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RabidWeasel posted:I'm slightly curious as to what (else) this is referring to, anyone? Lands of Lore 2 has lots of cat people in an ugly and hard to explore jungle. LIVE ACTION cat people. I had no idea it was possible to escape from the jail that way. I thought there was no escape from the second jail. The fact that you have to bring an item that you have to make first out of materials that have no connection to it is utterly ridiculous.
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Apr 4, 2015 01:09
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Wow, I never would have figured that getting repeatedly arrested would somehow be a way to progress the game. I guess they left that one in there just so that anyone who couldn't figure out any of the other, even more obtuse solutions, could still progress to a point where he'd get pissed off at the game and throw the CD into the woods.
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Apr 4, 2015 03:04
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I think you probably shouldn't have done this one second, because you re-used the same "getting caught" thing with the fish parlor guy. That was a waste, there are other people who could have caught you, like Darm and the Baths Guy, and my personal favorite (and the one I was hoping you'd show) is after meeting Zanthia, entering the Mystic's hut in the town wearing only the squirrel hat for a disguise.. I don't think even I knew about Malcom proclaiming his innocence after getting arrested, at least not of all those lines. PurpleXVI posted:Wow, I never would have figured that getting repeatedly arrested would somehow be a way to progress the game. What, having multiple solutions is now something to bitch about? There are a LOT of ways to get off the island. Someone we know but haven't met yet can offer us some advice on one of the other paths. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Apr 4, 2015 |
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Apr 4, 2015 03:15
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There's a good reason for showing this one now. Primarily, some upcoming events in the main storyline make absolutely no sense if you haven't seen the jail sequence, and I don't want to confuse y'all any more than necessary. Don't worry, we're going to see the spoilered line when we get to do one of the other escapes. Darm and Baths Guy don't have particularly interesting lines though, in my opinion.PurpleXVI posted:I guess they left that one in there just so that anyone who couldn't figure out any of the other, even more obtuse solutions, could still progress to a point where he'd get pissed off at the game and throw the CD into the woods. I think this one is actually supposed to be canonical. It won't become apparent for quite a while why I think that, though, but the sheer amount of assets used for this one alone is a small indication. I suspect they planned out and did this one first, while they still felt they had the time to do it. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Apr 4, 2015 |
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Apr 4, 2015 05:05
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The fact that there are multiple ways off of the starting island just shows how utterly ridiculous the puzzles in this game are. You'd think you could just stumble into one of them exits? But they all require some really huge leaps in logic. And the logic only gets worse the further into the game we go.
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Apr 4, 2015 09:23
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Chapter 5: Wherein Malcolm Sails to Kyrandia, and Falls off the Ends of the Earth Last time, we collected the Crystal Mouse from the mouse altar and convinced captain Jean-Claude Barbecue to take us back to Kyrandia so we can exact our revenge. Time to set sail! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6pmnygD9IY   Faster, boys! We're almost there! Let the attack on Kyrandia begin!  We're back! We haven't actually seen this location before - it's a screen or two to the left of the Bluff. We'll explore it in more detail later, don't worry. For now, let's get this invasion underway, shall we?   Not so fast, Malcolm. When did Herman learn to cast petrification magic? This is so unfair. And where the heck are our pirates?   We have no choice but to banish you to the Ends of the Earth!I can see you standing off to the side there, Barbecue! Do something!   ... to take you there on his ship. Herman, pay Mister Barbecue his fee, please!   It will be my pleasure to rid your country of this scoundrel!Jean-Claude, how could you? You're tarnishing the reputation of pirates everywhere with your backstabbing and lust for money.     You'll get this line regardless of how you escaped Kyrandia. It is possible, although unlikely, to come here without ever having met Rowena or spending any time in prison.  No, it sure didn't. Curse that traitorous seafarer! Did we at least get to keep the crystal mouse?  Nope. All we've got to our name is three Kyrandian pennies. They don't pay much in prison.Moreover, what is up with this crazy place?  (Music: Ends of the Earth) Looks like "the ends of the earth" is rather literal, and the world of Kyrandia is flat. Or maybe the pirates just dumped us at some random waterfall. Okay, so this is one of the most confusing areas in the game, and where it really starts going full moon logic on you. I'm going to go slow through this area - see if you can figure out what the heck the game expects of us before I show off the solutions. We can't leave this location the normal way, but let's have a look at those barrels.  The only way to go is down, and we have two barrels to choose from. Let's try one! I'm not afraid of barrel-riding!   We've landed further down the waterfall, but we lost the barrel and seem to be stuck. There are two mysterious signs. "No cleats. No umbrellas."There's also a mysterious cave to the left of the signs. Perhaps that way progress lies? Speaking of cleats, there's a pair just sitting behind us on the rock there.   Using the cleats on Malcolm makes him wear them, and exchanges the item itself for a shoehorn. Using the shoehorn on Malcolm removes the cleats again. He seems to think we might be able to use them for climbing, so why don't we try that? The signs warn us not to, but we didn't get this far by being chicken.   Amazing! You actually did it! We sure did, although the usefulness of doing it is dubious. Now we're just trapped on a different outcrop. Hmm. A hook.There is indeed a hook sticking out of the middle of the waterfall, but we have no good way of interacting with it. Another two weird signs on the other side, too. "No umbrellas. No swim fins."We don't have either of those things, so that's fine. Only one thing left to try: swimming!    You were never much of a swimmer, were you?Well, that didn't work. Okay, you know what, this whole thing just got started off wrong. Let's try that other barrel.   Okay, this time we ended up somewhere completely different. There's another mysterious sign - no flotation devices, by the looks of it - and what looks like another cave. However, we still have the same problem we had before: no obvious way across the waterfall. Clearly we're missing something.  Let's reload and go back to the top of the waterfall. There are two interesting articles on the right that we need to have a closer look at. "Deposit one coin please."It seems those are vending machines. Lucky for us, we have three coins to play with. It's not entirely clear what the one on the left contains, but the one on the right is showing a picture of a swim fin.  Clicking the buttons changes the display. The second button makes the machine show us a picture of a cleat.  The third shows an umbrella.  And the fourth a flotation device. It seems we can get exchange a coin for one of those four items. What about the machine on the left?  The paper scroll (sprite taken directly from one of the earlier games, by the look of it) shows up as an "Insurance policy" in our inventory. Hmm. Valid for this date only.The purpose of the insurance policy is not entirely clear, but it sounds useful, so let's hang on to it. We have two more coins to spend, but no indication what's going to be useful or indeed even what we're supposed to be doing.   I decided to buy some swim fins and an umbrella. There was a pair of cleats just downstream, as you'll remember. Maybe we can use the cleats to climb up the rock wall, then make it across to the other side somehow.  ... however, they seem to have vanished. Nuts! (Actually, the cleats spawning in this room is just a safety feature to prevent you from getting completely stuck. Not that it matters, though, since you can't beat the puzzle with just the cleats.) Okay, so let's ditch the insurance policy and spend that third penny on some cleats instead.  Double nuts! Putting the third coin into the machine will cause it to jam, swallow the coin, and fail to produce the item you wanted. There is a way to get three items out of the machine, though...  We just have to buy the cleats first, then put them on. Why?   With the shoehorn, we can screw with the machine and get it to produce an additional item, free of charge! We still can't get all four though - the shoehorn trick will only work once - but we can get three items out of the machine (provided one of them is the cleats) and also buy the insurance policy if we want it.  With all three items in hand, you can climb up here again. With the umbrella in hand, we can finally try making it across the waterfall.  All right, cool. We're on the other side. Only problem is... now what? We still can't leave this room. As you might have figured by now, the signs are actually clues to what items will have some useful effect in that room. The room with the "no cleats" sign could be exited by wearing the cleats and climbing up. The "no umbrella" sign hinted that we could use the umbrella to swing across. Following that logic, perhaps the swim fins can help us out next?    What do you know, it actually worked! We made it up to that cave we saw earlier, and we're on the right side of the waterfall, to boot! Let's waste no time in going inside.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjGptHbF6Ns That... was something that happened. I think. Aside from being the most 90s CGI thing imaginable, I have no clue what any of that was supposed to mean.  After witnessing that little... cutscene... you get booted right back outside the cave. Entering the cave again will do nothing but show the same cutscene again. Let's go check out that other cave instead. All we need to do is go down a few rooms. It's not entirely clear how to do that, though. Maybe we can float down with the umbrella?  This umbrella should help me float down over the rocks...  Especially for a klutz like you!Whoops! What happened? Actually, we died. This would've been a death, but since we were carrying the life insurance policy, the game saved us from sudden death and returned us to the top of the falls. Not that it matters much anyway, given that this game is more forgiving than the previous ones, and we can just reload if things go real sour. Astute readers may have already realized this wasn't going to work. The sign on the right has a flotation device on it, but there's no umbrella sign, and thus the umbrella won't work in this location. Unfortunately for us, we didn't bring a flotation device with us, and so we're forced to reload.  What if we went down from this room instead of up? There's an umbrella sign, so this ought to work.    And work it did. We're back in the room where the second barrel drops you off, except we're on the side with the cave. How about we have a look inside? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjGptHbF6Ns Okay, that was the same video again. What's going on here? What's the deal with these caves? We're not likely to find out by just standing around. This room has another umbrella sign, so we should be able to pull the same trick again.    Yet another room, with yet another cave. This is the lowest we can go at the ends of the Earth, and the signs are implying the swimfins or cleats are useful here if we want to go back up. But first, let's check out this cave. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZT39X-I6hw That... well, it's different, at least. We still have no idea what's going on, but at least the cutscene was different this time. Why, though? Because it's the second cave we'd visited without reloading.  With any luck, the general shape of this puzzle should be getting clearer, if still utterly predicated on moon logic. There are three caves, and non-obvious means of transport between them. We can get three items from the vending machine that facilitate that movement, and choose between two starting points. The caves seem to be showing us strange... for lack of a better word, strange visions. Really, the logic behind this puzzle is still mysterious to me, and I really can't explain why, but in order to progress, we need to visit each of the three caves, in any order. There are no real hints that this is what you need to do... I guess the game just expects you to futz around with whatever tools you have available until something vaguely resembling progress manifests itself.  There are a number of routes that work, but this is the shortest one. You don't actually need the cleats, so the shoehorn trick is kind of pointless, but I picked them up here, anyway. The flotation device and the umbrella is all you need.  Then, using the leftmost barrel, drop down to here. Now that we have the flotation device, we can make our way across.  Actually, what we need isn't the pool toy itself, but the air pump (equivalent to the shoehorn) that you get for equipping it. See that little pumpkin on the side there? Let's give it some air... Pumpkin. Get it? Ahem. Either way, with the plant inflated, we can get across to the first cave.  After having a quick peek inside the cave to trigger the Mandelbrot ball cutscene, we now need a way to get down to the next one. The umbrella didn't work, but the sign does imply that the flotation device will... Here we go with the pool toy...   I have no idea why this works when the umbrella doesn't. All Malcolm did was put the pool toy around his waist. Whatever - from here, we can use the umbrella to swing across to the left side again, then use it once more to fall gently down to the second cave.  Once again, we get the planet-and-clocks cutscene. Finally, we can drop down using the umbrella again.  Let's have a look inside the third cave. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zCZ7fUYTjc  I have no idea what's going on. I'm sorry, but I can't explain any of this. The Ends of the Earth is a weird place, and it just sort of happens, and I don't know what the designers were thinking. Next time, we'll try to figure out where the hell we are now, and how to get out of there. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 16:24
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I note that the second video shows an Earthy globe, i.e. with all of our continents. Kyrandia isn't going to turn out to be an alternate-universe Earth, is it? 
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Apr 5, 2015 17:24
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I don't even. What? Do you keep the life insurance policy if you die, or does it disappear after one death? This puzzle seems possible to stumble through if you can just keep respawning, at least. Though if someone has gotten this far, they've probably got a few different saved games hanging around.
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Apr 5, 2015 17:28
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I'm sure I remember there being a way to get more money in this section, by using the life insurance somehow? Also, when I played it, the videos wouldn't run on my computer, so I just figured they somehow explained how Malcolm ended up in fish palace. Apparently not.
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Apr 5, 2015 17:36
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I can't tell if the designers were just bad at their jobs or very, very high.
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Apr 5, 2015 19:04
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thedaian posted:Do you keep the life insurance policy if you die, or does it disappear after one death? You keep the life insurance and lose anything else you're carrying. However: Red Mike posted:I'm sure I remember there being a way to get more money in this section, by using the life insurance somehow? When you die holding the policy, you respawn with two coins in your inventory. It also resets the vending machine so you can put those two coins in, but nothing short of jamming the machine will ever let you have more than two items from it anyway. The game does this so you can't get stuck by throwing yourself off a cliff and leaving your coins behind.
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Apr 5, 2015 19:19
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Coincidentally, this was the last part of the game I got through on my own. By being stuck for weeks and brute-forcing it. But after somehow getting through this mess without going insane, I was utterly stuck. I needed a walkthrough to get through the rest of the game.
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Apr 5, 2015 19:43
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This upcoming segment is a bit of a pain. Not for the very blatant reason that anyone who has played this game will cite, that's just an annoyance. I dislike it because, yet again, randomness plays a large role in getting past this whole act. Sheer randomness (the landfill in the first act, the bones in the second act, this upcoming part and even the very final act) seems to be a intentional or otherwise overarching theme in this whole game. Not sure if that was just a design choice or if they were trying to pad for length or if they were lazy or all three. Seems they just ran out steam for anything that wasan't the first act and the finale. Ignoring Frank, who admittedly cranked out a catchy and memorable soundtrack.
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Apr 5, 2015 20:28
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:When you die holding the policy, you respawn with two coins in your inventory. It also resets the vending machine so you can put those two coins in, but nothing short of jamming the machine will ever let you have more than two items from it anyway. The game does this so you can't get stuck by throwing yourself off a cliff and leaving your coins behind. So if you drop the two items you get, and with insurance in hand, you jump off, you should be able to get the third item? I think that's the sort of thing I remember.
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Apr 5, 2015 20:45
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Red Mike posted:So if you drop the two items you get, and with insurance in hand, you jump off, you should be able to get the third item? I think that's the sort of thing I remember. Dying also removes any items dropped on the ground. The only way I know of to have three items from the right vending machine is if one of them is the cleats.
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Apr 5, 2015 20:48
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doing the obvious posted:This upcoming segment is a bit of a pain. that sounds like "this entire game.txt"
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Apr 5, 2015 21:24
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I seem to remember both the umbrella and the flotation device working from the top of the waterfall and dumping you in yet different places, but I don't remember where. (I think the umbrella takes you directly to the left side of the third room down, and that was how I got to the two lower caves. I might be wrong about the flotation device, since the barrels are there.) You can also use the bungee cord from the flippers on that hook at the very bottom to walk across the waterfall for Wallenda Points. Another reference! I didn't think this part was too difficult to figure out, honestly, since the life insurance machine is right there. Once you have that policy, you can just mess around with the various articles in the rooms until you figure out that each one allows traversal up or down from rooms where the sign says you can't use them, and the caves are pretty obvious. The third one you enter is the key. The various ways of crossing the waterfall are largely optional, but not too difficult to figure out. Really, while it makes no sense, I think this is probably the easiest part of the game to figure out without hints, simply because there's so little to do.
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Apr 5, 2015 22:00
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Yeah, the main problem with this part isn't that it's difficult or really even tedious... it's just confusing, because you have no idea why you're doing any of this, and it's not at all clear what the significance of what you see in the caves is. None, as far as I can tell. There are lots of ways you can get to the three caves, and the game doesn't punish you very hard with or without life insurance. In the end, you feel like you stumbled your way to the solution rather than actually solving a puzzle.
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Apr 5, 2015 22:10
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Nidoking posted:Also, you can get a few meaningless points by dropping a log on that bluff where Herman catches you, although I think it has to be there before you get spotted. It only works once, but it'll get you to safety. There's actually a whole series of escapes you can pull on Herman in that location with various items (I seem to remember stopping him from catching you with a net by holding the scissors from the first jail sequence and them cutting the net as he flung it over you) until he finally gives up and uses that paralyzing magic. Really the game expects you to get caught at least once pretty much, hence the ease of finishing your "prison labor" and of course it expects you to meet Rowena.
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Apr 6, 2015 02:03
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Psion posted:that sounds like "this entire game.txt" It's not all bad. The opening act is good, the final act is very conclusive and I like the idea that they had with it, the destination being the same, the motivation and payoff just being slightly different. The only issue I have with these two is the two major plot points that help establish the incentive for the final act are rather obscure and entirely missable. By which I mean giving a sandwich and listening to the Voice of Reason and talking to Catherine's ghost in the first act. This entire game.txt is really more 'good idea, bad execution. And great music'.
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Apr 6, 2015 04:28
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Oh man that last cutscene just looked like the animators couldn't be hosed putting the planks on the track correctly and just said "It's surreal! It's supposed to look all crooked and poo poo!" I could be wrong here, but I think the best way to get any kind of idea of what the hell is going on, both in this part of the game and in general, you have to listen to Malcolms sound bites that he says when you just click on him or wait for ages throughout the game. It seems like its the only time the plot is ever really addressed instead of all this incoherent mishmash of Malcolm just doing poo poo. The only problem with this is that the sound bites that Malcolm exclaims are kind of random, so sometimes he drops hints or mentions the whole murder thing, and other times he just talks about the screen he's on or whatever. I don't know if he changes his dialogue depending if you wait a while and just keep clicking on him or if you have reload from a save or even possible restart the whole game to make it change. Hyper Crab Tank see what happens if you just click on Malcolm routinely around that part of the game and see if that provides any insight into what the hell that place was all about or not. All that being said god I hated that part of the game, and the next part I hate even more.
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Apr 6, 2015 04:53
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Where did Harold learn magic? Why did his spell look like the petrification spell Malcolm? That part with the waterfall seems more like a tech demo then anything serious. Barbeque is pretty awesome the way he dynamically enters from just on screen. Malcolm didn't think this invasion thing through did he?
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Apr 6, 2015 10:47
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Zeniel posted:I could be wrong here, but I think the best way to get any kind of idea of what the hell is going on, both in this part of the game and in general, you have to listen to Malcolms sound bites that he says when you just click on him or wait for ages throughout the game. It seems like its the only time the plot is ever really addressed instead of all this incoherent mishmash of Malcolm just doing poo poo. Malcolm will say random things about the room if you click him or just wait around. They're the same lines either way, and change between rooms. However, most of them are pretty irrelevant to anything going on. At the Ends of the Earth, it's mostly Malcolm wondering where all the tourists (???) are and lamenting that most people don't make it away from the Ends of the Earth alive. Nothing I would say explains what the heck is going on. Then again, there are a few plot-relevant reflections you can get in some locations, like the cat ruins for some reason. doing the obvious posted:The only issue I have with these two is the two major plot points that help establish the incentive for the final act are rather obscure and entirely missable. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to get those into the LP, but I'll say I just straight up missed all of that when I played this the first time all those years ago. The final act of this game is bewildering if you've made it that far and never seen any of the setup for it, which is remarkably likely to happen.
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Apr 6, 2015 12:58
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:Malcolm will say random things about the room if you click him or just wait around. They're the same lines either way, and change between rooms. However, most of them are pretty irrelevant to anything going on. At the Ends of the Earth, it's mostly Malcolm wondering where all the tourists (???) are and lamenting that most people don't make it away from the Ends of the Earth alive. Nothing I would say explains what the heck is going on. I swear I've heard him say something that sounds almost like the beginning of an explanation. Makes me think he only says it on some playthroughs. Hand of Fate definitely does this, I've played through that game a million times and Zanthia still occasionally just says something helpful or just plain new but I'm wondering if you need to completely restart or just reload for that to happen. I'm almost positive Malcolms Revenge does that same thing. It's probably not worth anybodies time to play through that friggen jungle a handful of times just to check. I might give it a go or two if I'm feeling masochistic just to save you the hassle of checking.
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Apr 6, 2015 13:41
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I think the closest to an explanation is this line: Nobody has ever survived for long here at the Ends of the Earth. I guess... hmm. Am I essentially dead right now? ... but that only makes anything close to sense in hindsight, and only barely, if you squint a lot. Still feels like moon logic to me. All Malcolm ever says in the jungle, as far as I can tell, is "What a lot of trees!", "The jungle is really thick here!", and a bunch of other jokes related to the jungle and its thickness. He does comment about Fluffy in that particular room, but again, nothing plot-relevant. The closest thing there is this: I wonder how Kallak is doing. I hope he's okay and doesn't get hurt or anything. I want to kill him myself.As for reloading the game and whatnot... I don't know. If so, I've never noticed. I guess it's possible?
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Apr 6, 2015 13:50
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Well I did a little bit of preliminary fiddling around. Getting to that point in the game is a bit of a chore so I just decided to see if the dialogue changed in the first few areas. Nothing really seems to change, based on restarting or loading. But, I decided to see how it changes in Hand of Fate, in that game it seems to depend on how much of the current plot is known. So when Zanthia walking to the ferry, her exclamations are different from the ones she makes once she's spoken to Bruth. So I'm thinking it might be the same in Malcolm revenge. Of course by the river point, there's basically no plot happening, just Malcolm faffing about in barrels. So yeah its probably just a completely illogical mess and I'm just misremembering.
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Apr 6, 2015 14:07
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:I'm still trying to figure out the best way to get those into the LP, but I'll say I just straight up missed all of that when I played this the first time all those years ago. The final act of this game is bewildering if you've made it that far and never seen any of the setup for it, which is remarkably likely to happen. ...I think that's going a bit far. The normal thing people would do is to wander the island and see what's going on, what puzzles there are to solve. Especially if you don't know the fastest route to leave. If you look around you can probably find out a lot of the things the LP has omitted for pacing reasons. The fact that if you get caught and don't know how to escape, you get dumped back onto the island to continue exploring does not discourage you from exploring.
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Apr 6, 2015 14:09
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Interlude: No Business Like Show Business Today, we're going to have a look at another way to get off Kyrandia. Two ways, actually, since they're pretty close to each other. There are a whole bunch of rooms back in Kyrandia that we haven't been to yet, because we didn't need to in order to do the previous escapes. They're to the left of this location, the Bluff.  The Crossroads is immediately to the west. In general, there's not much interesting here. Some flowers. A rock. Mostly it just connects to other, more interesting locations. There's also a random event that can happen here, which we'll look at a little later. For now, let's go north.  You might remember this place from the first game. Brandon talked to his departed mother here in order to activate the final gem in his amulet. I suppose I should try to explain things to Katherine. She has to know I didn't kill her.This is also where this plot thread first appears if you're just randomly exploring Kyrandia.  That said, Malcolm clearly didn't think very highly of her in the first place. Let's have a chat.  Who's this guy? He reminds me of the ghost from the second game that we used to possess a scarecrow. Is it tradition in Kyrandia to bury royalty with their servants or something? [ghost] If you wish to speak with her, two flowers would be the polite gesture.  Right. In the first game, we had to bring a red orchid from the mainland in order to be able to talk with ghost mom. Seems the underworld has gotten more stingy with their retainer fees lately. Well, there are some yellow flowers over there that look vaguely orchid-like. Those should work.  Okay, then. The orchids make monkey noises as they leap away, resisting our efforts at picking them. We'll come back here later. For now, let's see what's south of the crossroads.  That could be my ride off this island.It certainly could! Look at that snazzy dog, too. I'm sure he'll let us ride his boat to the Isle of Cats.  Right. Darm mentioned this earlier. The circus has just been in town, and I guess this is their boat. I look like I belong in a circus, don't I? Sorry. We're leaving soon. You'll have to stay up here.  Maybe if we lie and tell him we're part of the circus he'll let us get on? I'm supposed to go with you. I don't think so. Please, don't ask. You know the rules. I don't think so.He's not buying it. This dog is too smart for us. We need to convince him we're part of the circus and belong on that boat. Now, there are two ways we can do this, and I'm going to cover both here.  All right, so, remember the toy factory? Malcolm's apartment is in the back there, and the hole in the ground leads to the city hall basement. We've been ignored the machine in the middle of the room up until now.  We can fiddle with the levers, and the green button on the right activates the machine, but nothing much happens. It spins its gears a little and then... nothing. Let's have a look at that big red book in the background. Perhaps it contains the instructions to this thing.  Clicking the book made a ghostly horse pop out.  After fiddling with the settings some more, the book now instead shows us a ghostly toy ball.  When the levers are in the upright position, we're shown a toy soldier. So, the book's purpose is to show you what configuration the machine is currently set to, but configuration is only half the puzzle. We need to provide the machine with some appropriate raw materials to make toys out of. For this puzzle, we need to make ourselves a set of leather balls. To do that, the obvious raw material is leather.  For instance, this shoe we found in the trash heap. We'll just jam it into the hopper up there.  Instant toy ball!  That's nice, Malcolm. Now, we need to make two more balls, and we need more leather to do that. We could go back to the dump and rummage through it randomly until we find more old discarded shoes, but there are some alternate sources of leather that will work just as well.  In an alternate timeline, we stole a leather jerkin from the public baths in order to wear it as a disguise. But, as it is made of leather, we can also use it with the toy machine.  Two balls, one more to go. The jerkin does respawn, so if we wanted to, we could go back there once again and pick it up. But there is a third source of leather...   RIP squirrel. We could go straight to the docks from here, but there is something we need to cover first.  First, we'll need a broken glass bottle from the dump. For what we're about to do, we can also use the scissors from the prison, or the shears from the chain gang, but the bottle can be gotten straight away without having to do any of that.  Y'see, the broken bottle has some sharp edges on it.  Enough to make a clean grab at one of the jumpy orchids, I guess? I'm not entirely sure why this works but just picking them doesn't. Seems to me the flowers would try to escape either way.  With two monkey jumpers - that's what the orchids are called, appropriately enough - we can finally have a chat with Catherine's ghost.   How is it that such a brutal, evil murderer can still be free in Kyrandia? You should be rotting in the Dungeon of Dismay. Okay, geez, calm down. We get it.  How can you claim you didn't kill us? It was the Enchanted Knife! Your hand was on the blade!  Whelp, that's all we're going to get out of that one. You can keep putting flowers on her grave, but you'll just keep having the same conversation. This bit is completely optional, and is really only there for some plot setup, as far as I can tell.  Oh well, time to move on. Now that we have three balls in our inventory, all we have to do is use one on Malcolm. I'd like to audition for a job. Hey, you have real talent, pal! You're hired! Excellent!     I can't believe they threw you overboard and cancelled the performance. I can't believe they didn't like my juggling.And that's the juggler escape: make three leather balls with the toy factory, then impress the circus dog with your juggling skills and he'll let you leave Kyrandia with the rest of the circus troupe. We didn't really impersonate a circus performer so much as get ourselves recruited as one, though... There is a second way to get onto the circus boat.  This guy kinda looks like he might be a circus performer, right? If only we could find some way to impersonate him.  First, we need an eel.  Then, we just need to wait for the mime to turn around. You'll notice Malcolm is wearing a snazzy squirrel hat; it's going to become necessary in short order, too. Anyway, with eel in hand, we can proceed.   Now we're having fun! Once again, we'll use the nail on a string to jimmy our way into the bath house.  You'll notice the leather jerkin is gone; in its place is the mime's outfit. We can now proceed to steal it the same way we did before; lie to the attendant about mucking with the controls, turn the heat up, and take the outfit while he's distracted.  Before we can put it on, we need to unhypnotize the squirrel. It's as simple as using the nut on a string on ourselves. This smelly mime outfit might look good... And there we go. We're now successfully disguised as a mime. The disguise works just as well as the leather jerkin for purposes of interacting with other Kyrandians, but more importantly, we can go back and talk to the circus dog again.  Ah. Apparently the mime is the captain of the vessel, and the dog is completely fooled. Our disguise is flawless. We're just about ready to leave. Did you bring me a fish cream sandwich?Looks like we forgot something.  Why would I bring you a fish cream sandwich?Smooth. You said you would get one for me. I'm sorry. Okay, I'll get you a sandwich. Anything else? A pillow, a nice beverage?We're not quite done. The dog won't let us embark unless we get him the fish cream sandwich we promised him. Er, the mime promised him. Now, I've already shown you one way to do this - scare everyone out of the parlor, collect some cream and eels and sesame, and you're done. But there is another way.  This kid. He randomly spawns in a number of different locations, and I've avoided showing him before now. He looks pretty radical, but most importantly, he has a fish cream sandwich. Perhaps he can be persuaded to give it to us.  Uh What? This should be a fascinating conversation.Here's the voice clip for that line. If you've played the previous game in this series, Hand of Fate, or read the LP, you might be thinking this kid must have a little bit of yeti in him. And, indeed, just like the yeti in that game, the kid is talking backwards. The subtitles aren't random, either; there's a simple substitution pattern.  Sdfr ralowfid sarsur jmtry! This sandwich tastes lousy! (Voice clip) Do you have any toys? You've got a tremendous personality, don't you?If you have the patience to decode his speech, you'll get a hint that the kid is interested in getting his hands on some toys. It's a fairly logical thing to try even without the hint, though. All kids like toys, right?  Back to the toy factory. The kid wasn't very specific about what toy he wanted, so we'll make of each. Aside from the leather ball, that means a toy horse and a toy soldier. For those two, we need a piece of firewood from the screen east of town each.  One of these should do it.  I ran into him in this location next. Here, kid! Go play in the street! Lm sdalhr. No thanks.Maybe a different toy?  Sdalhr. Thanks. This offering was apparently acceptable. I don't know if the game chooses which toy he wants at random, or if it's always that one, or what. Either way, he gave us his fish cream sandwich in exchange, so we should be ready to go!  Thanks. I love these sandwiches. Let's go, then. I can't believe they threw you overboard and cancelled the performance. I wonder how they found out I wasn't the captain. Maybe it was that... incident.And with that, we've covered the mime escape. These are probably the ones that are most likely to occur to people playing the game for the first time, since you're likely to find the boat while randomly exploring and Malcolm directly comments that it's a way of getting off the island. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Apr 9, 2015 |
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Apr 9, 2015 16:40
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Oh man! Finally, the toy machine. I spend so much time with that thing! I even reloaded several times because when that kid took toys for sandwiches, I thought for some reason I was screwed.
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Apr 9, 2015 17:20
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I still say the squirrel hat is optional if you set Malcolm to Lying mode before entering the baths.
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Apr 9, 2015 19:59
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Katherine has a little bit more to say if you summon her ghost and talk to her while the mood gauge is set to nice. e: now featuring less redundancy! Another weird thing you can do is use a squirrel instead of an eel in the sandwich machine. As far as I can tell it has absolutely zero use aside from making the Voice of Reason say he hates it. doing the obvious fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 9, 2015 23:23
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I mentioned the scissors and shears in the update, but I'd forgotten about the mood gauge. I'll see about getting some footage of that. As for the squirrel cream sandwich, I was planning to show that a little later. Squirrels are really multifunctional in this game, and have at least one more use beyond what we've seen and that one that I know of.
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Apr 9, 2015 23:25
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I've got to get me one of them Kyrandian squirrels. Other than the throat ripping bug it's the best multitool ever and I'm pretty sure I can live with that bug if I try.
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Apr 10, 2015 07:39
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:
... Way back in the 90's, when I was a kid who used to read gaming magazines and fantasize about being able to afford the games described within, I was quite baffled by the walkthrough for this game. I kinda assumed something was lost in translation. Turns out...
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Apr 10, 2015 10:50
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Huh. So the one thing Malcolm is suffering for is the one thing that's not his fault? Well, maybe, anyhow. Interesting.
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Apr 10, 2015 20:20
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Chapter 6: Wherein Things Go South Last time, we had a surreal experience at the waterfalls at the Ends of the Earth. After witnessing a series of bizarre visions, Malcolm somehow ended up... here: the Fish Court.    You bad little merman! Do not go so far away!Irritated by a missing attendant, the queen pushes a button and he appears. Malcolm is still unconscious. Clicking anywhere on the screen wakes him up.   Several years!?   She's always wanted a human. Who the heck are you? Where the heck am I? And what am I doing here? All reasonable questions. You can sort of see the golden collar in the screenshots, and you might have noticed the errant merman was also wearing one, as is the one in the back. Good morning. At last! I am glad to see you awake. I don't have time to play games. Oh, yes you will. Do we have to sing now? I am flattered, of course, but I'll have to be leaving now. You have no choice. You will come when I call. But now, I must take my nap.Well, the plot sure is taking a strange turn. It seems that Malcolm fell off the ends of the earth, but instead of ending up... wherever he was supposed to end up, he landed here: Limbo. Which is ruled by a fish. After hearing the queen's little speech, Malcolm automatically exits to the right.  Fine with me. At this point, Malcolm's overall goals are kind of fuzzy. The invasion of Kyrandia didn't go so well, but I suppose there's nothing stopping him from trying again. Our more immediate goal is more obvious: get the heck out of Limbo and back to Kyrandia. Limbo is a pretty strange place, overall. There are some more fish in the background, and a conspicuous key just sitting on the ground.  Could still come in handy, I suppose.  They seem to be supporting some kind of structure. There's nothing particularly interesting left on this screen, so let's leave. We can go bottom left back to the court, or top left or right into new territory. I'm going with top left for now.  It's a school of fish. Heh. As soon as you enter this screen, there's a weird ringing noise. Oh, no.  Uh, oh. I think you're in trouble here, pal!Our adventuring was rudely interrupted, and we were literally dragged by our collar back to the fish court. What gives, queen?  Truly the game of royalty. I guess that explains the massive board there. Great! And, since I am the Queen, I will go first.The queen takes several seconds to make her move. Hmm...Seriously, several seconds. Hmm... That's... certainly a unique opening move, not to mention a unique board piece. As you might know, tic-tac-toe is a solved game with perfect information and optimum play always results in a tie. I guess we'll play along anyway. Clicking any square on the board will cause a blue merman to park himself on it.  Hmm... The queen, as it turns out, is not particularly good at tic-tac-toe. Should be easy enough to beat her, then!  Surely she'll block the win, though.  Nope.  Awesome, we won. Now, let's get out of here and go look f-- Boy, you are lucky! Let us play again.Please no. Hmm... If we want to get out of here, we have to throw the game. The queen always makes the worst possible move, which means you have to actively try to lose the game. Calling this a puzzle is a bit generous, but it possible to get blocked into having to win.  You did win that one.It's not hard to do, though. However, we're still not free to leave. We can click on other things, but trying to leave the same way we did last time doesn't work. Looks like we've got to chat some more with the queen.  To tell the truth, I let you win.Harsh, but true. What did you say? Am I the best? You're an idiot. I had to work hard just to let you win. gently caress.  It's not enough to throw the game; after doing so, we have to set our gauge to "Lying" before talking to the queen. Tell me, am I the best player you have ever met? Without a doubt. Your skill is frightening! What did you say? Am I the best? You're a genius. I could never imagine those moves you make!The second half of that line is true, at least.  Maybe we'll play again later. Ta, ta.We're free to go. Before we leave, though, let's have a closer look at the board.       Oh, the 90s. We still love you and your sense of high-tech, even 20 years later. Trivia: I first played this on a 66 MHz 486DX. Pentium CPUs were new and pricy at the time. And where are the virtual reality headgear sets?This one's especially funny, since we're finally getting around to actually making high quality VR headsets happen now. They used to be a thing back then, although they weren't nearly as good. The 90s was a strange time in a lot of ways.  After playing tic-tac-toe, we get dumped back here again. Let's try Perch University again.  Ooh, I know! Okay, no sudden collar-related obstacles this time. The school is pretty boring, though.  The teacher will randomly ask questions of the students. Answers are never forthcoming. We can try to steal that nice, shiny apple of his though...  But first, we need to cause a distraction. We can do that by using the jester's staff on one of the fish on the left there. Let's liven this class up a little.  With the teacher distracted, we can snag his apple. Not that we had any real reason to, but what adventure game protagonist is above random petty larceny?  We do get some Fruit Points for doing it. Okay, let's continue exploring. There's another room to the left.  Well, that's new. Looks like a waterslide or aqueduct of some kind, and a clown being launched out of a cannon to the left there.  That was excellent!I wonder where that clown ended up. Could it be a way out of here? Oh, no. Oh, boy, we're back in court again. This sure has no potential for getting real old real fast. Yep. BIG trouble. Hmm. Maybe you could distract her... you know... romantically.Ew.  One more round of horrible tic-tac-toe and lying to the queen's face later, and we're free to go again. But before we do, there's one more thing to do here. We should have a chat with that merman in the back. He seems to know something about what's going on here. How do I get out of here? There must be something we could do. Let's scare her or something. It would take a miracle. The only thing she was ever afraid of was her father.Well, we still need to find a way to get rid of this stupid collar, but getting her to stop yanking us back and forth would be a good start. How do we get her father back? Maybe his ghost could scare her.Well, it's worked for us in the past. Where are we going to get some orchids down here, though? Either way, since we're free to go, let's continue on to the place with that cannon and see what the deal is with that.  What? Where? You must be new. This is Limbo here. It's not Heaven, and it's not, you know, down there. But we do give people rides to the Underworld. A cataract is a waterfall, which I suppose makes sense given the overall look of the place. Now, the Underworld doesn't sound like the best place in the world to go from here, but at least it's not Limbo.  With our gauge still set to Lying, perhaps we can convince this guy to give us a ride. Sorry, that's not in the manual. For first time riders, the charge is five coins. Repeat rides cost ten coins.I'm not sure why anyone would end up wanting to be shot into hell twice, but whatever. It sounds like we have a goal to work towards: if we can find some cash, we might be able to pay this guy off and get out of here. But where are we going to find some coins? Let's check out the last location we haven't visited yet, two rooms right of the court.  Another garbage dump. Great. Oh no.  Son of a bitch.  Once again we throw the game, and hurry on out of there. Maybe now we can explore the dump in peace.  My name's Malcolm. Who are you? You smell familiar. I'm Buddy, the blind batfish. I suppose it makes sense that a lot of trash falls off the ends of the earth and ends up here. There's another one of those aqueducts up there leading down into the trash dump.  Uhm... sure. That's me. Better give me your payment. Okay, here you go. Having the gauge set to Lying really pays off. Two coins sounds like a great start towards the five we need to use the cannon. Maybe we can gouge him out of some more. Any chance you'd make an advance payment? Well, no. But here's some free advice: Don't come around so often!There is an item on this screen. Do you see it?  Right here. Unfortunately, it's just a crappy old sock. It's junk, actually. Junk spawns randomly now and then all over the place. Say, didn't that fish say he buys old junk?  Great, okay. Three socks translates into one coin. Nine socks should be enough to get us out of here, and there are other kinds of junk that can appear as well. In fact, there's a trash dump right there. Maybe we can just...  Not that easy, unfortunately. Well, that's all of Limbo we can access right now. It's a strange and disturbing place, made worse by the queen's insistence that we keep playing tic-tac-toe with her. At least we have a plan for getting out of here. All we need is three more coins. We'll start working on that next time. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 14:46
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I wish Limbo in this game was like Limbo from the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy where you actually did the limbo.
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Apr 14, 2015 15:53
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Wow. I bet throwing tic-tac-toe games gets old very fast.
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Apr 14, 2015 16:01
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Torrannor posted:Wow. I bet throwing tic-tac-toe games gets old very fast. Looks like you have to do it for each new room you want to explore, and there's four rooms. So yeah, add this to the "what were the devs thinking?" pile.
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Apr 14, 2015 16:26
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It seems pretty obvious they were thinking "We hate you."
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Apr 14, 2015 16:45
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