Imagine you are skiing down an infinite slope, facing such hazards as trees,
ice, bare ground, and the Yeti, — a horrible monster! Each turn moves
you one screen row downhill. Unfortunately, you have to put your jet-powered
skis on backwards, so you can't see ahead where you are going; only behind
where you have been.
However, you can turn to either side, jump or hop through the air,
teleport through hyperspace, launch nuclear ICBMs, and cast spells to call
the Fire Demon. And since the hazards occur in patches, you can skillfully
out-maneuver them.
You ski until something bad happens to you. Your final score is
based on how far you have skied, how many jumps you made, how many Yetis
have melted during your run, and how healthy you are when are finished.
These characters represent the things that you see on the slope
behind you:
I
This is where you are.
.
This is normal snow — always completely safe to
ski on.
Y
These are trees. If you try to ski through trees, you
might hit one and get hurt!
' '
A space represents bare ground with no snow on it. If you
try to ski on dirt, you could fall down....
#
This is ice. When you are on ice, you can't turn, and you
might slip and fall down.
A
This is the Yeti! As soon as he crawls out of a snowbank,
he will lumber directly towards you at one space per turn, and if he gets
within one space of you, he will grab you and beat you up! However, he has
trouble moving through trees. Steer clear from the Yeti, and he will melt
after a while, since it is a sunny day. If you jump over him, your jet-powered
skis will help melt him. You can also melt him with nuclear ICBMs, or call the
Fire Demon who will cook him, but once a Yeti melts, another one always shows
up after a while. The Yeti doesn't understand about the edges of the slope
either, so you can just cross them to get away from him! And since he is
slower than you, you can try to ski right past him before he can grab
you!
*
This represents a nuclear ICBM that you launched. You
launch them from your backpack, and they zoom right at the Yeti.
D
This is the Fire Demon, who is always your friend unless
you call him a bad name and he gets mad at you.
These are your commands. You can type any one of these letters
when you have the "?" prompt on the end of the slope line, or just
hit a return to do nothing this turn. Preceding any command with a number
does that command repeatedly; thus, for example, “4l” is
“turn left 4 times”.
r
Turn to the right. If you were going straight down, this
will make you go one space to the right every turn. If you type "R"
again, then you will go two spaces to the right every turn. If you type
"L" the next turn, you will again be going one space to the right
every turn. Remember that you can't turn when you are on ice, and if you go
off the edge of the slope you come back into the other edge. You travel
farther while you are going sideways, so you get a better score if you slalom
to the side a lot, but you can never go sideways more than five spaces per
turn.
l
Turn left. Exactly the same as turning right, but totally
opposite.
j
Jump. When jumping, you don't have the "?" on
the right for each line you jump over, so you can't enter a command for it.
You can't fall, hit trees, or get grabbed by the Yeti while jumping, but you
might land badly and get hurt. Since the Yeti moves one space toward you each
turn, you have to be going at least two spaces per turn sideways to jump over
him without getting grabbed when you land, but your jet-powered skis may melt
the Yeti while you're jumping over him.
h
Hop. A hop is half a jump.
t
Teleport through hyperspace. This transports you to
somewhere else on the slope, but you might materialize way up in the air and
fall down.
i
Launch ICBM with nuclear warhead. If your backpack is
working well, an ICBM will be launched from it towards the Yeti, travelling at
three spaces per turn. Launching ICBMs is dangerous, but once one is going, it
can't hurt you. If it is launched and loses its negative-infrared lock on the
Yeti, it self-destructs.
d
Cast spell to summon the Fire Demon to this material
plane. If the alternate universes are in a synchronous phase, the Fire Demon
will appear somewhere on the slope, and move to attack the Yeti at one space
per turn, but if something goes wrong while casting this spell, the Fire Demon
might get mad and decide to go for you instead of the Yeti! If there is no
Yeti around, the Fire Demon will soon get bored and go home. If you don't like
where the Fire Demon showed up, you can try to recast this spell, so that he
will appear somewhere else.
!
Spawn an invisible monster called a Unix shell. You may
type to the shell; it will do strange things with your input, opening a space
warp in the middle of the ski-slope to display them at you. The shell monster
is polite; when it is done, you will be deposited back on your slope exactly
where you were before.
?
Display command help.
Good luck, and happy skiing!
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