I’m curious about the alternate endings in this game and how to reach them, as well as the alternate solutions the author mentioned outside of the walkthrough. For a PunyInform (I think?) game, Traffic has a lot of alternate solutions, by far I’d guess of all PunyInform games I’ve played.
But I found only one alternate solution. That’s with the box, guessing the numbers.
For the numbers you see on the box, the algebraic equations you get from saying “A+B=that C+D=that A+D=that B+C=that” aren’t linearly independent (TLDR: A+B+C+D = A+D+B+C so if you know the first 3, B+C doesn’t give any new information), so there are infinitely many acceptable solutions if you look at them that way. Clever misdirection!
The number is different for each playthrough, so You need a binary search based on what what you see when you input a wrong number. I forget what occurs, but the basic idea is, you try 999 first, then 500. If 500 is different from 999, then “higher” is the reaction to 500 and “lower” is the reaction to 999 and you start a binary search. If it’s the same, then “lower” is the reaction you saw twice.
As for endings? I found a bad one one where I as the main character tried to push the woman pushing the stroller. I survived but got arrested. I’m sure there must be more.
If your solution to finding the right number is the intended one, I found it badly under-clued. I tried messing with quite a few different numbers once I realised that there isn’t enough info provided on the display to find a unique solution, including making D as small as possible, as large as possible and doing the calculations to make sure B=D, but I never noticed a difference in how the traffic was described. If there had been some kind of feedback suggesting “there seem to be too few/too many cars coming down X” I might have persevered with it, but the difference must have been too subtle for me.
I was also confused by how, after distracting the mother as the baby, you can no longer activate the baby’s viewpoint, confirming that that vignette is “solved”, but after you find a way to prevent the woman getting off the bus, you can (and possibly have to) keep repeating those actions while trying to solve the traffic vignette. I guess this is because the game has you killed preferentially due to the stroller, the lights and the woman in that order, but it still felt like a missed opportunity for some positive feedback.
I gave up on the game after solving the traffic vignette with the walkthrough (a read-the-author’s-mind solution I would never have guessed, unless there’s a reference to the screwdriver somewhere I missed) and then realising in the second set of vignettes that I must have done something in a different order to what the author expected, because the narration was making reference to things the character clearly expected to see from previous attempts, but which I the player didn’t recognise at all.
I played this a whole bunch, ran glulx-strings on it and found a few more, so I’m going to try writing some hints:
What is even going on here?
I feel like the game should just outright tell you this, but…
Try restarting and just doing nothing for a while.
Examine just one thing per loop?
Does this suggest anything?
Looking at a person zaps you into their body after you die.
You can queue up multiple people to jump to in one go.
Once you solve their problem, it will no longer work to jump into their head.
Other general-purpose stuff
You can ask <person> about <topic>, tell <person> about <topic>, or ask <person> for <item>.
There are random room descriptions that don’t show up every time loop, so you may have to loop through a few times to even find out what things exist. Try looking at everything you can think of.
Edit:Don’t forget to x me and i when you find yourself in a new body.
The Stroller
This is perhaps the most obvious one that’s a problem. You might try approaching it directly (taking the woman’s phone, or attacking her?)
OK, that didn’t work. Look at her to end up in the baby’s body.
The walkthrough suggests there are at least three solutions but I only found one and two variations on another
examine the items
Can you think of any way to disrupt her with any of these?
One of these error messages is misleading: you can actually do the thing.
Futile.
The syntax is throw pacifier at woman/phone (do these count as two separate solutions? Meh).
What else could a baby do that might attract attention?
scream and cry don’t seem to work.
But oddly something much less disruptive does.
What might this baby have learned/be learning to do?
The other thing you can do is stand up or stand? (might only actually work on the last turn of the scene).
The Box
ask man about himself
ask man about you
ask man about work (or job)
For fun: ask John (repeatedly) about the random room events (coyote particularly).
You may have to ask him about things repeatedly.
What else can you think to ask him about?
help and hint
ask john for help (twice?) - but this is kind of a red herring: the equations just describe the diagram, and they’re not a full solution: you can choose any value for D and these equations let you find A, B, and C (but the X9000 does that for you).
enter <number> on screen (yeah, this needs more synonyms)
ask John about screen (and button)
ask John about clipboard (repeatedly)
From the strings output, it looks like there’s a way to get him fed up so he does it for you? But I couldn’t find that.
The Bus
look at everything
At some point you can see the end of this event happen from the outside too: what do you think is the bad thing that you have to fix here?
x bus
Can you ask the woman what her problem is? Or have some kind of conversation with her?
You have to turn off boombox before you can really do anything else.
The syntax for offering your seat to the woman is give seat to woman which is unusual and it really needs more synonyms but I also think it’s a pretty funny abuse of the usual “medium-sized dry-goods” manipulation commands.
I think the hardest one to find is open window but you might find this out by talking to her or thinking about the initial description of the bus and the result of x bus IIRC.
The Cab
And the student driver, which you’ll find from a disambiguation message if you try to examine the car that’s driving erratically and ends up hitting you?
But I didn’t find the student driver very useful and you don’t need him.
So check out the cabby. When you die, you (the protagonist) will say something about what you’re trying to accomplish here.
I guess the idea is the cop is chasing the erratic driver and goads him into crashing?
So you want to be totally illegal and block the cop.
You may notice that the student driver moves first?
So you can probably just mimic his moves. Though it’s not great about… it only sometimes describes the relationship between the two cars so you have to track it yourself a bit.
Or you may have to go into the student car and make him do specific things (the command is young man, n or young man, pull over or whatever.
You’re trying to keep both cars side-by-side blocking both lanes so the cop can’t get by until it tells you you’ve delayed pursuit long enough that he won’t be able to catch up.
Also, hey, pay attention to the radio.
Finishing up
At this point you should be able to just wait, take the package back to the lab, and get an ending.
But there is a “better” ending?
Now that the car isn’t killing you, you need a way to initiate the timeloop yourself.
Oh yeah, note that you can use undo to back up and experiment…
The command you want is break package (dangerously radioactive, I guess?)
But then what are you supposed to do? What loose end are you supposed to follow up on?
Remember the radio?
think about X is the command.
Specifically think about sarah
And then loop around again.
The location description doesn’t necessarily change, but there’s something new you can see.
x school
x girl
Updated Final Scene Revised (7).doc
OK, you need to get Sarah’s attention.
bark?
jump on bed?
look under bed
This is very much a guess-the-verb with not enough synonyms: push ball to sarah
Or you can (I feel like this one is easier to dream up) lick sarah or kiss sarah
Do whatever: she’ll just keep talking.
If you guess the wrong answer, you can undo and try again.
I choose to believe that you have to do this instead of opening the package because that’s the only way to trigger the bodyswap etc–when it first starts it’s after the car hits you, which presumably crushes/destroys the package
Also, I’ve been trying to put my reviews into these threads too, but missed this one
I’ve finished this one (with the help of Josh’s excellent invisiclues!) and don’t really have anything to add that hasn’t been covered in existing reviews, but I wanted to share my transcript. And I’ll throw in a little of my experience with the puzzles…
I solved the baby one without even trying to, just because I happened to try “stand” while in the baby’s body.
I needed Josh’s clues to learn that I needed to open the window on the bus and to know to ask John for help with the panel rather than doing algebra. And of course to access the true ending.
So, I really did not have the intended experience of any of the puzzles except the cab one.
Coming back here to add that I think the game’s walkthrough could also be improved. Having the stated steps for solving the traffic box puzzle be “unlock box, open box, ask man for screwdriver” will be frustrating for players, because they’ll wonder how they were supposed to make that leap. Including the intermediary steps of asking John for help three times (on the third, he’ll let you know the panel opens and mention that he has a screwdriver) would be much better, as that provides a clear path from starting point to solution.
Apologies to folks for the clunky puzzles (and thanks for playing my game)! I’m gathering notes and hoping to make an updated release post-competition.
