I'm 2,5 hours into "Heart of China" and I ran out of save files...

The place sure has changed since I came here with Zak McKracken...

I'm 2,5 hours into Heart of China. I finally got through the Chendung chapter alive and well, and reached Kathmandu. Only problem is that I ran out of save files, so now I always have to overwrite them. This adds a little anxiety, because I can imagine having to go back further in time if I happened to miss something vital. So let's hope that won't be necessary!

Drowning is only one of many death scenes...

Getting into the palace of Li Deng was quite tricky, but I blame the user interface. It had been a while since my first session, so I had forgotten you had to DRAG items into your inventory instead of simply clicking on them. It's a 90s game, after all, and we were still far from a one-click interface. Anyway, this led to me drowning in the sewers a couple of times -- yak! I mean, yuck!

Already vanquished a guard dog, now there are guard SNAKES?!

Puzzling through the palace itself was quite intuitive. Still had to reload a couple of times, but I finally located Kate Lomax, surrounded by killer cobra's! I didn't have much time to think of a way to free her, since the guards always show up after some time. I was able to buy myself a LITTLE extra time, but every time I tried to use my gun on the snakes, it didn't work. Once again, an interface issue: turns out I first have to equip the gun by dragging it onto Jake's picture in the inventory, then I had to hold the right mouse button to get some crosshairs so I could shoot with the left button. Thank Buddah this game came with a digital copy of the manual...

What a magnificent polygon plane!

Not long after I needed the manual again, to figure out the tank controls. Yes, I had to escape the palace driving a tank! It's a skippable arcade sequence, but I wanted to do it for myself. Lost quite some time getting blown up by other tanks, flipping myself over or driving straight into a river, until I finally succeeded in reaching my plane and leave for Nepal.

Kate's not looking too good...

Why Nepal and not back to Hong Kong, you may ask? Well, one of those snakes still managed to bite Kate, and Chi said the only cure can be found in Kathmandu. So once the plane was on the ground I had to reload a couple of times figuring out whether Jake or Chi should go look for help. All three of us froze to death repeatedly, until I figured out Chi had a right-click function as well... So now we're in Kathmandu, with several new locations to visit and several people to talk to. Let's try to get home now!

You can buy Heart of China on GOG.