by Emily Short
Winner of Four XYZZY Awards in 2002:
Best Puzzles, Best Player Character, Best Story, Best Game
After Savoir-Faire has loaded, click in the rectangle above and press the space bar. At the > prompt, type a command.
Savoir-Faire is a traditional text adventure, in the style of Zork and Adventure (a.k.a. Colossal Cave). There are treasures to find and puzzles to solve. You can instruct your avatar to explore the environment, make discoveries, and ultimately determine the course of the story.
About the story: Your avatar, Pierre, is a gentleman of certain extraordinary abilities: in addition to having a fine sense of etiquette and a taste for fine dining, he is proficient in the use of the Lavori d'Aracne, a magic used by the nobility to link related items to one another. Once one item is linked to another, everything that happens to either object happens to both. Open a box, and the door it's linked to will open as well. These links can only be forged between items that are already similar in some ways — there are limits — but the skill will doubtless prove useful more than once.
You can also tap into Pierre's knowledge by REMEMBERing items you come across and people he mentions from the past.
How to Interact: Savoir-Faire accepts imperatives (commands) in natural language. Some common commands that you might want to use at the beginning include:
Other common verbs include all the other senses (such as TOUCH and SMELL); movements such as CLIMB, JUMP, ENTER, and EXIT; TURN, PUSH, PULL; ways of looking such as LOOK UNDER and SEARCH; and some other basic actions such as EAT, DRINK, FILL, POUR, READ, HIT, etc. You may get more detailed instructions at any time by typing HELP within the game and reading the suggestions.
A more complete guide to playing interactive fiction, including a list of common verbs, may be found at brasslantern.org.
If You Get Stuck: Hints for this game are available from the author's website.
Savoir-Faire and this introductory text are copyright Emily Short, 2002-2004, and appear here courtesy of the author. This is Savoir-Faire version 8, available for download as Savoir.z8 at the IF Archive. Contact Emily at mindspring.com with any questions or comments; her username is emshort. The ZPlet interpreter used here is by Matthew Russotto.