Walkthrough for

                              A Broken Friend

                             by Paul Jenkinson

                           Written by Richard Bos


  First, a few notes. 
  
  To start with, this is a game for the ZX Spectrum, written, as far as I can
tell, either with some home-grown system or using a non-specialised programming
language, possibly even machine code. No PAWed amenities here, therefore. This
means that it does look unusual (I think it's trying to imitate the Magnetic
Scrolls adventures such as The Pawn) but unfortunately also causes a number of
limitations.
  [Update! I have recently been informed that A Broken Friend has these limi-
tations because it was, in fact, written primarily as a beta test of a project
to re-write some old games. This project is on-going, and improvements are
still being made to the system. The notes below, therefore, only apply to the
version which was current when I played it - yours may be much improved.]
  First, technically the program is quite restrictive. It allows you to enter
text in lower case as well as upper case, but it will only accept the former.
Try using the shift key - your input will not be accepted. It is equally picky
about punctuation, and worse, spaces. None of these will be accepted, neither
before, nor after, or even between words: where "get rock" is acceptable,
"get  rock" is not. For this reason, I'm less chatty below than I usually am in
walkthroughs: all commands are exactly as they should be entered, except, of
course, for the punctuation and parenthetical remarks.
  Another limitation is that this program is very bad for guess-the-verb. Or
rather, it's bad for guess-the-exact-command. Synonyms are completely absent.
You use get and drop - take and put will not work, anywhere. You press a
button; pushing it has no effect. More seriously, no command at all will be
accepted except the ones which are anticipated under the very circumstances you
use them in. Other commands will be treated as if you typed nonsense, even if
that same command elsewhere or at another time would give a reaction. This can
become quite frustrating.
  Real bugs are, as far as I have found, absent. The one, rather amusing,
exception concerns restarting the game. This is simply not possible: the game
state is only very partly restored to the start of the game, with the result
that you get the opening message again but apart from that the game continues
as if almost nothing had changed. I haven't found any bugs that concern the
gameplay itself. There are quite a few typos, though.
  On the design side it's a different matter. It's at times a silly and even
juvenile game, of course, but not annoyingly so. The map is not large, but that
mainly means that there are few empty locations - none of the stuffing which
was so common in the 1980s. In fact, several of the locations, and indeed some
of the objects, serve more than one purpose, which is a Good Thing. All in all
it is a shame that A Broken Friend does not seem to have received enough beta-
testing; with a few less typos and a bit more user-friendliness, it could
certainly have been a good little game.
  Finally, since this is a walkthrough, spoilers are rife below. I'm not taking
you past every single clue and sight - in fact, I'm not taking you past any
except those which happen to be on our route. Most objects can be examined and
some will give you a clue - although some will be as unresponsive as any other
unrecognised command. Still, it pays to look around before you resort to this
walkthrough, and if you accidentally read the solution to a problem you hadn't
come across yet, don't blame me.

  Now, let's go and get that Speccy repaired.
  

examine spectrum, get paperclip, unlock door. n, drop paperclip. d, examine
dustbin. e, s, w, feed ducks. s, 6492 (and no, I'm not telling you where you
could have got that information - suffice to say that it is somewhere in the
game), s, press button. e, d, get plank, u, get hammer. w, n, n, get feather,
e, s, oil door. s, get crate, n, n, n, e.

drop plank, drop crate. u, d, get rock, u, u. drop rock, u, get crate. d, e,
drop crate, get object, get crate. w, u, drop crate, u. w, s, w, w, get fish,
e. s, s, e, d, turn wheel. u, w, n, n, e, n, e, u.

s, e, examine tree, pull string. u, get mask, d, w, s, e. get bottle, w, s, s.
drop fish, get string, repair mask, wear mask. n, n, n, n, fill bottle. u, w,
s, s, scare girl, remove mask. (I'm not sure that the latter command is
necessary, but it certainly does no harm.)

n, w, w, w, give tramp bottle (which is the only three-word command you will
need - although you will need it a second time). get bottle, e, e, e. hit
statue, get chip. n, e, u, fill bottle. s, s, s, s, give tramp bottle. e.


And now the game is solved, your Spectrum is repaired, and you can go play a
game. Let's just hope that you can find one that was better debugged than this
one - for bonus fun, answer Yes to the "play again" question and see what
happens...