Your objective
Face it: your relatives were loony birds. Uncle Marty, who claimed that Paul Revere didn't make that ride; he did. Cousin Celia, who insisted that the Great Pyramids were her idea. Great grandma, who told stories of the days she rode with Alexander the Great. Your great uncle, who always talked about his friends in Beringia. And Pierpont Willson -- the old buzzard -- who started it all by building that house.
That house. That bizarre house, with its 16 bedrooms, two libraries, nine bathrooms, pool, gardens, two-story dining hall, and stairs stairs stairs. All in the only the worst, most expensive taste.
That house. With "ABANDON ALL TIME, YE WHO ENTER HERE" carved above the front door -- no wonder your family went bats, time-wise.
Your uncle was the worst. The old cheapskate tricked a scientist into slaving away in a tower laboratory, searching for the key to time travel. She found it, too, and put the power into seven crystals. Apart, each warps the space-time continuum, allowing uncontrolled interaction between space-time coordinates. Put together inside a small force field, they allow you to move wherever and whenever you choose.
Too bad your uncle was such a cheapskate. Otherwise, the scientist wouldn't have spread the crystals all over the house before she left (what she created once she can do again -- and again ... and again ... and again ...). Now they're wreaking havoc all through the house -- and they've been picked up by curious folks all through time and space.
Now it's your problem. Now that your uncle's dead (how did he end up squashed flat in the kitchen?), that weird house is yours -- if you can survive to claim your inheritance.
If you're going to live in this place, your job is to survive the plagues, the assassins, and the frightened people and creatures from other times that you'll encounter in your new piece of real estate.
- To do this, you must collect the individual crystals and -- finally -- put them together in the right sequence to create the outrageous, melodious key to time. As you collect each crystal, the space and time affected by that crystal will become your own; and some of your visitors/troubles will vanish.
- Once you've collected the crystals, you can put them together only in the laboratory; you'll be locked in once you enter, so SAVE before you go in -- just in case you make a fatal mistake.
- Six of the crystals may be in one of 13 rooms: a random number assigns them to the rooms at the beginning of the game. The seventh is always in the same place, though you can't always get there and survive. (The "hot" rooms are listed on a separate page.)
- Because a crystal affects the rooms around it, you know you're in the vicinity of one when time shifts around you and you meet strangers -- or maybe some old friends.