Lost Souls (12): ZOOM!

Finally! Progress, real, unadulterated, actual progress has occurred.

I figured during my time off that those glow-in-the-dark chrysalises were too prominent to ignore. I thought, hey, if I grab enough of them something will happen. I grabbed and grabbed. Nope.

I went to the walkthough. Yes, it was time to do that. The puzzle? Just pick the correct glowing chrysalis.

Dumb puzzle.

Why it's dumb: There are way too many chrysalises. Nothing happens when you grab the first 20. Ergo, you just have to get lucky in order to solve the "puzzle." You have to be facing in the right direction. If you start in the opposite direction, as I did, you will be grabbing chrysalises for quite a while. You will become frustrated with the game. You will stop grabbing chrysalises eventually and look up the solution in a walkthrough.

I think my idea of grabbing the pictures in the right order is a better puzzle.

However! I am now zooming along in the game. Not only do I have scissors, I have already used them twice to break into new areas. I have broken one pair and grabbed another one. I found three more pages in the library book, with more symbols. I've encountered Echo and Amy again. I've died again (can't figure out why that happened). I've also made it outside again and can now re-enter through the outside door to the train platform (very nice).

I would happily have continued but I don't have as much playing time today (especially after wasting all that time grabbing useless chrysalises). I think I might visit the unformed giant moth in the ladies room sink and stab it with the scissors. Maybe that's the object the fire wants.

Till tomorrow . . .

Lost Souls (11): Zoom . . . not

After all that anticipation I find myself in the moth room . . . stuck again. My progress in the game is at about the rate of the two creatures pictured above.

There is a puzzle here. I know there is a puzzle here. I know there is a clue. The question is, what is the puzzle, which clue, and what does it mean? I've learned that Boakes leaves clues--usually pretty good ones, but you have to interpret them properly. I find them. I just don't seem to interpret them properly. The can 'n bones puzzle is a good example, and the TV puzzle and the video puzzle. The clues on the walls in that room now are gone--so they must have been clues to the video puzzle which I just sort of stumbled through.

But, I went through the freakin' huge hole in the freakin' wall and now I find myself in a room filled with moth chrysalises dangling from the ceiling and some pictures of moths in various stages of mothic life. To get through the door I need another inventory item. No doubt I will receive it once I solve the moth puzzle (or, I will blow another freakin' huge hole in the freakin' wall). But what is the moth puzzle?

I think this puzzle must be like the video puzzle--just choose the different pictures in the right order. One of the pictures must be the clue--two of them are possibilities for that role. Of added interest is that when I turn off the lights the chrysalises glow. When I grab one it opens up and I find an undeveloped, red, pulsating thing that matches the thing in the sink in the ladies room outside the station. So now I know what that thing is. I went back there, but there's no change in that location.

I have looked at those pictures dozens of times in different sequences. It makes sense that I should follow the development of the moth--but so far nothing has worked. I've scoured the room. I'm confident that I haven't missed anything. I had lots more time for playing today, but have made essentially zero progress.

It just doesn't work. Probably I haven't tumbled to what the real puzzle is.

Well, I'll be gone shopping tomorrow. Maybe by Wednesday some possible solution will pop into my head.

Lost Souls (10): Proceeding!

Progress! And anticipation.

I have examined each and every node that appears to be possible in the hotel. I did find one new thing: I hadn't viewed all of the TV interview between the inspector and Mr. Bones. Their shadows are different. By clicking on the shadows you get more dialogue. Not from the inspector, but Mr. Bones gives more information about where Amy went at her own choosing. She called her "angels" by a dark light, and her angels now live in the hallways.

Nice! However, that new discovery did not advance me any further in the game, at first.

I found the scissors by looking through the keyhole in room 1B, but can't get into the room at all.

Trying to get up to the top floor keeps getting me killed.

To sustain suspense, I'll write today about my impressions so far. First, the graphics are spectacular. My only quibble is that they don't follow the decor of the first game very well. Yes, the layout is mostly the same, but the pictures on the walls are different. The dining room is now a buffet, and that does appear to have a different layout. The door into the kitchen is gone. The reception area is very nicely done and does look like the old one, but where's the restroom at the end of that hallway?

And what, pray tell, are these freakin' mannequins doing here?

Still, the graphics are completely creepy and the building is such a mess that I worry about the state of Mr. Boake's mind. The wall decorations, absent the pictures, really make the difference in turning the decor from creepy into something really frightening.

And of course the sound will scare the casual gamer if the artwork doesn't. Boakes has always done background sounds better than anyone else. The music is enough to keep you permanently on edge--just the right attitude for this game.

Also, I found an old interview with Boakes during my time off the game in which he talked of the attention he pays to camera angles. As a professional photographer with some experience in TV, he knows about such things. I never before realized it, but those camera angles indeed make his games much more interesting. These don't seem like just static shots in what still essentially is a slideshow presentation even if the transitions are smoother than the old-style slideshow in the first game. You just don't notice, really, that it's still a node-to-node slideshow because of the interest the camera angles lends to the scenes. Pretty impressive work. I especially like the shot from the top of the first flight of stairs looking down to the reception area.

And, are these hallways sometimes tilted? The camera angles often make the atmosphere even more uneasy.

Also, I must add that I indeed did find a clue that should have led me to the solution to the can n' bones puzzle. There is a graphic drawn into a book in Amy's overhead cache in the dining room that almost spells it out. Yes, I found that graphic and even copied it down, but I didn't tumble to what it was telling me.

So that's my own fault. I must remember that Boakes plays fair. Next time I'm stuck on a puzzle I must remember to look around. Somewhere there will be a clue.

Still, without consulting the WT I wouldn't have found the coin that I'd missed. I was right to look that up. Otherwise finding that coin would have been pure tedium, and that's not what we play games to experience.

So, back to the present:

There I was, stuck again.

At first, I thought the next step would be to retrace all my steps outside in the hope that I missed something else. Tedious. However, then I thought that I might still be missing something in the video. Went back to that and . . .

BLASTED A FREAKIN' HUGE HOLE IN THE FREAKIN' WALL!

So I can proceed.

But not tonight, because I didn't have enough time. Had cleaning to do, had to cook Dad's Sunday (very nice) dinner, and his friend, who visits us most nights, arrived early.

Ergo, I will have to wait until tomorrow to find out what terrors await me through the hole in the wall.

Doom must wait.

Lost Souls (9): Proceed!

At last I've managed to make some progress in the game! Found the old safe and its "combination," but alas, it won't open. Read some interesting notes in the pigeonholes back of the registration desk. Hmmm. "A.V." must be Andrew Verney. Had he received his note on time he perhaps would have been saved, but we know he's a ghost from the first game. Anyway, the note's still in the pigeonhole. Poor Andy.

I love seeing reminders of the first game. The ink-stained blotter is still there. The safe is an old friend. Gave me fits the first time, too.

Also, I have a largish round metal ring with symbols on it. One of them matches up with the first page of the library book. The book now has two more pages, but those symbols aren't on this disc. From that I bet I'll be finding more metal rings. Perhaps they'll all fit together? Presumably I got these from the game with Amy, but I quit right after that and don't really remember.

Wandered up to the 1st floor but couldn't get into the rooms (I must remember that there is the ground floor, then the 1st, 2nd, etc.). Tried the 2nd floor but don't have the key needed. Tried the 3rd floor and got killed.

Couldn't do anything more in the hotel, so I decided to go wandering. Aha! Echo makes contact! Echo seems to be not a very nice little ghost. She (I think of Echo as female) tried to get me killed.

Anyway, somehow I finished the TV puzzle in Room 1A, after Echo unlocked the door for me, although not before getting killed a couple of times. Very nice, very scary effect. Really don't know how I solved that puzzle. It just worked an instant before the monster got me for the third time. Interesting video of, apparently, me and Mr. Bones (who looks awfully young in the video--doesn't match the voice on the tape).

Also, I've spotted some definate clues on the walls of room 1A. There are eyes with numbers in them and different objects associated with them: a magnifying glass (the inspector?), bones (Mr. Bones, obviously), and birds. I thought at first that might lead me to a different combination for the safe (substitute number three for number four, etc.), but if so I haven't figured it out yet and I think that idea isn't right. Either I'm screwing up the safe puzzle as I screwed up the can 'n bones puzzle, or I need something else.

But for now, even with all my nice shiny new clues, I'm stuck again. I went wandering to all my old haunts (heh) hoping that Echo would come for me again, but nope.

So, tomorrow, I go over every inch of the hotel and click on stuff. There has to be something I've missed. I'm pretty confident that I've found everything outside.

I still need scissors. They have to be close.

And then I will . . . Proceed!

Lost Souls (8): I'm Finally In!

At last I'm in the hotel, and have turned on the power in there.

It seems I was expected.

Alas, however, I did have to go to a walkthrough, for two things. First, I would never have figured out that Mr. Bones' game was a sound puzzle. True, I might accidentally have noticed the change in the sound if I'd ever accidentally moved the can, but after many tries that didn't happen and I was ready to quit. Second, although I realized that the clue I got once I'd done Mr. Bones' game correctly was a telephone number, I couldn't operate the phone. Duh. Needed a coin that I'd missed, and I already had looked everywhere (including where the coin was several times--I just missed it).

When you reach the point in a game where it just isn't fun or intriguing any more, when you know you've done all you can think of, when you're ready to quit the whole thing unless you find one simple thing that you can't find, then it's time to go to a walkthrough. My favorite site for these is Gameboomers, where they have just about every game you've ever heard of and get WTs for them pretty quickly.

So, I skim down, seeing that I've done things in a different order from the WT, but am at the same spot, and I learn that Mr. Bones' game actually is a sound puzzle. I glimpse that I need to move the can around the screen. Great. I do that, and get it right pretty quickly. I get the four-digit number. That stays on the table, so obviously the can puzzle is solved.

I realize that this is the phone number of the hotel because that number is crossed out on the little cards by the door into the hotel. I go back to the waiting room, but can't get the phone to work at all.

Now by this time I know I've found everything, and I'm still stumped. Back to the WT and I see that indeed I have missed the coin in the Station Master's office. I get that, and figure out how to work the phone. From there it's all a cinch.

So now I'm in the hotel, and I figure out on my own how to get the power on. I play an extremely unnerving game with Amy's ghost. Blast, but the inspector is either actively stupid or he is himself dead. He can't tell that this kid is a ghost? As many times as she's flashed on and off right before his eyes? The evidence against him being dead is that he breathes out mist in the cold.

Perhaps he's just unhinged by this time. Either that or he is himself a ghost stuck in Hell. The newspaper, after all, did say that the hotel is Hell.

Anyway, night is falling here in California. After this last encounter, I really don't want to go on into Hell until tomorrow.

No apologies for the walkthrough, although I greatly had hoped that I wouldn't need to use one in this game. I recall that I did have to peek at one once or twice during Lost Crown (although I made it through Barrow Hill without one). I would have given up, especially after having been away from the game for three whole weeks. The frustration had peaked. That's what WTs are for, to keep you going. Yes, they also can ruin a game if you're weak, but by this time I know when to peek at a small hint, and when to keep plodding on by myself. Peak frustration time is peeking time.

Finally, tomorrow, I can start the adventure in the hotel. (I do hope I find some sissors soon.)

Lost Souls (7): Back to the Game!

Oh dear. I thought I was in.

Alas, I'm only in the highly unpleasant dining room. This appears to be Mr. Bones' domain. It has his revised Station Hotel menus all around. Mostly these are unreadable, but I'll have to take a closer look.

Yes, it's taken me far longer to get back to the game than I thought. I finished my Kirkus job (for now) but then got distracted by an absorbing book I found for my Kindle. Read that for several days. Finished another I'd started and made progress in one other (am doing a sort of unit on Saxon England, reading about King Alfred. All of this was inspired by Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Series that I've been reading to Dad. Well, it least it fits in a bit with the Lost Crown.)

I think, though, that I was just scared to start again.

Moving through the dining room we get to the door into the hotel, which yields nothing (except another book inventory item, and Station Hotel cards with the phone number obliterated). Bash on the door and it doesn't open. Next puzzle--getting that door open. Do I have to call the ghosts with Mr. Bone's game to get in?

Also, I've yet to find a sissors cache. In one sense I'm optimistic about that: perhaps nothing will attack me until I find a weapon.

I did find a nice cache of Amy's things above in the rafters. There's a clue there for a puzzle having to do with shaking the bones. It's can #15, on a table right there in the dining room, and I'm playing the tape recording before shaking, as appears to be indicated by Amy's clue. So far I come up with three patterns of bones: a seemingly random, straight pattern, a circular pattern, and the pattern we see all over the walls--the Darkfall symbol from the first game. I surmise that solving this puzzle will get me into the hotel proper, but so far, no go. I now have a total of five bones in my inventory and have tried to place them, both before and after, into the bones on the table. So far the game won't let me. I also have four cards from Amy that I can pick up on occasion, but so far can't fit them into the puzzle.

Hmmm. The number 15. Do I need 15 bones in all to make the puzzle work? I must count them.

I learned one thing about the game while I was out, so to speak. No, it wasn't my Mac that was the cause of the technical glitch in piecing together the newspaper jigsaw puzzles. A review of the game mentions that glitch. So it's something that Jonathan needs to fix with a patch. I've found three of these puzzles so far, and this has happened on all three. I'm being more careful now, and trying not to allow my cursor to get over to the left-hand side of the screen.

Also, as it happens, It was easily possible to get into the dining room, at least, right after turning on the lights. The only needful thing was to go into the Ladies room, confront the "ghost" in the stall, and put together the newspaper. However, Jonathan distracts us with that ringing telephone, which takes us into the waiting room and gets us involved in that Station Master's office puzzle.

Well, at least we have that done.

Clearly, however, I'm not done with the turn-on-the-lights-and-get-in puzzle.

Yet.

I must think.