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Sunday, March 29, 2020
Buds, Blooms, And Thorns Review Of Pluto Attacks! By JTP Games
Buds, Blooms, and Thorns Review of Pluto Attacks! by JTP Games
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Vitals:
Title: Pluto Attacks
Designed by: Troy Pichelman
Publisher: JTP Games / The Game Crafter
Year Published: 2016
MSRP: $25
1-6p | 30-45 min | 12+
Introduction:
DisclaimerSupport me on Patreon!
Title: Pluto Attacks
Designed by: Troy Pichelman
Publisher: JTP Games / The Game Crafter
Year Published: 2016
MSRP: $25
1-6p | 30-45 min | 12+
Introduction:
What's better than a black and white, 1950's b-level sci-fi movie? Well, lots of things, but they are fun to watch. Pluto Attacks! lets you play through a classic sci-fi movie where aliens from Pluto are attacking a small town in 1954. As is the case in these situations, all the adults have been incapacitated so it falls to a group of teens to save the day.
Pluto Attacks! is a cooperative dice game for 1-6 players. You'll get to take on the role of a teenager in the small town working with your teammates to defeat the aliens before the end of the movie. The game plays through four acts with a new scene appearing every turn. Using skills and abilities you'll have to roll dice to match requirements for each scene to secure the location. Securing the location gives you certain abilities, but may also be required to resolve the final obstacles.
Blooms:
Blooms are the game's highlights and features. Elements that are exceptional.
Buds are interesting parts of the game I would like to explore more.
Thorns are a game's shortcomings and any issues I feel are noteworthy.
Buds, Blooms, and Thorns Rating:
Pictures:
Pluto Attacks! is a cooperative dice game for 1-6 players. You'll get to take on the role of a teenager in the small town working with your teammates to defeat the aliens before the end of the movie. The game plays through four acts with a new scene appearing every turn. Using skills and abilities you'll have to roll dice to match requirements for each scene to secure the location. Securing the location gives you certain abilities, but may also be required to resolve the final obstacles.
Blooms:
Blooms are the game's highlights and features. Elements that are exceptional.
- Light, fast play is great to pull out as a filler or when you need a casual game.
- Theme is dripping from the game. All the artwork, mechanics, and flavor really hits the spot with the b-movie theme.
- The game has a great story arc. It's not a story game, but the way the game escalates through three acts to the final conflict is great. I've won most of the games I've played, but every one has come down to the wire and ended in a pretty tense finale.
Buds are interesting parts of the game I would like to explore more.
- There are a ton of different combinations for Scenes, Plot Twists, and Big Reveals so every game will tell a different story.
- There's an optional playmat that looks great and really helps with the game layout and theme immersion.
Thorns are a game's shortcomings and any issues I feel are noteworthy.
- The game does have a very high amount of luck. In addition to the dice rolling, having the cards you need to complete the win condition stated in the Big Reveal relies on the luck of the shuffled scene cards. If the cards you need to win are further down in the deck it'll be harder to survive long enough to win.
- There's not much you can do to mitigate poor dice rolls, especially earlier in the game. Having some way for characters to "level up" and gain skills would be great. Maybe when a Plot Twist card is removed it could give players a certain skill. like "reroll 1s" or "decrease one die by 1 to increase another die by 1". Some of these could even be specific to the type of card they are, like "reroll all dice once when resolving a science location". Other aspects of the difficulty may have to be increased because I think the balance is good as it is, but a feeling of a little more control would help feel like your characters were growing along with the story.
- Sometimes it feels like each turn is solo and there's not much cooperation, especially before you know what the win requirements are for the Big Reveal. Until then you really won't want to discard any cards to help out others or even yourself just in case those cards are needed at the end. I wish there was a better sense of cooperation and way to mitigate dice rolls earlier in the game.
I first played Pluto Attacks! at Protospiel Chicago in 2016 and again at Protospiel Milwaukee in 2017. It's made the rounds to quire a few other Protospiel events as well. I've since played my copy a few times, too, and have enjoyed every game I've played. Over the years the game has gotten better since my first play, too, with more cooperation opportunities available, improved artwork, and some refined mechanics. I do wish the cooperation aspect was pushed a bit more and that there was a little more control and luck mitigation, but the game as it currently plays is fast, fun, and easy to explain. It's a great game to pull out as a filler or with more casual gamers. I really like the sense of progression through the story like you'd have in a movie. The players are confronted with a series of setbacks, while they try to just survive and the town slowly falls to the invaders. Then they figure out what they need to do to defeat the aliens and get down to work trying to save the last remaining pieces of the town while collecting what they need to fight off the attack once and for all.
Every game I've played has come right down to the wire, so the balance seems great - no small feat for a game that relies so heavily on lucky dice rolls. Played right, you'll reach the game's conclusion with enough options for mitigating bad luck in those final dice rolls, hopefully. When you lose though it's easy to blame bad luck with the dice and cards that happened to come out. I wish there was something that gave you a little more control, or at least sense of control, especially as the game ramps up. As a dice game there's no escaping the luck factor, but giving the players a few more possible tools for mitigating the dice would be fun.
Overall though, I really like Pluto Attacks! for a light, casual game. The theme is fun, the mechanics reflect the theme wonderfully, and it's always a fun time with an exciting end. This isn't a collection essential, but if you like the idea of this you won't be disappointed.
Every game I've played has come right down to the wire, so the balance seems great - no small feat for a game that relies so heavily on lucky dice rolls. Played right, you'll reach the game's conclusion with enough options for mitigating bad luck in those final dice rolls, hopefully. When you lose though it's easy to blame bad luck with the dice and cards that happened to come out. I wish there was something that gave you a little more control, or at least sense of control, especially as the game ramps up. As a dice game there's no escaping the luck factor, but giving the players a few more possible tools for mitigating the dice would be fun.
Overall though, I really like Pluto Attacks! for a light, casual game. The theme is fun, the mechanics reflect the theme wonderfully, and it's always a fun time with an exciting end. This isn't a collection essential, but if you like the idea of this you won't be disappointed.
 |
| Bud! This game definitely has some great moments. It's good for several plays and should appeal to most gamers, especially if you enjoy other games like this. |
Did you like this review? Show your support: Support me on Patreon!Also, click the heart at Board Game Links 
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. And be sure to check out my games on Tabletop Generation.
GJJ Games Reviews are independent, unpaid reviews of games I, George Jaros, have played with my family and friends. Some of these games I own, some are owned by friends, some are borrowed, and some were provided by a publisher or designer for my honest feedback and evaluation. I make every attempt to be both honest and constructively critical in my reviews, and they are all my opinions. There are four types of reviews on GJJ Games: Full Reviews feature critical reviews based on a rubric and games receive a rating from 0 to 100. Quick Reviews and Kickstarter Previews are either shorter reviews of published games or detailed preview reviews of crowdfunding games that will receive a rating from 0 to 10 based on my impressions of the game. Buds, Blooms,and Thorns reviews are shorter reviews of either published or upcoming games that highlight three aspects of a game: Buds are parts of a game I look forward to exploring more, Blooms are outstanding features of a game, and Thorns are shortcomings of a game. Each BBT review game will receive an overall rating of Thorn, Bud, or Bloom.
, like GJJ Games on Facebook , or follow on Twitter . And be sure to check out my games on Tabletop Generation.
Saturday, March 28, 2020
Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Poetical Essay" Belongs In The Public Domain
 |
| Image assumed to be in the Public Domain |
The following is a tragic tale about how valuable work of literature was rediscovered, and then undiscovered. This loss for the arts was not due purely to negligence or accident, but to a selfish violation to the memory of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Even if you don't read Shelley, you should, at the very least, be profoundly perturbed by the ways in which the wealthy claim exclusive ownership over our cultural history. Shelley was a victim of avaricious entitlement.
In 2010, The Guardian reported a finding the rocked the literary world. Daisy Hay, a Cambridge graduate, was snooping through the library, as most graduates do, and came across an old manuscript. It turns out that these writings were the unpublished memoirs of one Claire Clairmont, Byron's former lover and a friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In these memoirs, she described these two poets in no genial terms, calling them "monsters of lying, meanness, cruelty and treachery." Clairmont, who was at that point a Catholic, branded Byron and Shelley as worshipers of "free love", who ruined the lives of women. Clairmont had personal experience with this ruination, and good reason to be sour. Soon after getting her pregnant with Allegra (who died at age eight), Byron abandoned Clairmont, presumably because he was married to another woman at the time. For this, she labelled him, "a human tyger [sic] slaking his thirst for inflicting pain upon defenceless women" (Alberge).
The writings have proved to be a boon to historians and biographers everywhere, and has helped to increase our understanding of the relationship between Clairmont and the Shelley's. Imagine, however, if Hay decided to sell Clairmont's memoirs to the highest bidder with the new owner refusing to allow anyone else to read the memoirs except himself. Such an action would be rightfully denounced as a greedy theft of history, a selfish attempt to claim personal rights to our global cultural heritage. Distasteful though it may be to entertain such callous contempt for the ever fragile past, it isn't beyond the depravity of some human beings to do so. Daisy Hay was not such an entity. Quaritch Rare Books & Manuscripts, it appears, is.
Of course, when Quaritch sold the recently discovered "Poetical Essay" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, they may have assumed that the owner would be generous enough to share Shelley's words with the public. Though if so, then it would've certainly been little trouble to ask. They were careless, however, in hastily selling off the "Poetical Essay" to the one with the fattest wallet. Quaritch knew how valuable this piece of Shelley's was, (or at least they should have) yet they felt no responsibility to alert local historians? Shameful. I don't have to tell you the exact amount of money paid to Quaritch for selling the "Poetical Essay", except that it weighed about the same as the silver coins paid to Judas Iscariot.
The news of the "Poetical Essay's" rediscovery was the toast of The Guardian in 2006,
"The revelation in today's Times Literary Supplement that an early poem by the great Percy Bysshe Shelley has come to light, and is in the possession of a London bookseller, will cause even more excitement than most. This is a wonderful discovery: few Shelley scholars ever believed the poem, Poetical Essay, would resurface and some even doubted its existence. It is a fantastic chance to learn more about the political and poetic development of the young Shelley," (O'Brien).
However, four years later, the same year, mind you, that Daisy Hay found Clairmont's memoirs, the "Poetical Essay" had vanished once more from the public eye. Michael Rosen noted that the poem in it's entirety was never made available, the reason being that only three people had read it: owner at Quaritch, the person who bought the poem, and some lucky professor by the name of Henry R Woudhuysen. The new owner, apparently, isn't interested in letting any of us peasants read his new treasure. More odd to Rosen, though, was the lack of outrage over the whole scandal, "we were approaching the fourth anniversary of the rediscovery of Shelley's "Poetical Essay" and that we, the public, were no nearer to reading it." (The Guardian) Rosen succinctly expresses his anger well in this paragraph,
"First of all, I would like the poem to be available to read by anyone who is interested. I believe that should have happened the moment it was rediscovered. Secondly, I want to know why Professor Woudhuysen was given the right to look at the poem, but no one else was. Thirdly, I want to know why this situation doesn't seem to bother anyone in the great republic of letters, least of all that guardian of literary precision and exactitude, the TLS. Isn't it an outrage, that a long dead, great writer's work can be hidden away in its owner's drawer?"
Rosen is completely correct here, "Owning manuscripts is one thing: owning the contents is quite another." Copyright laws back him up, too. In general, works fall into public domain 70 years after the death of the creator. This has recently been stalled in the United States by corporations such as Disney, but that's a discussion for another time. What matters, for the moment, is that Shelley's "Poetical Essay" was written in 1811, well past due any claims to copyright. Thus, the "Poetical Essay" is in the public domain, meaning: it belongs to us, the public. We, collectively, have a right to the contents of Shelley's essay, and it is illegal, let me repeat, illegal for the current owner to claim otherwise. There should be a manhunt for this shrewd, elitist coward, I want a subpoena for his arrest. Quaritch should be, at the very least, fined for their blatant carelessness with such a historical artifact. Their hands aren't clean in this affair. They are complicit, in every sense of the word.
So just what was Shelley's "Poetical Essay" all about? It is an anti-militarist piece, written in defense of Peter Finnerty, a critic of Britian's suppression of an Irish revolt, who was later imprisoned for speaking out. Paul O'Brien gave the poem background upon its discovery,
"But his first and defining political campaign was about Irish religious and political freedom - and it is here where the discovery of Poetical Essay is most relevant. Shelley published it in support of Peter Finnerty, the Irish journalist jailed for libelling Viscount Castlereagh, the Anglo-Irish politician who was sent to Ireland in 1797 to crush the United Irishmen rebelling against British rule. Castlereagh's brutality made him the most hated man in Ireland. Shelley was a professed admirer of the United Irishmen, and the events and personalities of the 1798 rebellion were crucial to his political and intellectual development. His abiding hatred for Castlereagh was venomously expressed in the Mask of Anarchy:
"I met murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven bloodhounds followed him
"Finnerty was the editor of the Dublin newspaper the Press and a man of great courage. He was indicted for an article which denounced the actions of Castlereagh, found guilty of sedition, imprisoned for two years and sentenced to stand for an hour in the pillory in Green Street in Dublin. Shelley, then a young undergraduate at Oxford University, was eager to show support for Finnerty. He placed an advertisement in the Oxford Herald announcing the new work, a Poetical Essay, "for assisting to maintain in prison Mr Peter Finnerty", for sale "price two shillings" (The Guardian).
This showed great courage on Shelley's part (though his relations with women may be another matter), and made me think of another great poet who wrote on behalf of Irish suffering, William Butler Yeats. A fragment of Shelley's "Poetical Essay" has made its way into public. It's sharp and rhythmic, certainly, but what I want is meat, when we've been fed only the bone. Regardless, take it away, Shelley.
"Millions to fight compell'd, to fight or die
In mangled heaps on War's red altar lie . . .
When legal murders swell the lists of pride;
When glory's views the titled idiot guide.
* * *
Man must assert his native rights, must say
We take from Monarchs' hand the granted sway;
Oppressive law no more shall power retain,
Peace, love, and concord, once shall rule again,
And heal the anguish of a suffering world;
Then, then shall things which now confusedly hurled,
Seem Chaos, be resolved to order's sway,
And error's night be turned to virtue's day."
Bibliography
Alberge, Dalya. "Byron's lover takes revenge from beyond the grave." The Guardian, March 27, 2010. Web. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/28/byron-and-shelley-were-monsters
O'Brien, Paul. "Prophet of the revolution." The Guardian, July 14, 2006. Web. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jul/14/poetry.comment
Rosen, Michael. "Owning manuscripts is one thing: owning the contents is quite another." The Guardian, July 23, 2010. Web. http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/jul/23/owning-manuscripts-owning-contents
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Batman Arkham Knight
Minimum System Requirements
Processor: Intel Core i5-750, 2.67 GHz | AMD Phenom II X4 965, 3.4 GHz
Memory: 6 GB RAM
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
Graphics Memory: 2 GB
Hard Drive Space: 45 GB
Recommended System Requirements
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770, 3.4 GHz | AMD FX-8350, 4.0 GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
Graphics Memory: 3 GB
Hard Drive Space: 55 GB
Download The Game Here
Download Crack For The Game Here
Saturday, March 21, 2020
WWE 2K19 | Review, Gameplay, & More...| Pro-GamersArena
WWE 2K19 | Review, Gameplay, & more...
When I was a kid I loved to play wrestling games, I still play but not that often. And frankly speaking, I only liked WWE games as they have so many different types of matches that you get to choose. WWE 2K19, as past passages in the long-running 2K wrestling series, is a decent game. The center wrestling completes an awesome activity of reproducing a WWE coordinate, and the strike/catch/inversion battling framework is a considerable measure of fun. It has truly outstanding and most far reaching creation suites of any game out there, and the manner in which that it essentially gives you a chance to do everything that wrestlers do, all things considered, in WWE 2K19, is somewhat dumbfounding. But it has many downsides too, the one which I hated the most is the funny glitches. Glitches have been a very close part of the WWE games, whether it may be 2K16, 2K17, 2K18, you get to see them in almost every WWE game. But this time in WWE 2K19, you will not get that much glitches to see but still, they are not entirely gone.
Quick Facts:
- Initial release date: 9 October 2018
- Publisher: 2K Sports
- Genre: Sports game (Wrestling)
- Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows
- Modes: Single-player video game, Multiplayer video game
My Career Mode: A must play
Man! I adored the My career mode, I mean the MyCareer, has dependably been a WWE 2K staple since 2K15. Be that as it may, in 2K19, it at long last feels like a legitimate AAA wrestling story mode finish with voice acting, cutscenes, and agreeable characters that develop and change all through the story. The battle is enlivened on account of an extraordinary execution from previous Tough Enough contender and current non mainstream wrestler, AJ Kirsch, who brings a genuinely necessary level of genuineness to the lead job.
What's more, the astounding thing is that, generally, the real wrestlers have dubbed their voice to WWE 2K19 which appears to me a truly extraordinary activity, however we should comprehend that not every person can act or name as few appear as though they're perusing from a content instead of acting.
Let's Talk about My Career:
Along these lines, Unlike earlier years that you generally begin your character in NXT, however in WWE 2K19's MyCareer mode you will be first wrestling in an association called BCW, where you're wrestling out of secondary school rec centers – a reality that the offensive pundit won't quit helping you to remember. From that point, you'll get seen by WWE head coach Matt Bloom and start your twisty and blustery way to the WWE primary program, Cool! Right.
Your character begins off to a great degree powerless, with a weak arrangement of moves, wretched details, and conventional passage alternatives. As you level up by picking up understanding, you can build your details through three ability trees, which are additionally separated by various ways inside every one. The expertise trees figure out how to diminish the detail over-burden that commonly goes with WWE 2K's vocation mode, however you never get the inclination that the abilities you're adding to make a big deal about a distinction in your character's general quality.
For the most part, MyCareer is easy enough to get away with playing with a sub-par character, but there are a few points in the story where your boss, Triple H decides to stack the deck against you, forcing you to compete and win in wildly unfair matches, such as a 3-on-1 handicap match, an 8 man battle royale, and a gauntlet where you health doesn't refill after each match. Rather than coming out of it feeling like a highly skilled beast of a wrestler, you feel like you have to resort to cheap hit and run tactics just to survive, or in other words, this time it's not very easy to win each and every match.
The Verdict:
I think this time WWE has extremely enhanced various issues that were available in past WWE 2K arrangement yet at the same time needs to chip away at some longstanding issues. Be that as it may, with the much enhanced MyCareer mode and the sheer measure of substance accessible on account of the arrival of Showcase Mode, It doubtlessly is a sort of game you should play at any cost for once.
What's more, the astounding thing is that, generally, the real wrestlers have dubbed their voice to WWE 2K19 which appears to me a truly extraordinary activity, however we should comprehend that not every person can act or name as few appear as though they're perusing from a content instead of acting.
Let's Talk about My Career:
Along these lines, Unlike earlier years that you generally begin your character in NXT, however in WWE 2K19's MyCareer mode you will be first wrestling in an association called BCW, where you're wrestling out of secondary school rec centers – a reality that the offensive pundit won't quit helping you to remember. From that point, you'll get seen by WWE head coach Matt Bloom and start your twisty and blustery way to the WWE primary program, Cool! Right.
Your character begins off to a great degree powerless, with a weak arrangement of moves, wretched details, and conventional passage alternatives. As you level up by picking up understanding, you can build your details through three ability trees, which are additionally separated by various ways inside every one. The expertise trees figure out how to diminish the detail over-burden that commonly goes with WWE 2K's vocation mode, however you never get the inclination that the abilities you're adding to make a big deal about a distinction in your character's general quality.
For the most part, MyCareer is easy enough to get away with playing with a sub-par character, but there are a few points in the story where your boss, Triple H decides to stack the deck against you, forcing you to compete and win in wildly unfair matches, such as a 3-on-1 handicap match, an 8 man battle royale, and a gauntlet where you health doesn't refill after each match. Rather than coming out of it feeling like a highly skilled beast of a wrestler, you feel like you have to resort to cheap hit and run tactics just to survive, or in other words, this time it's not very easy to win each and every match.
YES! YES! YES!
This time there's a much-loved grandstand mode which features the WWE journey of Daniel Bryan. Each section covers an alternate critical match in his career, with a presentation by Bryan himself that sets the phase in an entrancing little narrative style. When it's an ideal opportunity to really play, you're guided by destinations that make them do a significant number of similar moves and huge spots that really occurred in the genuine match, with a few goals activating meticulously reproduced cutscenes of some the greatest snapshots of his profession.
Royal Rumble & MITB:
Royal Rumbles are much more fun now as you can pick and pick the request in which hotshots enter. Steel Cages matches have experienced a relatively entire update with new exit minigames and a few new activities that add to the energy of the match compose. You can likewise now make your very own Money in the Bank briefcase and have wrestlers protect them in matches.
The Big Head Mode:
There's nothing exceptional in this mode, it's only wrestlers with giant head wrestling. Here WWE 2K19 just appears to grasp a considerably more fun and arcade-y tone and is greatly improved for it. Enormous head mode matches are extremely humorous to watch.
Here's a Big Head Mode Gameplay, on the off chance that you wish to watch.
Here's a Big Head Mode Gameplay, on the off chance that you wish to watch.
I think this time WWE has extremely enhanced various issues that were available in past WWE 2K arrangement yet at the same time needs to chip away at some longstanding issues. Be that as it may, with the much enhanced MyCareer mode and the sheer measure of substance accessible on account of the arrival of Showcase Mode, It doubtlessly is a sort of game you should play at any cost for once.
Friday, March 20, 2020
Storium Basics: Creating A Character / Applying For Games
Welcome back to Storium Basics. This series of articles is designed to help new players understand Storium in general, and be able to get started on Storium games. For those looking for more, see my more advanced article series, Storium Theory.
Today, we're taking a look at the first thing a player will need to do to get involved in a game: creating a character.
Once you've found a game that you'd like to join, whether through the Browse Games feature, the forums, or some other method, what should you expect to happen, and what should you do?
First, a bit about how narrators set things up:
The system a lot of narrators - myself included - will use for open invitation games is to take applications up until about the end of the default two week application period, then look over all the applications and choose the ones they feel will work best for their game. They'll certainly comment on applications before that point and will let you know if the character just outright doesn't work, but you often won't hear a definitive yes or no until the application period nears its end.
There are exceptions, of course - sometimes your character is just so clearly right for the game that they take it right away, or of course sometimes you're specifically invited to a game—but that's how that style works.
Note that some narrators also use the "Open Lobby" feature of Storium or forum topics to let players discuss character options and ask questions in a place specifically set aside for the game as well - I tend to just take applications, myself, but a lot of narrators love using that feature and if one does, you should certainly feel free to ask questions there! Even if they don't, you can usually ask questions via private messaging. Make sure that you understand the world and the game concepts if you're fuzzy on anything.
Remember, though - whether you are talking to the narrator in the Open Lobby, on the forums, through private messaging, or through any other method, do not construe the narrator saying that it is all right to apply with a particular character as the narrator saying that they will definitely approve a particular character. Narrators will often be willing to help you work through applying for a character or iron out a character idea, but until they actually hit "approve" on your character application, you do not have their approval.
Now...how do you actually apply?
I look at Storium applications as…kind of a job application, honestly. A fun one, but still, the idea as a narrator is to pick out people you're willing to be writing with for potentially several months to a year - these games can last a while, even if they sound short to begin with. You want to get a cast of characters that seems like it can work together, and do your best to pick a group of players that seems like it can gel pretty well.
It's in your interest as a player applying for games to look at things from that perspective too. You need to sell both your character and yourself - your character as an interesting element for the story, and yourself as a player who will be active, reliable, and easy to work with.
So, here are a few things I've found can help you be more likely to be accepted for a game:
If you would like to know more about character creation and applying for games in Storium, here are a few of my Storium Theory articles on that topic:
Today, we're taking a look at the first thing a player will need to do to get involved in a game: creating a character.
Once you've found a game that you'd like to join, whether through the Browse Games feature, the forums, or some other method, what should you expect to happen, and what should you do?
First, a bit about how narrators set things up:
The system a lot of narrators - myself included - will use for open invitation games is to take applications up until about the end of the default two week application period, then look over all the applications and choose the ones they feel will work best for their game. They'll certainly comment on applications before that point and will let you know if the character just outright doesn't work, but you often won't hear a definitive yes or no until the application period nears its end.
There are exceptions, of course - sometimes your character is just so clearly right for the game that they take it right away, or of course sometimes you're specifically invited to a game—but that's how that style works.
Note that some narrators also use the "Open Lobby" feature of Storium or forum topics to let players discuss character options and ask questions in a place specifically set aside for the game as well - I tend to just take applications, myself, but a lot of narrators love using that feature and if one does, you should certainly feel free to ask questions there! Even if they don't, you can usually ask questions via private messaging. Make sure that you understand the world and the game concepts if you're fuzzy on anything.
Remember, though - whether you are talking to the narrator in the Open Lobby, on the forums, through private messaging, or through any other method, do not construe the narrator saying that it is all right to apply with a particular character as the narrator saying that they will definitely approve a particular character. Narrators will often be willing to help you work through applying for a character or iron out a character idea, but until they actually hit "approve" on your character application, you do not have their approval.
Now...how do you actually apply?
I look at Storium applications as…kind of a job application, honestly. A fun one, but still, the idea as a narrator is to pick out people you're willing to be writing with for potentially several months to a year - these games can last a while, even if they sound short to begin with. You want to get a cast of characters that seems like it can work together, and do your best to pick a group of players that seems like it can gel pretty well.
It's in your interest as a player applying for games to look at things from that perspective too. You need to sell both your character and yourself - your character as an interesting element for the story, and yourself as a player who will be active, reliable, and easy to work with.
So, here are a few things I've found can help you be more likely to be accepted for a game:
- Provide a character picture.
- Narrators like to see those—it helps show that you've thought about the character more, and honestly just gives a good "at a glance" for the character's appearance and general mood or theme.
- Don't worry about getting this exact, necessarily - you don't need to go build your character in an art program or get it commissioned or anything.
- There was a good forum topic a while back where someone - I forget who - said that he looked at it as kind of "casting the part" as though this were a movie or some such - he looked less for an exact appearance match and more for a picture that fit the general mood and tone of the character.
- If you cannot provide a picture for your character - for instance, one player I play with is blind and therefore cannot - then just make sure to state that you could not in your comments along with the application. Narrators will generally be understanding, but it's important to let them know that there was a reason.
- Card art isn't as required, generally, but do pay attention if the narrator specifically asks for it. Narrators don't like having their instructions ignored.
- Take some time on the background - you don't have to (in fact, you shouldn't) spell out every detail of a character's life, but there should still be a perception that you know, in general, who the character is.
- Involve your character in the world.
- If the narrator calls out particular kingdoms or locations or tribes or what-have-you, consider having your character be from one of those places, or having run into people from those places.
- If he mentions events, particularly disastrous ones, consider having those events influence your character's background.
- Above all, try to fit your character into the game's world and the game's tone or mood, or be ready to explain why your character can still fit the game despite the differences. Characters that clash with the game's tone or world can sometimes work, but they will make narrators skittish - it is on you to explain how your character can still fit the game.
- A lot of players will submit characters they played elsewhere, and that's totally fine - I've done it myself with old MUX characters or tabletop characters - but make sure to make that character fit into the story's world all the same, likely with the above methods.
- You don't have to be perfect (though there are some sticklers for grammar rules on Storium that will say otherwise), but do take the time to do what you can to make your writing clear.
- In particular, split your background up into paragraphs (and when you do, hit enter twice to clearly separate them - believe me, it makes it so much clearer). It makes it easier to read, and narrators like to know that they're going to have an easy time reading your posts.
- Take a little extra time with your app - and with your writing on Storium in general. Again, you don't have to be perfect. Just make it clear that you do care about your writing.
- Put things into your background that the narrator can use. You don't have to spell them out as bullet points or anything, but characters that provide the narrator with possibilities are more exciting than those who just are what they are.
- Leave some mystery in there, or imply that a person that hurt you was involved with some evil force or another the narrator established in the game description.
- Narrators, by and large, love to have little cues that they can find in a character's description or background. It helps them involve the character more in the story, and make the story about the characters, rather than about events that the characters happen to be involved in.
- This is a good thing to use comments for as well - when you submit your character and that little box comes up with additional comments, take the time to just briefly talk about some ideas for how the character might tie in to the story, or call out bits in your application that you've intentionally left open for the narrator to use.
- Take a look at the other existing apps and try to make your character feel different.
- If other people are choosing a particular nature, strength, weakness, or subplot, it's a good idea to pick a different one. Storium may not have a tactical need to have different "classes" in your party, but narrators like to have characters that are different from each other.
- Work on differentiating Strengths, Weaknesses, and Subplots as well. A game with three people who all have Agile as their Strength card is simply not as fun to read as a game where those three people have different Strength cards. There are definitely story possibilities with overlap, but most narrators I've seen will prefer characters that differ over those that are similar.
- Write your character as someone who can and will get involved with the story and the other characters.
- Characters who feel like they'll want to be separate from the rest of the group a lot of the time (loners, "I work alone" types), or those who feel like they won't care about the story or will actively act against the story (for instance, a totally sensible character in a slasher flick game, who won't go to explore the creepy old house) will make the narrator nervous.
- Remember: You are writing a character for this story. Your character doesn't have to be fated to be a hero or something like that. He doesn't have to be thrilled about what he's going to be doing. But, deep down at the very least, he should be the sort of person that will pursue the activities the story demands.
- If your character appears to be the sort of person who would run screaming in the other direction from the events of the story or otherwise avoid participating in it, take the time in comments to tell the narrator how you'd like to tie the character to the story more firmly - or at least to give the narrator a few ideas for how it might happen. As above, it is on you to explain why a character that doesn't seem to fit can actually fit.
- Pick the starting cards for your character based on what you want to see come up in the story for that character - not just based on what sounds right for the character. You need to pick starting cards that feel like things that would be interesting to you - things you are going to want to play.
- This tends to matter most for Weakness cards, but can also be a factor in choosing a Strength or Subplot. Pick something that interests you and that you want to see as part of the story.
- I've seen players pick stuff because it "sounded right" or because it was who the character was before the tale, not thinking about where their character's story was quickly going to go and how they actually wanted to portray the character, and it always becomes something frustrating for the player then.
- Finally, for yourself, try to build a good reputation in general. Narrators can, and do, look at your play history. If they see interesting characters, story participation, group interaction, a good attitude, and completed games, they'll look forward to the possibilities presented by having you in their game.
If you would like to know more about character creation and applying for games in Storium, here are a few of my Storium Theory articles on that topic:
Missed Classic: Trinity - Is This The 50S? Or 1999?
Written by Joe Pranevich
Welcome back! Last time out, I explored the strange mushroom forest that I was dropped into after the end of the world. This "wabe", as I think it is called, is a strange place set in the shadow of a gigantic sundial and includes giant bees, an impossible flower garden, a cottage with game design notes, and a half-dozen mushrooms with little doors. But this isn't The Smurfs: each mushroom appears to have been created by a nuclear detonation. As I closed out last time, I finally worked out how to control the movement of the "sun" overhead to drop shadows on each of the doors. I opened the first door and was dropped back into reality, somewhere and somewhen.
This game remains difficult to write about. My usual style is a bit flippant and just not appropriate for the subject matter, but I also cannot help to be quippy. I'll try to keep the tone light as much as I can, but this is a difficult game with difficult themes and some of the scenes in this session are disturbing. I had to step away from the game at one point for a few days. Fair warning, but on with the show.
When I walked through the mushroom door in my previous post, I arrived in a rickety room filled with equipment that I do not understand. The white door remains open and I can use it to return to the mesa in the wabe, but then it closes immediately after. No amount of resetting the sundial opens the door again so I assume there is no way back. Will I only get one shot at each doorway? Is there a way to know what order I have to take the doors? I hope Mr. Moriarty won't be too evil about this, but I am prepared for a lot of saving and reloading.
The equipment that I stand next to is radioactive and obviously a nuclear bomb, but I'm not positive which bomb it is. Climbing down the scaffolding, I find myself in a large room with aircraft hangar-style doors. They are too heavy to open, but there's a button nearby so it's not much of a puzzle. A second button activates an intercom speaker and a voice informs anyone listening that it is six minutes to detonation. I'd better hurry! I open the doors and head out onto a tropical island. Thanks to the manual's history lesson, I guess that this is the H-Bomb explosion in 1952. The documentation just says a "remote island in the South Pacific" and I was fairly certain that was Bikini Atoll, but a quick Wikipedia search informs me that the first test was actually on nearby Enewetak Atoll.
Focusing on the present, I notice that the tide is coming in. That voice in my ear sniggers that "Gnomon can tether tide or time." Whoever he is, he's less clever than he thinks he is. We start exploring from our vantage point on the south of the island. To the west is a second island with a single coconut tree. Thanks to a mob of attacking crabs, there is no way to get to that island or its lone tree. To the north is an "extension" of wood leading off the island, described as being like a six-foot in diameter drinking straw connecting the facility to someplace offshore. It's too high up to climb and I do not see a way to access it from the hangar shed. While exploring, a shark follows me around the island, but when I reach the eastern shore he reveals himself to actually be a friendly dolphin! That's cute, but… er… he's going to die pretty soon.
Beyond that, there doesn't seem to be much to do here. After a time, I notice that the western island has sunk under the tide and only a single coconut remains floating in the water. There is no obvious way to fetch it but it screams "puzzle" and must be important for something. I eventually work out that the dolphin is actually incredibly intelligent and fetches the coconut for me when I ask. I break it open with my axe but find only coconut milk inside. What did I expect? A priceless gem? The "milk" leaks out quickly and I restore so as not to lose it. Could that be "good enough" for the potion at the cottage? The magpie said that we needed milk, honey, garlic, and a lizard. Surely, this vegan substitute for milk isn't "good enough" for a magic potion, is it? With nothing else to do and the timer ticking down, I leave my paradise to its fate and return through the white door.
I do some fast Googling to learn that the island was called Elugelab; the blast destroyed it utterly, leaving only a 15-story deep crater in the ocean bed where an island once had been. The wooden "straw" led to the nearby Teiter Island which survived the blast. There doesn't seem to be any real-world counterpart to the tiny island with the coconuts; as a tidal island it's not likely to have appeared on any maps and Moriarty may have just made it up.
When I return to the "wabe", I immediately try the coconut milk in the potion and it seems to work! I'm not sure how that counts, but I have three ingredients now. I need to find a lizard.
The Mushroom Kingdom
With my first trip out of the way and the knowledge of how to open the doors, I take stock of the rest of the portal toadstools:
My guess is that Mr. Moriarty is clever and has made each of the toadstools independent so that you can take them in any order. I therefore try the second one next and am immediately proven wrong: it leads out into Earth orbit with no spacesuit and nearly instant death. Nukes in space? There must be a way to survive there to do whatever I need to do, but I'm pretty sure I don't have the means yet.
The death scene at least offers some hints as we arrive, dead, at the ferryman's river. This time, we have a coin and use it to board the boat to the great beyond. Other than that, I don't glean any further hints how to cross without dying so I restore and try the next mushroom.
Mother Russia
I take the fifth door next and arrive in what appears to be an elevated shack on the Siberian steppe. It's cold and gray and someone is speaking in Russian on the loudspeaker. Google fails me and has no idea what "dyevianatsat minut" means, but Infocom was likely using either a nonstandard (or simply outdated now) romanization. My guess is that they meant "devyatnadtsat' minut" (девятнадцать минут) or nineteen minutes. Plenty of time, right?
I climb down from the shack and immediately step on a rodent underfoot. In fact, the ground is mobbed by hundreds or thousands of creatures all racing to the northeast. They "look something like hamsters, with long brown fur and beady eyes". Should I follow them? Or see where they came from? I try heading "upstream" against the tide of creatures, but Russian guards kill me so that's not the way. I follow them instead to discover a cliff edge where the rodents are jumping off in apparent mass-suicide. Only then does the game tell me what you already figured out: they are lemmings! Of course, lemmings don't actually jump off of cliffs, right? That's just an urban legend spread by an old (faked) Disney documentary?
At the cliff, I discover a single trapped lemming in a fissure. I rescue it but it quickly bites my hand and disappears into the mass. If I release the magpie, I can grab it and then stick it in the cage. Is that a good trade? Do I need the magpie for anything? Remembering back last week, I did not get any points for it (only for the cage) so maybe not? Also, lemmings are not lizards even if they have the same starting letter, and even if the potion took coconut milk instead of cow's milk, that would be too much of a stretch. I find nothing else of interest on the tundra. I even jump off the cliff once but just drown in the frigid Arctic water. Once there is nothing left to do and the countdown is presumably getting close, I head back through the door.
Doing some real-world research, I learn that I wasn't on the Russian steppe after all: the Soviets did their nuclear testing at a site in Kazakhstan. I was close enough though since that was part of the Soviet Union until 1991 and Moriarty would likely not have seen it as a separate country. The test site was 100 miles west of Semipalatinsk (now called Semey) and the region sees many health problems thanks to all of the tests performed there. There doesn't seem to be any real-world analogue to the cliffs as the nearest bodies of water I can find to the test site are frozen lakes around 25 miles to the northeast according to Google Earth. Am I looking too deeply at this? Absolutely. I'm procrastinating writing the next section.
Hiroshima
The sixth door is my only remaining choice, located on the moor just north of the ferryman's river. Stepping through, we find ourselves in midair and falling fast. Unlike in the space section, we have a few turns to experiment before we land with a splat and I have an idea what to do: open the umbrella! Doing so slows our descent enough that we land safely in a children's sandbox. Writing this section is choking me up, so I'm going to pause by just giving you the room description:
We know what's about to happen and it's devastating. I gather together my things and discover that I can really only move east towards the shelter without being caught. Inside is a disgusting and rough hewn bomb shelter, filthy and smelling of urine from the people that had to relieve themselves while waiting out the terror outside. It's an awful thought. There's a spade on the ground which I pick up, but otherwise there's nothing else to do.
I leave and discover that a girl is now playing in the sandpit. She spots me and nearly runs to her teacher, but then she spots my umbrella and her curiosity gets the best of her. I can tell that she wants it, so I hand it to her and she runs off into the shelter to play. Could she be the scarred woman in London? Do I even want to consider that?
There is still nowhere else that I can go safely, but seeing folded paper cranes in a nearby school window gives me a thought. I follow her into the shelter and hand the girl my unfolded origami crane from the beginning of the game, the one that gave me the message to go to the Long Water by 4 PM. She folds it back into its original crane shape and I gain three points. It glows with a strange energy. I return outside and the crane grows into a giant living paper bird. I climb on its back and it takes me up to just outside the white door, still suspended in midair, where I can leap off and through. Whew!
From a game perspective, that was an interesting segment and very much "on rails". If I had not brought the paper or umbrella with me, I could not have progressed, plus it was really only two rooms that I had to move back and forth between to advance story segments. More than any other section of the game except perhaps the first near-future in London, this paints a human face on the misery of the bomb. Honestly, this section wrecked me and I needed to take some time off from the game. I'm really not cut out for reviewing this type of emotional experience. This game hurts. I don't even care that I don't know if that was Hiroshima or Nagasaki, I'm done and need to move on.
Calling a Spade, a Spade
With no more toadstool doors to explore-- I haven't found the third or seventh and the second one kills me immediately-- I resolve find places in the wabe where my new items might be useful. I still have up a spade, a lemming, and an open coconut. It takes some experimentation, but I'll skip my failures and move straight to the good part: I can open the crypt in the cemetery!
Using the spade, we pry off the lid to see the corpse of the "Wabewalker" (me?). This was well-hinted since I was told earlier that I needed more "leverage" to move the lid and a spade is certainly leverage. I had hoped the grave would be empty, but instead I look down at a "great missionary or explorer" in his final rest. I hope this game does not go all Infidel on me. The corpse is wearing a burial shroud, a bandage around his head, and two strangely colored boots: one red and one green. Like any good tomb raider, I strip the corpse and take all of his stuff. His mouth hangs open once the bandage is removed and I discover a silver coin inside. Fare for the ferryman? The boots each have a strange (but empty) recess at the tip of the toes. Do I have to hide something in them? With the corpse thoroughly desecrated, I'm nearly halfway through the game: 49 points!
While exploring, I also get the brilliant idea to float the Bubble Boy's bubble out through the "space" doorway. Amazingly, it fits! The bubble immediately freezes to create a protective shell and that somehow keeps us from dying in the cold vacuum of space. Unfortunately, there is no way to control the bubble and the white door drifts rapidly away from us. After a time, a satellite comes closer and then departs again without letting us do whatever we are supposed to do. There is briefly a Star Wars-style laser destruction of a missile, but nothing to do except wait it out and die. There are still things that I am missing before I can conquer outer space.
Desert Island Decameron
I wear all of my burial clothes and the ferryman lets me on the boat! He takes the silver coin as payment (but not the London 20p one) and deposits me across the river. There is no entrance to Hades or two-headed dogs, but there is a small island with the expected toadstool on it. When I arrive with the seventh symbol set on the sundial, I emerge into another rickety shack next to a large metal ball covered with wires.
There are voices outside and if I leave prematurely, I am killed-- more on that in a minute. But if I explore the room first the voices eventually leave. I use that time to try to open the bomb via an access panel that I discover on the side, but no dice without a screwdriver. I even try using the London coin, but it doesn't fit. A book sits discarded on the floor, the Desert Island Decameron. Doing some Googling, I discover that it is an "unconventional anthology of humor"... a strange thing to find in a room with a giant bomb, but perhaps one of the guards needed a little light reading while he considered the hellscape that he was potentially helping to create. Inside is a bookmark with a poem on one side and a diagram scrawled on the other. I get four points for reading it so it must be important, but the only part we can "see" in text is the legend: "RD=DET, BL=POS, ST=INF, WH=GND". My guess is that we are looking at a wiring diagram and an explanation on how to defuse the bomb. In any event, it's useless without the panel being opened.
Once the voices are gone, I exit and climb down the ladder. At the bottom is a padlocked box… and our friend the roadrunner! He's finally back in his natural habitat and seems happy to see me. He even drops the ruby at my feet! I pick it up to gain a few more points and from this moment the roadrunner follows me around. I cannot open the padlocked panel, even when I try to smash it with the axe or spade. Letting the lemming go doesn't help either and I do not see any lizards here.
I'm going to pass on delving too deeply into my explorations of the New Mexico desert for now, except to say that we only get a few turns before we die and even with successive restores I do not find much of interest. I suspect that I am here before I am ready; maybe I find a way to slow down time? Maybe by defusing the bomb at the beginning, the test is delayed by a few minutes and I can explore further before dying?
Perhaps more importantly, this is the message that I get when I inevitably die:
The real Trinity test, which I am certain is where this gate has taken us, did not nuke the state of New Mexico. It was relatively modest as far as later bombs were concerned and so something must have happened to change history. Have I finally stumbled on the plot of the game? Did someone or something interfere with the Trinity test to make it even deadlier than before? It's a great twist if that's what happened and I am eager to see how the game continues.
For now however, I am stuck and have a few open problems to solve:
I did manage to get 70 points, but I've reloaded now to before crossing the ferry so I will have to get some of those again.
Time played: 2 hr 15 min
Total time: 7 hr 25 min
Inventory: bag of crumbs, small coin (20p), silver coin, red boot, blue boot, bandage, burial shroud, credit card, wristwatch, birdcage with lemming, broken coconut, and silver axe. (Not all being carried at once.)
Score: 70 of 100
This game remains difficult to write about. My usual style is a bit flippant and just not appropriate for the subject matter, but I also cannot help to be quippy. I'll try to keep the tone light as much as I can, but this is a difficult game with difficult themes and some of the scenes in this session are disturbing. I had to step away from the game at one point for a few days. Fair warning, but on with the show.
 |
| Ray Palmer seems like such a nice guy. |
The equipment that I stand next to is radioactive and obviously a nuclear bomb, but I'm not positive which bomb it is. Climbing down the scaffolding, I find myself in a large room with aircraft hangar-style doors. They are too heavy to open, but there's a button nearby so it's not much of a puzzle. A second button activates an intercom speaker and a voice informs anyone listening that it is six minutes to detonation. I'd better hurry! I open the doors and head out onto a tropical island. Thanks to the manual's history lesson, I guess that this is the H-Bomb explosion in 1952. The documentation just says a "remote island in the South Pacific" and I was fairly certain that was Bikini Atoll, but a quick Wikipedia search informs me that the first test was actually on nearby Enewetak Atoll.
Focusing on the present, I notice that the tide is coming in. That voice in my ear sniggers that "Gnomon can tether tide or time." Whoever he is, he's less clever than he thinks he is. We start exploring from our vantage point on the south of the island. To the west is a second island with a single coconut tree. Thanks to a mob of attacking crabs, there is no way to get to that island or its lone tree. To the north is an "extension" of wood leading off the island, described as being like a six-foot in diameter drinking straw connecting the facility to someplace offshore. It's too high up to climb and I do not see a way to access it from the hangar shed. While exploring, a shark follows me around the island, but when I reach the eastern shore he reveals himself to actually be a friendly dolphin! That's cute, but… er… he's going to die pretty soon.
 |
| R.I.P Flipper. None under sea were smarter than he. |
I do some fast Googling to learn that the island was called Elugelab; the blast destroyed it utterly, leaving only a 15-story deep crater in the ocean bed where an island once had been. The wooden "straw" led to the nearby Teiter Island which survived the blast. There doesn't seem to be any real-world counterpart to the tiny island with the coconuts; as a tidal island it's not likely to have appeared on any maps and Moriarty may have just made it up.
When I return to the "wabe", I immediately try the coconut milk in the potion and it seems to work! I'm not sure how that counts, but I have three ingredients now. I need to find a lizard.
 |
| Princess Peach has seen better. |
With my first trip out of the way and the knowledge of how to open the doors, I take stock of the rest of the portal toadstools:
- The first is in the meadow where I started. It doesn't open again now but presumably led to Kensington Gardens.
- The second is the toadstool at the waterfall.
- I cannot find the third. I suspect that it is near the boy blowing bubbles and possibly somewhere I need to fly to if I can work out how to gain altitude. Or perhaps the boy is sitting on it?
- The fourth is the one that I just explored on the mesa.
- The fifth is in the garden behind the magpie's cottage.
- The sixth door is on the moor far to the east of the map.
- I cannot find the seventh, but I expect that it is probably wherever the ferryman takes you.
My guess is that Mr. Moriarty is clever and has made each of the toadstools independent so that you can take them in any order. I therefore try the second one next and am immediately proven wrong: it leads out into Earth orbit with no spacesuit and nearly instant death. Nukes in space? There must be a way to survive there to do whatever I need to do, but I'm pretty sure I don't have the means yet.
The death scene at least offers some hints as we arrive, dead, at the ferryman's river. This time, we have a coin and use it to board the boat to the great beyond. Other than that, I don't glean any further hints how to cross without dying so I restore and try the next mushroom.
 |
| As a kid, I visited the Psygnosis offices in Cambridge. It was amazing. By coincidence, I later worked in the exact same office long after they had moved out. |
I take the fifth door next and arrive in what appears to be an elevated shack on the Siberian steppe. It's cold and gray and someone is speaking in Russian on the loudspeaker. Google fails me and has no idea what "dyevianatsat minut" means, but Infocom was likely using either a nonstandard (or simply outdated now) romanization. My guess is that they meant "devyatnadtsat' minut" (девятнадцать минут) or nineteen minutes. Plenty of time, right?
I climb down from the shack and immediately step on a rodent underfoot. In fact, the ground is mobbed by hundreds or thousands of creatures all racing to the northeast. They "look something like hamsters, with long brown fur and beady eyes". Should I follow them? Or see where they came from? I try heading "upstream" against the tide of creatures, but Russian guards kill me so that's not the way. I follow them instead to discover a cliff edge where the rodents are jumping off in apparent mass-suicide. Only then does the game tell me what you already figured out: they are lemmings! Of course, lemmings don't actually jump off of cliffs, right? That's just an urban legend spread by an old (faked) Disney documentary?
At the cliff, I discover a single trapped lemming in a fissure. I rescue it but it quickly bites my hand and disappears into the mass. If I release the magpie, I can grab it and then stick it in the cage. Is that a good trade? Do I need the magpie for anything? Remembering back last week, I did not get any points for it (only for the cage) so maybe not? Also, lemmings are not lizards even if they have the same starting letter, and even if the potion took coconut milk instead of cow's milk, that would be too much of a stretch. I find nothing else of interest on the tundra. I even jump off the cliff once but just drown in the frigid Arctic water. Once there is nothing left to do and the countdown is presumably getting close, I head back through the door.
Doing some real-world research, I learn that I wasn't on the Russian steppe after all: the Soviets did their nuclear testing at a site in Kazakhstan. I was close enough though since that was part of the Soviet Union until 1991 and Moriarty would likely not have seen it as a separate country. The test site was 100 miles west of Semipalatinsk (now called Semey) and the region sees many health problems thanks to all of the tests performed there. There doesn't seem to be any real-world analogue to the cliffs as the nearest bodies of water I can find to the test site are frozen lakes around 25 miles to the northeast according to Google Earth. Am I looking too deeply at this? Absolutely. I'm procrastinating writing the next section.
 |
| A spoonful of sugar helps the deep existential dread go down? |
The sixth door is my only remaining choice, located on the moor just north of the ferryman's river. Stepping through, we find ourselves in midair and falling fast. Unlike in the space section, we have a few turns to experiment before we land with a splat and I have an idea what to do: open the umbrella! Doing so slows our descent enough that we land safely in a children's sandbox. Writing this section is choking me up, so I'm going to pause by just giving you the room description:
Playground, in a sandpile
A set of children's swings move back and forth in the humid breeze. Behind them stands a long building, its windows hung with flowers and birds folded from colored paper.
Mounds of dirt are heaped around a dark opening to the east. It appears to be a shelter of some kind.
Several small children are happily chasing dragonflies north of the swing set. Turning south, you see a group of adults (schoolteachers, by the looks of them), wearily digging another shelter like the first.
Somewhat shaken, you rise to your feet in a child's sandpile. In the pile, you see an umbrella, an axe, and a birdcage.
We know what's about to happen and it's devastating. I gather together my things and discover that I can really only move east towards the shelter without being caught. Inside is a disgusting and rough hewn bomb shelter, filthy and smelling of urine from the people that had to relieve themselves while waiting out the terror outside. It's an awful thought. There's a spade on the ground which I pick up, but otherwise there's nothing else to do.
I leave and discover that a girl is now playing in the sandpit. She spots me and nearly runs to her teacher, but then she spots my umbrella and her curiosity gets the best of her. I can tell that she wants it, so I hand it to her and she runs off into the shelter to play. Could she be the scarred woman in London? Do I even want to consider that?
There is still nowhere else that I can go safely, but seeing folded paper cranes in a nearby school window gives me a thought. I follow her into the shelter and hand the girl my unfolded origami crane from the beginning of the game, the one that gave me the message to go to the Long Water by 4 PM. She folds it back into its original crane shape and I gain three points. It glows with a strange energy. I return outside and the crane grows into a giant living paper bird. I climb on its back and it takes me up to just outside the white door, still suspended in midair, where I can leap off and through. Whew!
From a game perspective, that was an interesting segment and very much "on rails". If I had not brought the paper or umbrella with me, I could not have progressed, plus it was really only two rooms that I had to move back and forth between to advance story segments. More than any other section of the game except perhaps the first near-future in London, this paints a human face on the misery of the bomb. Honestly, this section wrecked me and I needed to take some time off from the game. I'm really not cut out for reviewing this type of emotional experience. This game hurts. I don't even care that I don't know if that was Hiroshima or Nagasaki, I'm done and need to move on.
 |
| "You can either look at things in a brutal, truthful way that's depressing, or you can screw around and have fun." - David Spade |
With no more toadstool doors to explore-- I haven't found the third or seventh and the second one kills me immediately-- I resolve find places in the wabe where my new items might be useful. I still have up a spade, a lemming, and an open coconut. It takes some experimentation, but I'll skip my failures and move straight to the good part: I can open the crypt in the cemetery!
Using the spade, we pry off the lid to see the corpse of the "Wabewalker" (me?). This was well-hinted since I was told earlier that I needed more "leverage" to move the lid and a spade is certainly leverage. I had hoped the grave would be empty, but instead I look down at a "great missionary or explorer" in his final rest. I hope this game does not go all Infidel on me. The corpse is wearing a burial shroud, a bandage around his head, and two strangely colored boots: one red and one green. Like any good tomb raider, I strip the corpse and take all of his stuff. His mouth hangs open once the bandage is removed and I discover a silver coin inside. Fare for the ferryman? The boots each have a strange (but empty) recess at the tip of the toes. Do I have to hide something in them? With the corpse thoroughly desecrated, I'm nearly halfway through the game: 49 points!
While exploring, I also get the brilliant idea to float the Bubble Boy's bubble out through the "space" doorway. Amazingly, it fits! The bubble immediately freezes to create a protective shell and that somehow keeps us from dying in the cold vacuum of space. Unfortunately, there is no way to control the bubble and the white door drifts rapidly away from us. After a time, a satellite comes closer and then departs again without letting us do whatever we are supposed to do. There is briefly a Star Wars-style laser destruction of a missile, but nothing to do except wait it out and die. There are still things that I am missing before I can conquer outer space.
 |
| What happened to the other five stories? |
I wear all of my burial clothes and the ferryman lets me on the boat! He takes the silver coin as payment (but not the London 20p one) and deposits me across the river. There is no entrance to Hades or two-headed dogs, but there is a small island with the expected toadstool on it. When I arrive with the seventh symbol set on the sundial, I emerge into another rickety shack next to a large metal ball covered with wires.
There are voices outside and if I leave prematurely, I am killed-- more on that in a minute. But if I explore the room first the voices eventually leave. I use that time to try to open the bomb via an access panel that I discover on the side, but no dice without a screwdriver. I even try using the London coin, but it doesn't fit. A book sits discarded on the floor, the Desert Island Decameron. Doing some Googling, I discover that it is an "unconventional anthology of humor"... a strange thing to find in a room with a giant bomb, but perhaps one of the guards needed a little light reading while he considered the hellscape that he was potentially helping to create. Inside is a bookmark with a poem on one side and a diagram scrawled on the other. I get four points for reading it so it must be important, but the only part we can "see" in text is the legend: "RD=DET, BL=POS, ST=INF, WH=GND". My guess is that we are looking at a wiring diagram and an explanation on how to defuse the bomb. In any event, it's useless without the panel being opened.
Once the voices are gone, I exit and climb down the ladder. At the bottom is a padlocked box… and our friend the roadrunner! He's finally back in his natural habitat and seems happy to see me. He even drops the ruby at my feet! I pick it up to gain a few more points and from this moment the roadrunner follows me around. I cannot open the padlocked panel, even when I try to smash it with the axe or spade. Letting the lemming go doesn't help either and I do not see any lizards here.
I'm going to pass on delving too deeply into my explorations of the New Mexico desert for now, except to say that we only get a few turns before we die and even with successive restores I do not find much of interest. I suspect that I am here before I am ready; maybe I find a way to slow down time? Maybe by defusing the bomb at the beginning, the test is delayed by a few minutes and I can explore further before dying?
Perhaps more importantly, this is the message that I get when I inevitably die:
All at once, the desert around you disappears in a flash of startling brilliance! You jam your hands over your eyes in the awful glare; never see the fireball closing in at many times the speed of sound; and never feel the stellar hear that annihilates much of the state of New Mexico.
The real Trinity test, which I am certain is where this gate has taken us, did not nuke the state of New Mexico. It was relatively modest as far as later bombs were concerned and so something must have happened to change history. Have I finally stumbled on the plot of the game? Did someone or something interfere with the Trinity test to make it even deadlier than before? It's a great twist if that's what happened and I am eager to see how the game continues.
For now however, I am stuck and have a few open problems to solve:
- I have yet to find the third toadstool. I thought it was by the Bubble Boy, but since we use the bubble to go to space I was probably mistaken. I will have to search for it since there's something I missed someplace.
- I do not know what to do with the wight, either to help it or kill it. Could the crypt's skeleton key by the solution to the lock in New Mexico?
- I do not know what to do in space.
- I do not know what to do with the magnetic meteorite.
- I do not know where to find a lizard. It seems most likely to be in New Mexico, but I doubt it given that even if we find a way to reopen the doors, I don't seem to have a path back across the river to the main part of the wabe.
I did manage to get 70 points, but I've reloaded now to before crossing the ferry so I will have to get some of those again.
Time played: 2 hr 15 min
Total time: 7 hr 25 min
Inventory: bag of crumbs, small coin (20p), silver coin, red boot, blue boot, bandage, burial shroud, credit card, wristwatch, birdcage with lemming, broken coconut, and silver axe. (Not all being carried at once.)
Score: 70 of 100
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