Hugo III - Won! (with a little cheat)

By Deimar

Hugo Journal Entry #2 "I just had a most strange dream. Penelope and I fell off our plane and she was bitten by a spider. I got to explore a jungle with elephants, piranhas, evil spirits, witch doctors… The dream ended with me looking at a mysterious crystal ball where I saw myself getting into the plane. Isn’t it strange?. Penelope doesn’t find it that fascinating. She has spent the last hour or so just complaining about me losing our direction. What a girl! She just doesn’t seem to understand how incredible my dream was. And now she just won’t stop screaming. And only because our plane is falling into a jungle. I really hope she appreciates the irony. In any case, I think it is time to stop writing and brace for impact... ”

Back to square one, but with a lot more knowledge. So once again Penelope gets bitten and once again we are set to save her. And once again I go to plane screen, only this time I type “get in plane” and voilá. A nice close-up and everything I need to solve this game is shown. Including: Some clay (why are Hugo and Penelope carrying some clay in the plane and why wouldn’t Hugo be able to take some from the jungle is a mystery we may never solve); a sandwich; some bouillon cubes; some pins and a water flask. These guys do travel light.

At least the close-up is pretty. Not pretty enough to save this “look into plane won’t work” issue, but it is something

To be honest, it seems kind of cheap that there are that many items hidden here. Considering the ones you can get in the jungle don’t serve a purpose, at the moment, in solving any of the puzzles available, I think they could have been spread across the multiple screens. In any case, after looking at the new inventory items, the description of the cubes suggest they can be used for seasoning food. And the girl in the village told us about wanting something to spice up their food. We have a clear runner up for the most straightforward puzzle of this year!

The natives were so impressed with the cubes that they gave me one of their blowpipes with sleeping darts. When I first saw them playing with the blowpipes I thought that would be the solution to escape the witch doctor’s house. But the description you get when they give you the darts is that you can put an elephant to sleep. So I had to try. And I succeeded. The elephant fell asleep but there was nothing I could do with it. I went on to try my theory with the witch doctor to no avail either. So I was at the same point as I was before restarting the game, only with more items. But I had to have the solution with me, as there wasn’t really any other puzzle I feel I could solve. And when I took a closer look at my inventory, it just hit me. I have played Monkey Island enough to know what you can do with some pins. I was missing a voodoo doll however, but the clay seemed like a good option to solve it. Although “mold clay” didn’t work, make doll did. And so the once mighty fell, not with a bang but with a lot of pain, as if several pins were introduced into your body.

With the witch doctor rolling in pain in the floor, I could simply open the door of the jail and get out. This allowed me to take the candle and play mouse trap. You see, the description of the sandwich makes a point indicating it contains cheese. And there is a mouse you can interact with. And a small jail. I put the sandwich in the jail and waited for the mouse to get into it. But the little bugger was not collaborating. I noticed there are two mouse holes in the room and the mouse was peeking from the one farthest from me. So I just went to that side of the room and the mouse fell into the cage.

I am not going to imply anything, but I feel like this one could also have been inspired by a certain pirate adventure saga

Somehow I think I was in sync with the game at that point because after getting the mouse I immediately thought of the elephant. I think it is more cartoonish than anything based on real life, but I have always learnt from cartoons that elephants are afraid of mice. Sadly, my elephant was in a deep slumber and I wasn’t able to wake it up, although I was able to drop the cage and set the mouse free, which made me think I was on the right track. I restored to a previous save before putting the elephant to sleep and did everything again.

The following part is a bit tricky, although I liked it a lot. If you set the mouse free in front of the elephant, it gets scared and runs out of the screen in the direction of the stream full of piranhas. Then the game tells you that while he passed through the river it blocked the flow of water. The thing is you don’t have time to shoot the elephant while it runs scared. You have to shoot it before, then release the mouse just after shooting it and the elephant will fall asleep just in the middle of the stream, blocking the water flow and unblocking the path across the waterfall below.

I didn’t think this day would come, but I have to praise a puzzle in a Hugo game. It is mostly logical, involve a timing element that you have to discover and there are enough clues to keep you in the right direction

With the waterfall dry, a small path is uncovered. It leads directly to a garden full of gigantic plants with a pond of rejuvenating water. Well, that was easy, except for the plane part. Just a bit of water into the water flask and it’s time to roll up this game and save Penelope. Except there is no clear way to get back to her. The only roadblock I could identify was banishing the ghost, but it still told me that I was lacking some of the three items needed.

Forget Penelope, we could get rich!! Rich with this water!!

So I started going around looking for something I could have missed, using the items I had on everything on sight. I consulted the crystal ball and it only told me that I had to meet the old man, that he was waiting for me. The old man is the guy who made the ridiculous questions in the first game, and the one Penelope knock out in the second one. But that didn’t tell how to reach him. I realized that the only two items I hadn’t used where the golden bell and the golden candle. I started to think I needed a third golden item (and even googled it to find why would three golden items would be needed to banish an evil spirit) and went screen by screen typing get gold. Absolutely no success. It is at this point that I decided to check a walkthrough. PLEASEDONTTHROWANYTHINGATMEANDLETMEEXPLAIN!! Right now, I am under certain time constraints and I have a time limit to finish reviewing this game. More concretely, I have to finish before the 18th because I will be unavailable for three weeks after that date. So I decided to check the walkthrough instead of making a request for assistance. My apologies, but time is of the essence.

In any case, the solution to this particular puzzle is finding a spell book that just appears if you get next to the upper right shore in the piranha stream screen. Yes, you heard it correctly. You have to casually walk into a small corner and the book will appear. Are there any clues the book may be there before it appears? No. Is there any reason to go there? Absolutely not. What is a spell book doing in the shore of an amazonian jungle? I don’t know and I am sure even David Gray is not inclined to provide answers to this question. Let’s go with the default then: A wizard did it.

This is really scary, even more than the ghost, the piranhas and the cannibal witch doctor all together.

The book is actually the third item needed to banish the evil spirit, granting access to the old man. Let’s be clear, I think it would probably have been preferable not to have this close up. It is quite… curious. In any case, the man feels a little guilty for the tribulations he imposed upon Hugo in previous games (I guess getting knockout does not count) and therefore he proposes a game, where he will try to guess what Hugo is holding in his hand. The first two guesses are an obvious no, but for the third one he guesses a flask of magic water. And just by answering Yes you are left at the right side of the chasm we crossed at the beginning of the game, just next to the screen where Penelope lies. I gave her the water and that’s it. The end for real. We will miss you and your pixelated graphics, Hugo. Farewell, you magnificent couple!

Ride into the sunset, Hugo and Penelope! Good riddance! By the way, I like the way you fixed your plane in the middle of the jungle!

Session Time: 1 hours 16 minutes
Total Time: 2 hours 49 minutes