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Let’s Play Keepsake

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UruBoo - 16 July 2013 05:58 PM

I just finished Keepsake again (lastweek)

Pan for not expressing your thoughts here Tongue

Iznogood - 16 July 2013 11:02 PM

Also took me quite some time. What i did was that i took some screenshoots of all the dials, and then viewed them side by side and figured out the path i wanted to used, before i stared to mess with the dials.

I’ve sketched it, which helped me, but still couldn’t figure some of the things. First of all, I didn’t realize that roman numerals correspond to the lines left and right of it, I’ve thought each number relates to only one line, and based my power line on that assumption at first. Then, what even more bugged me, is that I couldn’t deduce that there’re actually power points/pedestals, and regular ones. I’ve thought each one of them is independent in that regard. But the funny thing, even though I had some false assumption, I’ve still almost managed to put it right at first try Content  - but like you, it was also in the final part of the power line that I made mistake. Also, I believe there’re multiple solutions to the puzzle.

 

     

Recently finished: Four Last Things 4/5, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout 5/5, Chains of Satinav 3,95/5, A Vampyre Story 88, Sam Peters 3/5, Broken Sword 1 4,5/5, Broken Sword 2 4,3/5, Broken Sword 3 85, Broken Sword 5 81, Gray Matter 4/5\nCurrently playing: Broken Sword 4, Keepsake (Let\‘s Play), Callahan\‘s Crosstime Saloon (post-Community Playthrough)\nLooking forward to: A Playwright’s Tale

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diego - 17 July 2013 06:38 AM

I’ve sketched it, which helped me, but still couldn’t figure some of the things. First of all, I didn’t realize that roman numerals correspond to the lines left and right of it, I’ve thought each number relates to only one line, and based my power line on that assumption at first.

I never figured out what the numerals actually meant, apart from each of the numerals representing a line, but I couldn’t “read” which number represented which line. But somehow I got many correct on the first try, and the rest by trial and error

diego - 17 July 2013 06:38 AM

Then, what even more bugged me, is that I couldn’t deduce that there’re actually power points/pedestals, and regular ones. I’ve thought each one of them is independent in that regard.

Luckily I understood that pretty fast, didn’t it say that on the 1st level help? I used the first level help, to get a basic idea of what I had to do. It was also because of this I got regular confirmations that I was routing it the way I had planned. Whenever a machine started I checked the dial of the machine, to confirm or disprove that it was the correct machine that started, at some points you could start 2 different machines from the same dial.

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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Iznogood - 17 July 2013 07:16 AM

didn’t it say that on the 1st level help?

Yeah, it’s just that I was mad at myself for needing 2 (or was it 3?) hint levels to solve it. And I was even more angry once I learned I failed only at one pedestal at first try without any hints, even with the false logic in my head Naughty Grin

Lovely puzzle, though.

     

Recently finished: Four Last Things 4/5, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout 5/5, Chains of Satinav 3,95/5, A Vampyre Story 88, Sam Peters 3/5, Broken Sword 1 4,5/5, Broken Sword 2 4,3/5, Broken Sword 3 85, Broken Sword 5 81, Gray Matter 4/5\nCurrently playing: Broken Sword 4, Keepsake (Let\‘s Play), Callahan\‘s Crosstime Saloon (post-Community Playthrough)\nLooking forward to: A Playwright’s Tale

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diego - 17 July 2013 07:31 AM

Lovely puzzle, though.

Yeah tough, but nicely constructed.


I just transformed Zak, passed the 3 trials, and have gained access to the upper level of the academy, but since this is your thread Diego, then i wont post anything about it until you do.

Edit: I think i will wait for you to catch up with me, and play something else while waiting. I know you said you would take it slow with this playthrough, and that is not something i’m normally good at, but there is a natural pause point here, and i fell like it is a game that deserves some time.

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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Ok, upper academy - here we come!


Oops… another “vision”...

Either Celeste’s father was a real jerk, or he was nervous about something…


Hmmm…


Anyway, this is where we wake up. More ahead and upstairs:


Ok, there’s no getting around these guys. At least, not until I complete:


THE THREE TRIALS!


The guardians are quite chatty, and will explain what I need to do… although conveyed in riddles and rhymes:



This got me lol’d:


BTW, those tests are the test of Wisdom, Allegiance… and I forgot the last one. Magic?
Anyway, let’s go:


and into the Caretaker’s room. What we have here is the letter from the Caretaker:


What we ALSO got here, is another puzzle:


It isn’t as devious as the machine room puzzle, but it got me stuck for a long time because I was side-tracked by some other clue Naughty Anyway, after a while:


and we got the device that finally let us read those strange parchments:


It speaks of a recipe, and a peculiar tree-man.


BTW, is it me, or that map resembles the face of a man? Gasp

Let’s go outside: (I think I know where I saw the “tree-man”)


Aaand… another vision:


There’s a neat system BTW, which lets you view again already seen visions (which I’m going to do since I forgot what were they saying in this one, apart from the fact that Celeste was mourning over her mother’s death and Nathaniel was being a jerk again)


Yeap, that’s the Treebeard. He doesn’t seem to be in the mood for talking, though.


The BROKEN pendant?! Let’s try to fix it. 10 minutes later…


Well, I REALLY need them to fix the pendant! Oh, well.

     

Recently finished: Four Last Things 4/5, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout 5/5, Chains of Satinav 3,95/5, A Vampyre Story 88, Sam Peters 3/5, Broken Sword 1 4,5/5, Broken Sword 2 4,3/5, Broken Sword 3 85, Broken Sword 5 81, Gray Matter 4/5\nCurrently playing: Broken Sword 4, Keepsake (Let\‘s Play), Callahan\‘s Crosstime Saloon (post-Community Playthrough)\nLooking forward to: A Playwright’s Tale

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diego - 20 July 2013 01:34 PM

BTW, those tests are the test of Wisdom, Allegiance… and I forgot the last one. Magic?

Bravery I believe!

The third trial is both the easiest and the most difficult at the same time.

     

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I think this is an excellent time to write a bit about my thoughts of the game.

First of all the graphics are absolutely stunning, at least most of the time, and there is some very beautiful scenes, like when you turn on the water.

The interaction and comments between Lydia and Zak are just right. Normally i’m not much for games that are about solitary exploration, they tend to make me fell like i’m the last person in the world, which is a feeling i don’t really like. But because we have Zak with us and there is also the occasional conversation with Mustavio and others plus the vision cutscenes, then it doesn’t fell like most solitary exploration games, but more like a “normal” 3rd person AG.

The puzzles are well constructed, intelligent and challenging but never unfair (at least so far). Normally i’m also not a big fan of isolated mechanical puzzles or minigames in the form of sliders etc., the reason being that they are usually best solved using trial & error and brute force rather than logic and intelligence. But the puzzles in Keepsake are all designed in a way, so it is not only better to use your logic and intelligence, but you also want to solve them instead of just getting past an obstacle.

It has the best hint system i have ever seen in an adventure game. All other hint systems i have tried, tend to either only tell you what you already know or have deduced, or to outright give you the solution, but almost never give you a nudge in the right direction without spoiling anything. In Keepsake the hint system however gives you just that nudge without spoiling anything. The 1st level hint at puzzles usually just explains the basic rules of the puzzles, which most games does automatically anyway, the 2nd level explains a bit more, and the third gives you part of the solution. For me so far the 1st hint has usually been enough to give me exactly the nudge i needed, and on the rare occasions i have needed a 2nd or 3rd help (3rd level only once), they have usually been spot on, and explained exactly what i had trouble with, without spoiling the whole puzzle. Okay i would wish the none puzzle hint also had at least 2 levels, instead of showing the exact location immediately, but it is still the best hint system i have ever seen.

Then there is the lack of fast travel, and the fact that the school is quite large and you have run long distances to get from place to place, going through the same places over and over and over .... again, this haven’t bothered me at all, i thought it would, but it haven’t. I think there is 2 reasons for that:

1) The scenery is absolutely stunning, and i don’t mind watching it again and again.

2) The game doesn’t consist of much more then the scenery and the puzzles (and the story). In “normal” 3rd person games there would be a lot of interaction with hotspots, conversations with NPC and exploration of new areas, and this all serves as a divider between the actual puzzles, but none of this exists in Keepsake, at least not as much as in most games i play. This means that if it wasn’t for these transportation intermissions then we would jump straight from one puzzle to the next, and that would simply be too much. I don’t know about you, but when i have just spend 1/2 to 1 hour solving a mind bugling puzzle, then i need a bit of down time to rest and rejuvenate my braincells, and the time you spend running to the next puzzle serves exactly that purpose.

Okay, there has been a couple of times it has annoyed me, but most of the time i don’t mind.

Then there is a feature, that i don’t understand why haven’t be implemented in all games, and that is the option to pause a dialogue. Lets be honest here, how many times have we not started a lengthy conversation / monologue only to have the phone ring, or suddenly discover that the bio-break we have been postponing, have now become a matter of urgency, and we either have to miss potential important information (hoping we can restart the dialogue) or ...
Or is that just me?

All we need now is a similar option to pause the cutscenes, but since they can be repeated any time we want, then that is not really an issue.

I could probably write much more, but i think i will stop here and end with giving it a rating of 4.5/5 based on what i have played so far.

     

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Nice, I agree with almost everything you wrote Smile


The most controversial thing is definitely the long walks, because of one detail: the player can decide that he/she DOESN’T want to use any in-game hints. Thus, the walking with some questionable feedback (I’m not saying that’s a bad thing per se) in a HUGE school can become bothersome. But I agree that it’s much less pain if you decide to use hints as where you should go next.

Iznogood - 20 July 2013 05:29 PM

But because we have Zak with us and there is also the occasional conversation with Mustavio and others plus the vision cutscenes, then it doesn’t fell like most solitary exploration games, but more like a “normal” 3rd person AG.

The thing that strike me first when I loaded Keepsake for the first time is exactly the unique mix of Myst-like game and 3rd-person. The only thing I could have wished more from a 3rd-person part would be some inventory puzzles, but logic puzzles more then make up for it.

Iznogood - 20 July 2013 05:29 PM

Then there is a feature, that i don’t understand why haven’t be implemented in all games, and that is the option to pause a dialogue.

Yes, it can come in handy (if you’re eating and playing, for example Grin). But there’s also the fact that skipping line of a text is sloppy on occasions, and character will continue to use gestures, and the amount of time passed will be the same as if you haven’t skipped it.

     

Recently finished: Four Last Things 4/5, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout 5/5, Chains of Satinav 3,95/5, A Vampyre Story 88, Sam Peters 3/5, Broken Sword 1 4,5/5, Broken Sword 2 4,3/5, Broken Sword 3 85, Broken Sword 5 81, Gray Matter 4/5\nCurrently playing: Broken Sword 4, Keepsake (Let\‘s Play), Callahan\‘s Crosstime Saloon (post-Community Playthrough)\nLooking forward to: A Playwright’s Tale

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diego - 21 July 2013 01:06 PM

The most controversial thing is definitely the long walks, because of one detail: the player can decide that he/she DOESN’T want to use any in-game hints. Thus, the walking with some questionable feedback (I’m not saying that’s a bad thing per se) in a HUGE school can become bothersome. But I agree that it’s much less pain if you decide to use hints as where you should go next.

Just to clarify one thing, I do try to use the hints as little as possible, as I assume you also do?

But when I started the game I spend a lot of time exploring the place, making notes of where the locked doors where and all the potential puzzles and POI, the place where we found Zak was actually the last place I went, so I got the keys relative late, and has continued to make notes when gaining access to new areas. This also means that most of the time, I have know exactly where I needed to go next, which puzzle I now had (most likely) the prerequisite to solve or which areas I could now gain access to.

But I’m also not being fanatic about it, e.g. when exploring the place I didn’t notice the tools, so when I did need those tools I didn’t want to randomly walk around the whole school until I stumbled upon them, and used the hint system instead.

But I agree if you don’t want to use the hint system even when stuck (as to where to go next), then it can become bothersome, but I don’t think a fast travel option would actually help, as the problem is you don’t know where to go!

     

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diego - 20 July 2013 01:34 PM


Well, I REALLY need them to fix the pendant! Oh, well.

This is actually one of the things the does bother me a bit, that there are some things we can only pick up or do AFTER Lydia realizes she needs it, even though WE know we need it. I did quite a bit of running between place A and B, myself, because I was trying to do something at B, but Lydia wouldn’t do before I had clicked on a more or less random item at place A, making her realize she needed the item at B.

But at least it does give us a reason for not doing it, in this case that she doesn’t want to “take” what is not hers (In my case that it was too heavy). This flaw is also very common in AG, and is much more common in some other games.

     

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This game started off very interestingly but now I’m starting to get bored. Do you ever get to leave the academy and you know…meet actual people? Or do you just keep wondering through the same empty halls over and over again?

Btw: I do really like your commentary. That comic book guy reference right at the start had me in stitches

     
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Iznogood - 21 July 2013 02:36 PM

Just to clarify one thing, I do try to use the hints as little as possible, as I assume you also do?

Yes, because I took the long tempo with this one. The reason is, just like you said, that puzzles are one of the game’s strongest sides so I’ll resort to hints only when I’m really stuck.

Iznogood - 21 July 2013 02:36 PM

But I agree if you don’t want to use the hint system even when stuck (as to where to go next), then it can become bothersome, but I don’t think a fast travel option would actually help, as the problem is you don’t know where to go!

I agree the part of the “problem” is that you don’t know where you should go, but if you think about it - that’s part of the game’s “charm”, the mystery right from the beginning. However, game does hint at occasions what you should be doing, and with fast-travel option you could explore it faster, even with some back and forth and trial & error. My point is that in order NOT TO use hints as where you should go next you need to really arm yourself with patience.

gray pierce - 21 July 2013 04:28 PM

This game started off very interestingly but now I’m starting to get bored. Do you ever get to leave the academy and you know…meet actual people? Or do you just keep wondering through the same empty halls over and over again?

I’ve never reached the second portion of the game, but I know it so I’ll tell you without spoiling it much: you don’t actually leave the Academy, but there’s a significant setting change.

     

Recently finished: Four Last Things 4/5, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout 5/5, Chains of Satinav 3,95/5, A Vampyre Story 88, Sam Peters 3/5, Broken Sword 1 4,5/5, Broken Sword 2 4,3/5, Broken Sword 3 85, Broken Sword 5 81, Gray Matter 4/5\nCurrently playing: Broken Sword 4, Keepsake (Let\‘s Play), Callahan\‘s Crosstime Saloon (post-Community Playthrough)\nLooking forward to: A Playwright’s Tale

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Diego—good Monkey Island reference! And I enjoyed your hand drawn notes.

The first time I played this game, I solved the machine room puzzle on my own. This time I didn’t have the patience—partly because I remember how long it took me the first time. (I remembered the pain, but forgot the solution.)  Foot in mouth

The puzzles in this game often have at least one twist to the logic that’s unexpected (sometimes more than one twist). I find that, for me, it’s almost better to try to solve a puzzle, leave it for awhile, and then return to try again. Time in-between seems to bring a fresh perspective. Or maybe that’s just another way of being patient.

I’ve passed two of the trials and Lydia is now doing magical things in the garden, which are definitely worth watching.

I’ve decided that Mustavio is a caricature, not just because of his accent, but because of the music that plays whenever Lydia talks to him. The man is doomed to have a comical-medieval tune strike up wherever he goes.

It’s different on this playthrough, watching the interactions between Lydia and Zak and knowing what’s happened in the past. I am struck by Lydia’s patience with her companion, as I suspect she’s catching on a lot faster than I did.

I return to the views from the top of the Academy even when I know I don’t need to be there. Just breathtaking.

     
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Becky - 24 July 2013 12:20 PM

I remembered the pain, but forgot the solution.

Grin Thumbs Up  I don’t blame you, like I said - I’ve found it to be pretty hard, which is unusual for what is, relatively, beginning of a game. But definitely a great and rewarding puzzle.

Becky - 24 July 2013 12:20 PM

Time in-between seems to bring a fresh perspective. Or maybe that’s just another way of being patient.

Yeap, but for example, with the caretaker’s room puzzle - for the life of me, I couldn’t have remembered to [spoiler]inspect the key closely. Actually, I did look at the key in the inventory earlier, but when I needed to solve the puzzle I totally forgot about it, and was sidetracked by the letters on the desk -“mbfx”, and tried to connect the letters to the numbers in the puzzle somehow [/spoiler]

Becky - 24 July 2013 12:20 PM

I’ve decided that Mustavio is a caricature, not just because of his accent, but because of the music that plays whenever Lydia talks to him. The man is doomed to have a comical-medieval tune strike up wherever he goes.

Pretty much. Grin But I can’t believe he won’t let me have the figurines, even now when the school is empty. Angry Tongue Somehow, I suspect he knows more than he pretends. Smile

     

Recently finished: Four Last Things 4/5, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout 5/5, Chains of Satinav 3,95/5, A Vampyre Story 88, Sam Peters 3/5, Broken Sword 1 4,5/5, Broken Sword 2 4,3/5, Broken Sword 3 85, Broken Sword 5 81, Gray Matter 4/5\nCurrently playing: Broken Sword 4, Keepsake (Let\‘s Play), Callahan\‘s Crosstime Saloon (post-Community Playthrough)\nLooking forward to: A Playwright’s Tale

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diego - 25 July 2013 04:16 PM

Yeap, but for example, with the caretaker’s room puzzle - for the life of me, I couldn’t have remembered to [spoiler]inspect the key closely. Actually, I did look at the key in the inventory earlier, but when I needed to solve the puzzle I totally forgot about it, and was sidetracked by the letters on the desk -“mbfx”, and tried to connect the letters to the numbers in the puzzle somehow [/spoiler]

He he - when seeing the the letters mbfx I immediately remembered where I had seen a puzzle that required letters, and went there as soon as I was done in the caretakers room. And I also immediately saw the connection between the numbers on the key and the safe, so I solved that pretty fast.

diego - 25 July 2013 04:16 PM

Pretty much. Grin But I can’t believe he won’t let me have the figurines, even now when the school is empty. Angry Tongue Somehow, I suspect he knows more than he pretends. Smile

I doubt that very much, though I might have to eat my words later, but for now there is nothing to indicate he knows anything. And he will give you the figurines as soon as you find his wine: the mbfx puzzle

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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