Shadowgate (Mac OS Classic)

Plenty of gates, plenty of shadows.

Secret Room#

There are multiple marked "exits" in the game which are (seemingly) impossible to actually pass through during normal gameplay; however, at least one of these can be made passable through following a series of (unprompted) steps, and a pixel-perfect item placement.

In brief, the steps are as follows (skipping over intermediate steps):

1. Get the slingshot from the closet in the entrance hallway.
2. In the "EPOR" room, close the vial on the left, then take it with you.
3. In the waterfall room, place the vial in exactly the location shown in the first screenshot below.
4. Load the slingshot with a pebble.
5. Heat the vial with a torch.
6. Shoot the vial with your slingshot. (This must be done as the next action after heating the vial.)

"TMON" is the name of another product by ICOM Simulations, and Tod Zipnick was the founder of ICOM.

While Tod would tragically pass away in 1991, the room's description as the "Tod Zipnick Memorial Secret Room" is actually found in versions of the game dating back to 1987. There's a couple of possible explanations for this:

• Given that Tod passed away from Hodgkin's Lymphoma, it's possible he was aware of his prognosis during the game's development and he (or someone else) added this memorial for when the time inevitably came.
• The description was originally intended as a joke at Tod's expense: Deja Vu had previously included a few such jokes, and the secret room here is remarkably empty aside from a product name, a bottle of wine, and a header reading "Dummy". If this was the intent, the joke heartbreakingly didn't age well.

A video with a more thorough step-by-step guide to accessing the secret room can be found below:

Watch on YouTube