The Clues Challenge

1 

 

Hey, you can hear me, right? Yeah, I know, it's weird, me calling out to you even though we can't see each other. But I know you're there, so listen to me. I need your help. I am supposed to research a book called Zarathustra no Tsubasa, but I have no idea what it is or what it exactly is I am supposed to research. I'm just not good with this thinking stuff. So I thought, perhaps I should get some advice from someone who's better at that. Yep, it's you I am talking about. So perhaps you could tell me what do do?

 

To help ⇒ Go to 2.

To not help ⇒ Go to 6.

 

2

 

Great, we're a team now, the two of us! Should we come up with a team name? No? Oh, okay, well, you might change your mind later on. Anyway, we're going to investigate this Zarathustra no Tsubasa or whatever it is called. But don't worry, I haven't come completely empty-handed. For example, did you know Zarahustra no Tsubasa is Japanese? It means The Zarathustra's Wings. What? You ask me whether I know Japanese? Well, to be honest, the English title The Zarathustra's Wings is just one I noticed on the cover of the book, as it has both a Japanese and English title. I also found out that the book was written in 1986 by Okajima Futari and that it is apparently a gamebook. What should we do first?

 

Look up the author of the book ⇒ Go to 3.

Look up what a game book is ⇒ Go to 4.

 

3

 

Oh, right, Okajima Futari. I've heard of him. Or to be exact: them. It was the pen name of Inoue Izumi and Tokuyama Junichi, who were active between 1981 and 1989. I think they also wrote Klein no Tsubo and Soshite Tobira ga Tozasareta. Apparently, this is the only gamebook they ever wrote, though Klein no Tsubo does begin with a man writing a gamebook, which is then going to be changed into a virtual reality game. Guess the theme of a gamebook must've remained interesting to them, as Klein no Tsubo was released almost ten years after The Zarathustra's Wings. But that's all we need to know about Okajima Futari for now, right? What next?

 

Add (W) to your inventory. 

Look up what a game book is ⇒ Go to 4.

Look up what The Zarathustra's Wings is about ⇒ Go to 5.

 

4

 

So I looked around on the internet, and I think a gamebook is a type of fiction where the reader participates in the story themselves by making choices, which changes the outcome of a story. They're also known as a Choose-Your-Own-Adventures.The choices you make as you progress in a story, for example by choosing to go either left or right in a maze, will lead to different narrative branches, all with varying outcomes. Some gamebooks also have more complex systems built-in, like an inventory mechanic or a story flag system which allows the game to check whether you have done certain segments already or not. Gamebooks were especially popular in Japan in the 1980s, ranging from both original gamebooks to gamebooks based on for example films like Laputa Castle in the Sky and Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind.  You even have gamebooks based on Famicom (NES) video games, like the ones based on Famicom Detective Club Part 1 and Part 2. So The Zarathustra's Wings is one of these books, huh? And there are of course (board) games like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective which are design-wise very close to a gamebook.

 

Add (F) to your inventory. 

Look up the author of the book ⇒ Go to 3.

Look up what The Zarathustra's Wings is about ⇒ Go to 5.

5

 

Oh, that's funny. The Zarathustra's Wings is about this detective, he's not really bright, so he needs help when it comes to the mental stuff. So he starts taking advice from some person we can't see, telling him to do this or do that... sounds familiar? Yeah, he also talks to that person directly sometimes. Anyway, the detective is hired to investigate the murder on Kashima Eizaburou, the wealthy businessman who was found dead in his study three months ago. He had recently obtained a jewel called the Zarathustra's Wings and shown it off to some house guests, but the following morning, he was found murdered in his study, and the Zarathustra's Wings were missing! What's more, the study was locked, and the key found on the desk inside the study, so this means it was a locked room murder! This detective is hired by the son-in-law to find out who the murderer is and to find the missing Zarathustra's Wings. Sounds like an interesting adventure! Should we read it?

 

Inventory check.

Do you have (X) in your inventory?   ⇒ Go to 8.

If you want to read the book  ⇒ Go to 7.

6

 

The murderer suddenly appears behind you, plunging a knife into your back. If only... we had made a different choice, I might've been able to save you...  

 

BAD END.

 

7

 

Wow, that took a bit more time than we had expected, didn't it? For the most part, it does what you'd expect of a gamebook, allowing you to choose who to interview or where to go. By using a special story flag checklist, the book also makes sure to know what pieces of information you have obtained (or not), which will become important later on. A common problem with gamebooks also seen in The Zarathustra's Wings is of course that each section of a gamebook is fairly short, so it reads quite differently from a novel: a lot of the story feels quite shallow and too much to-the-point and all the characters kinda feel the same. But at least the book makes you feel like a detective. Kinda. The book is basically divided in two parts, the first part being more focused on the murder investigation, and the second part on the search for the missing jewel. In the first half, you will be interviewing the suspects, see what you can learn from them and explore the study where the murder happened and the other rooms of the house. While the murder took place in a locked study, the trick used to accomplish this is very, very basic and the tricky part of the gamebook is basically activating all the story flags necessary to "solve" the murder: you might have a very good idea of what happened, but if you happened to miss a section and not have activated Story Flag A for example, you might fail in the "accuse segment" anyway because you didn't discover all the evidence. Perhaps this would have felt more satisfying if the trick itself had been more complex, but because the trick is so simple it almost feel like nitpicking... And in general, the necessity of "activating story flags" (= proving you obtained certain pieces of information) is a style that works very well with Ellery Queen-esque "elimination" deduction styles (where you cross off suspects of a list), but not so much as with a locked room... The second part of the book is focused on learning the whereabouts of the Zarathustra's Wings and a certain coded message is a vital key to learning its location. The code itself is in hindsight pretty simple, but there aren't really good hints beforehand, and you can't advance in the book without breaking this code: you only learn which section to go next if you decipher the coded message. When The Zarathustra's Wings was originally released in 1986 (before Internet!), apparently a lot of people got stuck there so when the book was re-released as a pocket in 1990, they added a segment with sealed pages at the end, with a hint (basically the answer) to solve the code, out of fear of people getting stuck there again. But what did you think of this second part? I wasn't a big fan of it myself, because it was so focused on the code, and if you had missed certain story flags in the first half of the book, you'd be punished here severely.

 

Inventory check.

Do you have (F) and (W) in your inventory?   ⇒ Go to 9.

If not  ⇒ Go to 6.

 

8

 

It is impossible to have (X) in your inventory. You cheat! I didn't know I was working with a cheater! Forget it, I'm outta here!

BAD END.

 

9

 

Guess we're done now. We've looked into Okajima Futari's gamebook Zarathustra no Tsubasa or The Zarathustra's Wings. I guess it's more interesting as a concept, as there aren't that many mystery gamebooks, and certainly not by mystery novelists. But the mystery itself in the book isn't super exciting: if this had not been a gamebook, but a normal mystery novel, the locked room murder trick would be very disappointing and one could also argue that a locked room murder on its own doesn't work very well with the way the gamebook handles story flags, and that a pure whodunnit would've been better perhaps. The code too is a major part of the story that might not be really what people were looking for when they opened this book wanting to play a murder mystery gamebook. So Zarathustra no Tsubasa is only worth looking into if you are specifically interested in trying a murder mystery gamebook, as there simply aren't many, but don't expect a hidden gem here. Anyway, that's it for our team-up for now. Perhaps we'll meet again, but until then, stay safe and don't make any wrong life choices.

 

The End

Original Japanese title(s): 岡嶋二人『ツァラトゥストラの翼』