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EggsAisle posted:Thread needs a new page though. I agree. Let's see if we can help with that. Edit: Oh hey, what do you know?
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Feb 23, 2016 14:21
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EggsAisle posted:Thread needs a new page though. Eh, we've already fit 4 games onto this one page. I'm sure it can hold one more. Just kidding, I agree with you. Edit: how did I miss that we hit the second page hours ago? 
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Feb 23, 2016 18:53
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Well, I can clear up the "Winged Scorpion" thing. I'm guessing it's meant to be a Scarabeus, similar to this one, but with a winged teardrop at the bottom.
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Feb 24, 2016 01:11
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It'd be kind of interesting if a game actually attacked your mouse cursor and it got hurt and moved slower, but the navigation is still pretty neat all told.
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Feb 24, 2016 05:35
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Part 7 Submachine 4: The Lab  Click here to play the game yourself. It's time to get started with the next game in the main series, The Lab. This game is quite a bit larger than the ones before it. This game was released in 2007, and introduces what is probably the most important game mechanic of the entire series. But we'll have to find that first.   ... bring it to the statue ... ... you should arrive at the lab ...  We find ourselves where we left off at the end of Submachine 3, still falling through the endless rooms. Leaving the Loop, we somehow end up on this rooftop. Are we outside? Is the Loop floating above this building? I don't know.   On the windowsill to the right, we find the first item of many in this game, a Hammer.   RTL These areas are to the left of the starting point. The only thing we can do right now is climb down the ladder.   We haven't found any keys yet, but even in Submachine, sometimes the solution is brute force.   A good hammer blow does wonders on a padlock. Let's go inside. ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 4 - Attic Rumble This isn't really music, more like background ambience, but for me, while exploring I'd suddenly become aware of one of those loud creaks, and it's actually a bit scary.   We grab some Naphthalene in the form of moth balls from the lab coat's pocket. We'll go right first.   Here's another phonograph like the one we saw in the Lighthouse. But it doesn't do anything. What we need to grab is the Rubbertube hanging from the ceiling, which might be hard to notice on your first playthrough.   Further to the right, I pick up a Chimneybrush hiding in the corner, and also the first of 21 Secrets from the chair. In this game, collecting all the Secrets does have a purpose, which you'll see later. The radio has the same snippets of music and unintelligible speech as the one in the Lighthouse.   If we drop the chimney brush into the chimney from above, a lot of soot comes out, along with a Doorkey. That's how you sweep chimneys, right? Just throw in a brush and hope for the best?   RTL Going left from the ladder, first we find this yellow Key hanging from the rack. In the next room, there's a table with some stuff on it we can't interact with, but we can take the Gashandle that's hidden behind the leftmost table leg.   The Doorkey from the chimney opens this door. The second Secret is lying on the bottom right of this landing. ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 4 - The Lab   RTL Down in the actual Lab, we find this rather strange looking machine to the left. There's another Secret sitting slightly behind the waste bin.   Turns out the device is a computer. The keyboard is broken, but we can press a button to send a ping somewhere. And Mur himself replies! Conversation with Mur posted:(@lab): root.ping//144.235.182.100 That IP address is a real address, which seems to belong to the US Department of Defense. I have no idea why Mateusz picked it, I don't think it has any relevance. If anyone knows more about it, I'd like to hear.   Mur has indeed sent something to the printer. In this game, we get a neat list of the Notes we've found, and the option to make a note of our own. That option just gives us you an empty sheet where you can type whatever you like.  Note 1 posted:coordinates of known locations:   To the right, there's some machine that doesn't seem to do anything, and the Lighter from Submachine Zero on the windowsill. There's nothing else on this floor, so let's go further down.   On the landing we find what looks like a cheap coffee pot to me, but the game calls it a Beaker. On the ground floor, there's not only a Secret hidden between the bars of the chair on the ground, there's also two Notes on the table.   Note 4 posted:At first we thought there was just one submachine. Note 5 posted:...for submachines, we go on missions into the net trying to discover new places and parts of this greatest puzzle. Murtaugh said once that there is no 'greatest puzzle', no masterplan, no one is controlling this thing. But we think otherwise. There must be a purpose for all of things. We just have to find it. I thought this was all possible, but since Murtaugh deserted us, I'm not so sure anymore. But we found our purpose, we see it clearly. Do you?... But most importantly, we finally got Mur's full name. It's Murtaugh. My purpose? I don't know about my purpose, right now I'm still trying to get home. 32 years? I'm really hoping Mur... Murtaugh can help me get out of this Submachine thing.  To the left there's a room with nothing of importance, but at least the door is unlocked.   The taps and the toilet cord don't do anything. Still no water. But there's a bar of Soap on the washbowl, and the fifth Secret is hidden to the left.  To the right of the stairs there's a CD we can take. Let's go up the ladder next. I still can't get over how weird this place really is. One moment there's the modern-looking technology in those looping rooms, next thing there's some ancient radio in the attic, and some computer that doesn't look like it was made anywhere on Earth... and now a mundane CD? What the hell did I end up in?   At the top of the ladder, we can grab one of the test tubes. The only way to distinguish it, is by noticing that its contents are somewhat purple. The game calls it "Irontrioxide". I suspect it's supposed to be Iron(III) oxide, pronounced iron-three oxide, better known as rust, but as you'll see soon, the chemistry in this game isn't very accurate. And with my nickname, I am obliged to care about that.   To the right, we take the Screwdriver from the table. There's another puzzle in that room, but we can't solve it quite yet. Going back down the ladder and to the right, we find a door that can be opened with the yellow Key from the attic.   Here's the room with the steel grating. Like Mur said, the panel on the wall doesn't seem to react to anything.  What we can do is ring the bell to make the block float, but it doesn't seem to have any effect yet.  What we actually need to do is go all the way back to the rooftop and use the Screwdriver to get the Valve. I don't even know what a valve would be doing there.   Then back down to the bathroom, where we attach the valve to the pipe, knock off the lid on top with the hammer (it's not very obvious that you can do this), and turn the valve to get water flowing from the pipe. Water! Finally! I don't know where it comes from but I guess I have no choice... Hmm, it tastes surprisingly fresh.   Anyway, we fill the Beaker with water, and return to the room with the Bunsen burner, because we now have all parts for this puzzle. I don't know if you noticed last time we were here, but there's a Secret on the ground next to the pipe. Let's not forget that one. By the way, other than it being HD, there aren't a lot of changes between this version and the HD version of the game. But all the HD versions seem to be using the same game engine... which has an inventory limit. You'll usually won't notice, but when I tried playing through the HD version picking up as much items as possible before solving any puzzles, I hit the inventory limit and had to use up some items before I could continue. It's a small annoyance that doesn't occur in the standard version of Submachine 4.   First, we connect the burner to the pipe using the Rubbertube, and we also attach the Gashandle to the pipe. Next, we turn both the Gashandle and the knob on the Bunsen burner, and light a nice blue flame with our Lighter.   Next, we place the Fullbeaker on top, and add the Soap, Irontrioxide and Naphthalene to the beaker, in that exact order. The game won't accept any other order.   Finally, we take the beaker with Acidioxide, and we also grab the empty test tube (Tester). Optionally, if you care about lab safety like I do, you can turn the gas off to kill the flame. Anyway, the wiki seems to think the acidic oxide has to be acetic anhydride, which doesn't make much sense. But it's right in saying that if you put soap, rust and naphthalene together, nothing much would happen at all. You certainly wouldn't form some strong acid. Anyway, before moving on, we take a quick trip back to the bathroom to fill the test tube with water. We'll be needing that later.  In the steel grating room, we pour the Acidioxide over the panel. I like to think it's just short-circuiting and the 'acid' doesn't have anything to do with it. The protagonist could just have poured plain old tap water on it and the same thing would've happened. Hell yeah! I'm the chemistry master! I can't believe that actually worked...   Beyond the steel grating is the portal device, and another note. Note 2 posted:Our mission has just started. Murtaugh taught us the necessity of writing notes and leaving them behind in locations they were made in. That's for leaving a trace in case somebody got lost. But we are all well trained, nothing bad is going to happen. Not this time.  Beyond this second steel grating, there's what seems to be an exit door. We can't reach it, though. Now that we've reached the portal, here's Mur's list of coordinates: laboratory: 001; ancient section: 104; looping traps: 690; basement section: 529; lighthouse digouts: 462; tomb trap: 770; the ship: 800. Let's try punching in 001 to see how this thing works.  A bit of a flash, but nothing seems to have happened. But we're already in the Lab, aren't we? Let's try the next set of coordinates, to the Ancient Section.   Holy poo poo, where am I? Let's explore this new area a bit. ♫ Thumpmonks - Ancient Section   To start with, we go right and climb down the ladder, where we can find these stone switches.   To the left of the switches is this room. The plate on the wall moves if we move the switches that correspond to the markings on the plate (the switch with a horizontal line and the one with a vertical line). Strangely enough, we have to move the switches down to move the plate up. Anyway, behind the plate we find a Stonekey to pick up. There's also a Secret hidden among the rubble to the left, but I forgot to pick it up for a bit.   To the right of the switch room, there's a room with several things to do. Another one of those bells with a floating block. I'll ring this one too, but it still doesn't do anything. I grab the Knife as well, and change the switches to the right position to open the plate, hiding another stone object which the game calls a 'Blocade'. I'm not completely sure what that means. Sometimes, the fact that Mateusz isn't a native English speaker becomes quite obvious. It's no problem, the games are completely comprehensible. Besides, I'm not a native English speaker either, and I'm always messing around trying to get the little language details right in my posts, so I have no right to complain at all.   Below the switch room, there's this place. We can't do anything here yet, except grab the Secret that's very sneakily hidden in the eye of the statue.   There was another wall plate above the switch room. It contains the first of four triangular Tiles which you might remember from the very first Submachine game.   A ladder comes down to let us up when we put the the Stonekey and the Blocade in the slots. Before going up, there's another Tile behind the plate to the right. I'm cutting out a lot of running back to the switch room to get each plate to move.   Up the ladder, there's a broken wall plate. Apply the Hammer to reveal another Secret. It's quite well hidden if you don't realize you can use the Hammer a second time.  Further up, we find the third Tile behind a plate.   All the way up the pillar, there's a Tile just hanging from a rope. When we cut it with our Knife, it falls down.   And it lands next to the switches. The Tiles go in the rather obvious slots down below. This makes the tiny plate in the middle move up, revealing some sort of screw.   We don't need the Screwdriver for this one. When I click it, the screw turns inwards, and there's a sound of shifting stones. As it turns out, a new ladder appeared near the portal. Meanwhile, I picked up the Secret from the rubble I forgot before.   Up the new ladder, first of all I grab the Coil. Secondly, let's take a look through that telescope.  Some kind of red brick structure off in the distance. Have we seen red bricks anywhere before?   Further to the left, we find another note. Note 3 posted:We haven't even started exploring this ancient section and our coil is already dead. Probably someone forgot to recharge it. But the situation is serious.  That big thing looks like some kind of lamp, but it won't turn on. No wonder, I took their battery away. And the coil's got no juice left anyway. Let's see if we can see anything through this telescope.  It's just too dark. We'll have to come back here with a recharged coil.   We've done everything in the ancient section we can. Let's move on to the Looping Traps. Next time. This update is long enough as it is. I hope you're starting to appreciate how large the Submachine Net actually is. The percentage of Secrets I found so far is a reasonable estimate of how far we are into Submachine 4. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Apr 9, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2016 00:39
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I'm not sure if 4 is my favorite but it's very high up there. This game does a great job of introducing its central mechanic and it's really cool exploring these weird places with the teleporter. This is a really strong entry in the series.
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Mar 6, 2016 04:44
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So, does anything happen if you just punch in a random number?
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Mar 6, 2016 06:14
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fractalairduct posted:So, does anything happen if you just punch in a random number? Just a loud "you're wrong" kinda buzz, and then the numbers reset to 000.
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Mar 6, 2016 09:25
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We're going to teleport and puzzle to eight different locations? At least? drat, this game is huge.
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Mar 6, 2016 14:31
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just finished the last submachine so time to hop on board here. as far as what we've seen so far goes: i kind of liked the loop actually? if nothing else it was so different from the previous two games it made me curious to see what the hell skutnik was gonna do next atmosphere and artistry of these games is absurdly good especially as the series go on but they still often fall prey to a lot of common adventure game pitfalls ie resorting to just rubbing everything against everything else, getting stuck because you missed some random thing wedged in a crevice or blending into the background a few dozen screens back and as cool as the portal/teleporter gimmick a lot of these games have is it can also feel pretty disjointed at times and lead to a lot of like... pick up thing, ok, now time to run around in circles going back to each place i already visited to try and figure out what to do the lab i don't remember being too bad with regards to the latter point but i really loathe the chemistry puzzle from nonsensical start to ridiculous end. argh that valve on the roof!!! i got stuck there so long oh i guess so my post isn't just totally me griping about stuff i hate: i do actually really like this series in overall, glad i played it, cool to see an lp of it! FPzero posted:I'm not sure if 4 is my favorite but it's very high up there. This game does a great job of introducing its central mechanic and it's really cool exploring these weird places with the teleporter. This is a really strong entry in the series. if the loop started to get me really intrigued about the series this game is the one that followed that up and just sucked me entirely in haha. although it's far from the best use this series makes of the teleporter gimmick! but that's for later Glazius posted:We're going to teleport and puzzle to eight different locations? At least? lol
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Mar 6, 2016 17:14
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Part 8 Submachine 4: The Lab Let's continue right where we left off. ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 3 - The Loop The music for the Looping Traps is somewhat of a remix of the main music in The Loop, as you might expect. Because it's really very similar, I'll just link the track of the previous game here.  As soon as we go right, it's clear that this section of the Loop is actually cut off from the rest. In fact, it's just a 3x3 square of rooms.   In the bottom right room, we find a Note. Note 12 posted:I've been here before!   RTL To the left, we find our tenth   Going up, we find a device with numbers. Each side can be set to three positions, and there's a button in the middle to activate it.   The top left room has a locking mechanism, and both of the other top rooms have a pole in them.   As you may have guessed, the numbers on the device correspond to coordinates. Setting them to a certain room activates the pole in this room, allowing me to click a button.   Each of the poles activates a light on the locking mechanism, and once we get all four, it opens up, netting us an Orb. And that's all we can do here. Let's see, what's next on our list?   Back to the basics. ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 4 - Basement This basement theme is rather different from the original, it's mostly ambient sounds. I think it fits, though.   The room to the right has a Secret in the power socket.   The device actually charges up our Coil with power. Useful!   RTL There's another tricky Secret in the room down the ladder, hidden against the right cable. To the left, we find a Note.  Note 6 posted:Our coil is broken, and we don't have a replacement. It's useless. It's so useless.    The Coil loses its charge after one use, so we run back to the charger, give it some more juice, and use it on the device on the right.   Let's follow the laser beam.   Another Note to the right.  Note 7 posted:Murtaugh came by today. He said that since we cannot charge the laser to break the Orb, he's returning it to it's original position.  The people who left these Notes seem terribly depressed though. The good news is that we found some new coordinates to check out, a brick room at 551. Let's keep that in mind.   The puzzle here is a bit of trial and error. Turns out you need to put the CD (which we picked up a while ago) in the claw to the left, and then place the Orb on the pedestal.   After a few seconds, the orb breaks, and the Chestkey falls out. Remember how the place in the Ancient Section needed a charged Coil too? That's why I go and make sure it's charged up properly... just to promptly forget about it and leave it in the charger. I'll have to come back for it later.   We're done here, let's go to the next place in our list, the Lighthouse Digouts. ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 2 - Digouts   To the left we find this thing with two floating blocks. We have hit two bells which made blocks float, so I think it's clear what we need to do to unlock this thing. There's also a Note. Note 8 posted:Did you notice that you have never found any signs of human presence in the submachines? No matter which ones? But there are at least four teams wandering around the vast net of submachine. And there are probably other people too, locked within their own locations. What are the odds of never finding anyone here?  Speaking of strange, to the left are these blocks, floating(?) in the void. Are we really under the Lighthouse right now?   To the right of the portal, we first pick up another Secret from the ground, and then find a pipe with fast flowing water or something.   To solve this puzzle, we need to take a quick trip to the 'Brick room' at 551, which turns out to be part of the Digouts. The portal room here has the 14th Secret.   To the left is another part of the pipe with flowing water. Pressing the button stops the flow. We also find a Note. Note 11 posted:I'm stuck, please help!     Back in the 'main' part of the Digouts at portal 462, the flow has stopped too. We can now use our old hammer to knock off the lock, so we can grab the Turbine.   We're done in the Digouts for now, so let's go to the Tomb Trap. As the name indicates, this is only a single room, with no way in or out, except for the portal. How did that portal device end up here anyway? ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 4 - Ancient Section   There's a Note here, and we can zoom in on some symbols on the right wall. Note 13 posted:No clues. No clues. Wait, what I was doing here?   "Second tomb" is just the wiki's name for this area, and I suppose it's a good enough description. Let's explore.   RTL Some weird, glowing blob in the middle room, and a few things to the left. First, there's the bell and block, the third of four. Secondly, there's a Note.  Note 9 posted:Need water. Must find water. Not much, one drop would be enough. Just one drop of water. All I see is sand, 32 chambers filled with sand as I remember. One drop of water from the test tube we carried all the way from the Lab...  This removes the test tube from our inventory and gives us the Sceptre. And that's all we can do here. Luckily, most of the areas the portal takes us to aren't so large they cause confusion. If you're playing the game normally, it's already confusing enough, trying to find out where you have to go next.   Next time, we'll explore the Ship, finish the game, and collect the reward for finding all Secrets. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Apr 9, 2017 |
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Mar 27, 2016 18:33
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Er... No mention of the secret at the bell screen in the tomb?
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Mar 27, 2016 20:12
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LogicalFallacy posted:Er... No mention of the secret at the bell screen in the tomb? I hoped someone would notice that. I completely missed it at the time, so I went to pick it up at the end, you'll see that next time.
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Mar 27, 2016 20:52
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You know, I would have figured that note about water to be just a dude dying of thirst. Well done on that little bit, puzzle designer.
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Mar 28, 2016 04:08
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Part 9 Submachine 4: The Lab The ship, last unvisited place on the list. It's really dark here, but luckily we brought a lighter. ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 4 - The Ship   RTL That's much better. At the bottom of the pipe in the portal room, we pick up the 15th Secret. The disconnected TNT detonator in the left room obviously doesn't do anything. But there's a note, and we can look out of the porthole.   Wherever we are, it's very dark outside. Note 10 posted:Crew expendable. Where did I hear that? Did that come from the company, or someone even higher? Nevermind... In the meantime we tried almost every possible way of unlocking that drat ladder. this lock just won't open. the last attempt is to blow this up. We're setting up wires right now, and if we're lucky someone of us will survive and finally see what's on the upper deck of the ship. However, I'm going to write another note just after the explosion, if we'll still be alive that is.   Going to the right, we find the last of the bells-and-blocks. There's also a panel we can simply remove from the wall using our Screwdriver.   There's a free Secret behind the panel, and a pair of wires we need to cut with our Knife.   And that's all that's needed to lower the ladder to the left. The note writers got themselves killed for nothing.   To the right on the second floor, there's another ladder. Not pictured: me lighting the lamps. The 17th Secret is sitting on the ground, to the left of the gas tube for the lamp.   If we place the Turbine in the large pipe and close the lid, it starts running by itself. This lets us open the hatch on the second floor.   Note 14 posted:If you looked hard enough and you are feeling lucky you can always try this location:   The Chestkey from the Orb we found in the Looping Traps and broke in the Basement Section lets us open this chest, so we can grab the Arm, which seems to be made of solid gold.  We've been nearly everywhere now, it's time to gather the remaining Secrets and find our way out of this place.   First, to the Digouts (462), where the bell-and-cube puzzle opened up to give us a Secret. Secondly, I finally return to the Basement to grab the Charged Coil I left behind.   RTL We return the Coil to the Ancient Section where we first found it, and use it to power the searchlight.   Looking through the telescope, we find some marks: 4-5-2, more coordinates. Luckily, the light doesn't use up the charge, because we need the Coil for one more thing.   All the way back in the Lab, we can use it to power this machine, so the arm moves and we can grab the 19th Secret. Almost there! At this point I realized that I should have found 20 Secrets by now. It took me quite a while to find the one I missed. Did you spot it?  As LogicalFallacy pointed out, it's in the Second Tomb, in the back left, right next to where the Note was.   Let's go to 452, the coordinates we got from looking through the Telescope. We could've found this place as soon as we got the Coil charged up, but we needed to collect some more items to do anything here. It looks like it could be a part of the Ancient Section.   When we attach the Arm and the Sceptre to the statue, it sparks, and...  quote:Congratulations The end. Except not quite. In the HD version, the game ends here and returns to the title screen. In the standard version, we end up here:   Now, I think this place, which is sometimes called the Annex, only exists to let you back into the game to collect the remaining Secrets. The HD version doesn't need the area, because there's an option to continue the game on the title screen. Author's note posted:Thank You for finishing this game. After reading this note, two doors appear. We aren't done yet, so let's go right.  This room has a Secret sitting in the corner on the right. There's also coordinates (596) in the top right, but they just lead back to this room. If you know what you're doing, you can just unlock the first portal device in the Lab, punch in 596, and beat the game in a few minutes. But where's the fun in that?   ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 4 - Bonus Area This area has a nice upbeat song, quite different from anything we've heard so far.   To the right, we dump all our hard-earned Secrets into the receptacle. Once you put in all 21, the gate opens. But wait a second.  The first room has another, 22nd Secret in it! I guess this is because the Annex area isn't originally part of the game. The extra Secret in the Annex makes it a bit easier to get 21. If you collect 22 secrets before going to the receptacle, once you put in the 21st, the last one just disappears from your inventory. But if you first put in 21 and then collect the 22nd secret, the counter bugs out a bit.  We can even add it to the receptacle and be left with 0/-1 Secrets. Anyway, further to the right we find a bunch of rooms with projectors in it, that give us a nice glimpse into Mateusz' life.       Most of these pictures were updated in the HD version. Because I like Einstein, I'm making an exception and putting his HD-version picture here (besides, the HD picture is used on the wiki, too):    I like how these pictures make it quite obvious where Mateusz got some of his inspiration from. It's a good reward for finding the Secrets.   And that's all of them. Let's go back to the exit.   The left room of the Annex has this switch from Submachine 3 in it. Clicking it simply returns us to the title screen. See you next time for a rather unusual side game: Submachine: Future Loop Foundation. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Apr 9, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2016 11:17
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I can see how living near an industrial area like that would give you a lot of inspiration.
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Apr 3, 2016 22:01
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Part 10 Submachine: Future Loop Foundation  Click here to play the game yourself. The second of three side games, this is a weird one. It was created as a promotional game for Future Loop Foundation, which was the artist name of English DJ Mark Barrott, according to Wikipedia. Back in 2007, when this game was released, playing it on the Future Loop Foundation website would unlock some hidden stuff on the site. The website has been dead for a long time now, though. This game is very short, and I would consider it the least canonical of all the side games.  The HD version of this game, simply called Submachine: FLF HD, was released in 2014 and is significantly different. It has a lot of extra rooms and puzzles, and all the references to Future Loop Foundation have been removed. It also has a new soundtrack by ThumpMonks. I'll use the HD soundtrack for this update, because I don't have an easy way to get the FLF music and ThumpMonks is better anyway.     The theme of this game is 'memories'. FLF created a project called "Memories from a fading room", and I suppose this game fits into that.   We start off in the Ward. Starting the tape player, the game's music starts playing and a key gets dragged inside. ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine FLF - The Ward In the original game, this was a sort of strange ambient track with some annoying sounds mixed in. I'd say the new version captures that feeling quite well.   Anyway, we use the Key to open the door and step outside, and almost into a bottomless void.   I don't know who we are or why we're here, but we seem to be some kind of mental patient? Around the back corner we pick up a Knife.   The Knife lets us cut open the stitches in the walls of our room, and the Keycard falls out of one of them.     We can finally escape from our room. Let's go right first.   A projector. Not very useful without anything to project.   RTL Down the ladder we find a door that takes us nowhere. Further down we go.   RTL At the bottom there's a ball that squeaks and jumps when we click on it. It's still there in the HD version, so it doesn't seem to be a FLF reference. I have no idea what it is about, it has no further purpose in the game. Possibly an in-joke by Mateusz?  More importantly, there are a few runes on the wall to the left. We're done down here, let's explore the top section of the Ward.   A part of the mechanism that lowered that bridge to our room, and another door to the right.   We can open the lockers in this storage room.   We find the Slide in a random locker. By the way, in the HD version this room is called "Morgue" instead, which makes things a lot more morbid, especially considering the changes Mateusz made in the next section.   The Slide goes into the projector and shows us some photograph. Clicking on it takes us to the next section, the Memory Bank. ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine FLF - Memory Bank The original game uses the same music as the Ward for this section, but in the HD version, there's a separate song.   Clicking on this picture allows us to quickly return to the Ward. But let's go through the door on the right instead.     Through the door and then left, beyond the owl drawing, we find this device with headphones. It allows us to select a rune, but most of them just give us noise. Let's leave that alone for now.   We can click on the stuff on the ground to look at it directly. These are obviously references to FLF stuff. In the HD version, all of these photos, including the Slide we saw, have been replaced by black-and-white photographs of people from a number of different ages. If you hover over them, descriptions such as "Father", "Grandmother" and "Great grandfather" pop up. The HD game is still about memories, but I'm assuming those pictures are of Mateusz' family (this is not confirmed anywhere, but I can't think of any other explanation). It does make the fact he turned the storage room into a morgue quite sad, though.  Back in the main corridor, there's another door further to the right.   RTL Inside, there are more pictures that are probably important to Future Loop Foundation.   RTL A neat little touch is that the entire game has rounded edges like that, to give it an old photographic slide effect.  This is at the far right of the main corridor.   We can punch in numbers on the panel, but none of the notes on the ground work. What we actually need is the patient number, 3218, which isn't actually random as far as I've noticed. The original version of this game can be beaten within 2 minutes, if you know what you're doing. The HD version takes a few minutes more, because of the extra puzzles.  As soon as we hit the last number, the screen zooms out to show us a new corridor sliding into place. What's with this place and shifting walls?      Behind the new corridor, we find an entire movie theatre. This place makes even less sense than many of the places we've visited in previous games. Anyway, we can't do anything here yet, so we need to backtrack to the left end of this corridor.  Where we can take the stairs down.   This corridor has more doors. Inside the first one we find a tv.  It shows FLF's logo. In the HD version it just shows static.   Beyond the tv, there's a device which unlocks when we select the right runes. These are, of course, the runes we found on the wall back in the Ward. And these aren't randomized either. This lets us grab the movie reel. The game ends when we put that into the projector in the movie theatre. Did I mention this game isn't very difficult?   There's a little bit more to explore, though. Behind the next door we find a panel that requires a three-digit code. This is part of an optional puzzle (which is no longer optional in the HD version).   We don't have that code yet, so let's continue on for now. To the left, we find another FLF photograph.   And to the right of the final door, there's one more picture. When we click the light switch, it makes a weird chirping sound.   I actually didn't make the connection at first, but the chirp is an owl's call. If we go back to the owl picture, we find the three digit code, which we use on the panel, to get a single rune. None of this is randomized, so you can even solve this optional puzzle by memorization. Wait a second, perhaps that's the point, it would be in theme with this game.  Anyway, this is the rune that activates the 'jukebox'. In the original version, this unlocks a second song, which is a slow guitar solo. In the HD version, this song starts playing: ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine FLF - Jukebox   And that's everything. Let's finish this game.  The projector plays this short loop of film. Ending posted:It's all coming back to me now... I honestly don't think this game is very interesting for people who aren't fans of Future Loop Foundation. On top of that, while most Submachine games are referenced by later games, by having similar architecture or whatever, that barely happens with FLF. There's some of it in the exploration game Submachine Universe, but that's about it. In the next game, The Root, the game starts with the protagonist waking up. Because of that, I like to think of this game as a dream. It isn't actually a part of the Subnet, but it did help stir the protagonist's memories. And as they said in the ending narration, they now know they need to go find the Root. So, see you next time for the next game in the main series: Submachine 5: The Root Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Apr 9, 2017 |
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Apr 10, 2016 12:36
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This was always a weird entry to me but considering its origins, its weirdness makes sense. Still cool that it's tangentially connected to the rest of the games, even if the connection is mostly theory on the part of its players. And yeah, what's up with that ball? It's the only place it shows up in the entire series and it does nothing. Weird.
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Apr 10, 2016 16:19
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I think The Root is probably the second best Submachine game.
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Apr 11, 2016 02:41
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Flash game band cross-promotion. Man, those were the days.
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Apr 11, 2016 02:51
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Part 11 Submachine 5: The Root  Click here to play the game yourself. Welcome to a new chapter in the main series. Let's jump right into it.   The game starts with a series of tubes, for some reason. Once you click all the valves on a screen, it scrolls up to the next part.   After three of those pipe screens we get a title card and the actual game starts.   I found a some paper and a pencil! Perhaps I should leave messages for those that come after me, just like others did for me. ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 4 - The Lab The music from the Lab plays here. The version in this game seems to be subtly different from the version in Submachine 4, but I won't upload every little music variant.  I don't know if anyone will read this, but who knows. If you've come this far, you may have heard of Murtaugh. I'm still not sure what his deal is, but so far he has saved my rear end several times, so I'm going to trust him for now. I figured out how to use the Portal device and I tried to use it to escape from the Lab. Just when I thought I solved the last puzzle, I heard something about applying for a job, and then I blacked out. I woke up here, feeling relatively well. I think I slept a long time, which was to be expected - who knows how many days I've been lost in this Subnet already. All I know is that I can't remember the last time I saw the actual sun. I feel like I dreamt a lot during my sleep, but I don't remember any of it. In any case, it was quite a surprise to wake up to the smell of fresh bread. Someone had left some sandwiches and a glass of water next to my bed. Finally some food, I felt like I was starving. There doesn't seem to be anyone here right now, so it's a mystery who left the food.   RTL I explored a little bit of the surroundings, and I could hardly believe what I found.   A bathroom! And not just any bathroom.  One with actual running water, and it even had a fresh towel, soap, and not to forget, toilet paper. Needless to say, I finally got a chance to clean myself. After all that, I feel ready to tackle anything. Let's find out what Mur (I assume it's Mur) wants from me.   Apparently we're in some other part of the Lab. We can open the hatch in the middle room and climb down.   RTL On the lower level we find a computer. Pressing the power button turns it on, as one would expect.   Murtaugh posted:Hi there.   Assignment posted:First assignment:  Whatever you say, boss. Anyway, this is what the Notes item we picked up is actually for, the protagonist will automatically make a note of important stuff.   To the right of the ladder, there's the way to the Portal.     Another hatch, another ladder to climb. Why don't they have stairs in their house?   We found the Portal already. We have three sets of coordinates right now, the Lab (leading back to here), the Corridor and the Root. None of the other coordinates from Submachine 4 work anymore. I assume this is more because of a game design reason than anything else - after all, everything is connected in Submachine Universe.   Let's check out the Corridor first. It's a small location where we can't do much yet. ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 5 - Corridor   RTL We can't seem to go any further to the left.   To the right, we find an electric door of some kind. I also discovered a weird little bug here: if you check your notes in the Corridor portal room, once you leave the screen showing your notes, you magically find yourself one screen to the right, in the room with the arrows.  Behind the door we find this sort of... control room or whatever it is. We'll be back later.   Let's take the portal to the Root. In this seemingly outside area, the background track sounds like howling wind.   There's a tricky secret here, by clicking on the ground to the left of the Portal Device, or just 'behind' it, we find some hidden steps behind the device.   Downstairs we find the first of only five Secrets. The Secrets in this game tend to be well-hidden though.   Going right from the portal.     While writing this update, I'm noticing that the further we get into the series, the more rooms we encounter that don't have puzzles and just give more flavour to the game. In any case, we pick up a somewhat hidden Lead Casting here. ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 5 - Old Bricks   We're in the main part of the Root now.  We can't explore much though, the lights are still out.   This one was a bit tricky to find. In this room you can remove that plug, if you notice that you can unlatch the tiny clamps holding it by clicking on them. Open up that switch box on the wall, connect the plug, and there's light. I doubt this is safe electrical engineering, but it works.   Now we can climb further down. By the way, the wiki gathered a lot of Submachine lore from forum posts by Mateusz. I'll probably miss a bunch, but I'll share the interesting things I find.   For instance, the Root is the oldest man-made Submachine, built in the early 20th century (before 1906).   Going up the ladder, we find some thing on the wall here which opens. As far as I know, there's no purpose to it. Let's go left.   You might be wondering about the Ancient Section now. Isn't that older than the Root? Yes, but as far as I understand it was an existing location that got absorbed by the Subnet. It wasn't specifically created as a Submachine. By the way, I wish people would stop rearranging the wiki. I sometimes have trouble finding information again.   All the way to the left is this rusty old device. It doesn't seem to work anymore, but we can pick up the Wrench lying on the ground.   Our protagonist seems to think it's some sort of 1950s observation room. This fact doesn't seem relevant to the puzzles, we actually won't be coming back here. It does make the history of this place even more mysterious, though. Did explorers rediscover this place in the 40s or 50s?   There was another ladder going down from the lower floor. Let's explore that part of the Root.   We use the Wrench to remove the bolts, so we can grab the Rusty Key. Another small gameplay difference: in this game, the selected item becomes the cursor, and once you click on a bolt with the Wrench, it gets locked in the short animation, meaning you have to wait before you can click on the second bolt.   The rusty key opens this locker on the top floor, so we can grab a rusty piece of metal from the hook.   It's the first Cipher Plate and it fits in either of the slots of this machine we passed on the ground floor.  Putting it in the left slot and pressing the button transports us to another place in the Root. Looks like this thing is some kind of short-range portal device.   Going down and to the right, we find another of these lightning bolt devices. We can't do anything with it yet.   Further to the right, there's a bathtub with some kind of liquid in it, and a sign.   That sounds all dangerous and chemical like! Let's write it down! Time for another chemistry note. The formula on the sign is citric acid, the acid in citrus fruits - kinda. C6H8O7 certainly is citric acid. The "x H2O" is likely intended to indicate the monohydrate (a common crystalline form of the acid, in which water molecules are 'caught' inside the crystal structure). This is normally written as C6H8O7 ⋅ H2O, the floating dot indicating that the water is a separate molecule that's stuck in the crystal. I guess Mateusz confused the dot with the multiplication sign and turned it into an x. In any case, hydration is specifically a property of the crystalline solid. Once it actually gets dissolved in water, there aren't any caught water molecules left, and the correct way of writing is C6H8O7(aq), where the (aq) stands for 'dissolved in aqua'. The stuff in the bathtub is clearly a solution, hence, the sign is technically incorrect.  The final room to the right is this one. Those pipes swing a bit when I touch them with the mouse cursor. That's all.   Back at the transporter, putting the Cipher Plate in the right slot takes us to yet another part of the Root. We'll soon pick up another Cipher Plate, giving us access to even more transporter locations. There's plenty left to explore... so let's do that next time. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Apr 9, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2016 22:47
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I feel like this Part is one of the more confusing ones but I really like the cipher plate mechanic. It ties in so well with the whole "oldest submachine" setting.
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Apr 30, 2016 23:05
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Yeah, despite all the ruins in previous episodes, this is the first one that really feels old and ruined to me.
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May 1, 2016 03:56
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Carbon dioxide posted:Time for another chemistry note. The formula on the sign is citric acid, the acid in citrus fruits - kinda. C6H8O7 certainly is citric acid. The "x H2O" is likely intended to indicate the monohydrate (a common crystalline form of the acid, in which water molecules are 'caught' inside the crystal structure). This is normally written as C6H8O7 ⋅ H2O, the floating dot indicating that the water is a separate molecule that's stuck in the crystal. I guess Mateusz confused the dot with the multiplication sign and turned it into an x. Is there some reason related to the puzzle it is citric acid? It could be isocitric acid, or some weird artificial compound that uses the same amount of each atom but with a different structure?
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May 1, 2016 08:24
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MercurialOne posted:Is there some reason related to the puzzle it is citric acid? It could be isocitric acid, or some weird artificial compound that uses the same amount of each atom but with a different structure? Well, the puzzle that requires that bath tub will come up in the next update I think. I'll talk more about it then. Meanwhile, have some more compounds with the same formula: http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?Formula=C6H8O7&NoIon=on&Units=SI The hydrate notation is wrong no matter what.
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May 1, 2016 08:31
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Part 12 Submachine 5: The Root ♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 5 - Old Bricks  We ended last update taking the transporter to a new sector by putting the cipher plate in the right slot. Let's explore.   Down and to the left we find the second cipher plate, which lets us access a bunch more transporter coordinates. But there's more to find in this place.   Down, down, down we go.   RTL Down here there's a somewhat hidden area off to the left.   The rusty plate standing against the back wall can be moved. It's the only one in the game that can be interacted with, so it's not very obvious. We pick up the second Secret here.   To the right we find this machine which makes the most awful fingernails-on-blackboard squeaking noise when you try to turn the wheel. Our protagonist writes down that it's a charger. This is a good moment to talk about the coordinate system used in the Root. We started out in (0,0). Putting Cipher Plate 1 in the left slot takes us to (1,0), putting it in the right one takes us here. Adding Cipher Plate 2 to the calculation, we can go to (2,0), or (2,1) by combining the two plates. And so on. Of course there's no (1,1) because we only got a single copy of Cipher Plate 1. In any case, we'll return here later.   Next stop, (2,0).   There's some kind of pressure control down the hatch. For the next puzzle, we need to put the pressure on for every control we find, like so:    Down the manhole one screen to the left, the pressure is already on, so we don't touch the controls. We find an Empty Coil here, though. I think I know what I need to do with that.   One more valve to open. The device on the wall doesn't seem to do anything right now.  And all the way to the left we find this room, where we can't do anything yet.   We take a quick trip back to (0,1) to charge the coil. It takes three turns of the squeaky wheel to charge it up all the way (and you can't take the coil out before that). Mateusz has been merciful for the HD version and reduced it to a single turn there.   Next on our list, (0,2).   RTL There are three rooms with these monitors here. They look very similar and don't seem to be powered right now.   RTL All the way to the left is this valve. If you turn it, when the pressure is on in all three of the hatches in (2,0), there's a sound of air blowing followed by a loud clang. Looks like we did something, somewhere.  There's also a very sneaky Secret sitting behind the pipe.  ( ... )  RTL Back in (2,0), the pressure apparently was strong enough to break through that bricked up door.   Behind it, we find our first Wisdom Gem.   And to the left we find the second to last Secret just sitting in a familiar-looking chair.   Next stop is (2,1). Going right, we're immediately blocked off by a gate.   RTL  Up the ladder, there's switches to the left and to the right. Clicking both switches opens the gate to the right... but blocks our way back.     And that's how far we can go right now. Looks like there's a lightbulb missing.  Yes, thank you. I just said that.  Getting back to the transporter device requires switching the gates back.   The one place we haven't been to yet, (1,2). This location is a bit difficult to explain. I went forward through the door to end up in the room with the 'wheel'.   Going further right, I went through the next door. This place is basically a square-shaped loop (as seen from above), with a small room in the middle, which you see in that last screenshot. So, it's a 3D-area, but representing this in what's basically a 2D point-and-click game is somewhat difficult, and you might get confused for a bit if you don't know what's going on.   The center room has a hole in each wall except the one with the door. There's a dial like this in every hole, which corresponds to one of the 'wheels' in the looping corridor. The wheel in the previous screenshot corresponds to the left hole. We have to turn the wheels so that all the dials point at the thing on their outside.   These are the other two dials. I find it easier to use a combination of trial and error and remember what I've done than to try and understand the geometry of this place and solve it in one go, but that might just be me. I do think it's a neat gimmick though.   Further around the corridor, we see that all the rooms look mostly the same. This wheel corresponds to the dial on the right wall.   While this one corresponds to the back one. The transporter is one room to the right from here.  Getting all the dials right opens the thing in the center, so we can grab the Metal Box.  There's one more thing here. This is the only room in the entire Root that has a light bulb that's not protected by a grate. We grab it so we can use it later in (2,1). This is why I went to (2,1) first, the missing light bulb there is actually a good hint, and even then it's hard to notice that this one is different. Now that we've been to every transporter location, it's time to collect some stuff.  First, we return to (1,0) and go back to the citric acid bathtub.   The Metal Box goes into the tub.   It starts bubbling and dissolving, leaving a Wisdom Gem behind. Now, I was going to write a rant here about how citric acid is a weak acid and doesn't dissolve metal that easily, it just increases the rate at which it rusts. MercurialOne asked about citric acid isomers, but none of those are really strong acids. However, I realized I was missing something - what if we take a particularly reactive metal? Most of you will have seen videos of alkali metals reacting violently with water, but nobody in their right mind would make a box out of an alkali metal, as it would immediately start reacting with moisture in the air and dissolve within a short period of time. Next in the list of reactive metals are the alkali earth metals, of which magnesium is actually used in engineering a lot. It's relatively stable and it's an extremely lightweight metal. Magnesium reacts with pure water too, slowly bubbling, forming magnesium hydroxide and hydrogen gas. Acids increase the rate of this reaction by a lot, and even with a relatively weak acid it only takes a few minutes to dissolve magnesium. What's a chemistry explanation without a video, though? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2q4k6U1EVo This guy adds magnesium to, in order, formic acid, acetic acid, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, and phosphoric acid. Looking at the acidity of citric acid, it's between that of formic acid and that of phosphoric acid. And you see in the video that even the weak formic acid dissolves it in minutes, for phosphoric acid it only takes seconds. And it bubbles in a similar way to what we see in the game. So, assuming the citric acid bath in the game is sufficiently concentrated, and assuming the box is made of magnesium metal, this bit of chemistry is actually surprisingly accurate. I am pleased.   Our protagonist is smart enough to not stick his hand in concentrated acid, so we'll have to drain the bath instead. A neat little thing is that if you zoom back in on the bath while it's draining, you can see the water level dropping there as well.   Today's chemistry lesson nets us our second Wisdom Gem. --- We're actually quite far through this game, but putting it all in one update would be a bit much, and this seems like a good place to pause. We'll finish the game next time. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Apr 9, 2017 |
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May 8, 2016 13:38
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I think that lightbulb was probably one of the things that stumped me for the longest time. It's not particularly obvious even with the hint from 2,1.
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May 8, 2016 19:01
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While I am glad that there is a plausible explanation for how citric acid melts through metal, I think this may be one of those cases where the creator got the chemistry wrong on accident, and only serendipity allows a reasonable explanation. Or maybe I'm wrong, and Matteus did more research into the chemistry of this event than most authors would, and deserves the praise heaped on him. That lightbulb was a dick move though.
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May 9, 2016 09:42
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The nearly-full jar of secrets seems to indicate otherwise, but is there going to be a third Cipher Plate for endgame?
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May 9, 2016 12:21
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I was wondering what happened to this. Somehow this had become untracked.  Rectifying that now and going through what I missed.
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May 9, 2016 16:28
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If I recall correctly, there are only the two cipher plates in-game. If you look where he picked up the first one however, you will notice that at some point there were 6, which makes this place pretty drat big. (43 locations if my math is correct)
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May 9, 2016 16:39
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LogicalFallacy posted:If I recall correctly, there are only the two cipher plates in-game. If you look where he picked up the first one however, you will notice that at some point there were 6, which makes this place pretty drat big. (43 locations if my math is correct) And I think that in Submachine Universe there's another locker room, possibly bringing the original total to 12. Although that locker room might be in another part, or another copy, of the Root. We've already seen places that are similar to but not the same as other places we visited, so I have no idea how many versions the Subnet has of each location.
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May 9, 2016 17:26
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I also believe we need to hit a new page. This thread is loading sloooowly. How many updates have we had on this page now?
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May 14, 2016 16:57
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It's getting a bit slow, isn't it? I'm planning to post an update tomorrow, but the thread needs about 6 more posts before we go to page 3. Are there any readers who haven't played the remaining games and would like to share their theories/guesses of what the Submachine and the Subnet actually is?
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May 14, 2016 17:30
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My firefox is herniating itself trying to load this page with all of these images. Hopefully this post will contribute to a new page. Also, so this post is not just me trying to "bump the topic", I'd like to say that the myst style of dream logic and down to earth yet fantastical worldbuilding is somthing I really enjoy in adventure games and I think it should happen more often.
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May 14, 2016 18:32
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I finished catching up to this thread about a week ago, but I didn't really have much to say. It's an interesting series of puzzle games and I'm interested to see where this all ends up.
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May 14, 2016 19:29
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Carbon dioxide posted:It's getting a bit slow, isn't it? It seems to be a bit like the Stargates, where the ancients set up a bunch of teleporters and then other people started screwing around with them after the ancients left.
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May 14, 2016 21:25
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Theory on what subnet, loop etc are: Due to the rather anachronistic mix of technologies, I'm pretty sure that instead of it all being left by ancient aliens, it's all human developed and built. We really know nothing about the world or time period Murtagh and the player character come from, so it's hard to say if this technology is "modern" or not. There could've been a cataclysm that rendered the technology lost, or perhaps it's still being developed and tested, though I find that unlikely, considering the teams being sent out would imply that there's a reclamation effort in progress. The Loop is likely a proceduraly generated portion of the subnet. It's possible that it was part of an effort to use the Submachine technology to create infinite habitable space. Honestly, we know so little that even the most evidence supported hypothesise and ideas are nothing more than fanfiction. It's like trying to figure out the world-plot of Lost from just watching the 5th episode. Or, to make the obvious joke, it's like trying to figure out the world-plot of Lost after watching every episode.
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May 15, 2016 10:25
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Perhaps it's something that grew "organically" and we happen to unknowingly live inside part of it?
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May 15, 2016 15:13
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Maybe this whole thing takes place in the mind of our protagonist after they've gone crazy. We did wake up in a padded cell in FLF.
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May 15, 2016 16:34
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