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Adventure Game Scene of the Day - Wednesday 7 October

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Don’t you just love when a game allows you to control and manipulate the weather, especially when it is not just a gimmick, but something that you need to do because it is part of a puzzle?

Well, if you do then you will love the solarium puzzle in Keepsake, as this is exactly what you have to do here, and not only do you need to change the seasons, you need to do it several times, and that is just part of the whole puzzle.

I had some trouble deciding on which puzzle from this great game I should feature in this weeks Midweek Puzzle, as the whole game is an absolute treat for a puzzle lover like myself, and is packed from start to finish with wonderful brain-teasers. It is not just one of the most difficult games I have ever played, it also features perhaps the most difficult puzzle I have ever solved, or rather not solved, in the form of the observatory puzzle Shifty Eyed

Not a puzzle lover or afraid that you will get hopelessly stuck?
Fear not, the game also have the best hint system that I have ever seen!
Use the 1st level hint and it will give you a slight nudge in the right direction and/or explain the rules of a logical puzzle, 2nd level and it will nudge you a bit more, 3rd and it might show you part of the solution, 4th level and it will solve it for you.
Not stuck at a particular puzzle but you simply don’t know where to go next or how to proceed? Press the hint button and it will guide you towards a puzzle that you have the prerequisites to solve, or towards an item that you need.

The great thing about this hint system is that it allows you to play the game at the difficulty and the way that you want to play it.
Looking for a challenge and don’t mind being stuck for hours or days, then you can simply choose not to use the hint system.
Like puzzles and brain-teaser but don’t like getting stuck, then you can solves as much as you can on your own, and use the hint system whenever you do get stuck.
Like the puzzles and don’t mind being stuck, but hate all the running around, then you can use the hints to guide you to the right places, but solve the actual puzzle on your own.
Don’t like puzzles and are only interested in the story, well this is probably not the best game for you then, but it would still be possible to complete the game without actually solving a single puzzle on your own.

     

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

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I loved Keepsake - lots of proper puzzles and so beautiful to look at! I did have a few reservations though-

What you say about using the hints to find the next puzzle and thus avoid the running around is a good idea as far as it goes - but a couple of the puzzles have rather a lot of running around in the solving! There are some ‘control panel’ type puzzles where the control panel is some distance from the thing it affects, so you have to keep going back and forth. That spoiled the fun for me a bit - however pretty the scenery is, I get bored if I have to traverse the same few screens too many times. Still less annoying than Syberia though Smile

One puzzle was broken! There’s a room with riddles written on plaques, and you have to identify the answers to the riddles to match each plaque. But the dialogue didn’t match up - so if you matched each plaque to the answer for the riddle she read out from it, it would be wrong! The riddles are also visible as cryptograms written on the plaques, and those are in the right place - that’s the only way I managed to solve the puzzle. I don’t know anyone else who got there without a walkthrough…

But as I said, overall this is a lovely game. It plays fair apart from the one broken puzzle, and it’s absolutely gorgeous.

     
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Phlebas - 08 October 2015 05:55 AM

The riddles are also visible as cryptograms written on the plaques, and those are in the right place - that’s the only way I managed to solve the puzzle. I don’t know anyone else who got there without a walkthrough…

So maybe the riddles were red herrings and you were supposed to solve the cryptograms in the first place?

Not sure if I’m understanding you correctly.




Also: hi, diego! How’s the “Let’s Play” coming along? Grin

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

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I’m pretty sure that’s not it, Timo. There’s a puzzle near the start of the game where you have to enable Lydia to read ‘magic writing’, as I recall - you see inscriptions written in these symbols a number of times after that, and you can always get Lydia to read them for you. The fact that what you see on screen approximates the text as a cryptogram is pretty much incidental (and sometimes you have to squint to read them), I’m just a little compulsive about such things Smile

The text in the cryptograms on screen is pretty similar to what she ‘reads’ from them in this puzzle, they’re just out of sync - the dialogue triggers presumably got swapped around and it wasn’t caught in testing.

It’s possible it was fixed in a later release of the game, of course - and my final impression was that it was a lovely game with some broken bits, rather than a broken mess with some good points.

     
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The game does involve a bit of running, in fact the puzzle I posted is probably the one that requires most running, as the two screenshots are located quite a bit from each other, and you need to change the weather at least twice.

@Phlebas is the broken puzzle the second trial to gain access to the upper level?

I can’t remember having similar problems with it myself, but it has been awhile since I played the game so I could have forgotten it. Or it might be that I never noticed that two of the descriptions was swapped, simply because I solved it partly by trail & error anyway, or that it was fixed in my version of the game.

     

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

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Looking at a walkthrough I think you’re right - it’s the second examination, the test of wisdom. It was disappointing because in general the game is scrupulously fair and puzzly - too often if a game is story-driven and pretty, especially if it’s third-person, it ends up seeming like the designers intended it to be played with a walkthrough rather than actually solving the puzzles. Do you know of any others in the style of Keepsake?

That reminds me: If you enjoyed controlling the weather in Keepsake, Mind:Path To Thalamus features some rather gorgeous manipulation of weather/seasons. It’s first-person with some action/platform elements, so not pure adventure - but definitely a puzzle adventure at heart, and some of the environments are beautiful. It’s currently available for a bargain price as part of an Indiegala bundle:
https://www.indiegala.com/midweek
(I can’t vouch for anything else in the bundle, but that’s a bargain for the one game!)

     
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Speaking of weather manipulation, there are also puzzles of that sort in Starship Titanic.

     

Carpe chocolate.

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Phlebas - 09 October 2015 04:40 AM

Do you know of any others in the style of Keepsake?

Not really.
The games is kind of unique in the way it works, especially if you look at the hint system.

I was kind of reminded of the good old 7th Guest game when I played this, but that is 1st person. Another game that also comes to mind is Memento Mori 2, which is also a very puzzle heavy 3rd person game with a high difficulty, but that is a more normal 3rd person game in all other aspects. I actually featured MM2 in my very first Midweek Puzzle here on the forum.

Phlebas - 09 October 2015 04:40 AM

That reminds me: If you enjoyed controlling the weather in Keepsake, Mind:Path To Thalamus features some rather gorgeous manipulation of weather/seasons ... It’s currently available for a bargain price as part of an Indiegala bundle:r the one game!)

Lady Kestrel - 09 October 2015 11:36 AM

Speaking of weather manipulation, there are also puzzles of that sort in Starship Titanic.

Thanks, Mind:Path To Thalamus sound like a game I should give a try, and I have also never played Starship Titanic.

     

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

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Lady Kestrel - 09 October 2015 11:36 AM

Speaking of weather manipulation, there are also puzzles of that sort in Starship Titanic.

Oknytt also has a bunch of weather manipulated puzzles.

     
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TimovieMan - 08 October 2015 06:43 AM

Also: hi, diego! How’s the “Let’s Play” coming along? Grin

I didn’t want to read this thread Grin but now I just caught a glimpse of it - all I can say is, that I have something in store. Wink The biggest problem to me was, that the imageshack ate all the pics (and I just didn’t want to continue with the game until all previous screenshots are in place) , and it proved to be harder than I thought to capture and upload them again, but I think I found a solution.

     

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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