The puzzle seemed fair to me. I was initially confused because I misunderstood rope as a hint to climb the boulder.
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I feel like I’ve gotten way too far into this game to not have been keeping any maps or detailed notes. I am also embarrassed to admit that I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the backstory and was just wandering around collecting badges. I started over this weekend so that I can keep track of where I found each item and badge.
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I was very guilty of this. Even now if somebody asks were badge x was found my response is usually “I can’t tell you until Wednesday/Saturday when I can show it and get a reminder.”
same! Although I later went back and made a map, I don’t know where I found most things.
Honestly, I think it’s the type of game where it’s good to not do some of that stuff?
Here is a real thing that I looked up this week:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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