory
  A perilously thin plastic bag
  (in the bag) vodka
  (in the bag) shards of glass
  (in the bag) a stick of butter
  (in the bag) two litres of diet cola
Cut bag with shards
  Carefully, you manipulate the shards to cut open the bag from the inside.
  You decide to leave the vodka in the bag for now since you cannot put it
  in the broken bottle, and you take the other items out.
Put butter on ground
Open cabinet
  As you move to the cabinet, the alien steps forward and slips on the butter.
  With a backwards flip, it falls to the ground. As it does so, its glasses
  fall from its face to the ground, and shatter. The alien starts to search
  around for its glasses.
  You open the cabinet and find a contact lens case.
Get case
  Ok.
Get gun
  The alien still holds on to its gun, and is frantically searching for its
  glasses.
Open door
  The door is closed. There is a touch sensor in the middle, but it doesn't
  respond to your hand.
Give case to alien
  The alien takes the contact lens case and quickly puts in its contact
  lenses. It calms down and looks around. Then it remembers that you were
  the one who caused him to fall. It angrily raises the gun to point straight
  at you. ZAP! You are now dead.
Undo  (or restore game, or whatever)
  Undone.
Look case
  It's a small case containing two contact lenses and some cleaning fluid.
Put vodka in case
  You open the case and replace the cleaning fluid with vodka.
Give case to alien
  The alien takes the contact lens case and quickly puts in its contact
  lenses. Then it screams! The vodka is burning in its eyes! It throws down
  the gun and rushes out the door.
Get gun
  The gun has broken into several pieces, most of them unrecognizable and
  useless. One of them appears to be an alien kind of battery or charging
  device. For some reason it bears a green recycling logo.
Get battery
  Ok.
South
  As you step out of the cell, you are intercepted by a patrol of aliens.
  Bad move! You are now dead.
Undo
  Ok.
Listen
  You hear aliens walking around outside the cell.
Wait
  Time passes.
Listen
  You hear aliens walking around outside the cell.
Wait
  Time passes.
Listen
  All is quiet.
South
  You are in the hallway of the alien ship. A weird kind of machine stands in a
  corner, and a strange kind of apparatus stands in another corner. The hallway
  leads east and west, and cells line the north wall.
Look apparatus
  Judging from all those Star Trek episodes you watched, this is some kind of
  beam transportation device. It is very old and looks rather rickety. It seems
  to be coin-operated, except that the coin slot is rusted shut.
West
  You'd better not stray that far, someone might notice you.
Use cola on rust
  You pour some cola on the rust, and it eats the rust away, revealing the
  coin slot.
Look machine
  It looks like a candy machine, except that it contains weird pieces of
  alien technology rather than candy. Most of them bear a green recycling logo.
  There are several slots in the machine, apparently meant for coins or for
  pieces of technology.
Put battery in machine
  You put the battery in a large slot and it falls through. A voice speaks,
  "fthjkfhdsjkn vcxjk", followed by "Thank you for recycling", which is then
  repeated in French, German and a bunch of other languages you don't recognize.
  A couple of coins fall into the tray, apparently return on deposit.
Get coins
  Ok.
Insert coins in apparatus
  You throw the coins in the apparatus, and watch it come to live. It starts to
  hum and buzz, and lights begin to blink in unrecognizable patterns.
Use apparatus
  You step on the disc and are transported off the alien ship!
  To be continued...

[BlackMan890]

in the continue, he was transported to the mother ship, not to the earth

not bad Radient

[Ashen]

Yay! An entry at last. And a good one at that.
As promised, here are your cookies. If you haven't entered (i.e. everyone who isn't Radiant at this point), don't take the cookies. I guess I'll have to trust you on that.

[Ishmael]

Radiant, have you played Death Gate?

Anyway, here's my go:

- Talk to alien: No result, it doesn't understand you, so it shouts back at you, something that has a lot of R's in it.
- Give flowers to alien: You hand the bauch of flowers, that you brought with you, to the alien. It stares at them for a moment looking confused, and then takes them in his other hand, still pointing the gun at you.
- Use DVD on alien: You dig a DVD case from your pocket, take out the DVD and show the data side to the alien. It freaks out of the reflection throwing away the gun, then having a confused look at the flowers, then throwing them away. It looks reealy angry now, reaching it's hands towards your throat.
- Look at bag: The bag contains a bottle of white wine and a bottle of vodka.
- Give white wine to alien: You quickly dig up the bottle of wine you have in your bag and give it to the alien. It stops, takes the bottle and stares at it, again confused.
- Interact Vodka: You dig up the bottle vodka from your bag, open the cap and drink some. The alien tries to imitate you, but is left mouth dry.
- Pick up thingy: You pick a weird twisted piece of alien technology from the floor. The alien looks at you looking a bit suspicious.
- Use thingy on bottle of wine: You open the wine bottle using the twisted piece of alien technology. The alien looks a bit confused again.
- Interact Vodka: You drink some more of the vodka. The alien imitates you, and looks at you with a really bright expression on it's face. It saps the full bottle of wine, then graps your bottle of vodka, and empties it aswell. It wobbles weirdly.
- Use DVD case on alien: You hit the alien in the head with the DVD case you have. The alien drops on the floor and starts snoring. Weirdly, the sound is not coming from it's nose... it's coming from... lower... quite a lot lower...
- Look at Machine: There is a large, dark machine in the corner of the room. It has many blinking lights in it.
- Interact machine: You press the buttons on the machine. It beeps every time, sometines several times, with dirffent tone. But in the end, you see no change in your sitiuation. Or maybe you have composed a new little song, but that's about it.
- Use DVD with machine: You insert the DVD disc you have into a apropriate-sized-looking slot in the machine. The machine takes the disc inside, hums, beeps and rattles for a moment, the, out of the blue, after a half a second complete silence, it explodes. You are thrown next to a window at the opposite wall of the room. Out of it you examine the sitiuation. The ship starts falling towards the surface of Earth. You see some kind of thrusters trying to brake the falling speed. They work quite well, as the result of the episode is a nice, controlled crash-landing on your backyard. After taking the empty plastic bag back home you return to search the wreck. Onboard you find no-one, or no trace of the alien technology. So now you have a nice wrecked alien ship in your backyard. Great day, isn't it? So head back to the store...

[JudgeDeadd]

- You have a bag with vodka and butter.
- There's a big green door here. Security camera is watching it. It's too high for you to reach.
- There is a small door here.
- There is a pipe sticking out of the wall here, multiple glasses are standing next to it. When touched, the pipe fills one of the glasses with water.
- The guard alien has glasses and is drinking water from the device every a few minutes. When he fills the glass with water, he takes his glasses and cleans them for a while. Then he drinks the water.
- The guard will kill you if you approach one of the doors.
- If you walk up to the green door, the security camera will see you and a few aliens will enter the room and kill you.

Okay...
Walk up to the water dispensing device. When alien fills glass and is cleaning glasses, fill the glass with vodka. The alien will fall asleep after he drinks it.
If you touch his gun it explodes and kills you, but if you search him carefully you find a DVD disk.
Enter the small door. Inside is a wooden stool and crowbar, take them.
Place the stool behind the camera. Stand on it and put butter on camera.
Leave through the door.
You are in a corridor with doors labelled A, B and C. A and C are locked.
Room B is a WC. If you search the toilet, you will find a ring of keys.
Unlock door A with keys. Listen at the door, you will hear an alien. Open the door but don't enter or the alien inside will kill you. Hide behind the door. When alien comes out, hit him with a crowbar.
Inside room A is a computer. If you turn it on, it says "Enter Password". Whatever you enter, the computer will say "Wrong Password" and turn itself off.
Put DVD disk into computer. Turn the computer on. "Safecracker 45.5" application will appear. It will crack the password and you will get access to the Admin's Menu.
In the Menu, select "Unlock all doors".
Leave and enter now unlocked door C.
There are two wide doors inside. Open one of them with a button next to it.
There's a ship and another door inside.
Enter the ship. Press button labelled "Start". The door behind you closes. The door in front of you opens - it leads to outer space. The ship shakes as it gets away from the UFO.
Soon you will get to Earth. The end.

Great! I'm going to take the cookies now.

[Ashen]

Shameless bump, to remind people there are only a few hours left to enter!

Voting starts in about 5 hours from ..... now.

[Ashen]

Another bump, to say voting open.
Voting closes in 24 hours, give or take a few minutes.


Am I allowed to vote?

[Sinitrena]

Am I the first to vote?
Well, I vote for Ishmael.

[Radiant]

I abstain from voting, for obvious reasons.

Ishmael -> I haven't played, nor heard of, Death Gate. Unless you mean the cycle of (not very good imho) fantasy books by Weiss & Hickman.

Out of curiosity, I've never participated in one of these before, but the rules for this contest seemed rather strict (e.g. start with certain inv items only, mandatory use of a taste/smell/listen/touch command, etc). Does adherence to these score you bonus points? Is non-adherence cause for disqualification? Or anything? (I don't mean to dis anyone, just curious as to how the voting works)

[pslocum]

All of these were good. That having been said, I vote Radiant.

Radiant- In answer to your question, I haven't heard of anybody being 'disqualified' for neglecting to include something, but it decreases your chance of winning somewhat.

[Ashen]

I don't see why Radiant shouldn't vote. I don't think it's against the rules to vote in a game you've entered - provided you don't vote for yourself. Heck, I don't think it's against the rules to vote for yourself, it's just bad form. That said, I've decided not to vote as well, unless it's a tie when I close voting.

Radiant:
Well, the rules (what you start with, any restrictions on what you can/can't/must included, etc.) are up to whoever sets the puzzle, so they change from week to week. So, I think whether someone can be disqualified for failing to follow them is up to the PuzzleMaster^TM too. As pslocum said, you might not get as many votes, but - honestly - when I vote I don't go through every entry to make sure they match the rules.
Similarly, since it's decided by voting, you can't really get 'bonus points' for following them exactly, unless it's in terms of more votes.

[Ashen]

Another bump, another double post.
Voting Closed!
Radiant and Ishmael both have 1 vote, so I'm going to cast the tie-break vote.

The winner is.....


Radiant.

Ishmael's was good - as was JudgeDeadd's -, but Radiant's was closer to the style I had in mind when I set it, which just puts it over the edge (Ha! So you can get bonus points.)

Well done to Radiant, and good luck with the next Puzzle Time.

[Radiant]

Whee! Thanks!

And there shall be lots of pie for all participants, and anyone else who happens to read this thread!


Oh wait, does this mean I get to create the next contest?