Welp, one thing that this e-mag was waiting for a long time was a walkthrough
for Kithe E-Mag issue 14, to explicate its intricate inner workings to the
vast majority of its consumers who seemed too impatient to get a feel for the
unique postmodern experience and immerse themselves in the textual
environment.  (Similarly, having veered so far from the beaten path, and
having found it such a rewarding experience as far as the creative experience
goes is one factor which rendered us of such little motivation and great sloth
where creating this issue 15 was concerned.)

Welp, it is possible to accomplish such a task, (a walkthrough, that is) but
it would require such a thorough reverse-engineering of the code (half a meg
of scripting, if you must know) that if we were to go to such efforts, we may
as well render a port of it to HTML.

So no Kithe E-Mag issue 14 walkthrough.  Yet.  (Not even any unused Kithe
E-Mag 14 music, which was really leftover from Kithe E-Mag issue 13.  If we
ever get to actually use Mindlink, it'll have been waiting over three years
to be used.  Most artgroups (or computing organizations in general, for that
matter) never live that long.

That magnanimous piece of tracking will be a more permanent fixture of the
scene than many of the more illustrious ansi groups we have known.  A scary
thought.

IN ANY EVENT... so you don't leave disappointed, we will offer something in
compensation.  Yes, it is a walkthrough.  Yes, it is to a game created, by
Mist members, in the Adventure Game Toolkit.  (A marvelous software engine
henceforward in this article to be referred to below as AGT.)

[skip the hooha and click here to get to the walkthrough already!]

What you are about to experience is the complete information necessary to
play, from start to finish, one more under-played and mysterious text-game
experiment we here at Mistigris cockled up together for the king of compos:
our team entry for (tag-team) Blender number 40 (whose words were superhero,
criminal and England.)

The team consisted of myself (Cthulu who will take this opportunity for once
not to talk about himself) Skrubly, a longstanding Mistigris member and past
Blender champion, and Merlyn, a longtime TabNet poster known in this instance
better as Gonzo vs. the Jabberwocky.  Over a five-hour time-limit the three
of us stewed together the insidious and surreal tale of Mad Cow Man, his
glorious but mysterious sidekick Deep-Fried Beef Fat Boy and the theft of the
Crown Jewels!

(If you ask any authority, they'll tell you that we were robbed in the judging
of the competition - Warpus and co. spent no more than five minutes looking
around some of the rooms and not scoring any points - not that any are to be
had - and never managed to penetrate into the dense and intriguing thicket of
mystique and stirring plot-mangling.  Not to mention the amusing descriptions
of the lavatory.)

We will admit that when push came to shove towards the end of the timed
competition things did get a bit rushed, especially in the betatesting when
the text was flowing faster than the coder could patch it in -reliably- so
some might think that a walkthrough is necessary, or at least a valuable
addition to the arsenal with which one approaches this piece of code.
Needless to say, to go back a bit, the same can't be said for the well-coded
and comprehensively tested Kithe E-Mag Issue 14 game, but the same sort of
pathetic souls who couldn't figure it out would most certainly have been in
dire need of a walkthrough to this prototypical game-form.  In addition to
presenting a clear guide to this particular piece of Interactive Fiction, it
presents the reader with a series of hints and tips useful for playing any
text game, especially ones coded under the AGT, so the earnest Kithe
#14-walkthrough-seeker need not leave here entirely disappointed as the more
general tidbits discussed here will certainly serve them well in that context
as well. So print it out [is there a way we can offer that as an option from
within the mag, Joe?  Press printscreen or something and it prints everything
below this?] and let it guide you through the rich narrative we three wove on
that insane evening as you consult its hardcopy while playing the game (or
as you switch windows between the Kithe #15 session and the game session,
for techno-lamers.  Yes, I mean you!)

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO...

As the game starts out, you are presented with...

The introduction.  In the tradition of all of the greatest text games, this
one begins with a particularly nasty hangover.  But here there is no need to
turn on the light, reach for your gown and take the buffered analgesic.  No
need to gather the junk mail and ask Ford, What about my home?  No need to
call up Steve Meretsky and harrass him for hints, as in this game your
semi-sober state only affects your character's memory, not the gameplay.  We
merely pay homage - we don't stoop to the level of sheer ripping off.

(At least not at this point.)

The first thing you should always do in any text game is to check your
inventory: The command "I" (with a carriage return after, as always, and a
note - game commands and actual names or objects or locations within the game
will be presented in this walkthrough in all caps.  So I'm not just
arbitrarily yelling out at you, Wesley Willis-style - though on second
thought, that sounds like it would be a fair piece of fun, and maybe I'll try
it next time we meet) should suffice (we're still talking about the inventory
here, in case you forgot) to show you what you are carrying.  Oh dear.  Not
quite as surreal as "NO TEA" but certainly these pair of possessions are
among its ranks in the hierarchy of seemingly-not-only-useless-but-
flamboyantly-extraneous objects.  You can LOOK AT or EXAMINE the SHRUBBERY
and the WINE GUMS (or just GUMS - this interpreter will recognize the full
name or last word of any object). Sure, they don't seem useful now, but you
never know when they might come in handy later on when the trail of the chase
burns hot.  And if not?  You can always EAT GUMS if you feel a bit peckish.
(No, not that kind of peckish!)

What else is lying around this SHABBY FLAT?  Rule number two of text games
(and adventure games in general - much is made of this in the Monkey Island
games) is to nab anything that isn't nailed down and some that is.  LOOK
around.  Read the resulting description.  The textual description of the
room that first appears is primarily for purposes of setting - any objects
present which will actually serve you quasi-useful purposes will be
mentionned as an adjunct at the bottom of the room description.  Thus the thing
here to do would be to ignore the fridge and the lamp in the room's
description and to PICK UP or GET the following-listed BOTTLE and SCHEDULE
instead.  LOOKING at those two objects will provide you with a destination
and a pressing set of circumstance by which to be at the place.

And the chase is on!  Suddenly, we have a plot!  (Frankly, I was worried there
for a minute.)  Rereading the room description (LOOK or L) will in most
circumstances make apparent in what direction exits to other locations are to
be located (but not all - we goofed in a few places, where EXIT should
suffice and if not, where randomly trying all the directions will definitely
suffice unless there is some creature or obstacle preventing you from
progressing until it is accordingly dealt with) and in this case it is
definitely to the SOUTH.  (S should work just as well, and some keypads might
even work for fancy-pants folk.)

And here you are, OUTSIDE THE SHABBY FLAT.  (You may note that location names
as grossly-emphasized in this walkthrough are displayed in the game interface
in the top left corner of the screen, so if you're unsure where you are -
and the room description is less-than-clear, which does happen to even the
most dedicated game designers from time to time - that display should help
clear things up.)  What a filthy brat, eh?  Too bad you can't interact with
him in the slightest - the possibilities or offense are near-infinite.
(Perhaps material to be mined deeply for a subsequent text game, sequel to
this near-masterwork.  Hm... ) Nothing here to pilfer, so like any good
gamer-cum-kleptomaniac you start looking for the nearest exit.  Unfortunately
there are two of them.  It is important to note at this juncture (ha ha) that
there is more than one way of playing this game through to the end - not
through forking so much as alternate routes and approaches in a few
circumstances.  This walkthrough will guide you along the way of playing the
game which will allow you to visit as many of the locations and read as much
of the text as possible, but there are a few faster and less circumventious
(or even circular) routes.  (To determine what the best way is, we recommend
you draw a map of your meaningless meanderings through our mostly-hollow game
world.  It won't help much in the gameplay, but it's a lovely way to spend a
rainy Sunday afternoon.)

With that disclaimer stated, we direct you summarily along in the wrong
direction.  South you go, into a TUBE STATION.  Not a great deal there.  You
can visit the ticket machine off to the side if you want to - not a great
deal there either (it's broken) but fortunately no ticket-checkers seem to be
on-duty at the moment and you can sneak aboard a Tube car (that is, London
subway train) going EAST to Watford or WEST to Picadilly Circus.  Watford is
said to be nice at this time of the year, so EAST you go (refer to the first
sentence of this paragraph here), and, after a brief ride on the
fast-but-filthy marvel of civil engineering, you emerge (NORTH) in beautiful
WATFORD STATION.  Well, perhaps beautiful is an overstatement. Certainly less
squalid than your apartment, and it is important after all to take these
things in all relativity.

NORTH takes you up the stairs to the slightly-less-squalid scene of ABOVE
WATFORD STATION where, strangely, there doesn't seem to be much more to do.
You can make a phone call here, but hey, you don't have any friends or a
quarter (er... 25-pence piece?) for that matter, so at this point it seems
more a piece of well-fleshed-out set design than any useful tool.  Then again,
you never know... Not much here to snag (you know: loot, spirit off, pocket,
steal, shoplift, snicker-snacker) either so spurning the seemingly
non-further-functional Tube, you head east into a waiting taxi cab.

Being IN A CAB can often be a bad experience; sometimes it can be an uplifting
or enlightening one - in fact quite a good collection has been published of
wise philosophical anecdotes gleaned from serial cab-riding in the streets o
New York City.  This game, however, is not set in the Big Apple, but rather,
in a few selected (and thoroughly ashamed) quarters of the Big Spotted Dick.
Er... Old London Towne, that is.  So no enlightenment here, no
paradigm-shifts.  Only an unexpected free ride and finally a glimpsed clue to
your identity.  Who is this mysterious protagonist whose actions you direct?
Did we read your system registry and surreptitously snag (you know the drill)
your personal and vital information and statistics?  (Or are we as a computer
collective more moral and scrupulous than what Blizzard and Battlenet tried to
get away with in Starcraft?)  Play the game and find out instead of just
reading this walkthrough, assbitch!  (I for one can't conceive of any reason
why someone who hadn't played or didn't have access to the game would read
this mess, certainly not this far - surely my writing style isn't that
engaging and assuredly not here as in this article I am in fact making a
deliberate effort to be hard-to-follow and obtuse because hey, if you're just
going to read all the answers to the puzzles in the game, you should have to
work a bit at some point along in the process.  Perhaps in some distant age
someone will write a walkthrough to the walkthrough to this amazing
Blender-game; all of the information, none of this crap!)

EXIT takes you out of the cab.  (Sorry for that spot of poor coding.)  Gee,
this location looks familiar.  This time, let's take the road less travelled
and venture WEST.  OUTSIDE DUFFY'S DONUTS, eh?  Well, you haven't had any
breakfast yet and it certainly appears to be a respectable establishment, so
take my advice and go NORTH through its entrance.

Upon further inspection, you're not so sure that you want to fill your
stomach, but there are still things here which may be of some use.  Going
WEST to the booth will reveal the presence of a large cheese.  Talk to it if
you like, worship at its feet (er.. base) if you so desire, but above all...
be sure to pick it up.  (LOOK AT it <- and the at is important, so don't be
fooled - and you will see an oblique reference to bad coding.  Or at least to
the discovery of a limit to string sizes in early betatesting about an hour
and a half in to the compo.)  Whatever you do, don't put it down once you've
got it, because then you will be exposed to (gasp!) more bad coding!  (It
won't crash the game or anything, but the way this engine handles things
certainly makes it easier for things to be more surreal than originally
intended, like the message you'll yet in Kithe issue 14 (hey, I thought I
wasn't going to talk about that here) when you try to TALK DEVIL in Hell.)
If this makes sense, you need help.  If it makes sense and you HAVEN'T played
Kithe #14, you really need help.

Nothing else in the booth, so exit to the EAST back to the main room in
Duffy's and proceed EAST again, to, well, okay, listen up ...  If there's one
more thing about text games which you must learn, it's that in addition to
grabbing whatever you can, it is often essential, as it is in this case, that
you explore as many locations as possible, though you would in reality have
slight motivation if any to enter the nasty nooks and crannies your virtual
self wanders.  Thus, you must believe us when we say that it is of the utmost
importance, even though it reaches depths unplumbed since the movie
Trainspotting, that you take a look in, well, the loo.  (No, not LITERALLY.)

If you thought that this grim mess couldn't get more putrid and revolting, you
underestimated the avid morbidity of the authors of this game.  The bathroom
is, to coin a very bland phrase, much worse than the main room.  Still, let's
hearken back to this walkthrough's description of WATFORD STATION, especially
the part that bears on the relativity of sualidity, especially in relation to
your distinctly SHABBY FLAT.  Compared to that, this bathroom is a walk in
the park.  (It's just a good thing that you were so hung over that you weren't
able to make out in the dim light what it was that composed the puddle that
the Ribena BOTTLE was sitting in.)  There are two things in this room which
you will find to be of use.  One is an object (oh, what the hell, let's just
state it overtly - TAKE the bloody PLUNGER already) but the other is much
more vital to the course of the game; knowledge, and particularly knowledge
on which plot devices hinge.  If there's one thing you should remember from
years past of playing classic adventure games in the vein of Maniac Mansion,
Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry it's that phone numbers written on the
walls of bathrooms always always ALWAYS serve to be disproportionately
important later on in the game.  (To say nothing of their applications outside
games, in real life - for a good time call 1-604-253-5480) In this game we
draw on a rich tradition established by our adventure-game predecessors
(okay, so we rip them off this time) so be sure to make a note (as in, write
it down on a scrap of paper so you don't forget it) of the phone number on
the wall.  Remember, that abstract digit is as essential to the game as the
concrete (well, rubber really) PLUNGER which should be burning a hole (or is
that the bleach?) through your pocket as we... er... relay information in a
nonsimultaneous non(except in a most anal sense of the word)interactive
textual medium.

(That was unnecessary, Cthu.)

Leave all this gratuitous and fancy free silliness behind by exiting the
bathroom WEST, exiting Duffy's Donuts SOUTH (the bathroom certainly tempered
whatever was left of your appetite) and, knowing a good thing when you see it,
continuing SOUTH until Duffy's is nothing more than a bad smell in your
furthest-back memories.

This should, of course, leave you in the glorious PICADILLY CIRCUS.  (Of
course, you could have been here long ago if you'd just gotten on the Tube
the other direction, but you'd have missed all this rich, er, wankery.  No,
there was stuff important to the gameplay, honest.  You just won't appreciate
its subtlety until two weeks after you finish the game.  It'll hit you when
you're stone asleep, and you'll sit straight up in bed and go "MEIN GODT!
Herr Cthulu vas correkt!" But by then it will be TOO LATE!  Mu...   mu haha
ha HAHA HAHAHAHAHA!)

Er... yeah.  Picadilly Circus is a vast collection of sights, sounds and,
perhaps most importantly, smells.  But to the dedicated game-player, who has
no time for such touristy preoccupations as sightseeing, there is only one
thing in this magnificent set piece worthy of your scrutiny: the telephone
booth to the SOUTH.

Once you agree and decide to join me in the phone booth, I would recommend now
as a good time to either SAVE GAME (didn't know you could do that, didja?) or
go back any pick up anything you may have left behind (ignoring my, as always,
sage advice.  Hey, I coded this thing, arright?  For all practical purposes
here, I am the GOD of this game world.  GOD DOESN'T GIVE BAD ADVICE.  So
smarten up.)  (That whole Abraham and Issac thing was just a misunderstanding,
btw.)  When you're ready, put the phone number to good use - just type it in
at the text prompt as one big long digit, no spaces, no "PRESS", no "USE
PHONE", no fooling.

Ha ha!  Fooled you!  Well, not really.  Though you may not instantly realize
it, for gameplay purposes a smelly old SEWER is exactly where you want to be.
Trust me.  We're going to approach use of the other two Blender-arbited words
any minute now.  Don't believe me?  Head SOUTH.

Okay, this hardly constitutes proof, but it does allow you to put your CHEESE
to good use.  To good USE.  To good... okay, here.  The exact phrase you want
to use in the RAT ROOM goes as follows... <ahem>... USE CHEESE.  It's that
simple.  With the menace neutralized, proceed further SOUTH.  We are getting
closer to that proof I mentionned above.  I can smell it.  No, wait, that's
raw sewage.

What the hell is this?!  Well, we decided that the first, pre-sewer portion of
the game was so tame and pedestrian that we'd have to spice the second part up
with an extra dose of obligatory monsters which you'd have to make strange use
of your inventory items to get around.  With the tried-but-true formula of
USE <objectnamehere>, eventually you'll find the correct seemingly-arbitrary
combination of verb and noun which will neutralize the threat.  In retrospect
it will seem to have been a logical choice, and in any event, you don't have
time to reflect on the grand meaning of the plunger's application (whoops)
because a huge huge chunk of text comes screaming at you.  Yes, it was another
arbitrary puzzle, but one we didn't have the time to script the code for, a
failing which you can all be thankful for.  In fact, it even lies to you, as
a subsequent inspection of your inventory will reveal the fact that the
formerly-seemingly-useless SHRUBBERY will still be in your possession despite
your having given it to The Duke in exchange for safe passage onwards.

Speaking of which, go SOUTH again.  (The twists and turns in this maze are
quite tricky to navigate, aren't they?  Your map may look straighter than a
British rock star - then again, most things are - but just try using it to
backtrack your steps.  Insidious!  It's a shifting maze!  Not just bad
coding, but a devilish device of mystery!  Oh yes.)  Not a lot here, but one
more skip SOUTH should finally put you in the thick of the plot at long last.

And here you are, at MAD COW MAN'S HIDEOUT!  He explains who you are, what
threat of crime is faced, and instructs you to escape up the trapdoor into
Buckingham Palace for the real game to begin!  You can pick up the family of
TOURISTS if you want (Hey, baby...) or just clamber UP with a light pack, and
to your immense surprise...

welp, the game ends.  Hey, we were operating under a strict five-hour time
limit here, and I have no doubt that at least a significant chunk of that was
spent playing acromania on #mist.  Still, we utilized all three words to the
best of our ability (and ihmo, better than any other team did) and what's more,
managed to provide a deeply surreal experience in the sewers of London.
Perhaps most importantly of all, the experiences we had in the creation of this
little practice-session proved deeply informative and essential to the
subsequent creation of perhaps the greatest e-mag of all time, Kithe E-Mag
issue number 14.

Don't be disheartened by the display of the score - we didn't have time to code
it properly, but rest assured that if you followed my directions here you
would have attained at least 60, which is reserved for penguins.

For the avid fan (for who else would still be with me here, 338 lines later?)
what was to elapse following Mad Cow Man's hideout was a merry investigation of
Buckingham Palace, collecting evidence of the criminal's passage on his way to
the Crown Jewels (hamburger wrappers), presentation of proof, as his sidekick,
Deep Fried Beef Fat Boy, to Mad Cow Man, a betrayal and climactic showdown on
a zeppelin set on a collision course with Big Ben.  But as was said above...
this is all territory for a sequel 8)

If you thought that this walkthrough was long, consider that Kithe E-Mag issue
14 is at least seven times as large and complex as the blender game was.
Perhaps you should be grateful that I didn't provide a solve to it after all.