 What is this game? The MISSING: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories (god what a long title) is the latest project by Japanese auteur Swery65, best known for his extremely janky yet oddly compelling love letter to Twin Peaks, Deadly Premonition, and his new studio, White Owls Inc. Generally, Swery's game indulge in a very sincere love of Americana, David Lynch, horror, jazz, and more while failing at almost every technical aspect, although he has certainly gotten better about it over the years. The Missing, released October 12 2018, is a puzzle game involving the titular JJ attempting to find her lost love, Emily, on an abandoned island. While Swery doesn't get away entirely from the jank of prior games (The Missing plays decently, but has a few hang-ups that make it slightly aggravating to play in some areas and looks dated by 8 years graphically), I like the creativity of the puzzles, and its story is genuinely compelling and heartwarming, dealing with heavy subject matter in a mature way. Heavy subject matter, you say? I think this is probably a good time for a content warning, best summarized by the game's opening title cards.   If you're turned off or upset by body horror, depictions of suicide, and depictions of phobia towards LGBT people, this game might make you feel really uncomfortable. Those of you who do read and post in this thread, I implore you to be on your best behavior and be as respectful as possible. What's your spoiler policy? If you're one of the 4 other people here who have played this game, please  DON'T SPOIL ANYTHING. I don't mind speculation and what not being kept to spoiler tags, but try not to carry on entire conversations in spoiler boxes because people love to click on that poo poo and spoil things for themselves accidentally and then get mad in the thread and derail things. Don't do it, dude.Do you recommend the game? I'd get it on sale, since it is extremely short for something that costs 30 USD (I'd say a first run is about 6 hours maximum), but it is one of my favorites of 2018. Updates Update 1 Update 2 Update 3 Update 4 Update 5 Update 6 Update 7 Update 8 SunAndSpring fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Jan 4, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2018 21:23
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 We start off with, funnily enough, the main menu. Our protagonist gazes out at the ocean and the island beyond until we smash that new game button. There’s no music, and all that can be heard is the roar of the waves and the squawking of seagulls. Once you hit start, JJ beckons her friend, Emily, over to hop on into that boat over there. She leaps onto it in an incredibly goofy video game way since she just reuses the jumping animation from JJ. They both find this as funny as I do, apparently and start cracking up. JJ reaches up to pick up that plushy over there before the screen fades to black.  The game then cuts to a rather ominous monologue about the island, showing footage of its dead trees, rocky landscape, and stormy weather.  A remote island in North America just off the coast of Maine… Filled with artifacts left over from the good old days, this island has the power to awaken the formative memories of all its visitors. The island’s ancient inhabitants called it “A’lapo Grymo,” The footage quickly flashes to show imagery of clockworks revolving and blood dripping down onto a white background before continuing. -which means “place to find the lost” in their long-forgotten language…  We flash forward to JJ and Emily watching the stars at night at their camp, chatting it up and having a great time. There’s a jaunty harmonica, some lovely violin, and an acoustic guitar as our background music. As an aside, I almost envy you, dear reader, because unfortunately one of the more negative aspects of this game is that the voice acting, especially on JJ, can be really flat in a lot of places since this is a very low budget game. You, however, get to imagine any voice you want for them. Truly a tragedy that you can think of them having the voice of Laura Bailey and Grey DeLisle or any other actresses you want while I know what they really sound like. JJ responds with a goofy sounding, “Yeah, it sure is,” to Emily’s fawning over the night sky.  She pauses to trace her fingers over her hat, before asking, “Hey, J.J…”    “You’re such a romantic!”, JJ says. “You’re on to talk. You just hide it better. You love this kind of stuff, don’t you?” Emily slides on in a little closer. “Well, I certainly don’t hate it.” The music cuts off right about as Emily lays her hand on JJ’s thigh. The following bit is wordless, but truly fascinating. There’s certainly a few ways to interpret this scene.        We fade to black yet again after that kiss, and suddenly…    Emily sure is talking weird. In fact, she’s doing the same exact thing the Man from Another Place is doing in this, in which she speaks backwards and then has the recording of her backwards talk reversed. Gotta have those Twin Peaks references in a Swery game or else it wouldn’t feel right.  We awaken later at night. The stars have been obscured by storm clouds, and it is raining heavily. We can try to get left, but the only thing we get for our troubles is an invisible wall and an “achievement” for running into that wall that tells us we really should be focusing on Emily right now. We head on down to the right then, past the campgrounds and into the woods. Unfortunately, our cellphone is getting no bars, so we can’t just call Emily up. Cute wallpaper, though.  After a while of running and our obligatory jumping tutorial, in which we must mantle some logs, we enter the woods. There we come across a rather lambent lepus.  It speeds off as we approach into the woods. It’ll be our little guide for now. As we head on further, we find our obligatory puzzle tutorial. We hold that button (I am playing with a PS4 controller on PC, by the by, so all this X and B poo poo really drove me nuts) and drag that crate over to that ledge and hop on further to chase the white rabbit.   After that, we crawl under a tree, and slide down a slope to see…  Oh.   Ohhhh.  Whatever the hell that thing is, it leaps off in chase of Emily. We pass by ourselves on the ground there as we head on to rescue our beloved. Further on, we come across a truck and the game studio name-dropping themselves.  A white owl indeed. Pressing the button causes JJ to shout for Emily in a rather nonchalant way, as if she were looking for her in her house instead of a haunted island stalked by a phantom wielding a big ol’ knife, and causes the owl to fly off. It graciously drops that donut (more on those later) for JJ, at least. We’ll climb on up to the truck and onto the tree, and press forward to come across a waterfall, some scaffolding, and a bridge.  The only other thing of note here is that JJ will not for the life of her let that plushy down for a second, holding it even while she cranks the lever to lower the bridge.  Heading on further, we find our first real puzzle. There’s a crate here, which we need to climb on up and to the right, but alas, it is too far into the hole for us to drag it out. However, deeper inside this little alcove, we find another crate on a ledge above us.  All we have to do is drag that first crate over, leap up onto the scaffolding, and push the second crate down, and then hop down to push it and the other crate forward to the hole.  Easily done. We’ll snag that donut there too and head on up.  We find some rocks on the ground. Picking them up allows us to lob them at that delectable donut up there, and snag it. Really important to keep your carbs up in a situation like this.  Going up, we see another donut. Heading over to get it causes the floor to fall out, and JJ to slide all the way back down to the bottom, to climb up again. How irritating.  As we get to the power station proper, there’s something strange sitting in the tall grass. It runs off as we get close, just like the white rabbit. No one on this island just wants to stay still and chill out with us.  We’re in a big field now, and find that lightning strike sign was not joking around.  JJ’s running animation after this goes to about the best sprint she can do in heels.  A tree blocks the way forward, and as things in this game are in a habit of going from bad to worse, it gets struck by lightning and falls. We have to turn around and run off before it squashes us flat.  Unfortunately, fate does not like JJ.    We’re burnt to a crisp. At the very least, JJ’s poor voice acting takes the edge of things as she wallows around on fire before falling limp. However, our friend from earlier returns, and he brings a few of his woodland pals with him. He seems like the trustworthy sort. I mean, he’s got a doctor’s coat on.   Yeah, no poo poo.  Huh. After that, button prompts start appearing. Holding it down brings a little bit of life back to JJ, as she starts to writhe around.    With our final push, we regenerate as if we were never struck by lightning in the first place. All JJ can do is mutter a bewildered “Why?”, before going to pick up her doll. It didn’t seem to get the same power she did, and turns into dust in her hands.  JJ begins to cry as the title of the game appears and its theme song begins to play. 
SunAndSpring fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Nov 20, 2018 |
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Nov 19, 2018 21:27
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I bought this game and gave up and refunded it 1.5 hours later. It seems to be fun with an interesting story, but the gameplay is just so incredibly slow on a mechanical level. It felt like it's constantly playing at half speed, making movement a chore. I guess a screenshot LP is the correct way to handle it, so I might follow.
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Nov 19, 2018 22:36
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I bought this game on Switch and got about three hours into it before becoming too frustrated to continue. Just like the last guy said, it feels just... so... slow. And then what made me stop was a softlock due to clipping into a wall and getting stuck in a falling animation, resulting in having to replay a whole chapter. It was really a shame because of how enthralled I was by the story. I can't say I regret the purchase, though! ...mainly because I plan on checking out a few LPs of the game (if I can find that many good ones). Speaking of which, you're doing a screenshot LP! Neat idea for this game! And I like the way you're handling it so far. I look forward to more of this. Oh just letting you know: You missed a [/img] tag at the first lightning strike. EDIT: You fixed it! GameTrekker fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Nov 20, 2018 |
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Nov 20, 2018 00:40
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cant cook creole bream posted:I bought this game and gave up and refunded it 1.5 hours later. It seems to be fun with an interesting story, but the gameplay is just so incredibly slow on a mechanical level. It felt like it's constantly playing at half speed, making movement a chore. Oof, tell me about it. It plays better than Deadly Premonition but that's a low bar to clear. JJ's turn speed when crawling is the absolute worst, and due to mechanics I'll get into next post, you tend to wind up crawling quite a lot. At the very least I learned that rather than having to press the button to change position twice to stand back up, I could just hit the jump button and she'd get on her feet. Other mechanical flaws I dislike are that you can't turn when throwing stuff, so you have to just chuck whatever you're holding at the ground and try again from the right angle this time.
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Nov 20, 2018 00:42
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I was thinking about picking this one up, but maybe I'll wait a bit to see how it looks here.
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Nov 20, 2018 02:51
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Well, folks, let's get back on that grind. We return to where we left off, with the amazingly cheesy music from the last post still playing and JJ still crying. As we walk along, JJ sees visions of her past with Emily. Running through the fields, posing for Emily, and a flashback to that campfire kiss from earlier.   As soon as we get out of sight of the title card, JJ manages to get a hold of herself, and manages to stop sobbing. About a few steps after that, our cellphone starts to chirp and vibrate. Weird, since we're getting no bars on this island whatsoever.  Sadly, it's not Emily. It's our stuffed animal that suffered the wrath of Zeus about 3 minutes ago, F.K. JJ predictably takes this... poorly.  I gotta say, this scene is giving me vibes of that scene from the movie "Mandy", in which after Nicolas Cage's character returns to his house after watching his wife get utterly immolated by a group of cultists, there's this insanely goofy TV commercial playing for a brand of mac and cheese called "Cheddar Goblin." Nic just watches the whole thing while shell shocked, thousand yard stare fixed to the screen as the prop goblin just vomits pasta all over extremely excited children, because really what could he do at that point? Only in this case instead of a goblin, it's the spirit of a doll that has cellphone access and is an annoying little poo poo.   Everyone in this universe has custom emojis for some reason. Well, not for some reason, it actually loving kicks rear end. One of my favorite things honestly is just seeing all the stupid reactions JJ and friends (that you'll all see later) have because it really gives the characters a lot of flavor even though the overwhelming majority of them never appear in game.  Uh well ok maybe not all of them are great.  God drat, JJ is not even a bit curious as to why or how her departed dolly is talking to her. Guess we'll just head on past this farm house and move the drat plot along since JJ is so impatient. We climb up a tower of hay, and well, our odds don't look too great since someone decided to just leave their barbed fencing all down the ramp.  With nowhere else to go, we slide on down, and bounce off each and every bit of barbwire here, losing a limb each time until we are reduced to naught but a head. Ouch. Note the little status indicator up on the top left. Reminds me of Fallout's Vault Boy.  Well, this kind of sucks, huh? But hey, we did manage to regenerate earlier. If we repeat the same thing...  JJ regrows her body, regenerating each layer of herself back until she's back exactly the way she was. Pretty good way of teaching the player, honestly, relying on them remembering what they just did a few minutes ago rather than just screaming, "HIT THE Y BUTTON TO REGEN." After we get that handled, the heath we were just in turns into a swampy waste management area. That goopy brown stuff on the ground there is quicksand. If JJ gets caught in it, she can't jump, but can move enough that she can drag herself out before she drowns in it, which sends us back to a checkpoint. But, at least someone left convenient ropes for us to swing our way on past.  Later, we come across this. We've got a crate up top, barbed wiring everywhere, and a pit of quicksand in our way further on. Oh, and a rope leading to a donut because that's really just the perfect place for one.  Unfortunately, we've got no rocks to chuck here. But, we do have the power to basically get away with severing our own limbs. If we ram JJ into that barbed wire on the right, it knocks off one of her arms, and we can pick it up with our remaining one and chuck it to hit that crate.    I'm thankful JJ bleeds white and goes into a more shadowy form whenever she gets injured. It'd be a little too much for me if it were played straight. Anyway, yeah, we got the crate, so we can get that errant donut and make our way across the pit. Further on, we see some rocks (gee, sure wish those were back there near that crate), and an obligatory crate to knock over with said rocks. Just gotta chuck one over that pit since JJ can't climb and hold a rock at the same time, and we're good. There's a donut hidden under a crevice too small for us, but there's a way of getting at it in a moment.  Heading on up, we come across a stumbling block. Some jerk didn't balance this board right, so it sinks before we can get into that crawlspace there.  Well, there's plenty of barbed wire, and plenty of us to make the other end balance out.  But let's take a detour first and bump into that spiky stuff one last time, so that we're a rolling head again. Hopping our way back, we can roll under that crevice and get that all too precious ground donut, and then we'll press on.  Past the crawlspace, we come across yet another crate puzzle, and also the same drat puzzle from before. Seems a bit early to reuse the same thing, but whatever, free donut.  There's a small catch here with this crate though; one can miss a donut lurking in the tree up there if you get too eager and push the crate forward into the muck (again). We're far smarter than that, and will obtain that tasty pastry before going on.   Oh hey, it's that dude from our wallpaper, Sleepy! Let's run up and touch him.  Doing so causes him to shower JJ, his biggest fan, in donuts. Truly a noble man.  The purpose of the donuts is also revealed to us. They unlock text messages from JJ's pals, before the whole island incident and the giant ghost with a knife and the regenerating and the what not, and also cheats (mostly just palette swaps and accessories for JJ) and pictures in the gallery. I'll put the texts in a separate post after I beat every chapter, since you can unlock tons of them per chapter if you're diligent in getting every last drat donut and since I've played this game before this LP, I know where a good portion of them all are and thus am going to unlock like 2-3 rounds of text every chapter or so, and it's easier for me to just take pics of all the text rather than do the classic LP trick of making a pic for each character and having them read out their lines because of those dang emojis.  Climbing to that platform above Sleepy, we find a bunch of rocks and an urn attached to something underneath the sludge that looks primed as gently caress to get some rocks tossed into it.  Chucking enough rocks weighs the urn down enough to sink, revealing what was under the mud. It's, uh, more body parts in a cage. Suppose it's appropriate to put it in the waste dumping grounds, I guess. At least it helps us jump our way past that wall.  Heading on, we find a tree with a familiar hat on it. Pushing it over, the hat soars away and gives us a path over the goop.  We'll find Emily's classic hat. Its owner is nowhere to be seen.   Finding this hat unlocks more messages, though. These are from JJ's mom and Emily. Since these ones are more story critical, I'll put them in this update.  Before that, let's use that key hidden in the hat to open a gate ahead of us and enter the next chapter's area, the church.  Seems a good a spot as any to check your texts. Let's start with Emily, since she's pinned at the very top of our contacts.   drat zoomers, using "suxorz" in the year of our lord 2018!   Emily has a thing for moose and lobsters. She's so Maine it hurts.   Seems like JJ has a bit of a perfectionist streak to her. Wonder who she gets it from. Well, onto her mother, who is the only other pinned contact.  Well that mystery didn't last too long, huh?   Such a helicopter parent. Reminds me of my mom, in a way. We'll leave off here, for now.
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Nov 21, 2018 03:24
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All of JJ's emotes are of that donut mascot. Now that's dedication. And I'm sure her toy being named FK isn't ominous at all. 
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Nov 21, 2018 04:15
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In the coffee!
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Nov 21, 2018 04:28
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I...uh...wasn't expecting self-dismemberment to be a primary game mechanic here. It seems a lot less goofy than in NeverDead, which is the last place I saw that.
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Nov 21, 2018 04:51
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Oh hey those custom emojis are Stickers, a lot of chat apps like LINE and Telegram have them, and allow varying degrees of user-made content. Also varying degrees of what they'll let people put in that content.
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Nov 21, 2018 08:09
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Time for our first text-reading interlude. This will be a short one (really short actually, as I go back over this first part in a quick proofread) since it's mostly just JJ's friends being introduced, so maybe I should've just powered through last night and put all these in the last post, but we'll eventually start getting lots more of them. Let's start with Abby, since she's first in line after the big three (Emily, Mom, and F.K.).   Pretty short and to the point. I like Abby a lot, although it'll take a bit for me to talk about why. I wonder how expensive it must be to be a punk rocker if you're always smashing your guitars up. Even the beginner ones are a bit pricey. Up next, Lily.   Just a very cute little cat emoji there  . Also, a hint of a crush on JJ, perhaps? Certainly odd to get worried about losing contact for a bit. Up next, the worst guy.  Of course this motherfucker has a clown for his avatar. It must truly horrible to have a wannabe YouTube superstar as an acquaintance. If I had to rank all JJ's contacts, Phillip would be dead last, for a variety of reasons. Finally, Prof. Goodman.  I believe this is the professor JJ mentioned assisting earlier. He's a pretty cool guy, but he also doesn't have custom emojis because he's old and therefore he will never give us anything as good as the "WHO THE gently caress" emoji JJ uses.
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Nov 21, 2018 21:14
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Any chance you can zoom in on the phone a bit? I'm finding the text hard to read.
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Nov 22, 2018 01:04
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The incredibly busy background is the big offender, I think. It's especially hard to distinguish stickers from background.
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Nov 22, 2018 02:23
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Alright, now that Thanksgiving week has finally concluded and I have finally finished gorging myself on turkey, let's get back on that MISSING poo poo. I'll reupload those text images the next time I do a break for texts so you fine viewers can see them in glorious cropped 1920x1080 resolution. Anyways, we go beyond those intimidating gates where we stopped last and enter a construction area. There's a big ol' wrecking ball swinging around, a crate that is blocked by a thin raised platform, and no way to get up to where we need to go forward. Or is there? Let's just jump into that wrecking ball. What's the worst that could happen?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcz36EfinJw  Well, the good news is that getting ourselves absolutely hosed the hell up reverses gravity. The bad news is that JJ now shambles around like a zombie and falls down constantly in this form since, you know, we just broke her body in almost every possible way. Well let's get that donut at least and regenerate. Rather than just instantly regenerating like she does severed limbs, JJ has to audibly pop each and every one of her limbs back into place and, at the end, reset her snapped neck. I can't say whether you're really missing out because of not hearing the sound effects, or if you're blessed, but boy are they crunchy.  Anyway, let's head back and, using our new found power, get that crate where we want it to go.  There's a wall in our way, but seeing as we're invincible, we can just launch ourselves through it and smash it down so we can get that crate and leap up to a ladder.  Afterwards, we've got another wrecking ball and yet another wall to launch ourselves through if we want to get find another Sleepy we can get a boat load of donuts from (and thus a whole bunch more of texts to read from our pals).  Going forwards, we find a gate that prevents us from going forward while upside down. Luckily, there's a little hook we can lower down with this wench here.    Afterwards, it takes us just another rendezvous with the wrecking ball and a regen to get up to that platform up there leading into the church proper. We can up or down, but for now we'll head up. As we ascend, we've got a simple puzzle in which we lower a chain for us with that mechanism, leading us to a trove of donuts, both over to the right there and up a ladder to the church's belfry.   Heading down, we find Emily's backpack, sans Emily, and a big conspicuous X painted on the floor that probably doesn't mean anything at all.   Something behind us makes a loud thumping noise and all the bookcases get knocked over. We fall through the big X as the last one falls and smashes the floor, and are stuck at the bottom. Good thing we got all those donuts before this Looney Tunes style mishap happened.  There's a sleepy over there that we'll get back to. For now, we enter the main church. It's incredibly ominous here, especially without any music. The stained glass depicts our friends, the white owls and the Moose Doctor, so maybe it's not all bad. Check out that owl on that statue, though. He blends into the muddy background since his eyes are closed.  As we walk past the owl, it flies off, and then decides to punish us for our impertinence by ramming into us at Mach 2.  This severs an arm off JJ. Best to keep it in mind, since these black owls show up quite a bit in this level. Heading all the way to the right, we find a locked door and another white owl. Shouting will send him flying into one of the murals to shed some light on those statues we walked past.    A few feet before the door is a mechanism connected to a chain. We lower it down and get to another puzzle room.  Leaping up the see-saw while it leans up to the left gets us to that ladder, where the next crate is.  Dropping it down lets us push the prior one up on that ledge, where another white owl awaits. Calling out does the same thing as before to another mural.  We can either drop onto the chandeliers or onto a wooden platform above it all. Doing the latter leads us to some donuts and the third white owl.  The next two white owls hang out on the chandeliers with their black owl cousins. Shouting causes all nearby owls to fly off, black and white, so in order to get the white owls without getting killed by the black owls, we can toss some convenient rocks at the white owls to make them fly off. We're going to do something really stupid before that, though, and piss off exactly four of them, so they can eviscerate us enough that we are nothing but a head.  Rolling over, we can get to that Sleepy underneath the rubble, and get ahead of our donut quota.  Smashing all four windows reveals a big orange button in the center of the room. I really wonder what kind of denomination goes to this church, because I feel like having a big button that arises when five hooded and mysterious statues are illuminated by the light of the moon to open a door isn't exactly standard Protestant or Catholic procedure. Maybe they're Greek Orthodox?  Standing on the button does two things. It opens the door in our way (yay!) and also summons a horrible Silent Hill monster from the abyss to attack us (gently caress!).    Needless to say, getting near her is a terrible idea. We'll book it towards the opened door before she can dice us to pieces. If we go too slow (say, because we got dismembered), she summons hands to drag us down, killing us instantly. Apparently the room we just opened is the church's barbwire storage room. I guess it must make a decent crown of thorns on a budget.  Luckily, there's a latch to block the monster for a bit. Unfortunately, she can just pull a Shining and just cut through the door and grab us.  Button mashing frees us. We'll use that lever to lift that huge block of barbwire out of our way, and book it into the gardens behind the church.  We do come to a gazebo, which is too high for us to jump on. Luckily our friend, when she cuts us to ribbons, also launches us in the air to do it. Thanks!  We come across some convenient ropes to swing across, but I suck and drop down and have to wait to get cut up again to leap through that gap.  Anyway, we come across a plank balanced precariously on a ladder and some hedges. We get across, but our pursuer drops down like a loving idiot since she's far heavier than us and falls into her own hands. They drag her away as she screams at us, and that ends that little chase sequence we had, and this current chapter of the game. Next up: the graveyard!  
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Nov 28, 2018 02:15
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Well, you certainly can't claim that this is derivative.
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Nov 29, 2018 01:06
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It's time for rounds 2 and 3 of texts from our wonderful friends (and Phillip I guess). Let's check in with Abby first.  Ah, this reminds me of going to college in the years when ear gauges were popular. Drove the business teachers nuts.    Basically the proper solution to said professors was to ignore them completely, so kudos to Abby for realizing that. Next up: the worst dude.  You figure JJ would have just blocked this immense idiot but sadly she is prevented from doing so by the powers that be within the White Owl Inc. writing team.  I took a look at the car he's talking about and it costs $83,000 dollars MSRP. Pretty nice I suppose, but I hate that this horrible man has the money to afford that, somehow.    Yeah, and I bet she lives in Canada and he doesn't have any pictures of her because she's camera shy  . Anyway, I'm amazed by how American this character is. Either this is one hell of a translation job or somehow Swery65 is deeply familiar with this kind of guy, because I'd be shocked if this archetype existed in Japan. Time to give ourselves a temporary break from this rear end in a top hat and talk to our pal, Lily. Henry Dreyfuss comes up quite a few times in this game, actually. He's a pretty interesting figure, having pioneered a lot of iconic industrial designs that you've probably encountered quite a few times without having known who made them. Of course, a lot of them are going the way of the Dodo; after all, the wonderful cellphone we're using to read these texts has made Mr. Dreyfuss's black telephone dreadfully obsolete as anything but a movie prop.   Other than Henry Dreyfuss and Lily being amazed there are books inside of a college library, not a whole lot to this one, other than JJ just being a useful study buddy. Onto Prof. Goodman, then.   "Form follows function" is an old saying of Louis Sullivan, often called the "father of modernism" in reference to his design of skyscrapers near the turn of the 20th century paving the way for the modern movement of architecture and industrial design. Modernism in those fields is essentially based around the idea that the shape of something should be entirely structured around its purpose. As such, modernist designs are very utilitarian and minimalist, with little in the way of ornamentation to detract from the objective of the object. Henry Dreyfuss up there designed things according to this philosophy as well. Of course, in the 60s, many artists got bored of this philosophy making things look, in their eyes, very similar and austere, and thus it began to be replaced by the dreaded postmodernism, that alleged bane of many a right-wing grifter's life.  Right on, Prof. Goodman. Anyway, round 3! I unlocked these in the church belfry, I believe. Back to Abby.     JJ really sucks at giving advice, to be honest. There's only one thing that can be said for this:  . Oh, speaking of someone who should be entirely cut out of someone's life... You know what's kind of like a gun but for text messages, JJ? The block button. Please. Use it.   God, this loving dude is taking Gorilla Mind or Brain Force or some poo poo now. Can't believe it.  Terrible poster. At this point, even our friend who constantly posts in emoticons is a relief.   A lot of this reminds me of my college days but this is a wholly alien experience to me that I cannot relate to. All the pizza places near my college were really loving good. God, there was this one place that had absolutely divine tomato sauce and great mushrooms. I miss it terribly.   Yeah, I'd be ashamed too if I were working at a bad college pizza place. Finally, we touch base with our professor again.     I feel like too much Red Letter Media has ruined me. I can't hear anyone talk about their feelings for Star Wars, whether they be facetious nerd ramblings meant to sell you whatever the gently caress Disney is offering or genuine expressions of childhood nostalgia like Prof. Goodman is expressing here, without just thinking of the dumb phrases from their reviews worming their way into their brains. Like gently caress dudes the first thing that popped into my mind when he said he liked the blasters was, "I bet he clapped when he saw them." Anyway, that's it for now. We'll be going through the church graveyard next.
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Dec 1, 2018 04:02
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Thanks for the size increase on these. Way easier to read.
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Dec 1, 2018 09:10
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I have a great love for this game, but I can't talk about why because spoilers, so instead I'll just let people know that SWERY saw the love for the stickers and decided to make them available on his giphy account. https://giphy.com/whiteowlsinc/ It does include some we haven't seen yet and a few gifs of deaths, so some spoilers there.
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Dec 9, 2018 16:00
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 Graylien posted:so instead I'll just let people know that SWERY saw the love for the stickers and decided to make them available on his giphy account.
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Dec 9, 2018 17:23
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This game is fantastic and thank you for showcasing it.
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Dec 10, 2018 00:13
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This definitely looks interesting. Looking forward to seeing more of it!
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Dec 10, 2018 21:09
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Graylien posted:I have a great love for this game, but I can't talk about why because spoilers, so instead I'll just let people know that SWERY saw the love for the stickers and decided to make them available on his giphy account. Such good stickers. Anyway, howdy folks! I've been a little busy lately, but now it's time for another chapter of The MISSING. I'm a bit ambivalent about this area. While it's got more plot progression than the last couple of chapters, it's also got a feature that bugs me a bit. I'll go into it later. For now, we're at the gates of the graveyard. There's vines blocking our way, and a well. Using the mechanism here brings up a bucket with a rock in it, that we can toss at the lantern to burn away the vines (and also the gate apparently? Guess lamp oil can melt steel beams).    We then slide down a slope into some shallow water, and start getting some texts from F.K.     Poor F.K. Such a well-meaning dumb rear end, but ultimately a useless weeaboo. I suppose it's funny that this game's mascot character is entirely acknowledged in-game as being a pain in the rear end, unlike other Japanese games where you're supposed to find shitters like Teddy from Persona 4 and Morgana from Persona 5 endearing. At least, F.K. texting us unlocks more texts from Emily and JJ's mom. Let's check in on Emily.   That's one compressed .jpg, JJ. Please be more considerate to Emily next time.  JJ apparently exists purely off sweets. She literally never talks about eating anything but candy and donuts and cake in the entire game, in my recollection of it. I shudder to think of the effects of an all-sugar diet.  And what a wonderful camping trip this turned out to be. One can only imagine the feeling JJ is getting right about now reading this.   Feel like I'm missing (no pun intended) something here. Does "une aventure" not mean "an adventure" in French? Anyway, I do like how their relationship is portrayed. It's very sweet (again no pun intended), and it really reads like a bunch of modern Gen Z college kids would actually talk. Now, let's crush that mushy feeling we get looking at these two lovebirds and let's read the insane ramblings of a Gen X soccer mom.    This is some real conservative mommy poo poo right here. I am painfully familiar with this kind of stuff, having been raised in a similar way and having known all my aunts and how they interacted with their kids. I feel like this kind of behavior stems from their recognition of the fact that in this kind of society not getting a job is tantamount to a death sentence, getting a lovely job is going to crush your soul, and that they're going to keep voting to make sure it stays that way so they fear either ever happening to their children. Fun stuff. Let's go back from this depressingly real representation of a person to the game in which you gently caress yourself up in major ways order to solve puzzles. We got rocks, we got a lantern, and we got a gate. Simple enough.  Just gotta get on the dry grass to get the rock over there and-   Ah loving gently caress. Remember what I said about me having problems with this area? Normally, when JJ gets hurt, she makes the dullest reactions to it when she does because she doesn't have the best of voice actors. Not so here. She loving screams her head off when she goes up in flame, and runs around doing so for far too long until she eventually falls over, writhes around in pain, and then pushes herself back up, hunched over in pain. I feel really guilty doing it, which I guess is the point, but the other stuff comes off like Happy Tree Friends-style schlock comparatively. Anyway, I'll press on. We come up to an open grave and a dead guy nearby. How lazy, whoever dropped off the dead dude could've just dumped him in themselves. Well, I suppose we can do it.  gently caress again. He burns to dust in our hands. I thought this guy was necessary for a donut and restarted the chapter, having to go through all that junk again, and it turns out there's another guy a few feet further. Truly a chapter of self-owns. Anyway, you can just dump him in this grave, and I guess his soul ascends to Heaven and drops us a donut in the sky as a favor.   Heading on, there's another gate and a crate. Well, guess we got to immolate ourselves again...  There's a disadvantage to being on fire, however. Being mostly carbonized now, we're very fragile. That short drop down causes us to splatter into bits.  In any case, we do the obvious and ignite the gate by touching it. Huzzah! There's another dead guy shortly ahead. We dump him into the grave and get a chain dropped down leading to the top of this monument.   Who else is at top but another Sleepy? An obelisk is a normal place for a donut mascot and I refuse to accept any other answer.  He'll dump more donuts upon us and thus give us more texts to peruse later. For now, we drop down (causing JJ to explode into body parts again because of fall damage), regen, and then drag that crate into a pit so we can progress.  We come across the other gimmick of this level here. There's creepy lullaby music playing around here, and when we run past the trees, we get snagged by a thing that looks like that baby-headed spider toy from Toy Story 1, but with an even more ridiculous amount of bladed appendages.  It raises up into the sky, and, well...  Still not as bad as the fire, though. Going forward, there's a few more of them, but crawling prevents them from grabbing JJ. Up ahead, there's a levitating donut we can hit with one of our limbs.   There's another creepy baby in our way that we can't avoid. That's ok, since we need to be a severed head in order to progress. There's a little obstacle course that's not hard, but annoying if you gently caress up and land on a barbwire patch since it sends you back quite a ways.    As we get on up, F.K. texts us. Apparently JJ's able to answer and respond back (with proper capitalization and grammar, no less), despite being just a head. I'll leave it up to you all on how the hell she's pulling this off.   All of our most powerful stickers, unleashed in a devastating barrage. God drat!  Talking to F.K. beats being immolated, I guess. And, as before, it gives us more texts from our best friend and mother dearest.      I'll let you all draw your own conclusions. Let's move on to mom.  Ok, sounds normal enough. Checking in on your kid is good-  Oh Jesus gently caress no it's not normal at all.    Yeah, that's about the only way anyone could really react to all that poo poo. Let's move on from that particularly bit of craziness and go do some balancing puzzles. There's a bunch of body parts around here, which are important, in addition to the crates and platforms.  There's also a gate tucked back here leading to a Sleepy. We'll get to him later.  We'll stack two crates onto the left platform after we lower it and toss that arm across the gap, so we can lift the pair of legs there without the platform lowering on us.  Burying the legs here causes a purple flame to ignite. On that gravestone. Same happens when we chuck the arm in. Seems like there's a few more to grab on the way. We'll dodge another one of the Swiss knife babies (god what a weird loving phrase to type) and enter a catacomb. Lots of meander patterns on the walls. Maybe I was right about the guys who run this place being Greek Orthodox.   We come across a Vitruvian Moose. Yes, really.  He talks constantly, in the Twin Peaks-style backwards speak, looping the following as you solve the room's puzzle: quote:HELLO CAN YOU HEAR ME We've got to arrange these limbs in a similar way to the Moose's pose to get that head on his chest. Doing so causes him to rotate around a bit and then drop it for us.  Going back with the head (and later the other arm, at the top of those stairs we passed), we drop them into the grave, and the obvious happens. The lantern smashes, igniting us yet again.  We'll go back to burn that gate before the grave and get some more donuts from that Sleepy over there. I sure hope they were worth it after getting partially cremated again.  Going forward, we encounter a gate at the top of the stairs, which leads into a dark room. Luckily, we're a torch, so we can see what the hell is going on.   There's a ladder so we don't break into pieces as we go down, and some pipes shooting water intermittently. Best to avoid them.   And there's the exit. Let's just get on down-  I am just the worst. That's the graveyard chapter in its entirety. Next time, we go through the saw mill! 
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Dec 11, 2018 05:29
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Apparently "aventure" in a romantic/relationship context can be translated as "love adventure" or affair. Poor JJ.
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Dec 11, 2018 06:27
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OutofSight posted:Apparently "aventure" in a romantic/relationship context can be translated as "love adventure" or affair. Ah, that's what I was leaning towards. Sort of like how Freund in the German language can mean either "friend" or "boyfriend" depending on the context used. Lots of very subtle details in the texts. Be sure to read them closely. Even Philip's, sadly.
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Dec 11, 2018 20:13
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This is certainly unique and interesting so far, although I am not sure if it is a game I would actually want to play. Thanks for doing this, and looking forward to seeing where it goes.
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Dec 13, 2018 04:52
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Hello! Hope you all had a lovely holiday season. Figured it would be fitting to do an update (finally) on Boxing Day. So, let's look at the texts we collected during our journey through the church graveyard.    Ah, a woman with exactly the same kind of work ethic I had in college. As it turns out, I got owned repeatedly in several classes when I realized I couldn't go without studying and still get A's and B's and it sucked really bad. Oh well, maybe it will work out for Abby. And now for the obligatory Philip update.   What the gently caress, is this guy reviewing dabs? I cannot imagine anything worse than watching a rich kid get high off some wax in the basement of his parent's house. But gently caress, he's too lame for that. Probably means hair wax.  "Watch me pomade my hair, JJ, it'll be great." gently caress this guy, let's read some Lily posts.  Alright, I think by this point, Lily's crush is glaringly obvious enough that a blind person could read these texts and see it.  And also she watches too much anime apparently  . Oh well.   Ohhhhh, Lily, nooooooo. You can't just send your crush poo poo like this, this only works in romance manga. This kind of poo poo gets restraining orders called on people. Oh well, maybe she'll recover next time. Onto Goodman!    Ah, what a nice guy . He even managed to not say, "JJ, your mom is kind of nuts," to her even though he 100% thought it. Onto course two of our text smorgasbord.  Well, I guess it turns out that it's actually dumb as hell to try and rush a big report. Who knew.   Seriously this girl does not eat anything but sugar, it's insanely concerning. Good bargaining skills I guess, but for the love of god, JJ, eat some pasta or something.   Well, this confirms what was implied by the earlier tweets: this dude's a trust-fund failson. Truly awful. You can only imagine this dude and his fellow kin in upper-class teenage mediocrity slithering through that party like eels, comparing the cars their parents bought them and smoking lovely weed they got from some libertarian they met on campus.    Just the worst god drat person. Can't even really gently caress him over by not doing the thing for him because his parents will just foist him on some other school. I can't even deal, let's just go and see if Lily can correct her course before she gets arrested for stalking.    "Sort of... lol" is really obfuscating the fact that JJ is somehow a sugartarian despite all things that would put one off such a horrible idea.   Well, that's one hell of a leap to call it a "date", but JJ doesn't seem to mind. Let's finish up these texts with some more from the Professor.     drat, JJ, how could you not know who Boba Fett is? He's only the most inexplicably popular character in Star Wars simply because his armor looks super cool. I guess JJ lives a life blissfully unaware of nerd poo poo, which honestly seems like a blessing to escape from it since it's all just so insanely stupid these days. Well, that's wraps up this update. I'll see if I can get another update tomorrow or Saturday. Again, hope you readers enjoyed the last few weeks!
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Dec 27, 2018 03:26
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Dec 27, 2018 06:54
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Beautiful.
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Dec 27, 2018 14:52
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SunAndSpring posted:Seriously this girl does not eat anything but sugar, it's insanely concerning. Good bargaining skills I guess, but for the love of god, JJ, eat some pasta or something.
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Dec 29, 2018 01:17
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Sorry I'm late with this one. New Year's and my internet connection deciding to celebrate New Year's via killing itself didn't help things. But to smooth things out, we get through TWO chapters this time. Truly incredible. We begin where we left off last time, at the saw mill. To start, we'll move this platform to be where we need it for later puzzle-solving. Predictably, the saw mill is filled with buzz saws. Wouldn't be a saw mill level without one, tell the truth. There's also these big industrial AC units that completely ruin JJ's day if she wanders too close. But, since I have to collect all the texts for you all to read and the only way to do that is to get all those donuts and as per usual there's alcoves where only a head can fit in...     Well, I feel bad, but who knows, maybe this is all worth it to her because she gets 271 donuts out of it. Anyway, predictably, the buzz saws and conveyor belts around here all move around, creating a little obstacle course for us.  Note this thing here, with the big LEDs saying "1/10" with a brick on it. We need all the bricks on this level to make this move forward to get out of this OSHA non-compliant hell.  Further on is a more ludicrous obstacle course with even more moving saw blades. However, there are (presumably saw-dust covered) donuts at the end of it, so needs must I suppose.   Now, for the main puzzle. First, we got to turn off all the moving parts in this factory. To get up to the switch, we just leap into this saw blade, which somehow launches us upwards and to the platform we can't reach otherwise.   I had to turn it back on immediately afterwards to get those donuts inside that fan though . And also propel myself to this Sleepy Donuts here. But now that everything's off, we can get all the bricks we need, so we can move the platform over to this crane arm (which used to have a platform laden with donuts but it fell the second JJ touched the switch for it.  Unfortunately, we're one short.  But it turns out our arm weighs about as much as a brick.  This platform easily attaches to the arm earlier. To get an achievement and some more donuts, we can bring it down on JJ's head, which reverses gravity like those wrecking balls did a few chapters back and drops us on the ceiling here.   Now, let's quit loving around and get out of this place.  There's a set of train tracks connected to the lumber mill, fittingly enough.  Also there's the horrifying knife monster chasing Emily. What a reunion.   Coming up ahead, we spot a stopped train. There's a few ropes leading up to dead ends, some water leaking out of a hole in the top of a water shipping container, a few donuts underneath the train blocked by rocks and stuck in the luggage where we can't reach, and a big gate covered by vines. I think you know where this is going.  At the front of this old-fashioned locomotive is the engine room and a few logs to toss into the furnace.  Touching the engine while it's on sets JJ on fire, allowing us to deal with the gate blocking the train from going forward. After that's done, simply tossing 5 or so of the logs into the furnace will scoot the train forward and also propel JJ into the furnace, setting her on fire. Again.  This game is just mean, sometimes. At the very least, it unlocks all the donuts we couldn't reach before, such as a Sleepy Donut at the top of this tower over here.  Heading onward, we come to the caboose. The fact that it is leaning rather precariously and has barbed wire underneath it is of no concern. Let's just climb on over.    Oh, look at that. Well, we can try to run, but JJ is not exactly fast enough to outrun a speeding train car.   We've got to do a quick jump to avoid getting JJ's head splattered by the barbed wire underneath this caboose. After that, it's smooth sailing from here on out. Also there's some familiar looking graffiti down here in the tunnel.  Outside, we can get a pretty nice view of the night sky along the bridge here.   Fittingly enough, it's where we find Emily.  She begins running away from us in a very dream-like fashion, leaving after-images of herself as she says some rather cryptic stuff.         Welp, good time to stop. I'll upload a bunch of text messages tomorrow. Happy New Year's!
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Jan 4, 2019 05:59
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