A while back, I wrote a post on making trouble: The technique by which players could elaborate on the dangers or problems their characters encounter as they wrote the story of a challenge, rather than just leaving the troubles to what the narrator initially established.
When you're writing on a challenge, you're writing not just your own character's story but the story of the challenge itself. I've already written a great deal on the need to write not just your character's actions, but the results of those actions, and how those results impact the challenge going forward.
I've also written on the need to leave things open for other players to use.
Today, I'd like to take another look at that, from a slightly different angle: Questions.
When you are writing any story, the thing that gets readers involved is questions. You establish questions early on, and as the story goes on, you provide answers to those questions. That's the cycle of a story. Create mystery or uncertainty in the early going, and provide truth and certainty later on. I think we tend to understand that in writing pretty naturally - it's easy to get the idea that for the story in general, for instance, I would be starting out a story asking the question of "Who can defeat Doctor Fear?" and end up answering it with "Bravery Man can defeat Doctor Fear!" by the end.
Silly superhero names aside...we get that part, right?
But smaller parts of a story follow the same cycle. Challenges, for instance, are all about questions and answers.
The existence of the challenge itself presents a question. Usually, the answer is in the form of one of the final outcomes of the challenge, as written by whoever plays the final card. But that isn't the only question and answer cycle that can be contained in a challenge.
As I've mentioned in prior articles, telling the story of the challenge is up to the players once it is established...and thus, the players have the opportunity to define further questions asked by the challenge, and to answer those questions.
This goes back, somewhat, to the concept of making your own trouble, but questions aren't always about trouble. They're about mystery, or about the unknowns of a challenge. They might be about what's going to happen next...but they might also be about what just happened. Why did it happen? What was the cause? Or, what is the consequence?
The early moves of a challenge are about questions. The later moves are about answers.
To put it another way, you don't want to get too definitive too early.
If you're playing a Strength card on a challenge, you want to move the challenge in a positive direction related to the Outcomes. That's fine, that's expected, that's what you should do. But you also want to look at where, exactly, you are in the challenge's story.
Is this late in the challenge's story, or early?
Should you be wrapping up challenge elements? Or is this the point where the story of the challenge is still being established?
If this is the second card play of a nine-card challenge, well, you're probably still more at the establishing point of the challenge's tale. Everything still feels uncertain, unclear. Even if you're moving the challenge in a positive direction, it shouldn't feel stable. The gains shouldn't feel firm.
There should be questions.
The gains made by Strength plays feel uncertain, perhaps even risky. There are open questions about how they can be maintained. The positive movement of the challenge feels tentative.
Save solid gains for later in the challenge, or especially for points where based on the Strength/Weakness balance of a challenge, it feels unlikely (or even impossible) for it to turn back to Weak. Late in a challenge, when there's three Strengths on it and only one Weakness with one or two cards left to go, that's the time to do something like managing to fell the enemy commander and drive the army into disarray, or find the one solid lead that gets you to the person who knows what you need to know - and all you have to do is convince him to share.
The same can be said of Weaknesses, too! When a challenge is in the early going, Weakness plays are about establishing the potential for things to become very bad. They're about putting your character into trouble, or having your character cause a problem that might become truly devastating in time. If the second card play of a nine-card challenge leaves the allied lines entirely routed, or leaves one of the player characters down and out...that might be pushing things too far. But towards the end of a challenge, especially when the Weaknesses have the Strengths outnumbered, well, those might just be exactly what is called for.
Depending, of course, on the nature of the challenge and the outcomes!
So...what you want, in the early going, are questions. Uncertain situations, things that are still a little up in the air. Maybe they're trending one way, or maybe the other. Or maybe, especially with neutral cards, they're totally uncertain. But...they're questions. They're situations that still need to be resolved. Mysteries that still need their truth.
When I say "questions," now...I don't mean literal, straight-up questions, worded as such. I don't mean that you write in, "Mighty Arnbjorg struck forth into the enemy lines and drove the defenders back, but has he dared too much? Will the enemy swarm in around him?" That's actually a great question to ask...but that's not how I'm suggesting you write it. If the end of your move leaves you thinking you should really tag on "Find out next episode!" you're probably being a little bit too direct.
Questions are things you draw from a story, not things the story shoves in your face.
So if you're writing that bit, instead, what you do is write about how Arnbjorg's attack drives back the enemy, and they are temporarily stunned and confused by the sudden ferocity of their foe. But the commanders are shouting orders, and the enemy ranks are starting to form up again. The enemy general is shouting to regain order, and pointing his sword at Arnbjorg. The enemy's attention is on him.
The question is understood. Will Arnbjorg's gains be able to be held? Or will the enemy swarm back in and put him in danger now?
And late in the challenge? That's when the answers start coming in force. The final few moves of the challenge introduce answers to the lingering questions of the challenge - the questions asked along the way by other player moves, and finally the questions that established the challenge in the first place.
When you're making moves in the latter half of a challenge, or further, that's when you need to take a good look at what is still out there to be answered. What doesn't feel like it has been resolved? If you aren't writing the final move, don't resolve everything, but maybe there are still some things that are lingering out there and you can wrap something up. Maybe earlier, Arnbjorg was shown fighting for his life and for the line against the enemy after he managed to break in among their defenses...and that situation still feels like it needs an answer. Now's your chance. Do your character's actions stabilize Arnbjorg's gains at last? Or does something go wrong in the attempt and lead the enemy to swarm in at last?
Transform uncertainty to certainty. This situation has now definitely gone right...or definitely gone wrong. There's no longer a feeling that this element of the story can go a different way. Arnbjorg and Skjoldis hold the line solidly, preventing the enemy from gaining access that way...or, Arnbjorg and Skjoldis are forced to withdraw, and the enemy breaks through and can't be driven back that way. An answer.
Now...there's nothing wrong with answering something earlier in the challenge, or questioning something later. This isn't a hard and fast rule. It's a guide. Early in the challenge, tend towards questions. Late in the challenge, tend towards answers.
The reason is...questions provide opportunities. They leave things open for other players. They give inspiration, so someone can further the story of a challenge. Answers, meanwhile, close doors. When a situation is resolved, the part it played in the story is over and players need to look elsewhere for inspiration. So: By asking questions early in a challenge, you provide lots of inspiration for other players to use. But late in a challenge, you don't want to risk leaving dangling plot threads or forcing the final player to wrap up every little bit of a challenge...so it's time to start closing some of the extra doors so that the final player only has the main challenge questions (or close to that) left to resolve.
This isn't the only way to think of a challenge's story, and I don't think it's something you should hold in your head as some kind of sacred, infallible rule...but it's a helpful way to think about how you can write on a challenge, and I think if you take a look at moves - yours, and others - and ask yourself, "What questions are asked?" and "What answers are given?" you will find your challenge writing feeling more like a full, cohesive story.
jueves, 23 de mayo de 2019
Missed Classic: Spellbreaker - Won! And Final Rating
Written by Joe Pranevich
Spellbreaker started as a chase, then it became a hunt for macguffin cubes, now we are finally closing out through some of the most devious puzzles every created for adventure games. We've just about reached the end the last original "Zork" game. This has been a game that I have in turn loved and hated. It's the longest Infocom game so far. Despite my previous misgivings, I am enjoying it more as it cruises to the finale.
Last week, I continued my quest for cubes. I found one deep in the sea, discovered when I transformed myself into a clone of a particularly annoying fish. I found a second after racing a roc to its nest, and a third after helping a green-eyed boulder play a game of bumper cars with her brown-eyed friend. This game likely makes no sense to anyone not actively playing it, but there have been a few great puzzles recently. With that cube retrieved, I can teleport point to a new cube room: Dark. That has two exits, but as usual only one that I can pass through. I descend into a strange dark cave-- let's go find some grues!
Wherever I end up, magic is starting to go funny. My glowing knife that I have carried around since the beginning isn't glowing properly anymore, instead dripping glowing magic stuff into a pile on the floor. I pick my way down the hall and into a "Grue Cave". Last week I found what I thought was the treasure vault from Zork III; could this be the grue lair from the same? Unfortunately, the grues notice a guy with a glowing (and dripping!) knife and kill me. I have to restore.
I try again but extinguish the knife before I head down. In the dim, I notice a glow coming from the center of the room. Before I can explore, the grues find me even without the knife and kill me. Although spells seem to be weird here, I manage to "snavig" a grue and use its darkness-honed senses to see what is going on. I'm in a strange amphitheatre. In the center of the room is a pool of the dripping light, bright enough to hurt my grue-eyes. In the center of the pool is a squat column with something on top of it. I expect that is where I need to go. How do I get there? I climb into the pool, but as a grue the light burns so that I have to go quickly. I scale the pillar to discover another white cube! I pick it up and then wait to turn back into a human. The whole mess takes several attempts since I need to remember to memorize "snavig" and "blorple" before I head down, plus I die when I stay in the light too long. I also found that it is too dim to see the cube if you become a human too early. The whole process is simple enough to figure out and I soon have access to another cube room: Fire.
Gold Box Games
The Fire room has three exits: South takes you back to the cliff at the beginning of the game, but I do not see anything new. East is the expected blocked route. North leads to the only new location, a different spot on the volcano from last post. This time, I see an outcropping that I cannot reach to the west with something on it that is not melting. What could that be? My money is on another cube. Riding the carpet there doesn't work because it just catches fire. You cannot jump. None of my spells seem to do the trick. I am stuck. I re-explore much of the game again looking for things that I missed, but find nothing new. I end up asking for assistance and… I would not have solved this myself.
The trick is the gold box that we found in the ogre's cave at the beginning of the game. Completely unknown to me, the box responds to cubes. If you put a cube in it, the outside changes to hint at where the cube might go. When the water cube is in, the box has pictures of dancing dolphins; with the air cube, there are eagles; etc. I never noticed because I never needed the box for storage thanks to my zipper. We then had to realize that the box operates as a teleporter: drop it someplace and you can get to it by taking the blocked exit in each of the respective cube areas. I cannot even think of how I would have stumbled on that. Even with all that, we also had to realize that you can throw the box to the outcropping. I can't help but feel that Mr. Lebling was aiming to create the hardest puzzle in the series and overshot.
Super-Charged Magic
I blorple it and end up in a room that it slightly different than the others. It is the "Magic" room, although "magic" appears to be code for mirrors, bird-droppings, and clutter. Instead of just one, there are two exits that I cannot pass through with a third that just leads back to the meadow from the beginning of the game where I picked up the ragweed. As before, there is nothing I need to do there. Although I seem to be in a dead end, I discover that the new cube is doing something to supercharge my magic. Anything I cast is more powerful than usual and I can memorize more spells than ever. There are plenty of places that super-magic could be useful, but my first thought is the treasure vault. Using my now more powerful "rezrov" spell, I am able to unlock and open the complicated vault door to see what is outside.
Just beyond the door is a new room with two piles of white cubes. Unlike mine, they are labeled "x1" through "x12" with six in one pile and six in another. There's an iron door to the north that I can open with a spell, but not without alerting the guards. I try to "blorple" one of the cubes and it takes me to the nondescript room, the same place as other non-special items. Putting cubes in the god box doesn't help to find a special one either. My guess is that only one of these twelve cubes is real… but which one? I need to solve quickly as we only have a few turns before the alarm goes off. Somehow saving the game doesn't even work here!
I try the "jindak" spell which shows that one of the piles is glowing slightly more than the other. That must be by clue! I try to break it down through processes of elimination. Since the second pile is brighter, I swap cubes 1, 2, and 3 with 7, 8, and 9. I "jindak" again and the second pile is brighter. That means that either 10, 11, or 12 is brighter than the others and the real cube. I swap 10 with 4 and try again, but the guards catch me. I need to find a faster solution.
Instead of using two piles,I use three. I arrange the cubes such that 1-4 are in the first pile, 7-10 are in the second pile, with 5, 6, 11, and 12 in my hands. The piles are still all the same size, but if neither of them glow more brightly then it must be the group in my hand that is special. I use the same process of elimination to narrow it down to one cube… and that doesn't work. I try it two more times to see if I made a mistake and the third time it worked! What did I miss in this puzzle? I looked up the solution after and the problem is not that the real cube is brighter than the others, it is that it is dimmer than the others. These are the world's power-cubes and it makes no sense that the real one is less magical, but we can go with it. What was happening is that I would narrow the field down to three cubes: one in each pile and one in my hand. When the two piles were the same, I could use the one in my hand to exit the vault. That "solves" the riddle without realizing that the correct cube was dimmer. It's a nice puzzle, even if the solution doesn't quite flow logically from what we know of the cubes.
An Excellent Adventure
The cube from the vault leads me to the "Sand Room", clearly intended to resemble a giant hourglass. Heading up teleports me back to the ruins room, although it is moderately less ruined than before. On the ground is a sack rather than the zipper. More importantly, the water pipe is overflowing and filling the room. My guess is time travel and I am somehow seeing the room earlier. Why? I have no idea. Inside the sack is the "girgol" scroll, the same one that I found in the zipper before. (Fortunately, I took good notes.) Water fills the room. I try to hide in the zipper, but that is only a temporary respite and I drown as soon as I come out. My guess is that I need to set up the room exactly as I found it, but I am unsure why.
Exploring the other way from the hourglass and I find myself in a prison cell. In fact, it is the cell above the oubliette that I discovered with the mouldy spell book. If I am going to reproduce that, it might mean that I have to leave my own spell book here and memorize whatever I need for the rest of the game. I can easily blow the door off the hinges using my super-charged "rezrov" spell (just like I found it!), but leaving gets me captured by the guards. Instead of forcing the cabinet open like I did the first time, I use the iron key. It fits! Inside is a blank scroll. Maybe I get to keep just one spell for the rest of the game? I try copying "blorple" to the scroll but that doesn't work due to magical copy protection.
Let's set this up just as before! I unlock the cabinet to get the blank scroll, placing my own spell book in there for me to find in a few years. Before I do that, I memorize a bunch of "blorple" and other spells. I make sure to lock the cabinet before blowing open the door. Since leaving still triggers the guard, I blorple back to the hourglass room and try the ruins. This time, I take the sack and put all of my stuff in it, leaving just the girgol spell in a closed zipper just as I found it in the beginning of the game. Fortunately, the sack is big enough for all of my stuff. I also copy the "girgol" spell onto the blank scroll since I don't see anything else to do with it. I leave… and absolutely nothing changes. I have no idea why I did that and no feedback that suggests whether or not I did it correctly.
The Final Confrontation
Sorry, guys. I had to consult a hint. It turns out that I had done everything correctly, but I missed what changed. You might remember that there were two blocked exits in the Magic Room. Well, I was supposed to come back and discover that I could get through one of them now that I set up all that stuff. As best as I can tell, there was no hinting about that. This seems difficult and obscure for its own sake.
I pass through that door and find myself in the throne room of a castle. The shadowy figure that I have been chasing all this time coalesces in front of me. He tells me that he was surprised to find me in Borphee because he knew (thanks to the time cube?) that I would be arriving here to meet him today. He also thanks me gathering all the cubes because he couldn't have done it himself. He had captured four of the cubes through intensive research, but by just manipulating me to go on a quest he was sure that I could gather them all. He then reveals the big truth: he is my Shadow, a copy of me created because of my immense magical abilities. He wants to use the cubes to come to life and rewrite the world in his image. He freezes me in place and brings the cubes together into a bigger cube, and then builds a second cube before merging them in some way creating a 4-dimensional hypercube. Finally, he takes the "magic" cube from me and plunges it inside just as his freeze spell wears off of me. There is no time to do anything because he leaps inside the cube (which the game calls a "tesseract") and becomes God incarnate and the game ends with -99 points. I guess I need to figure out a way to stop him.
On my next attempt, I try to throw the knife at him before he freezes me. That causes him to freeze me earlier which would seem to not be good, but then I also unthaw earlier. I try to cast the "girgol" spell to freeze him but he catches me before I can do it. It takes a few attempts, but there is one moment when he is near his final victory where he stops paying attention to me long enough that I catch him off guard. He is frozen and I have the tesseract, but what am I supposed to do with it. I put the "magic" cube in just as he did, but it doesn't seem to do anything. He wakes up soon and completes the ritual, taking over the world. I restore and try to jump into the cube myself because becoming a God seems like fun, but apparently I have a conscience that does not let me. I try putting other stuff in, but that doesn't work either.
Next time, I let him get further in the ritual and do not stop time until the absolute last moment before he jumps in. This time, since the "magic" cube is already in there, I find that I can remove it. What to do? I still can't jump in. I eventually put my sack in the spot because why not. That causes (somehow) the world to be remade (somehow) without magic as one of the elemental forces. I win! If you can call a life without magic, "winning". The shadow and magic cube disappear and I find myself back in Belwit Square with all of the now out-of-work guildmasters no longer frogs. I scored 600 of 600 points, earning the rank of "Scientist". But in a different way, I was a complete failure. How will the bakers make their pastries now with no magic?
Time played: 4 hr 45 min
Total time: 23 hr 05 min
Score: 600 of 600 (100%)
Final Rating
I could harp on about how difficult this will be to rate, but let's just get on with it...
Puzzles and Solvability - This game ranks up there with Zork III as one of the greatest sets of puzzles I have ever played. There are good inventory puzzles at the beginning of the game, interesting uses of our spells, and stand-alone puzzles that have me still thinking about them days later. Several of the puzzles require good timing, but with a turn-based system this becomes just another avenue to explore rather than a frustration. By the end of the game, the puzzles had become too hard with the gold box puzzle a near-legendary example of a puzzle that is solvable if you know the rules but which you are very unlikely to trip over by accident. I also found the time travel puzzle at the end to be unsatisfying, in large part because I didn't really understand why I was doing any of that. Still, a near-perfect example of how to make good puzzles. My score: 7.
Interface and Inventory - What is left to say about Infocom's best-of-breed text adventure interface? Not much. This one gets special recognition for disabling the "save" function during the cube puzzle as well as the whole mechanic around writing on the cubes. So much of the game text was responsive to those cube descriptions and the game put real effort into making everything flow together. My score: 5.
Story and Setting - The game began as a chase, a hunt for an attacker that crippled the magical community of the world, but quickly became something else. We didn't really get to see the big picture of the story until around 60% in, but there were plenty of breadcrumbs to follow that suggested the ultimate plot. The setting remains the Great Underground Empire although we spend very little of this game underground. Things mostly (but not completely) fit together. My score: 5.
Sound and Graphics - No attempt was made to add ASCII art or any graphics of any kind. Alas, there is only one score I can give. My score: 0.
Environment and Atmosphere - I wish I could say that I felt that the environments came together, but even at the end there were too many disconnected areas. While some areas had fantastic atmosphere (the grue cave will remain one of my favorites), too much of the game felt disjointed. They could have done better. My score: 4.
Dialog and Acting - The prose was fantastic throughout, although the limited interaction we had with NPCs wasn't anything to write home about. Towards the end, the descriptions became even more evocative. I read through the Shadow's final speech three or four times because I loved it so much. My score: 5.
I am going to subtract one point for the impossibility of the gold box puzzle. That leaves us to tally it all up: (7+5+5+04+5)/.6 -1 = 42 points!
A final score of 42 places Spellbreaker at exactly the same level as Zork III which somehow seems right. While the former game had weaker puzzles, its atmosphere was moody and fantastic. This has the highest puzzles score of an Infocom game so far, but it had neither the writing of the Hitchhiker's Guide, the atmosphere of Wishbringer, nor was it as well-rounded as Planetfall. It's in the upper echelons of the Infocom catalog, but not quite at the top.
Up next will be the final game of Infocom as an independent company, Ballyhoo. It seems a strange game to end on, but I am looking forward to playing it for the very first time. Depending on timing, this may be before or after I pick up Batman Returns for the main cycle of games. See you soon.
Last week, I continued my quest for cubes. I found one deep in the sea, discovered when I transformed myself into a clone of a particularly annoying fish. I found a second after racing a roc to its nest, and a third after helping a green-eyed boulder play a game of bumper cars with her brown-eyed friend. This game likely makes no sense to anyone not actively playing it, but there have been a few great puzzles recently. With that cube retrieved, I can teleport point to a new cube room: Dark. That has two exits, but as usual only one that I can pass through. I descend into a strange dark cave-- let's go find some grues!
 |
| Molten magic is pretty. |
I try again but extinguish the knife before I head down. In the dim, I notice a glow coming from the center of the room. Before I can explore, the grues find me even without the knife and kill me. Although spells seem to be weird here, I manage to "snavig" a grue and use its darkness-honed senses to see what is going on. I'm in a strange amphitheatre. In the center of the room is a pool of the dripping light, bright enough to hurt my grue-eyes. In the center of the pool is a squat column with something on top of it. I expect that is where I need to go. How do I get there? I climb into the pool, but as a grue the light burns so that I have to go quickly. I scale the pillar to discover another white cube! I pick it up and then wait to turn back into a human. The whole mess takes several attempts since I need to remember to memorize "snavig" and "blorple" before I head down, plus I die when I stay in the light too long. I also found that it is too dim to see the cube if you become a human too early. The whole process is simple enough to figure out and I soon have access to another cube room: Fire.
 |
| My favorite was the Curse of the Azure Bonds. |
The Fire room has three exits: South takes you back to the cliff at the beginning of the game, but I do not see anything new. East is the expected blocked route. North leads to the only new location, a different spot on the volcano from last post. This time, I see an outcropping that I cannot reach to the west with something on it that is not melting. What could that be? My money is on another cube. Riding the carpet there doesn't work because it just catches fire. You cannot jump. None of my spells seem to do the trick. I am stuck. I re-explore much of the game again looking for things that I missed, but find nothing new. I end up asking for assistance and… I would not have solved this myself.
The trick is the gold box that we found in the ogre's cave at the beginning of the game. Completely unknown to me, the box responds to cubes. If you put a cube in it, the outside changes to hint at where the cube might go. When the water cube is in, the box has pictures of dancing dolphins; with the air cube, there are eagles; etc. I never noticed because I never needed the box for storage thanks to my zipper. We then had to realize that the box operates as a teleporter: drop it someplace and you can get to it by taking the blocked exit in each of the respective cube areas. I cannot even think of how I would have stumbled on that. Even with all that, we also had to realize that you can throw the box to the outcropping. I can't help but feel that Mr. Lebling was aiming to create the hardest puzzle in the series and overshot.
 |
| The world hangs in the balance. |
I blorple it and end up in a room that it slightly different than the others. It is the "Magic" room, although "magic" appears to be code for mirrors, bird-droppings, and clutter. Instead of just one, there are two exits that I cannot pass through with a third that just leads back to the meadow from the beginning of the game where I picked up the ragweed. As before, there is nothing I need to do there. Although I seem to be in a dead end, I discover that the new cube is doing something to supercharge my magic. Anything I cast is more powerful than usual and I can memorize more spells than ever. There are plenty of places that super-magic could be useful, but my first thought is the treasure vault. Using my now more powerful "rezrov" spell, I am able to unlock and open the complicated vault door to see what is outside.
Just beyond the door is a new room with two piles of white cubes. Unlike mine, they are labeled "x1" through "x12" with six in one pile and six in another. There's an iron door to the north that I can open with a spell, but not without alerting the guards. I try to "blorple" one of the cubes and it takes me to the nondescript room, the same place as other non-special items. Putting cubes in the god box doesn't help to find a special one either. My guess is that only one of these twelve cubes is real… but which one? I need to solve quickly as we only have a few turns before the alarm goes off. Somehow saving the game doesn't even work here!
I try the "jindak" spell which shows that one of the piles is glowing slightly more than the other. That must be by clue! I try to break it down through processes of elimination. Since the second pile is brighter, I swap cubes 1, 2, and 3 with 7, 8, and 9. I "jindak" again and the second pile is brighter. That means that either 10, 11, or 12 is brighter than the others and the real cube. I swap 10 with 4 and try again, but the guards catch me. I need to find a faster solution.
Instead of using two piles,I use three. I arrange the cubes such that 1-4 are in the first pile, 7-10 are in the second pile, with 5, 6, 11, and 12 in my hands. The piles are still all the same size, but if neither of them glow more brightly then it must be the group in my hand that is special. I use the same process of elimination to narrow it down to one cube… and that doesn't work. I try it two more times to see if I made a mistake and the third time it worked! What did I miss in this puzzle? I looked up the solution after and the problem is not that the real cube is brighter than the others, it is that it is dimmer than the others. These are the world's power-cubes and it makes no sense that the real one is less magical, but we can go with it. What was happening is that I would narrow the field down to three cubes: one in each pile and one in my hand. When the two piles were the same, I could use the one in my hand to exit the vault. That "solves" the riddle without realizing that the correct cube was dimmer. It's a nice puzzle, even if the solution doesn't quite flow logically from what we know of the cubes.
The cube from the vault leads me to the "Sand Room", clearly intended to resemble a giant hourglass. Heading up teleports me back to the ruins room, although it is moderately less ruined than before. On the ground is a sack rather than the zipper. More importantly, the water pipe is overflowing and filling the room. My guess is time travel and I am somehow seeing the room earlier. Why? I have no idea. Inside the sack is the "girgol" scroll, the same one that I found in the zipper before. (Fortunately, I took good notes.) Water fills the room. I try to hide in the zipper, but that is only a temporary respite and I drown as soon as I come out. My guess is that I need to set up the room exactly as I found it, but I am unsure why.
Exploring the other way from the hourglass and I find myself in a prison cell. In fact, it is the cell above the oubliette that I discovered with the mouldy spell book. If I am going to reproduce that, it might mean that I have to leave my own spell book here and memorize whatever I need for the rest of the game. I can easily blow the door off the hinges using my super-charged "rezrov" spell (just like I found it!), but leaving gets me captured by the guards. Instead of forcing the cabinet open like I did the first time, I use the iron key. It fits! Inside is a blank scroll. Maybe I get to keep just one spell for the rest of the game? I try copying "blorple" to the scroll but that doesn't work due to magical copy protection.
Let's set this up just as before! I unlock the cabinet to get the blank scroll, placing my own spell book in there for me to find in a few years. Before I do that, I memorize a bunch of "blorple" and other spells. I make sure to lock the cabinet before blowing open the door. Since leaving still triggers the guard, I blorple back to the hourglass room and try the ruins. This time, I take the sack and put all of my stuff in it, leaving just the girgol spell in a closed zipper just as I found it in the beginning of the game. Fortunately, the sack is big enough for all of my stuff. I also copy the "girgol" spell onto the blank scroll since I don't see anything else to do with it. I leave… and absolutely nothing changes. I have no idea why I did that and no feedback that suggests whether or not I did it correctly.
 |
| Probably not this ornate, actually. |
Sorry, guys. I had to consult a hint. It turns out that I had done everything correctly, but I missed what changed. You might remember that there were two blocked exits in the Magic Room. Well, I was supposed to come back and discover that I could get through one of them now that I set up all that stuff. As best as I can tell, there was no hinting about that. This seems difficult and obscure for its own sake.
I pass through that door and find myself in the throne room of a castle. The shadowy figure that I have been chasing all this time coalesces in front of me. He tells me that he was surprised to find me in Borphee because he knew (thanks to the time cube?) that I would be arriving here to meet him today. He also thanks me gathering all the cubes because he couldn't have done it himself. He had captured four of the cubes through intensive research, but by just manipulating me to go on a quest he was sure that I could gather them all. He then reveals the big truth: he is my Shadow, a copy of me created because of my immense magical abilities. He wants to use the cubes to come to life and rewrite the world in his image. He freezes me in place and brings the cubes together into a bigger cube, and then builds a second cube before merging them in some way creating a 4-dimensional hypercube. Finally, he takes the "magic" cube from me and plunges it inside just as his freeze spell wears off of me. There is no time to do anything because he leaps inside the cube (which the game calls a "tesseract") and becomes God incarnate and the game ends with -99 points. I guess I need to figure out a way to stop him.
On my next attempt, I try to throw the knife at him before he freezes me. That causes him to freeze me earlier which would seem to not be good, but then I also unthaw earlier. I try to cast the "girgol" spell to freeze him but he catches me before I can do it. It takes a few attempts, but there is one moment when he is near his final victory where he stops paying attention to me long enough that I catch him off guard. He is frozen and I have the tesseract, but what am I supposed to do with it. I put the "magic" cube in just as he did, but it doesn't seem to do anything. He wakes up soon and completes the ritual, taking over the world. I restore and try to jump into the cube myself because becoming a God seems like fun, but apparently I have a conscience that does not let me. I try putting other stuff in, but that doesn't work either.
Next time, I let him get further in the ritual and do not stop time until the absolute last moment before he jumps in. This time, since the "magic" cube is already in there, I find that I can remove it. What to do? I still can't jump in. I eventually put my sack in the spot because why not. That causes (somehow) the world to be remade (somehow) without magic as one of the elemental forces. I win! If you can call a life without magic, "winning". The shadow and magic cube disappear and I find myself back in Belwit Square with all of the now out-of-work guildmasters no longer frogs. I scored 600 of 600 points, earning the rank of "Scientist". But in a different way, I was a complete failure. How will the bakers make their pastries now with no magic?
Time played: 4 hr 45 min
Total time: 23 hr 05 min
Score: 600 of 600 (100%)
 |
| I blinded them with science. |
Final Rating
I could harp on about how difficult this will be to rate, but let's just get on with it...
Puzzles and Solvability - This game ranks up there with Zork III as one of the greatest sets of puzzles I have ever played. There are good inventory puzzles at the beginning of the game, interesting uses of our spells, and stand-alone puzzles that have me still thinking about them days later. Several of the puzzles require good timing, but with a turn-based system this becomes just another avenue to explore rather than a frustration. By the end of the game, the puzzles had become too hard with the gold box puzzle a near-legendary example of a puzzle that is solvable if you know the rules but which you are very unlikely to trip over by accident. I also found the time travel puzzle at the end to be unsatisfying, in large part because I didn't really understand why I was doing any of that. Still, a near-perfect example of how to make good puzzles. My score: 7.
Interface and Inventory - What is left to say about Infocom's best-of-breed text adventure interface? Not much. This one gets special recognition for disabling the "save" function during the cube puzzle as well as the whole mechanic around writing on the cubes. So much of the game text was responsive to those cube descriptions and the game put real effort into making everything flow together. My score: 5.
Story and Setting - The game began as a chase, a hunt for an attacker that crippled the magical community of the world, but quickly became something else. We didn't really get to see the big picture of the story until around 60% in, but there were plenty of breadcrumbs to follow that suggested the ultimate plot. The setting remains the Great Underground Empire although we spend very little of this game underground. Things mostly (but not completely) fit together. My score: 5.
Sound and Graphics - No attempt was made to add ASCII art or any graphics of any kind. Alas, there is only one score I can give. My score: 0.
Environment and Atmosphere - I wish I could say that I felt that the environments came together, but even at the end there were too many disconnected areas. While some areas had fantastic atmosphere (the grue cave will remain one of my favorites), too much of the game felt disjointed. They could have done better. My score: 4.
Dialog and Acting - The prose was fantastic throughout, although the limited interaction we had with NPCs wasn't anything to write home about. Towards the end, the descriptions became even more evocative. I read through the Shadow's final speech three or four times because I loved it so much. My score: 5.
I am going to subtract one point for the impossibility of the gold box puzzle. That leaves us to tally it all up: (7+5+5+04+5)/.6 -1 = 42 points!
Up next will be the final game of Infocom as an independent company, Ballyhoo. It seems a strange game to end on, but I am looking forward to playing it for the very first time. Depending on timing, this may be before or after I pick up Batman Returns for the main cycle of games. See you soon.
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DE: Don't Lose Focus When Building Your Army
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| Stop making bad army lists! |
First, I'd like to welcome a lot of the newer players joining the Dark Eldar. We got a fantastic new book and there's a lot of things to learn. However, one of the things I want to warn you about is that Dark Eldar is NOT a beginner's army. There is a lot of tricks and nuances to the army that when managed poorly, will cause you lose many games. Take it from me, I started with DE back in 3rd Ed. 40K and I actually received most of the army from a friend that was quitting it. He warned me that the army was tough as shit and that he was tired of losing. Thankfully for me, I've always wanted to start playing them and I absolutely love a challenge. Coming from a competitive RTS background, 40K was basically a Power Point presentation of StarCraft.
OK, fast forward almost two decades and here I am. Still playing the Dark Kin but with much more experience. The next couple of paragraphs will be me trying to explain how to be a more successful Dark Eldar player in 8th Ed. This is something you just have to trust me when I tell you: The army is very simliar to previous editions, but the edition itself is very different. Things die a lot quicker now and the alpha damage potential from other armies out there can be just as mind-blowing as ours. In some cases, it might even be more potent, so you just gotta listen up, check the ego, and brace yourself for something that might sound harsh, but it will win you a lot of games.
STOP losing focus when building your army
This starts at list creation and this is a byproduct of having really cool units and being spoiled by choice. I'm not saying that Dark Eldar have unit choices up the ass, no, that's not what I mean. I mean that one of the biggest mistakes that newer players make is building their army in multiple different directions that branch away from their army goals. Before you build a list, you must have goals in mind. The goals should not be something as broad as "go kill your enemy", it should be something more specific with the exact tooling that you will need to get the job done. Maybe it's just my min-maxy ways as a competitive RTS player, or maybe it's my Program Manager genes being tossed into a game, but I'm telling you right now that whatever list you bring, it must have purpose.
What do I mean by this? I mean if you intend your army to shoot the enemy dead, it must do that and do it very well. If you want to assault the enemy dead, it must do that and do it very well. When you start building your list to do a little bit of everything, that's when things go to shit. The new 40K articles and Realspace Raid requirements for all these little fucking patrols all over the place doesn't make things any better. I'm absolutely serious about this: Go read some of my earlier articles where I'm constantly complaining about HQ tax. HQs, in our army is not very cheap, especially when you look at the Archon and the Harmonculi who are ~70 points. I wish I can link you guys to some army lists I've seen on the internet so far with naked Archons all over the place without transports. What's the fucking point? You're literally spending 70 points for the dude to sit there and look stupid or the rest of the battle. Succubus are the only HQs I would recommend for a cheaper HQ unit that can do some work, but that's not the point here. The point here is that your list must be focused to do something well, and do it exceptionally well. This is why I think that my pure Kabal all shooting army is still my strongest variant of the Dark Eldar and that my Kabal/Cult Succubus whip-my-hair-back-and-forth list is just for fun. I know that it is weaker because it doesn't do anything exceptionally well. Remember again, if you pay for something, make sure it does something.
Let's break it down some more. You can start by looking at the damage potential that the list provides from a firepower perspective and then you can examine it from a melee perspective. Can your melee components outfight other armies melee components? I don't think so. It does a pretty decent job at it, but Wyches aren't exactly a unit I would write home to mom about. What about shooting? Well, because you subbed in Wyches, you are taking away from your shooting component so it's definitely not as strong as a pure shooty force. This makes you extra succeptible vs. the likes of Tau, AdMech or other pure shooty armies with a higher Alpha than you. This puts you at an immediate disadvantage and forces you into a shooting attrition war which you will almost certaintly lose. Playing defensive is not Dark Eldar's speciality, and even if they have some units that can do that, they are considered the outlier for what the army IS truly good at, and that's shooting.
Don't get me wrong, it's not all doom and gloom yet. I will talk about some awesome and cheap melee units that we can bring forth shortly.
 |
| Yup, this can be you! |
STOP using CPs as list-building requirements
Stay the hell away from those multiple Patrol armies with overinflated HQs. Do NOT fall into the trap of building up Patrols with a bunch of useless HQs because you want the CP. That's almost as bad as building a Brigade just to realize that you bought a crap ton of units but don't have the points to equip or use them properly so they end up being fuckall useless once they hit the battlefield. Remember: For every unit you buy, make sure it counts for something. I'm not saying to be allergic to melee or not branch out into Coven units to hold objectives. I'm saying don't go overboard and be mindful that more you pull your army into different directions, the weaker it will be at doing any one thing. If you do want to make your army multi-faceted, make sure that it does both of these things as well as it can. Just don't try to go in all 3 directions that the DE book is painfully telling newer players to do with all this Patrol garbage.
Don't believe me? Do this: Try and CP whore and build a Brigade army list for DE, as competitive as you can. Then show me the firepower that the list can put out with respect to range vs. what the total number of wounds look like with respect to toughness and saves. I am willing to bet that that army cannot fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. When I try and ask people why the hell they need CPs as a requirement to build an design armies, they always give me the same piss-poor answer: CPs win games (thinking multiple uses of Agents of Vect). Yes, you're correct, well-timed and properly used CPs can win games, but I don't see Agents of Vect shooting or actively killing your opponent's units from the start of the game. The only thing that can do that effectively are your units and you should not be handicapping yourself by locking into some rigid army structure just for CPs. Agents of Vect is not going to save your ass from a Admech gunline, so you might as well drop all the shitty MSU Scourges and Reavers that are just going to explode and do nothing for you. Not to mention you can get close to Bridgade level CPs with some good list tweaking.
Likewise, I'd like to see a triple Patrol list with Kabal, Wyches and Coven in there and it try to be competitive. It will be decent at best, but never as good as a list with just Kabal/Cult simply because you're trying to do too many things at the same time. Real talk though, let's take some of my own shit and dissect it on a Haemoculi table.
Check it out. It starts with an idea, and then I'm going to braindump onto this page:
- I've been throwing out the idea of taking Flayed Skull recently just so I can play with a killy Archon AND a killy Succubus.
- I'm going to accept the risk that I will be losing some firepower in this list, but hopefully two killy HQs will allow me to make up that killing power. I just need to make sure I can keep this HQs cheap and killy.
- Let's take an existing Skeleton list that I have and then turn it into something that has a strong melee component that has good synergy with the rest of the list.
- The entire army has to move fast and apply good pressure so it can overwhelm the enemy's fire priorities. It's a go big or go home list.
OK, now let's break this down into actual game terms:
- Killy Archon for me is the Famed Savagery + Djin Blade that can get 8 attacks at S5 AP-3 D3 wounds that hit on 2s with re-rolls to hit.
- Killy Succubus for me is the Blood Dancer + Triptych Whip, Strife and Adrenalight that gives me 9 attacks at WS2+ re-rolling 1s and every hit of a 6 turns into 3 hits with an Agonizer.
- I'm going to trim down as much as I can from my firepower to make room for these badasses and give them a full retinue of Wyches to accompany them in Raiders.
- I need extra weapons and Warlord traits, so I'm going to need more CP to activate Alliance of Agony for the Blood Dancer and possibly more Prizes from the Dark City.
- Now, let's make the entire army move FAST. Really fast, so we're going full YOLO over here. Keep in mind that through playtesting, I can move these boats under the Black Heart Spearhead to get those additional FNPs.
1999 // 10 CP
Flayed Skull Battalion +3 CP
HQ:
Archon, Djin Blade, Blaster = 93
Trait: Famed Savagery
Archon, Huskblade, Blaster, PGL = 96
TROOP:
10x Warriors, 2x Blaster, SCannon = 104
10x Warriors, 2x Blaster, SCannon = 104
10x Warriors, 2x Blaster, SCannon = 104
PARTY BOATS:
Raider, Dark Lance = 85
Raider, Dark Lance = 85
Raider, Dark Lance = 85
Raider, Dark Lance = 85
Raider, Dark Lance = 85
+++
Strife Battalion +3 CP
HQ:
Succubus, Adrenalight, Whip = 54
Trait: Blood Dancer
Succubus, Painbringer, Agonizer = 54
TROOP:
8x Wyches, Grave Lotus, Agonzer, BP, Shardnet = 83
8x Wyches, Serpentin, Agonzer, BP, Shardnet = 83
5x Wyches, Hypex = 40
+++
Black Heart Spearhead +1 CP
HQ:
Archon, Living Muse, Agonizer, Blaster, PGL = 94
FLYER:
Razorwing, 2x Dark Lance = 145
Razorwing, 2x Dark Lance = 145
HEAVY:
Ravager, 3x Dinsintegrators = 125
Ravager, 3x Dinsintegrators = 125
Ravager, 3x Dinsintegrators = 125
>>>
Firepower:
9 Dark Lances at BS3+
9 Disintegrators at BS3+
6 Blasters at BS3+
3 Blasters at BS2+
2 Razorwing Missiles at BS3+
3 Splinter Cannons at BS3+
25 Splinter Rifles at BS3+
The TLDR is this:
- Don't branch out too much, you will lose focus and detract from your army goals.
- Trying to be too many things will make your army suck and do nothing well.
- Stop building shitty army lists focused on CPs. Units win games, not CPs.
- If you must branch, do 2 things decently well instead of 1 thing really well.
I realized this was part-guide and part-rant, but it needed to be done. Have a good night all.
Happy Holidays From Oceanhorn 2 Team!
 |
| Happy Holidays and New Year from Oceanhorn 2 team! See you in 2018! |
Download Battlefield V For PS4
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Enter mankind's greatest conflict with Battlefield™ V as the series goes back to its roots in a never-before-seen portrayal of World War 2. Take on all-out multiplayer across the world or witness human drama set against global combat in single player War Stories.
Release Date: Out NowGenre: Shooter
Developer: DICEPublisher: Electronic Arts
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Platic Crack?
Here is a little something I have been waiting on for a bit over six months…. A proof of concept in plastic from another manufacturer.
I am stoked! The quality looks good, the price is right and the turn around time will be good. So why did it take six months then? Because it was free, a test mold and test shots arranged by my old account manager at WGF who has struck out on his own. He asked if I could send him the original files to split and use as a non-retail sample to show other clients. I agreed and after some waiting they arrived! This is only two of the five pose options... As a free test mold we were limited to a single sprue.
No doubt Wai Kee and the old WGF makes incredible plastic, but his shop is always jammed with production, this makes it pretty much impossible for me to look at that as a viable resource for future production or Kickstarter's. I had my doubts that anyone could get close, but I am reeealllly happy with these shots, and as this opens up the door again I am eyeing another Kickstarter.
I am still pulling together all the costs and if it appears to be a real option, I am more than happy to give it a go. This time would be FAR more focused. One kit at a time, with true costs, the molds and production would need to be funded in full for that 'episode'? But if it works, another would be on the heals of the last… Ferals? then StuG? then Shadokesh vehicle or walker… then whatever sounds fun.
With this kind of Kickstarter there would be a very focused goal, drive and costs… We are not so much looking at the typical song and dance hype train. The product would make it or not on its own merits, and cover its true costs.
Soooo what do you think?
Would you like to know more?
I am stoked! The quality looks good, the price is right and the turn around time will be good. So why did it take six months then? Because it was free, a test mold and test shots arranged by my old account manager at WGF who has struck out on his own. He asked if I could send him the original files to split and use as a non-retail sample to show other clients. I agreed and after some waiting they arrived! This is only two of the five pose options... As a free test mold we were limited to a single sprue.
No doubt Wai Kee and the old WGF makes incredible plastic, but his shop is always jammed with production, this makes it pretty much impossible for me to look at that as a viable resource for future production or Kickstarter's. I had my doubts that anyone could get close, but I am reeealllly happy with these shots, and as this opens up the door again I am eyeing another Kickstarter.
I am still pulling together all the costs and if it appears to be a real option, I am more than happy to give it a go. This time would be FAR more focused. One kit at a time, with true costs, the molds and production would need to be funded in full for that 'episode'? But if it works, another would be on the heals of the last… Ferals? then StuG? then Shadokesh vehicle or walker… then whatever sounds fun.
With this kind of Kickstarter there would be a very focused goal, drive and costs… We are not so much looking at the typical song and dance hype train. The product would make it or not on its own merits, and cover its true costs.
Soooo what do you think?
Would you like to know more?
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