By Garry Francis
Every year, the king holds an extravagant ball where he invites all the local dignitaries and they lavish him with gifts. The king sells some of these gifts after the ball and uses the money to fund the ball the following year. More importantly, he also gifts some of the money to enterprising craftsmen, tradesmen and other small businesses to help them establish or improve their business. It's a very generous incentive and is very popular with the people, as all honest, hard-working people have a chance to gain the king's favour.
If you're not a dignitary, but you've been invited to the king's ball, then there's a fair chance that you'll have a chance to present your business proposal to the king and maybe get some funding.
You're the local baker. You work long hours making and selling wheat, barley and rye breads. How boring. You dream of making sweet pastries, fruit cakes, gingerbread and other delectable things that you know would be popular, but you don't have enough time or resources to diversify. You need to get some funding from the king, so that you can hire a couple of apprentices, expand your shop and install some new ovens. There's just one problem. You haven't been invited to the ball.
You come up with an ingenious plan. You've baked the most gorgeous fruit cake. If you can get into the palace and present your plans (and your cake) to the king, you're sure he would provide you with the funding you need.
You leave the cake in the shop and set off to see if you can find a way into the palace. It looks easy enough. All you have to do is get past that guard.
This is a traditional text adventure that was written for SeedComp! 2023, 9 January to 1 March 2023.
Release 1 was compiled with Inform 6 version 6.41 and the PunyInform library version 4.3. You may need to make changes if using later versions.