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 You wake up at the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by your broken memories. Reclaim and compile your magic or drown in a sea of dreams. Open Sorcery: Sea++ is a charming text-based game about exploring a mystical ocean formed from the human subconscious, that also kind of doubles as the Internet (we'll get to that). It's a world filled with mythological creatures, strange fauna based on computer puns, and wizards from Earth. We play an undercover wizard whose soul fell into the lowest depths of this place after an attempt on her life. We'll be setting out to reclaim our lost powers, climb back to our body on Earth, and maybe, just maybe, get revenge on the people who put us here. It's a newly-released game with modern design sensibilities, but it's largely set up like a classical text adventure - travel in four cardinal directions, visit colourful places, meet interesting people, and befriend/outwit/murder them. I love the hell out of this game, hence why I'm actually LPing something. >Ask about audience participation_ quote:There are multiple ways of solving pretty much every challenge in this game, and the consequences of how we solve them will reverberate forward with us to various degrees. When we have meaningful options for dealing with these (which will happen a lot), I'll leave our approach up to an audience vote. >Ask about spoilers_ quote:This game is a sequel to Open Sorcery. Open Sorcery is short, rad, and costs like $3.50 on Steam, but no knowledge of the original Open Sorcery is needed to enjoy Sea++. Where knowledge of the original Open Sorcery is relevant to this game, I'll share that information in spoiler tags. If you want to discuss anything about the original Open Sorcery, or anything related to Sea++ content that we've now missed, please use spoiler tags. >Ask about sensitive content_ quote:This game can go to some pretty dark places, and we'll be running into a decent variety of "content warning" style content. The game provides its own content warnings on a zone-by-zone basis - naturally, I'll transcribe these, and you also have my assurances that this content isn't nasty or gratuitous (except for arguably one sequence that I'll clearly label as such). This game ticks a lot of "content warning" boxes, but it's not fundamentally a dark game. It ain't no Undertale, but it has a fundamental warmth to it, and kindness will still punch well above its weight if you're clever about it.  1: System Crash 2: Kernel Reboot 3: Backup Restore 4: Multi-Factor Authentication 5: Local Area Network 6: Inkjet 7: Denial of Service 8: Casting Error 9: Low-Level Code 10: Parallel Processing 11: Restore Point 12: Null Pointer Exception 13: External Storage 14: Audio Feedback 15: Comments Section 16: Agar.io 17: Internet Troll 18: Visual Basic 19: Web Scraping 20: Media Library 21: Creative Commons 22: Bug Bounty 23: Data Forensics 24: Law As Code 25: Platform Governance 26: SIM Cards 27: Legacy Code 28: Signal Amplifier 29: Keyword Search 30: Deep Blue 31: Readme 32: Narrative Roguelike 33: Social Media 34: Cheaters' Queue 35: Project Forecasting 36: Upload Speed 37: Link Surfing 38: Memory Cards 39: Hardware Overheat 40: Patch Update Doopliss fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 00:01
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", nothing. I'm sure you can do it.
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Reserved????
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Feb 14, 2021 00:01
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  Here's the first screen we get upon booting this game up - a content warning for ableism and a charity targeted at supplying running water to Navajo familities in the US. You should now have a decent idea what we're getting into.  After that, we get to see the Main Menu, with a "deep sea" audio effect looping in the background. Notably, the Options menu has some pretty involved accessibility features, the ability to skip certain types of puzzles, and a speed mode that drastically simplifies text you've seen before for subsequent playthroughs. The Achievements button is a worthwhile click - sort of spoilery, but each achievement comes with a short hint on obtaining it, which gives us some nice signposting for some of the more obscure content. We, of course, are here for the New Game button. Let's get into it.  Open Sorcery is made from a high-level HTML-based engine called Twine. There's JavaScript to be had, but mainly we interact with this game by clicking links.  As we click the links, new text appears, punctuated by the sound of broken bones. Eventually, the screen looks like this.   The words "My spirit" appear for a few seconds, then automatically replace themselves with "the bits of me beyond muscle and bone".  The web.The place below the 'real' world. A place of thoughts, spirits, and dreams. all connected.     The game politely allows me to click "family", "friends", and "beliefs" to cross them out. The text is largely more conventional than this, but the intro plays around. Some threads snap cleanlybut some are strong and deep, so instead of them breaking they break off a piece of me.   This time, the game doesn't give me a choice, and they vanish for good.  I cannot see(no connection to hardware) I cannot think(no connection to brain) I can only fall. . . Finally I land. Title card! Each paragraph slowly fades in and out when I click the heading. For the rest of this section, we can hear water all around us. This is too short for an update, so let's assess the damage.  Lie still in the Dark: I cannot bear to move. If I move, I might hurt again. Lying still in darkness, I am as close to not existing as I can be without death. It's comforting in a way I would normally find disturbing. Cry: I weep. That hurt so very much. I feel so very empty. I choke on a sob and start coughing. When I am done I weep some more. My tears vanish into the seawater as soon as I cry them. Just a few more drops in the ocean. Very soon, I am sick of crying. I stop, exhausted. We'll be in full-on protagonist mode in a moment. We're allowed to be miserable for a bit. Feel around:  The game will often have links that add a bit of in-line flavour text when clicked. I'll represent these by pasting them off to the side in the original image. The dark is absolute. I search the sand with my fingertips.There are so many shards. Broken pieces that were once beautiful. Still are beautiful, in a sad sort of way. If I find enough pieces I can put them back together. Learn who I am. Darkness of the OceanThe water around my is cold, still and pure black. The sand here is pitted with sharp stones. Dream shards. Collect my dreams.  Our memories have a white "shimmer" effect traveling along the text from left to right. Good to know. I collect all the pieces of this dream.I think it is an important dream, since it stayed with me so long, and landed so near. Now I must figure out how to piece it back together. A jigsaw puzzle of memory.  Here's the first form of puzzle in the game. Our memories take the form of shattered text fragments, and we have to place them in the correct order. There's no penalty for guessing wrong, and this one's pretty obvious from the punctuation. Play along if you feel like! Answers will be immediately below. . . . . . I remember magic.I remember guiding the impossible into the inevitable with a light hand. I tame spirits with scripts. I master matter, motive, and mysticism with math. I see the spaces in my mind where the spells belong. I am an open sorcerer. Oh I want my magic back. If everything else didn't tip you off, magic is pretty closely connected with computer science in this setting.  A satisfying "ding" plays when we obtain something new. SalveMundi was a simple program, one of my first.It creates glowing letters. Those would be useful right now. They'd let me see. Well, I've found the memory of the spell. Perhaps I can find the memory of how to cast it. There are no more dreams in this patch of sand.I'll have to search elsewhere. I still can't see anything. I guess I'll just pick a direction and walk.  Now we're a *proper* text adventure. We're going to spend a large portion of the game looking at something like this, typically with more art. Let's start with north. I try to stand and walk.My right leg buckles. There is a ghost of remembered pain. I collapse back into the sand. I rub my leg.It aches. Spiritual forms are based on body memory. My body must be hurt. Permanently hurt. So much that it's a part of my identity. I can't put weight on my right leg. Luckily for me, I'm underwater.I don't need to walk, I can swim.  Same difference, at least for now. North, attempt 2:  Looks like the path further north is cut off for now, but we do grab ourselves a memory. It's another dream.Or perhaps a memory. Memory ==> A false distinction. Memories are dreams of the past. I feel its jagged edges and realize this is only a fraction of a larger dream. I'll have to find the rest of this dream before I can see if there's any magic in it.But for now, I hold this dream to my chest and see what it has to tell me. Absorb dream.  Is this what broke our leg? Nothing for it but to press on, I suppose. Let's try west. The ground here is hard stone.Feel the stone. I discover a crack in the stone.I feel drawn to it. A tingle of familiarity tells me that a piece of me has fallen down there.  The game politely advises us when we're missing a resource that would be of use. That said, we should be okay to just brute force this one.  We get a nasty buzzer sound when we lose health. Ow. I press the dream into my chest, letting the memories and thought flow back into me.quote:Discovered part of dream: the steps of breaking One more to go, and we get... Something? North and west are now locked off to us - our character dosen't want to travel too far from our crash site without being able to see - so let's continue our counterclockwise circuit.  Two screens south and we find another memory.  I think we've learned our lesson. We're in the southwest corner now, so let's circle east. Darkness of the Ocean, SoutheastThe sand here is rough. Feel the sand.  Our second recurring puzzle: Scavenging! We're given a pile of junk letters, and need to find a relevant word without knowing what that word is. Not exactly a challenge when there are only 21 letters to look at. While searching the debris, I find a stick.It's a splinter of wood, as long as my forearm and thin as my thumbnail. Fragile, but might be useful for something. Convenient! Let's do some backtracking. I use the stick to knock the dream out of the nest of whatevers.Something grabs the end of the stick and snaps it in half. Lost stick. But I recover my dream. quote:Discovered part of dream: the steps of breaking Another memory puzzle, this one comprised of the text snatches we've been fishing out of the sand. Fragments are in the quotes below, and the answer is immediately after. quote:Pain. quote:I am running to school. quote:4. My leg is wrong. I am running to school.My foot hits ice flush with the concrete. The world lurches. I land on my leg. My bag, all my textbooks, land on top of me. Pain. There are five steps to breaking a bone: 1. The crack of pain. 2. Speckles of light before my eyes [this sentence is in gold text]. 3. I want to vomit. 4. My leg is wrong [the word "wrong" is in green text. Our hero seems to care deeply about this one]. 5. I realize there will be another six months of wearing a cast. Six months of sitting in the bleachers, watching the other children run. I have broken so many bones. I am so tired.  Another lovely "ding". That memory didn't sound like it would wreck our leg for good, though - a mystery for another day. We continue our circuit. Darkness of the Ocean, EastThe water is dark. I hear something. I hear crying. Hello? The sounds of crying stop.There is a pause. Then there is speech. This voice is rough and has the tell-tale lisp of a not-quite-human mouth.  I've lost my name. . . . I am sorry. I know a thing or ten of loss. A name is hard to lose. Are you crying because of loss? I cry because I have found a dream.A dream of swimming free through the Web. A weep because this dream of freedom reminds me that I am chained. It is so beautiful, but its beauty tears my heart to pieces. But I cannot look away. Well. That probably belongs to us. Let's be careful and take our time with this fella - we can't exactly give chase in our current state. How are you chained? I am chained by my master's will.Ten seasons ago, measured by the color of the coral and the digital clocks in my master's shop. Ten seasons ago, I swam where I wanted. I could beach myself on the shores of faerie, flirt with the phoenixes in their academy, or peek into the world of men. Ten seasons ago, I lost those places, and found only this darkness. Ten seasons ago, I lost my skin. You're a selkie. What we say here actually does feed into a mechanic later in the game, but it's not one that needs to be optimized, and this decision alone is highly unlikely to change anything. I'll pick the neutral option, since we don't know what kind of person we are yet. That's unfortunate. It is what it is.This dream gives me brief escape. Though it hurts me with longing for true escape. You shouldn't keep something that hurts you. I cannot help myself.You should understand, you are human are you not? I can only presume. I am enough like a human to love what hurts me.Alright, enough screwing around. I need that dream. It's a part of me. It is only one memory.You have others. I want this one. It reminds me of life before my chains. I have no others. I have lost all my memories. Then you can make others.I want this. gently caress this poo poo. So you'll take away a piece of me and trap me in the dark. You're just like your master. I...!No! I... I can feel the water tremble as the selkie flits unhappily back and forth. Fine.Take your memory. It is too painful to look at, anyway. I will go back to looking for darkness, and dreaming my own dreams. I am NOT like my master. No, you are not. Thank you. The water vibrates with rapid movement, and he is gone.Harsh, but it got the job done. Let's take a look at that memory. It is indeed a dream of freedom.The sort of freedom that would tempt a selkie. It's all in pieces, though. Damaged by the fall. quote:aches. quote:I discovered the Web. quote:I am swimming. quote:but fly. quote:in other people's dreams. . . . . .   quote:Discovered part of spell SalveMundi() Now we're getting some decent jumbles, and we learn our name on top of that! Or at least our forum handle, which will have to do for now. Let's head over to the inventory and see what we can do.   Happy, building music plays...  ...And then cancels. Looks like we have to find some light, but if we had light we wouldn't be in this mess. Nothing for it but to complete our circuit. Darkness of the Ocean, NortheastThere is light here. Small motes of moving light. Not enough fo illuminate everything, but it's refreshing to see something. Examine the light. Convenient! Almost like I looped this way on purpose.  Did I mention computer puns? I feel like I mentioned computer puns. Regardless, Pisces doesn't seem to think these are a threat. Let's take it slow. Right now, the lantern phish are scattered into small groups around the edges of this area, keeping their distance from me."wat is ur tru nam?" Wish I knew, buddy. Though I still wouldn't tell you. Let's keep waiting. Lantern phish have collected back into a school. They weave back and forth in hypnotic patterns. I take care not to stare too long."i am forin prinse. gimmie monies"   Nope, don't like that one bit. But now that they're at ease around us, we can strike.  Lantern phish aren't *nice* creatures, and resource management is kind of a big deal in this game. That said, killing is killing. Do we take what we need, or take everything? As I alluded to earlier, this game has something of a morality system. That said, it's not portrayed as a traditional "good/evil" affair, it doesn't reward or punish, and it doesn't really impact the ending. I suggest you ignore it on a first playthrough - decide based on your sense of pragmatism and your conscience. Doopliss fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 00:02
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take what we need
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Feb 14, 2021 00:39
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What we need seems good.
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Feb 14, 2021 06:43
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Only what we need right now, we don't know enough about, well, anything, to take risks yet.
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Feb 14, 2021 18:11
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Life is hard in the deep. We need their light, and these fish are jerks. Take it all.
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Feb 14, 2021 20:01
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 Welcome back. Last time, we were hunting for a source of magical light to fuel our first spell, and we had no choice but to steal some from a passing lantern phish. We chose to be merciful and take only what we needed.  A symbolic gesture, perhaps, but we have no memories or friends to tell us what we are. If we want to be a good person, we'd drat well better act like one. Let's take another shot at compiling that spell.  Victory! I have a spell.I can cast it whenever I like. I think I would like to cast it NOW. Cast Spell  Our spell inventory. A modest thing for now, but if we play our cards right we might even get ourselves a scroll bar.  Our first spell fades into existence and pulses gently. I am sitting at the bottom of the ocean.Not the physical ocean. This is the spiritual sea of thoughts and feelings that exists below the material world. The space the soul goes to dream. The birthplace of spirits. Sea++ Look at myself.  We have a name and an appearance. Now we just need a plan. My body must still be alive.My spirit wouldn't exist without a brain. Software can't exist without hardware. I would have fallen into my component parts. Earth, fire, water...mostly water.  Pisces has been through enough poo poo that she might just take that last option, though it's a pretty obvious game over. The other two options have only stylistic differences, but I think we'd rather heal ourselves as much as we can before we return to our body rather than waking up as a 40-year-old amnesiac.  Pieces of me are scattered everywhere, around and above me.I'll find my spells in them. That will help. My first objective should be to find a webship.You need a boat to travel the physical sea. You need a webship to travel this sea. Now that I have light, I can look around and see what I can find.  Hey, the art's back! Trail of footprints ==>The footprints are five-toed and tipped with dots that imply claws.An indent curves between the prints, snakelike. A tail, I would guess. They lead up to the debris where I found that stick, and then depart to the south. Whatever it is, it didn't eat us while we were helpless and blind, so we might as well investigate.  Cliff ==> I look over the cliff edge.Below, there is only utter blackness. There are those who say, if you go deep enough, you begin to rise again. There are stories of a web beyond ours, populated by alien dreams, twisting network threads of strange material, whose origins lie in another world. You know. Cthulhu. Guess that's the southern border of the map, then. Let's see about those footprints.  Curious building ==> This building is made of things that are not building material.One side is constructed entirely of desktop computer towers, stacked like bricks. The rest of the walls are tabletops, webship hull plating, and broken flatscreen TVs, all duct taped together. There are tiny windows made of tablet screens. Inside, I see more junk. Darknet ==> Seems that gathering elements is a big deal in this world. We'll need to keep our eyes open. Neon sign Well, it's not a text adventure without a shop. We don't exactly have money or valuables, but perhaps the owner can help us get our bearings.  A  jaunty tune plays inside the shop. Welcome welcome welcome.Welcome to Packet Rat's Emporium of Gently Used Second Hand Items. We offer quality merchandise at ocean floor prices. Please have a look around and let me know if anything interests you. I'm sure we can make a deal.  Given that we have literally nothing of value on our person, let's start by talking him up.  Generally, when we're looking at a person or puzzle, we'll see a little something like this. Spells and items are pretty self-explanatory. Matters and motives are motes of raw elements, such as that Light mote we used to compile our spell. They're the main resources we need to juggle in this game - for example, if a wall of fire was in our way, we might be able to put it out with some Water motes. Doing so would cost us the Water, though, and this means we generally don't want to spend motes on puzzles unless it's necessary. SalveMundi wouldn't be likely to impress this fella, so let's dive into dialogue.  I can't imagine you get much foot traffic down here. Oh, you would be surprised!When webships crash, where do they go? Down here! And what do they need? Spare parts for their ships! And who has that? Me! You may have noticed, this area has few commercial alternatives to my humble establishment.This high demand coupled with minimal competition makes this a surprisingly lucrative location. My prices follow from that. We could accuse this guy of extorting disaster victims, but we might still need his wares, so it can't hurt to be polite. I see. I am glad you understand! Is the darknet outside yours? Who do you sell to? Oh, a variety of spiritual entities. Fairy nobility. Barons of Hell.Some open sorcerers. Interesting. And how do you make deliveries? I have an arrangement with a kraken. She comes by regularly. Does she take passengers? You know, I don't know?It doesn't hurt to ask. The next scheduled pickup is in five months. Ngh. Nevermind. How much do you charge for Dark? Ooh, that's promising. The height of simplicity!...presuming you have experience manipulating Matter and Motive? I seem to. Then simply go out onto the abyssal plain and search for patches of darkness.Examine them closely and you will find clots of particularly thick black you can pluck out. I will be happy to sell you almost anything in my shop in exchange for them. Alright, we have the makings of a plan. Find a webship carcass, repair it with spare parts from Packet Rat, get the hell out of here. Let's make a bit of a shopping list while we're here. Most of this stuff is the sort of ruined trash you'd expect to see in a junk shop at the bottom of the sea.Meaning, none of it works, but there are parts that could be re-purposed for something else. There are a LOT of webship parts. Everything from hull plating to engine parts. I discover a hidden gem among some old Sierra adventure game floppy disks. A USB flash drive.But no ordinary USB stick. I can tell by the pattern of runes on the side and the aura of constricted Earth and Order that radiates from it. This is a USB Drive of Holding.  This is exactly what I need to transport heavy webship parts.I doubt the Packet Rat knows what this is, or he'd be featuring it as a special. I should definitely buy it. And, finally, the specials.  Oh, how interesting. A sealskin robe, you say. Let's get a price check on that.  That belongs to the selkie, doesn't it? Well no. Not really.It belongs to me. It's a sort of physical contract. As long as I possess it, he is my employee. You're using the word 'employee' very loosely, there."Slave", more like, but we don't need to say that bit out loud. Yes, well.What about him? How much for the skin? As I mentioned before, it's not for sale. Are you sure I couldn't persuade you to part with it for an exorbitant amount of money? Well. We might have to do something about this later. In the meantime, though, we're done here. Let's go exploring westward.  That must be one of those darkness patches Packet Rat mentioned. But first, let's take a look at those sharp shapes to the west. Sharks. Those are sharks.Sharks the size of Buicks. Well, I guess we found the westmost edge of the map as well. Let's check out that darkness.  Now the word searches are getting more serious. . . . . .  By luck, none of the words were generated diagonally, but we still have to do a word search where we don't know what the words are. This gets us three motes of Dark.  More than enough to buy that USB stick we spied earlier, so we do so. The Abyssal Plain is a big, wide open area, so we're going to have to explore this systematically. We'll start in the southwest, and then do sweeps from north to south until we find the eastmost end.  Two screens north of the corner, we find another patch of blackness. . . . . .  This one appears to be bugged - finding a mote resets the rest of the puzzle, and we can also reset at will. After finding the other two, the last word is revealed as "somber".  Seamount ==> A seamount is a mountain rising from the ocean floor that does not reach to the water's surface.Seamounts that do reach the water's surface are what we like to call 'islands'. And there's the northmost corner of the map. Let's take a look at that darknet we glimpsed to the east.  It costs us motes to compile a spell, but once it's compiled we can cast it as many times as we want. You can solve a lot of puzzles in this game through opposite elements, so let's try that SalveMundi spell from earlier. I cast SalveMundi.I summon the glowing letters and press them against the side of the darknet. The darkness hisses and steams, melting under the focused power of its opposite matter.  No light to spare at the moment. I brand the phrase HELLO WORLD into the side of the darknet, and then tear the scraps of dimness away until it is a hole I can fit through. Looks like we stumbled on one of Packet Rat's finds. Our find now. Let's take a closer look at this baby. This used to be a Skyhook Air, skimmer model. You can tell by the pomegranate logo engraved in the side.It's small and sleek. The sides taper from flared wings into a spear-point of a bow. That spear-point is slightly crumpled from impact with the seamount. This model is fast, but very small and not durable at all. Basically just a cockpit. It will serve if I plan a straight sprint up to the surface with no exploring along the way. The white chassis is stained and dented, but all of the sensitive machinery is pressed into its hull, which doesn't seem to be breached. Skyhook webships are hell to repair, but if the proprietary hull tech is intact, I can just hook up an engine and a sail.I'd need some spare parts to fix the cockpit cover, and the keyboard controls. All in all, I would need an engine, a sail, and 8 parts to fix this webship. It's a start. Not exactly the most robust ship, but it'll get us out of here if we have no other options. We can search the ship in more detail later, but for now let's take a look at the debris around it. I search the debris for useful parts.The darknet makes it hard to see, and I'm sure I'm missing half of what's here.  These early searches really don't mess around. . . . . .   As Pisces suggested earlier, all ship parts other than engines and sails are interchangeable with one-another. We could find more if we had some Light on hand, but we made our choice, and trading Light for ship parts might not be a wise investment regardless. We begin sweeping back south.  Search engine ==> This is a search engine--a drone constructed to search and catalog interesting items and places in the Web.It will search until its data stores are full, then return to whoever made it and upload what it found. You don't see too many of these in the Deep Web. They tend to get eaten. The most interesting thing about it, in my eyes, is that it's powered by a quality engine that I could easily re-purpose for a webship.I can see its power cords dangling from its underbelly. If I can disconnect them, it will power down. Not much we can do with this right now, but if we could plunder this thing it would improve our webship, plus it means we don't have to give money to Packet Rat.  Just south of the search engine is a small whirlpool with some Water motes hidden inside.  The word "Fluid" appeared mid-search - I suspect these weren't meant to be solved all in one go. The last one I can't find to save my life - we'll worry about that later. What was that "Chaos" one, though?  We manage to pull some Chaos from the unpredictable swirls. Two Water, one Chaos, and maybe one more Water later if we can find it. We find the shop again at the southmost edge of this column, so we start our next sweep north.  A ghost and (presumably) its corpse. Let's save the most interesting link for last and take a look at that body. A half decomposed body. Mostly skeleton.It clutches a sword in one hand. sword ==> Long, broad and shockingly sharp for lying at the bottom of the ocean for who knows how long. I find a mote of Death clinging to the corpse. Gained 1 Death Death motes are a very versatile tool for "solving" most living "puzzles" we encounter. But enough of that - let's check out the main attraction.  Ghosts are a slowly crumbling framework of old thoughts and stale feelings.This ghost is using my memory as a crutch to hold up its fading existence. Clinging to scraps of my identity because it has none of its own. I could just take my memory.Send the ghost back to the restless sleep of the not-quite-dead. That's not as bad as it sounds. It's debatable whether ghosts are conscious at all. Many consider them to be videos on repeat, with some ability to free-associate. Wouldn't pass the Turing test. They say that exorcism is more upkeep than mercy.  This is BEL/S, a fire elemental bound to C++ code and the protagonist of Open Sorcery 1. She'll mark information from the first game that we might want to know.In this case, we suspect there's a bit more to ghosts than Pisces thinks. I could try to put it to rest.All ghosts 'want' something. Have some input that will satisfy their derelict emotional framework. Getting that input lets them to do whatever it is souls do when they are done being alive.  What will it be? Doopliss fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 20:39
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(Try to) Put the ghost to rest. We've started out being peaceful and picking more benign options, might as well continue.
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Feb 14, 2021 21:02
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This finally came out? Sweet. I was sort of following the development a year ago.
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Feb 14, 2021 22:13
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Oh, hey, I completely forgot about those games, but I enjoyed the first one, I guess I have to take a look at it now.
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Feb 15, 2021 03:44
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 Welcome back. Last time, we were faced with an ethical dilemma of whether to Do The Content or Not Do The Content, and we bravely chose to do the content. Look, they can't all be deep quandaries.  This is going to be a bit of an undertaking. Now that we know what we're getting into, the game gives us chance to back out of this and just take the memory.  Once I know more about the ghost, I can talk to it and tell it what I discovered.I'm on this. We will not be deterred. Step 1, talk to the ghost. This ghost is blanched white, but there is a splotch of red on its head, leaking down the body in rivulets.Always bleeding.  A head injury, or just ghostly distortion? Who are you? Ahm...Ah ahm... Apparently frustrated, the ghost brandishes its sword.I start to back away, but it seems finished. Apparently that was my answer. What do you want? Car.Car. Car. Old. That's rather random. How did you get here? B. Bb. Oat. Bboat.Teeth fish. The ghost abruptly hefts the spectral sword and slams it into the sand.It leaves an imprint. DED.Thn. Cr...ash. The ghost stutters, and its head lolls. It clutches at the blossom of red on its forehead.Starting to think this is not productive. Let's head back to the Packet Rat and see if we can get better information from someone who's confirmed sapient.  The selkie's started lurking around Packet Rat's shop. Hopefully he doesn't hold a grudge about the whole "comparing him to the person currently enslaving him" thing.  Let's avoid committing for now. We can figure out how to address the whole "slavery" thing, if at all, once we're a bit better equipped. Have you seen any other human souls around here? Yes. Will you tell me about them? Yes. ...go on? Three ships. If they haven't been totaled or scavenged into uselessness, we'll be spoiled for choice.  Nice of him to tell us about their scents. We'll make a note of that.  That is the story, as I saw it.Not just three ships, but three fatalities. And succumbing to her wounds on the plain does match what the ghost told us. While we're here, let's learn a bit about our friendly neighbourhood merchant. Can you tell me where the Packet Rat gets his parts? Certainly.He rips them from the husks of drowned ships. He is always happy to see a crash. For him, it means customers or spare parts. Does he ever cause the ships to sink? No.He does not go that far. He is far too cowardly. In case we needed more confirmation that Packet Rat is an rear end in a top hat, we've obtained it - not that the selkie's an unbiased source. Let's see if the Packet Rat can fill in some of the blanks for us. Have you had any other customers come by lately? Well, I believe it was a few months ago.I actually had three in quick succession. Busy time. Can you describe them? If you wish?The first was a human, they were all humans. She was round and brown colored. She came in looking for parts and I sold some to her. The second arrived about a week later.She was a troublemaker. Very big. Yelled a lot. But made no sense. Couldn't talk right. Kept asking for a carol, as if it were, what is the thing, Christmas? Also bled on the merchandise. I told her she was to leave and not come back until her head was no longer bleeding. That's definitely our girl.  Pretty clear by now that moralizing at Packet Rat is a waste of breath. Do you remember any of their names? Ah, no. Apologies. I have no memory for human names. I should use that line in the future. Sort of a less productive version of what the selkie told us, but he did confirm that we're dealing with the ship that crashed into the seamount. And come to think of it, the ship we found last update was right next to the seamount. Let's take a look.  I guess you could say it's pretty Spartan.   These dolls are clearly handmade. Their faces are embroidered and they have tiny outfits.One is sewn of white cotton and has a tiny hand-stitched leather jacket. One is made of brown muslin. It has a tiny dress of patterned flowers.  There's a bit more to the compartments in the back. We'll go from top to bottom. The first cabinet contains sewing supplies. This cabinet contains a half-repaired purple blouse, and an incomplete patchwork rabbit made entirely out of scraps of lavender cloth. This cabinet contains clothes. Blouses, jeans, and a spare cloak. This cabinet contains a whetstone, oil, renaissance wax, and paper towels. I discover a plan for sewing a websail.This could be useful. I take it. Sewing a websail under these conditions seems optimistic, but we have the protagonist sense for relevant items.  I guess if you're an explorer down here, you probably have some motes stored away. This cabinet contains a stack of music CDs.==> Everything from Aida to Wicked. And that's it for the cabinets. We'll check the fridge and the coffee machine and see where we stand. This is a rather expensive-looking coffee machine.Many of the parts have been removed, but there is still a filter full of ground beans that smell both strong and rotten.  And that's all the information there is on the Ghost of a Warrior. Hopefully it's enough.  As mentioned previously, we need to give this ghost five memories to remind her (it?) of its (hers?) previous life - one for each external sense. We get a bunch of options for each sense, and we need to answer each one correctly based on the information we've gathered. We can try this puzzle as many times as we want, and we get a bit of feedback for correct memories. For those who want to play along, I'll list the options for each sense right below. The correct answer will follow. Taste posted:Mint tea Sound posted:The comforting buzz of bees Touch posted:Dirt between your fingers and leaves brushing your face Sight posted:Blood Scarlet Smell posted:Fresh bread. . . . . . Remember the taste of chicken and tic tacs.Remember the quick and clever rhymes of musical theater. Remember the roughness of cloth and the bite of a misdirected needle. Remember the sight of blood scarlet. Remember the smell of strong coffee. The only cheeky one there was the colour - the selkie gave "blood" to us as a scent, but we have coffee to fill that hole. I finish my litany of sensation.I examine the ghost. It is waking up.  The ghost has transformed from a vague white silhouette into a tall, imposing woman, wielding a sword and wearing a white cloak.Her hair is fiery red. It blends with the blood still forever leaking from her head-wound. She is looking directly at me. She nods. What do you want? We're not really sure where to find a worthy foe for her to take vengeance on, and we certainly don't know where her lost love is. We'll continue our search of the Plain.  Finishing our sweep to the north and heading east, we run into something strange. On closer inspection I discover that the white lump is a huge octopus, albino white and translucent.It has pressed itself into the crease where seamount meets sand. It is not having much luck since it is the size of a washing machine. I am perplexed for a moment.I have seen little sea-life. My bright glowing letters scare off creatures accustomed to perfect darkness. Then I see that the octopus has only six arms--two less than its title dictates. And its mantle is half-crushed, oozing faintly blue liquid into the water. It is dying.  For all we know, Pisces might have been a healer in her past life, but she's not one now. At least we can give it some comfort. Everything will be all right?This cephalopod has possibly fatal wounds. I will not give false comfort. Even to octopuses. At least we can, uh... Put it out of its misery? No.It's helpless and killing it would serve no purpose. Pisces is still her own character, it seems, and her opinions will sometimes outweigh ours. For now, there's nothing for it but to leave the octopus to its fate.  We find another patch of darkness just to the south. . . . . .  Dark and dark, huh? We rediscover the crash site and Packet Rat's footprints. One more screen east.  More dark. Outside the Abyssal Plain you're lucky to find two or three word searches in a zone - Packet Rat knows how to choose his locations. . . . . .  Again, I miss a Dark. Don't even worry about it.  Ooh, this is new. These are hydrothermal vents. Black smokers, which are the only vents found this deep.In the real ocean, these are located between tectonic plates, where the mantle of the planet bubbles up hot and boils the seawater. In the Sea++, they crop up over dense supplies of Fire matter. Collect Fire matter.  Pisces has a pretty impressive amount of willpower and pain tolerance. We can harvest quite a bit of Fire from here, but we'll be paying for it with health. Should we hold off on harvesting Fire, harvest a bit of Fire, or harvest a lot of Fire?
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Feb 16, 2021 02:59
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I’d hold off on gathering the fire motes till we can find a spell or something to make it safer for us, the first game taught us that order makes a good companion to fire I’ve played the first game and loved it, but I’ll wait for a sale or something before I’ll get the sequel. Thanks so much for covering it.
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Feb 16, 2021 06:32
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I gotta say, it's definitely worth the 12.50€ at regular price. And apparently a quarter of the profits goes to a water charity, which is cool. If anyone is one the fence about it, it's a clear yes from me. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to get much traction. There are only 14 steam reviews so far. (all of which positive.) I'd say to hold off. We don't an urgent need for fire right now, so we don't need to boil our hand in an underwater volcano right now.
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Feb 16, 2021 08:03
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Presumably we can come back, so hold off for now.
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Feb 16, 2021 14:51
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I really liked the original, so I tried the game out in early access but it was too broken to complete, so I'm glad to see someone going through it!
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Feb 16, 2021 15:44
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knaelidos posted:I’ve played the first game and loved it, but I’ll wait for a sale or something before I’ll get the sequel. Thanks so much for covering it.
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Feb 16, 2021 16:34
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RBA Starblade posted:I really liked the original, so I tried the game out in early access but it was too broken to complete, so I'm glad to see someone going through it! I'm going through it right now. I guess the author fixed a lot between early access and release, since it seems stable to me.
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Feb 16, 2021 23:05
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 Last time, we chose not to stick our hand in a geothermal vent and see how much fire we can pull out before the hand burns off - at least, not until we find a more efficient way of doing so. You're more disciplined than I am. We'll make a note of the vents for later.  As we swing along the seamount for our next sweep, we find another ghost. I wonder how common it is to leave a ghost when you die.  I will never turn down free motes, even if they're motes of congealed Death scavenged from a literal corpse. Look like we have a bit more looting to do for this fella, though.  These are pretty old.And cookies don't travel from site to site very well. They'll probably crumble away if I travel with them. We could just eat them - it's well documented that tasty snacks can heal all sorts of spiritual injury - but that greyed-out option is intriguing. Let's hold off until we figure out what that is and see what we can glean from this ghost.  The ghost's head and limbs are disproportionately small compared to its torso and arms.It was either deformed, or died wearing a bulky coat. It's curled in on itself in a posture of intense grief. Given the corpse is right there and wearing a heavy leather jacket, we can make a pretty safe guess on this one. Let's see if it's feeling talkative.  This could be a glitch in the ghost's nature, but judging by our experience with the warrior ghost it's more likely that it was just a massive nerd in life. Who are you? I am nobody. Who are you?Are you nobody too? I am Pisces.Oh.The moon is distant from the sea. And yet with amber hands She leads him, docile as a boy, Along appointed sands. Are you referencing my name? Starfish. Yes. Free association. Well done.What do you want? They left me, sweet, two legacies.Two legacies of love A Heavenly Father would content had He the offer of. They left me boundaries of pain capacious as the sea Between eternity and time. Their consciousness and me. Not sure we can work with that. Hopefully the poet will be a bit more lucid once we restore its awareness. How did you end up here? I see. Seems like this is the third ghost, who crashed near the cliff. Let's see if he remembers anything about the warrior. I gave myself to her, and took herself for pay.The solemn contract of a life was ratified this way. Shall I alter? When the hills do. Shall she falter? When the sun questions if his glory be the perfect one. My worthiness is all my doubt. Her merit all my fear.Contrasting which, my qualities do lowlier appear. That I should insufficient prove for her beloved need Is the chiefest apprehension within my loving creed. So I, the undivine abode of her elect content Conform my soul as 'twere a church unto her sacrament. The ghost seems to shake, as if it might come apart at the seams.But it recovers itself just in time. It sits holding itself, and quivering. He seems to care a lot about the warrior, but it also sounds like he felt equally compelled by both of the crashes. We should probably make tracks before we upset him any further.  A new text style. The text changes as we wait on this screen, as well as any of the child screens. The glow is actually glowing letters.The letters are like mine, but crudely formed. Like they weren't written, but grown. The letters read: YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON. Uh oh. The letters are coming closer.Crap. Let's get out of here.  That was a fully grown angler phish, and it will mess us up if we stay on that screen for too long. Sadly, we can't get a bead on it until it enters the range of our light, and it's quick enough to take a nasty chunk out of us before we can react. Come to think of it, perhaps the warrior could defeat it if she chose the path of revenge. Angler phish killed the lady she was following, after all. With the angler phish gone, we could investigate the coral forest to our heart's content.  Conveniently, the poet's ship crashed immediately south of us. As before, we can burn our way in with SalveMundi.  This barnacle-covered brick is a UFOware Heavy Debugger.This tank of a webship is heavily fortified. It's not fast, but generally doesn't need to be--it can take a beating. It's not quite as fast as that Skyhook we investigated earlier, but it's actually pretty competitive on speed. The big thing is that it would take a *lot* of ship parts to get running.  Speaking of webship parts, this one has four parts available due to its increased size. That also means we'd find extra ship parts if we burned the darknet up more thoroughly, though we don't currently have that option. . . . . .  Scavenging these ships is often pretty gentle, because the words tend to spawn horizontally. This time we have three areas to explore - the storage area, the cabin and the cockpit.  All of the jewel cases are labeled:Second Series by Edmund Graves The cover art is a skeletal bird wreathed in black daffodils. Clutched in its talons is a long parchment with the tagline: Hope is the thing with feathers. It's durable as gently caress. Appropriately metal. Not familiar with any musicians by that name, though. Let's check out the cabin.  A sleek, black electric guitar is hidden under the bed.Take the guitar.  That's the spirit, Pisces. Last stop is the cockpit.  Hauntingly distorted guitars screech out of the speakers. Someone screams the lyrics:NO RACK CAN TORTURE ME! MY SOUL'S AT LIBERTY! BEHIND THIS MORTAL BONE THERE KNITS A BOLDER ONE! I turn it off quickly. That's very loud.Not the sort of lyrics I normally expect from screamo. Seems like it might match Graves' CD cases, though. And with that, we're done here. We exit the ship, quickly scurry past the coral forest, and say hi to the poet. Same deal as last time. Taste posted:Mint tea Sound posted:The comforting buzz of bees Touch posted:Dirt between your fingers and leaves brushing your face Sight posted:Blood Scarlet Smell posted:Fresh bread. . . . . . Remember the taste of Pop Tarts.Remember the whine of distorted guitars and scream of heavy metal lyrics. Remember smooth wood and the distant dig of guitar strings on callouses. Remember the sight of Midnight Black.I think we're supposed to infer this from the electric guitar being black, and perhaps the black daffodils on Graves' CD cases - judging by the "E" on the sticky note and Graves' sort of esoteric lyrics, it's likely the ghost actually is Edmund Graves. Remember the smell of leather.The selkie mentioned the "man" smelling like leather, and we could also infer from the leather jacket.  He ate and drank the precious words. His spirit grew robust.He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was dust. Seems pretty much the same to me, frankly.  What do you want? They left me, sweet, two legacies.Two legacies of love. If this boundary, time, cruel master, capacious as the sea, Is drawn for all eternity between those two and me... A bit of variance in this one as the poet processes. The ghost wavers. He seems about to cry again, but stops himself. As it happens, we already have his instrument with us. Do we fulfill the poet's last wish, or gently caress that poo poo, we're reuniting the ghost polycule? Doopliss fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Feb 17, 2021 03:12
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my adventure game senses are telling me that this isn't exactly a polycule we're looking at but I hope the game is a lot less cynical than I am. Let's bring the gang back together again.
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Feb 17, 2021 03:21
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Bring the gang back together, what could go wrong? Also, it could not go wrong, and we could get a bigger and better ship out of it, make some people less unhappy, not gently caress over the remaining ghost that doubtlessly is hanging about and get enough spare dark to free the selkie. We could also set us up for massive trouble, of course.
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Feb 17, 2021 03:28
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 Welcome back. Last time, we were moved by the poet's plight and decided to help the three ghosts spend their afterlives in domestic bliss. Or maybe it's some kind of weird unfortunate love triangle, but we can cross that bridge when we get to it.  First order of business, free memory! I start picking up the pieces.As I do, I notice that they have fallen in a very particular way. They form a shape.  Is that kanji?I don't know what that symbol means. But as I look at it, dread settles cold in my gut. My right leg aches. The game never calls back to this directly, but the dominant theory is that this is kanji for "fire". If it is connected to our right leg, it's likely not what blasted us down here. Pisces is just a regular old trauma magnet. I finish gathering the pieces quickly.And I put them back together.  . . . . . Tarot cards. Tea leaves.Crystal balls and tortoise neck bones. Celtic runes and dove entrails. Humans are terrible at predicting the future.So is magic. Prophecy is a chump's game because offree will, infinite possibility, and innumerable variables.No one really knows why. It's just hard.  A simple three-parter, and a short lesson on prophetic magic. The spell code implies we might even be getting access to some, if we can find the other pieces.  The final webship. By process of elimination, this belonged to the first victim - the one the selkie referred to as "the lady".  As before, we burn our way in and scavenge what parts Packet Rat hasn't got to yet. . . . . .  These might be hardcoded to spawn horizontally, or perhaps it heavily favours horizontals because of how it picks starting letters. Despite a bunch of refreshes, it seems consistent. On to the ship itself.  The Schooner isn't actually any faster than the Debugger. It's a bit less robust and significantly cheaper to repair, but it can still travel to places that would crumple the Skyhook. I enter the ship.The Lenasus has a cockpit and a cabin. Both have been painted rose pink. Same colour as the sticky notes. We'll start with the cockpit.  For raw amount of words and links, the Schooner actually comes in behind the Skyhook. Maybe we'll have better luck with the cabin.  I find a mote of Earth in one of the pots.I gain one Earth. Aside from dirt and stone, Earth also represents ice. Basically, if you need a solid block of stuff, Earth is your go-to. As for the teapot... The dregs of ancient tea coat the bottom of the pot.It smells intensely of mint. And that's all we've got for the Lenasus Schooner. Now all that's left is to find the ghost.  The anemones are the most colorful things I've seen on the ocean floor.Sky blue. Sunshine yellow. Autumn red. Rose pink. Colors from another world. And we do find her, just one screen north of the schooner.  The siren call of Death motes draws us to the corpse first. Odd to see plants growing in the body, though - I thought these three only died a few months ago.  The ghost's lower body blurs with the anemones, almost as if it is part of them.Its fingers wriggle strangely, bonelessly, like tentacles. Its hair floats through the air, moving of its own accord. Tasting the water around. I think this spirit used to be a Life sorcerer. They sometimes fuse with the local flora, when they die, and sometimes are even reborn through them. There's our explanation for the plants.  Who are you? The ghost touches the anemone about it.Affectionately. Like a mother. I assume she's mute due to the circumstances of her death. Or perhaps she was always mute. What do you want? The ghost touches the anemone about it.But that's not quite enough. It looks straight up. It puts its hand over where its heart would be. It reaches up, as if straining towards the surface. It slumps back down and sighs. It consoles itself by petting its anemone. How did you get here? The ghost points to the south.She's earning the title "gardener", and she clearly misses someone up there, but that's about all we can glean from this.  This should be our final round. Taste posted:Mint tea Sound posted:The comforting buzz of bees Touch posted:Dirt between your fingers and leaves brushing your face Sight posted:Blood Scarlet Smell posted:Fresh bread. . . . . . Remember the taste of mint tea. Remember the comforting buzz of bees.A guess, but it fits her style and it fits the window decal. Remember dirt between your fingers and leaves brushing your face.Not much conjecture needed on that one, even aside from the potted plants in the ship. Remember the sight of cherry-blossom pink.Remember the smell of mint.  The ghost blinks.She laughs. She plunges her arms into the mound of anemones.  Life is less reliably useful than Death, but also less inherently harmful. It can heal injuries and make plants flourish.  I'm not even sure we're dealing with a ghost anymore, but we ask what she wants for formality's sake.  That's one way of getting our memory back, I suppose. As it happens, we have good news for her.  I've been playing a little coy with the ghosts' dialogue for the sake of pacing. All of these options appear for every awakened ghost, even if we haven't unlocked the options yet, and we'd get a big "ARE YOU SURE" dialogue if we took any of the options that locked the others out. We could've reunited the ghosts with each other one by one, and they'd have been briefly happy about it, but it wouldn't give them peace and they'd inevitably get dragged back to their bodies. We've made our choice, of course.  As they vanish, there is an outpouring of love.Gained 3 Love As they vanish, I hear faint words.  When the chaos is done, the Gardener presses my memories into my hands.All jumbled together. I'll have to sort them out. Here's our first memory that might take a bit of noodling. It won't be the last by any means. quote:returns 28 rows quote:SELECT Omens FROM dbo.Prophecy quote:returns 0 rows  Seems like Pisces has an interest in apocalypses. Discovered part of spell Omini()Future currentFuture = rand.generateFuture(); print(currentFuture.toString()); Collected 2 of 3 parts of this spell.  There are certain mechanical advantages to helping the ghosts find peace on an individual basis instead. The Warrior would have given us free entry into the coral forest from last update, the Poet would have given us a kickin' rad enchanted guitar for later (the ordinary guitar still has its uses, though), and the Gardener would have given us a single mote of Love for putting the other two ghosts to rest. Still, this seems like the happier ending. Now that the hubbub's out of the way, let's check on the Gardener before we carry on.  Doesn't look like any of them are going to be moving on any time soon.  We've built ourselves a pretty hefty inventory over the last few updates. Love is mainly useful for pacifying threats that we don't want to actually kill. Chaos breeds change, breaks stagnation, and, more pragmatically, fucks up machines. Order, I suppose, does the opposite.  Right now, though, I'm most interested in that Life mote. As you may recall, we previously ran into a dying octopus on the seamount. At the time, there wasn't anything we could do, but the calculus is a bit different now. A single Life mote won't grow back severed limbs - I'm not sure anything can do that - but it would certainly help. Should we hold on to the Life, heal the octopus and eat some web cookies, or heal the octopus and feed it the web cookies?
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Feb 17, 2021 22:31
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Heal and feed the octopus and gain a pet. (An unlikely result.)
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Feb 17, 2021 22:56
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Heal and feed him.
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Feb 18, 2021 00:38
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 Welcome back. Last time we achieved a happy ending to our first sidequest, and received a big old pile of motes as a reward. Today, we've decided to continue our Nisces playthrough by nursing a dying octopus back to health.  We also get our first look at the Matters and Motives interface. Each matter and motive has its opposite, and they're arranged opposite one-another from left to right. In this case, Life is the only mote that will really achieve anything.  I watch the octopus for a little while.I didn't cast a magic spell, so there's no miracle reconstruction of flesh or sudden sprouting of new arms. This is a skill I regret not having. ==> I suspect from my regret that there is a reason I never will. If it was that easy, I suppose our leg wouldn't have any problems. Eventually, the octopus detaches itself from the seamountainside and plops onto the sand.Its gills flutter evenly. The will to live is a powerful thing.  I mean yes, *obviously* we're petting the octopus and having it follow us, but let's at least assess things first. I check on the octopus' wounds.Its mantle is still damaged, but it isn't bleeding anymore. It has six arms and two stumps. The stumps ooze a little. Seems like will to live was about all we gave it.  I feel like Abigail Corfman knows what players like, and players like pet octopodes. Speaking of "pet octopodes"... I pet the octopus.Its skin is like slimy velvet. It pets me back, suckers curling around my wrists and arms. I guess petting an octopus might not actually be pleasant, but it's the thought that counts.  Our new friend isn't in immediate danger of keeling over, but I wouldn't call it robust. Maybe some adventure game food will improve its health.  I check on the octopus' wounds.Its mantle has healed and looks to be the right shape again. It has six arms and two stumps. The stumps are entirely healed over. Eating those ourselves would have taken us back above half health. Still, seems like our cephalobud got more out of it than we would have - it seems like it's about as healthy as it will ever be.  Healthy enough... FOR BATTLE. I try to subdue the search engine with physical force.It catches me easily with its spider legs. The octopus immediately imitates me and attempts to grapple the search engine. It has much better luck. And more arms.  I detach the engine from the frame.I upload it into my USB Drive of Holding. Gained search engine. Alright, not exactly a pitched battle, but it gets us a *very* useful piece of kit for our webship. We'll discuss exactly how useful later, but it definitely means one fewer big-ticket items we need to spend Darkness on.  Since the octopus seemed dissatisfied, we take it over to the coral forest for round 2. We appear to have misread our friend's mood.  The octopus wins. It wrestles and pulls and guts the phish with its beak.It rests on the ground for a moment. Bite marks cover its arms. It crawls over to me. It offers me the angler phish corpse. Aww. It's sharing. Our friend is victorious! Thanks to the web cookies, it won with only superficial wounds. If the octopus was coming into this fight hungry, it would've been a double KO. The octopus eats the angler phish.I harvest a mote of light from its lure. Gained 1 Light And with the forest's guardian down, we have free rein of the place. As always, we'll start by looking around.  We're not entirely clear on what "necromancy" means in this setting, but Death motes govern decay and diminishment in all its forms. It's likely not friendly. This seems sort of unsafe, but we choose to ignore the octopus' instincts and poke around. What kind of hero would we be if we left areas unexplored?  I examine the webbing, and find meaning in it.There are line art drawings, stitched out of silk. Schools of fish. The angler in its lair. A dark cave. A falling figure. I have found a colony of artists. Or perhaps not artists.Record keepers. None of this stuff is original. They're just mimicking what they see.  Fortunately, they don't seem interested in killing us. Let's see if we can make contact. I try to communicate with the spiders, but quickly give up.They stare at me, unresponsive. It's just a touch creepy. Maybe they're just suspicious of us. Maybe a Love mote will reassure them.  I gather all of the web-spun motes, picking them like blackberries out of the spider web.I end up with a sizable pile. Gained web motes. These are shaped like motes, but clearly spun of webbing.  They're very proactive copycats. I wonder how they'd handle something a bit more sophisticated.  And there's our other necessary ship part. Not quite as splendid as the engine, but spidersilk is very sturdy, and it'll serve us well on our way out of the Abyssal Plain.  With that diversion out of the way, we return to our sweep and stumble on a promising looking cave.  Ooh, another free memo-waaaaait a second.  Stargazer ==> This fish is called a Stargazer because its eyes are on top of its head.Do not let the sweet name fool you. It is venomous, generates electric shocks, and is widely regarded as one of the meanest things in creation. On my first playthrough, I absolutely glee-clicked the memory before I even read the rest of that screen. LP Pisces is smarter.  Once we're aware of the threat, it's pretty easily dealt with. Nothing down here likes light, and things lurking in caves like light even less. The memory is ours for the taking. quote:complete certainty. quote:NOW is the alchemical process of converting quote:I've always liked throwing rocks at things quote:PROPHESY is the alchemical process quote:and guessing about what makes a noise. . . . . . NOW is the alchemical process of convertingutter mystery into complete certainty. PROPHESY is the alchemical processof throwing rocks into the dark and guessing about what makes a noise. I've always liked throwing rocks at thingsand I don't mind a profession that admits its professionals are charlatans.  With this, we're set to compile our second spell. Compiling it requires a mote of Dark, which aren't exactly in short supply down here.  Omini is our hint spell. It'll give us advice about whatever we cast it on, generally in cryptic haiku form. As we'll see shortly, it's a very important spell.  And that "very boring and repetitive" area represents the east edge of the map. We can travel as far as we want that way, and the game will keep proper track, though eventually it will get annoyed and offer us a fast travel option back into terrain with content in it. Let's check out that darkness patch.  Much like as we've seen before. Two of these are simple enough, but the third word here is kind of cheeky. Maybe we can finally get some value out of that "cast a spell" option. . . . . .  Omini is how we solve these puzzles without losing our mind. It'll give us a full list of the words in each word search, downgrading us from crossword-style word search to junior word search.  So much simpler. In the future, I'll include the prophesied words in spoiler tags so you can cater to your own difficulty. This is why I've been willing to miss words in past updates instead of toughing it out.  Speaking of, I just went back and solved all the other word searches. Liberating!  Finally, we come to the last relevant object in the Abyssal Plain. You see? "Inkjet" referred to this jet black ink on the ground. It wasn't me failing to come up with an octopus pun at all. This darkness source gets its own art asset, but armed with Omini it will succumb like all the others.  Omini also lets me more reliably warn you when one of the words doesn't spawn properly. On this screen, there are only three words to find. Prophesied: nocturnal, caliginous, tenebrous,  Despite sifting all the motes out, the rest of the liquid darkness remains. Perhaps Omini will give us some insight into why this pool's special.  Things look good in black.And some things look valuable when they appear black Or perhaps it won't. The hint might be miscalibrated, or it might refer to resources we haven't acquired yet. We can't say until we figure it out.  Having fully explored what's likely one of the most Dark-rich regions in the Deep Web, we've made it... 1.7% of the way to buying the selkie's skin. I think we have to assume that buying the selkie out of slavery honestly isn't on the table. That doesn't mean we're out of options, of course. We could keep our eyes open for other solutions elsewhere in the Deep Web, or we could "buy" the selkie's freedom for a much more affordable three Death motes. It's not as if Packet Rat doesn't deserve it. Should we kill the slaver, leave the Packet Rat be for now, or [UNLOCKED] find some way to rescue the selkie non-violently? [LOCKED] options are my obnoxious form of thread participation gameplay - these are puzzle solutions that we have all the resources for, but I want to see if y'all can think of it. Mention how we'd actually achieve this option in the thread, and the option will unlock for voting. These aren't necessarily the best outcomes, but they are the less obvious ones. This one got solved instantly, and is now [UNLOCKED]. Doopliss fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Feb 19, 2021 |
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Feb 19, 2021 01:24
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The obvious answer is taking fake motes from the spiders and dipping them in the ink pool to swindle the Packet Rat. Which isn't very nice but neither is slavery, so he can suck it up.
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Feb 19, 2021 01:58
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That seems like a good way to get it done, here's to them not being relevant after this.
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Feb 19, 2021 02:02
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Yep, that seems like what we should be doing. edit: can we name the octopus?
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Feb 19, 2021 02:53
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I don't think I'll be voting since I'm also playing this game but I'm glad to see someone's LPing it. And you helped me find a puzzle solution I'd missed so thanks!
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Feb 19, 2021 02:55
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Leraika posted:Yep, that seems like what we should be doing. Definitely continue our policy of non-violent helpfulness until we have a pressing reason not to. And this is an important question.
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Feb 19, 2021 06:13
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Oh hey, somehow missed this until now! Extremely happy to see this being LP'd - will have to bow out of voting unfortunately due to having also done a lot of EA testing on this, but I'm eager to see how well the hivemind does (and will happily complain about how you guys get the easy version of the puzzles, what with the quality of life changes and the actually functioning as intended, grumble grumble) Good luck!
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Feb 19, 2021 07:22
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 Welcome back. Last time, we found a way of rescuing the selkie without just up and murdering Packet Rat. Believe it or not, I cut dialogue from this puzzle - we could have walked right up to the selkie and said "hey, I feel like defrauding your boss" and he would reply "sweet, I suggest these weird coral spiders who copy stuff you show to them".  I'm still on Team Kill Packet Rat myself, but this gets the job done. Maybe his buyers will kill him when he tries to offload this Dark. Regardless, it's time to pay him a visit.  Not doing yourself any favors there, Rat.  I drop the giant mound of counterfeit darkness onto the counter.The Packet Rat goggles at it. Lost counterfeit darkness.  He unlocks the SPECIALS cabinet.He takes out the sealskin robe. He hands it to me. Gained sealskin robe. I will miss the passive income.But I'm sure I will make it up in investments. Do tell him goodbye. I hate goodbyes.  This presents a secondary dilemma. We currently have 10 ship parts, and we can only get up to 14 by spending our Light mote. Repairing the best webship requires a whopping 20 ship parts, and Packet Rat happens to have 10 parts scattered around his shop. Packet Rat may be a predator, but we've hurt him a lot already, and if we also steal his supply it might significantly hurt his business long-term.  Pff nahhhh, we're robbing this fucker blind. We should probably leave before he comes back regardless.  We're confronted immediately.  We choose "give him his coat" on the theory that, because it has the fewest syllables, it's the actual fastest option.  Finally he looks back down at me.He swims back down, coat wrapped around his shoulders. He stays a yard away, reminding me more of a wild animal than ever before. What a strange human you are.Why did you do this? You gain nothing. I know how painful it is to be missing a part of yourself. The selkie pulls his coat tighter about him, and I can see it start to creep over his skin, transforming him into a seal. Now I cannot wait.I must swim again. Goodbye.  And now, for the time being, we're finished with the Abyssal Plain. We have our choice of webships to get us out of here, and I'll summarize them at the end of the update, but for purposes of demonstration we're going to take the schooner.   More frustration than excitement, it seems.  Tragically, octopodes can't breathe webship atmosphere. Our time together was precious short, but we'll carry the memory of it in our hearts for the rest of our lives.  The Deep Web music is easygoing but catchy. I rise into the dim waters of the Deep Web.I shut off the short burst engines and close my game. I float free, buffeted lightly by errant currents of emotion. I feel a faint pull upwards.My body drawing me back towards it. Straight up is the path of least resistance. I can use my connection to my body as a line to draw my ship upwards. But if I go straight up, I won't recover all of my memories.I'll need Matters and Motives to power the ship if I want to explore. We'll have to see about that, Pisces. Quality engines and sails will make traveling easier.I take readings of the surrounding waters. I detect currents that link me to four nearby IP addresses. Time to choose.  We've unlocked the world map. Traveling to previously-visited IP addresses doesn't cost us anything, so we're not at risk of missing zones if we don't plan our route well - we actually *can* travel straight up, and it won't make it harder for us to dip back down later. Here are our potential destinations:  When we select a zone, we get a description of its travel difficulty, as well as a concealed list of content warnings. I'll put them behind spoiler tags for those who like to go in blind and aren't sensitive to nasty content, but you might also find them a fun form of scouting or foreshadowing. 3.199.32.2 (Up) Content Warnings: ...................None...................  000.000.00.0 (Down) Content Warnings: Spiders, Being unable to trust your senses  374.7.4.3 (East) Content Warnings: ...................None...................  10.101.010.10 (West) Content Warnings: ...................None................... We're going to end this update with two choices. First, do we travel up, down, east, or west? Second, I picked the Schooner to get the update to a reasonable length, but this is an important choice for our future plans. Our options are as follows: The Skyhook is small, fast and light. It will give us a small speed bonus during travel, which can let us move around more efficiently. However, it also takes more damage than other ships, and moving efficiently sometimes involves tanking some damage. In addition, it is not at all designed for exploration, and its flimsiness will straight-up stop us traveling to at least one sub-zone and delay another. The Schooner is the standard everything else is compared against. No buffs, no debuffs. Eventually, it can travel anywhere in the Sea++, though one sub-zone will be off limits until we find a top-of-the-line engine. The Debugger is a fortress that happens to be able to sail. It's no less nimble then the Schooner, but it can visit every area right from factory default, and it gives us some modest damage reduction to boot. The real cost to this ship is the parts needed to repair it - if we take the Debugger, we'll be setting off with zero ship parts left in reserve. If any mishaps happen, instead of the ship taking damage, *we* take damage. We'll make up the damage difference in the long term, but we'll need to walk gingerly until we find more ship parts elsewhere. Which direction? Which ship?
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Feb 20, 2021 00:40
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I subscribe to the Virtue of Balance, so let’s go schooner. And to the east.
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Feb 20, 2021 02:26
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Goodbye sweet octopus. I say we go big and go down. cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 10:00 on Feb 20, 2021 |
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Feb 20, 2021 02:44
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Debugger and go up, I feel like we want easy during the earlygame while we try and get some resources together.
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Feb 20, 2021 08:56
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I'm going to call the voting in favour of the Debugger, and say that the next vote decides our direction. If the next voter picks east for some reason, I will literally resolve it randomly.
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Feb 20, 2021 15:31
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east 
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Feb 20, 2021 15:53
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east
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Feb 20, 2021 18:41
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Active content warnings: Spiders, Not being able to trust your senses  Welcome back. Last time, we rescued the selkie and settled on the Heavy Debugger for our chariot. We were a bit less decisive on our next destination, and managed to split the vote between all four options.  Our ship choice rewards us with a properly bloated Steam catalogue. We settle on Puzzle Pirates - that game was my goddamn childhood - though it doesn't give us any new text. With a split vote, we left our fate in random.org's hands, and decided to travel down. This is one of the two directions marked "difficult", as well as the only starting location with associated content warnings. We're starting off in the literal and metaphorical deep end.  "Momentum" is basically progress. At the end of every "turn" of webship travel, our momentum increases by an amount based on our websail, engine, and whatever event occurred on that turn. If our momentum exceeds the target momentum, we arrive. If it doesn't, we enter another turn of play. We put on the Deep Web tune and set off. Speaking of events, here's our first one. The Tutorial Fish is a lovable fellow who will take the time to explain whatever we're doing to him. The Tutorial Fish seems very orderly, so let's try hitting him with a Chaos mote.  Tutorial Fish is still remarkably relaxed about it, but this solution would still put us down a mote. Maybe we can do better. We click that "use ship equipment" button and select the Search Engine.  Here's why the Search Engine is such a big deal. It lets us duplicate the effects of a mote without actually spending anything. We might find better engines as the game continues, but the Search Engine's Order effect will always be there for us. Still, we might want to use our Search Engine later in the voyage, and the Tutorial Fish doesn't actually seem like a threat that needs resolving. Now that we've demonstrated that we've learned from him, maybe we can just leave.  Tutorial Fish believes in hard lessons, but we call his bluff and voyage on.  Generally, taking a point of damage instead of spending a webship resource is a good trade, but the scuffle slowed us down by an awkward 1 momentum. If we complete every other event without losing momentum, we took that damage for no gain.  We could burn this away with our Light mote, but we only have the one, so let's try toughing it out again. As I navigate the blackness, it leeches hope from me.Lost 3 health. I gain 10 Momentum. [+5 from sails] [+5 from engines] Three damage is getting into the range of relevant health loss, but as they say, the only hit point that matters is the last one.  We know from earlier that these are creatures of Light, so we could probably suppress them with Darkness - not exactly a scarce resource for us. However, we also know that lantern phish aren't really a threat until they grow up. We brute force our way through once again. I am briefly mesmerized by the phish.I gain 5 Momentum. [+5 from sails] [+5 from engines] [-5 from event] If we were forced to use Packet Rat's lovely equipment, -5 momentum would be a big deal. For us, it doesn't really change the calculus.  Hey look, a target for our Search Engine! It's almost like I savescummed this. I engage the Search Engine.I shield myself with Order and the confusion of the fog can't touch me. I gain 10 Momentum. [+5 from sails] [+5 from engines] My current Momentum is 34.My target Momentum is 30. I cut through the current of the Web. I reach my destination. We're down 4 health, but we made it without spending precious motes. Those are the kind of voyages you want.  The music changes back to ambient underwater noises. The waters I steer through are emotions and relationships.Liquified by the pressures of the depths. They are dangerously dense here. Love crushed into hate crushed into boredom crushed into fondness for a favorite doll. It's a heady cocktail. If I stay here too long, it will warp my perceptions. I descend into the darkness.I watch for landmarks through the glass of my ship's cockpit.  Welcome to the Depths - a convoluted labyrinth of sensation. The Abyssal Plain was nice and simple to navigate, but this zone is anything but. Let's see if Omini can give us any guidance. Begin by the blog.Trumpet. Flutes. Trumpet. Flutes. Drums. Flutes. Trumpets. Flutes. Flutes. I'm sure that will make sense eventually. To someone. Perhaps that memory floating there will be more immediately profitable.  One out of five. We're going to have some searching to do for this one.  I grab the paper through a porthole.It is titled: From the journal of Winfield Scott Winfield Scott posted:Depth: 13 NB ==> Nested Brackets An explorer's journal. The game saves this into our inventory in case we need to read it later - I suspect it'll be a bit more important than an FPS audio log.  There's some red psychoplankton in the northeast (or up-east, I guess). Weird flora and fauna is pretty much what passes for landmarks in this zone.  Winfield Scott posted:Depth: Mother Seems like Winfield had a bad time. It might be unsafe to spend too long down here. There's another journal entry immediately to the east. Winfield Scott posted:Depth: 15 NB A more lucid Winfield suspects there's something else down here with us. Great.  There's something new. Wikis are informative crustaceans that decorate their shells with facts.This one has been caught and its collection of information is slowly being digested and broadcast (poorly) by the blog.  A blog has to talk.Stop it talking, it dies. Or understand. Transform. There's no option to use motes on the blog, so it seems like there's nothing we can do for now. Our last Omini casting mentioned "begin at the blog", but the rest of it still seems like nonsense. Let's check out that journal entry.  Less crazy than two entries ago, more crazy than last entry. Seems like he lost his sense of direction down here and bad things happened.  The sea monkeys here are playing with a *gleaming* memory.Take it from them. Cast a spell. Leave it be. We want that memory back. Perhaps Omini will give us a hint as to how.  The thing about Omini being your hint spell is that, sometimes, Omini is also just the solution. Discovered part of dream: silence is not only goldenbefore the yelling starts. The blood rust silence While we're here, let's check out that journal entry. Winfield Scott posted:Depth: 16 NB? Seems like there might be an underlying principle to synesthesia navigation. Or Winfield might just be totally out of it. Another journal entry is immediately to the left. Winfield Scott posted:Depth: 12 NB  More resources in the down-west corner. Discovered part of dream: silence is not only goldenbefore the student's answer. The liquid cool silence These are some very small fragments. Winfield Scott posted:Depth: 15 NB  As we spend more time down here, our ability to perceive things blurs a bit. In addition to the descriptive test, we start to steer by sound instead of direction. Fortunately, the game won't jumble things up on us - for example, "drums" appears at the bottom of the screen, and will cause us to go down. Winfield. You idiot.  The other thing is that, as our perception erodes, we lose the ability to interact with certain objects. I'm betting that rough wisp is another journal entry. We should surface and gather ourselves.  As we try to surface, our awareness blurs yet further. The original plan was that spending too long down here would deal damage or even instakill you, but this never seemed to manifest. We can spend as long as we want down here, we just can't do much.  Exiting the Depths returns us to the world map and sets us to full "sanity", so there's nothing stopping us diving back in immediately.  Here's that room from earlier with the "rough wisp", seen with the benefit of a clear head. Winfield Scott posted:Depth: 16 NB? Seems like Winfield realized the danger a bit too late.  The corpse is harvestable. Prophesied: life, fatality, . . . . .  Definitely not intended to do these on one screen. We do in fact find a mote of Life in here as well - decomposing matter is appealing to organisms.  "Something blue" seems promising. The game gives us a "cast a spell" indication when we look closer, so we burn the darkness away with our old friend SalveMundi. Discovered part of dream: silence is not only goldenfound only underwater. The quivering thin silence  I spend a bit too long down here trying to find the last memory, and have to resurface again. Here's what that blog looks like on low sanity.  Discovered part of dream: silence is not only goldenbetween two people who once loved each other. Ah, there it is. Let's see if we can put it together. quote:before the yelling starts. quote:found only underwater. quote:before the student's answer. quote:Silence quote:between two people  Discovered part of spell Mute()world.audio.volume = 0; Collected 1 of 1 parts of this spell. I have found all the pieces of this spell. I can COMPILE it in the inventory. Fortunately, this is a one-dream spell once we've actually got the dream sorted out. Compiling it costs a Death mote, which we now have no shortage of.  Mute does exactly what it says on the tin, and we can already think of a use for it. Our Omini spell from earlier suggested that, if we can stop the blog from talking, it'll wither and die - hopefully freeing the wiki trapped inside. On the other hand, the Omini spell ended by saying "or understand. Transform", which we're not really sure what to do with right now. Should we mute the blog, or hold off and look for an alternative? We've also stumbled across another couple puzzles. I'm betting we can all solve the "begin at the blog" puzzle, but I'll go ahead and spoil that Winfield's journal is for an unrelated puzzle. We could figure out what direction is what under synesthesia just by experiencing it, so it's not that either. [UNLOCKED] What the hell do we do with this journal? Doopliss fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Feb 20, 2021 |
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Feb 20, 2021 19:34
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Arcvasti posted:east
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Feb 20, 2021 19:35
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