Here is a real thing that I looked up this week:
2 Likes
I still seem to be a key short. Is there a way to get into the lodge desk drawers?
Also, do the switches in the observatory do anything?
Is anybody who attended the Baltimore IF online meetup yesterday willing to discuss this notion of a factual basis for the plot?
I’d want to ask @CortJstr for sure, but:
I don’t believe you can get into those desk drawers, and the switches don’t do anything either as best as I can tell.
I was not at the meetup, but I’d LOVE to hear more about this.
I assume the secretary will be uploading a PDF of the minutes to this thread.
2 Likes
Sadly, no notes remain from this meeting. @okushimo, what do you mean by ‘factual basis’?
I was That Guy and extracted text out of the story file, because I had gotten as far as I thought I could solving puzzles and I really wondered about a couple story points. I can tell anybody reading this and contemplating doing the same, you will find not any secrets to the universe. Although I did find a few mildly interesting things.
I was satisfied with not understanding everything, and I think that is perhaps the most experimental aspect of the game. The biggest question that remains in my own mind is:
What happened to Erica, exactly? Everything in and around the lodge seems more-or-less abandoned, except there’s a cell phone that still works on her couch and her snake seems to be living just fine. Who has been feeding it?
My second biggest question is, who keeps locking the world’s gates and doors when I end a session?
Number one is what I’m left with too - but, snakes can go 6 months without food -it’s possible she killed your predecessor and abandoned the area and the snake is on its ‘last legs’ when you show up.
And I think he means, “Did this really happen? Is it based on a true mystery?”
I assume the Baltimore / DC meetup notes are damp but will slowly dry out over several days.
4 Likes
One thing I’ve been thinking about but haven’t looked at in any systematic way yet is this: which characters exert influence over which parts of the map? For example, it seems clear that the lodge and shed belong to Erica Nailer, and she has certainly made her bones in the forest area.
The parking lot and the gazebo were originally built by ??? but are now (intermittently) Zuleika’s, and the willow is sort of hers as well.
I need to think about who the abandoned cabin belongs to; it’s pretty far off the normal map. The quiet place I don’t even have a theory about yet.
1 Like
This is a very interesting line of analysis, from my perspective at least, because the map really is divided into “domains” like this. For the most part these divisions aren’t distinguished very well and they don’t really affect anything, but if you’re looking to “solve” this “puzzle” I’d start by trying the LISTEN action in various locations.
1 Like
Here are some more locations that I see as belonging to certain characters, based on the items there:
Garden Shed - Anita Stapella
Observatory - Harlan Waverly
West Cabin - Harlan Waverly
Cemetery - Noah Ellsworth / Cynthia Ellsworth
Bird Sanctuary - Cynthia Ellsworth; Malcolm the rat
Abandoned Cabin - Noah Ellsworth / Cynthia Ellsworth
1 Like
It’s starting to sound like a game of Clue :).
It actually reminds me a little of chess or go. Each character has some amount of territory under their control, but there are holes and sorties over the lines.
It seems like Erica Nailer has a strong grip on the northeast third around the pond; the southeast third belongs to Noah Ellsworth and the Fly Fishing Association; Harlan Waverly is ascendant in the western third, with Anita Stapella claiming pieces for herself here and there around the west, south, and east. Jack Deacons made a play for the northeast but we know how that turned out.
1 Like
Gone Home also has a similar organizational pattern where each character has put their mark on certain rooms.
THERE’S A TALKING RAT?!?!
I’ve been wandering around this slice-of-life parser pond, off and on, for almost a year, and now I find a TALKING RAT??
This is so incredible and bizarre. After exploring this game world for so long, this seems almost as suprising as it would be in real life. This game is turning out to be not just bigger, but weirder, than I thought.
3 Likes
Joining the conversation!
I currently have 14 badges and I’m working on the crows at the playground to get my next one. I had a sneaky look at some of the spoiler tags in this thread and the main thing I don’t seem to have cracked yet is some kind of quiet area with a new bird and a geode?. I don’t know where that is. I’m also stuck on CALL MAMA STUPID FOR LUNCH.
Another one of my puzzling areas is the phone booth. Is there a way to remove the piece of styrofoam or decipher the secret messages?. And I wonder what the graffiti in the phone booth means…
Finally, I’m intrigued by the presence of two similar-seeming nightstands that turn up in two different locations and whether they have any significance…
I’m so fascinated by the game, but seem to have run up against my own limits for the time-being…
1 Like
Yes, the secret messages are just letter substitution ciphers and can be solved fairly easily. However, they’re only jokes, not important information or clues, as far as I know.
I would be very interested in text extracted from the story file.
I’ve picked up this game again recently and with a new safe file am hitting the limit on discoverable things, even if the limitation is only by my own creativity.
I do have an addition about Erica Nailer, however:
ask malcolm about erica
“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of her.” He nods sagely. “She’s the human who burned down this walkway thing.”
ask malcolm about walkway
“Yeah, someone arsoned the bridge thing. But I guess it got put out before it burned all the way down. There used to be like a, lookout, I guess you’d call it, just past here.” He indicates an area floating in space. “They’d have parties and stuff. I think the fly fishing guys would induct new members here. Or at the cabin.” He motions to the east.
You also find the dirty key to the bird sanctuary/walkway in her fire pit. She burned down the walkway and tried to burn the key in the fire pit as well. I think it was all to get rid of the people she saw as being on “her” property, with the bird sanctuary included.
1 Like
hey, just going to resurrect a dead thread and ask what the parent key for the substitution cipher here is?
1 Like