Lost in Time - I Went to the Villa by the Horse With No Name

By Michael

It seems appropriate that I’m starting this playthrough session just after the Fourth of July, as I’m working to gain independence from this ship for Yoruba and myself.

Wait, we’re traveling through time and space, not outer space. Wrong Independence Day.

For those of you who aren’t American, you can play along by having a barbecued hamburger, some potato salad, a cold, frosty can of lager, and wait until dark to disturb the sleep of all the cute, adorable puppies out there.

To recap the story so far: I’ve awoken, somewhat dazed, in what appears to be the cargo hold of a ship. It is likely we are in the past, which is odd, since the last time I remember, it was 1992. After exploring around, I’ve found a slave named Yoruba being held down here with me, who, in telling of his story, prods at some memories I still have. We are both down here because of a man named Jarlath de la Pruneliere, who, although she doesn’t mention it, shares the same last name as her (with an altered spelling, the final ‘e’ was removed over time). Yoruba has managed to find himself a knife, and even though he has a family legacy to protect a treasure that’s also likely in the hold of this ship, he plans to instead use the knife to commit suicide. I convince him to let me use the knife first, as I try to figure things out.This seems like a good time to pause, and show up a feature of the game. Remember, there’s a few icons that appear if I move the mouse to the top of the screen. One of them is for the notebook. Choosing the notebook first brings up your thoughts, which get updated from time to time. You’ll know when this happens, because the icon will appear at the top of the screen and briefly pulsate.

I guess I haven’t had time to update my diary yet

There are no new entries, but there’s a new tab. Look at the “1” at the right of the book, hovering over it with the mouse, it says “Dialogue”. I’ll click that.

He ordered extra prints of that photo, to share with his classmates

If I click on the picture or the caption below, I get a replay of the conversation we had, screen by screen. I won’t rehash it here, look at the 15 or so pictures towards the end of my last post if you need a refresher. Certainly convenient, for the average gamer who didn't take 75 screenshots during that last session.

Back from that digression -- I have a new inventory item, the knife. It’s not going to open the treasure chest (as before, I’m told that the lock can wait until later), so I’ll try it on another puzzle that’s eluded me so far.

I return to the post that is near an escape hatch in the ceiling. I’ve been given the hint by the game that it is too smooth for me to climb, so I tried some things to make it less smooth, such as pouring acid on it, or using the nail and corkscrew on it to scratch it. None of that works. But, perhaps the knife.

I guess it’s a carving knife

I proceed to carve a step in the post. Based on the picture, the step might be a little small for even my pet cat’s paws to use, but we will suspend logic and disbelief for a second.

Perhaps I need to bring my pet cat aboard, it sounds like they have a mouse problem.

After climbing the step, I arrive on the next floor. Immediately, I see a door, and hear scratching from within.

I don’t realize it immediately, but as soon as I carved the step, I discarded the knife, so I won’t be returning it to Yoruba. I wonder if the game will do this often, removing items from my inventory when I’ve used them for the appropriate puzzles. We will see.

I’m somewhat of a scaredy-cat, so I’m not going to investigate the scratching yet. I’ll pussyfoot myself around the rest of this floor.

Turning to the left and right, and walking around, I can walk a few lengths down, and see stuff on the left and the right of me as I do so. I won’t overload you with screenshots of every view, just a few choice items.

You (don’t) light up my life

On one set of shelves, I find two lamps, one that’s “broken”, one that’s “not working anymore”. The game doesn’t let me interact any further.

Set up the pins, so I can bowl...

On the same wall as the lamps, and further up, there are some racks built into the wall, with pins, used for winding the rope on the ship.

...and damn, a 7-10 split!

There’s a pin missing from the rack, rather conspicuously. I’m thinking it may be a puzzle, but when I hover the mouse over the spot, I can still interact with a “pin”. A bug? Or sloppy handling of the image and hotspots? We shall see.

Checking out the racks, I’m told they are perfectly all right. (Insert another Al Lowe joke here). When I do interact with the pins, I’m told they are tight. Perhaps that’s a puzzle? Again, time will tell.

I’m having a ball so far

I come across a few cannons and some cannonballs, which Doralice sarcastically notes makes sense, because of all the cannons here. Whatever I say about this game, I’ll admit that, in ways, Doralice is my spirit animal. I am also a sarcastic S.O.B. at times.

There’s also a cannon with a big chip in it, but I can’t do anything with that right now. There’s also a barrel described as “rotten”, but also, there’s nothing to be done at this time.

In one alcove, hanging from the ceiling, is a halyard. First, I had to google the term, because it’s not one I use on a daily basis. So, that’s a rope used specifically for hanging something above a ship, such as the mast or flag. So why is it down here, and what can I do with it? Clicking on it, or trying inventory items on it doesn’t get me any further, because it’s too far out of reach. I’ll be needing a ladder or stool, perhaps, or just a longer tool. Sadly, I’ve discarded the knife previously, so that won’t help us here either.

 The real question: why would they be cooking cane sugar, if Starbucks wasn’t around yet to serve you iced coffee?

Giving up on the rope for now, I continue to explore, and come across some containers that look like large bowls or half barrels to the naked eye. It appears they are for processing cane sugar. One had raw sugar, one cooked. I find a towel at the bottom of one of them, and I will, of course, be stealing that.

There’s some boxes containing contraband goods, and a porthole that cannot be opened. Wait, how does she know the boxes contain contraband goods and stolen treasure, when she doesn’t even open them? And, how does she know we aren’t on a legitimate ship carrying cargo for a legitimate customer? All good questions to ask the slave on board?

Okay, I might have been joking about Starbucks before, but I’m seriously thinking otherwise now.

We find some sacks filled with cinnamon bark and cocoa beans, which, despite my intentions to make lattes for the crew, I cannot do anything with at this time.

Race you off the ship!

Again with the linguistic differences, when I see the word chariot, I think of a cart, pulled by horses, being driven in a race or to convey royalty. But I think the game is using it to describe a wheeled cart for moving the cannon around. Regardless, it’s of no use to me at the moment. Perhaps if I found a cow, to provide some milk. But being on a ship, a cow would just provoke me into telling humorous insults about fighting dairy farmers.

There’s a cord with a ring hanging down from the ceiling. I try to pull on it, but alas, it will not budge. Again, I have so many different inventory items I think might work. I try to yank on it with the pliers, but get reminded, as with the earlier puzzle, that a gentler approach would be needed. I look to try the oil that I used on the pump, to perhaps grease the rope or a pulley or something, but that has left my inventory after I used it as well. (And at the time, it said I was just using a couple of drops, so I’m surprised it is gone.) Water has no effect either. So, I try one last thing, before giving up on this puzzle and leaving it for another time. I use the towel on the ring.

To me, this felt like random guessing, but I understand the logic of it.

Pulling on the cord opens a cabinet in the wall next to us.

Hidden within the secret cache is a bar of soap. Like any prisoner (if I am one), I will endeavor to not drop it. And with that, I have now emptied the cache.

I need to Move Your Bottom.

There is a bottom in this cache that moves, but nothing in my inventory right now does anything. I’ll have to come back to this later.

Insert Al Lowe joke here

Again, I’m just skipping around the room now, not detailing how I’m walking. If you think of the rotations as separate rooms, this level is basically a 3x4 area, although that’s not entirely true. But I don’t want to bog down the post too much.

Also, if you’ve noticed, I’ve apparently gone into full-on adventurer mode, and forgotten the goals I had, and I’m simply just exploring, and trying to pick up anything not nailed down. I’m not sure that’s how the designers intended the game (do they ever?) but I’ve started to do it by default.

Some solid adventure game advice

At one side, I find a pair of cannonballs. I can’t take them (clicking only looks at them), and none of my inventory items react, so I’ll come back to them later.

All the world's a stage, and we are but the players

There’s a trapdoor in the floor. Well, another one. There’s the one that I came up from, but there’s another. I think it corresponds to where Yoruba is being held.

Now I’ll paraphrase Doralice’s line from before: It feels like I’ve been picking locks all morning. Unsuccessfully, though.

I can’t do anything with the rod or the lock, and amazingly, this was one of the goals I had when I entered this level -- to free the wizard slave. So, another puzzle to work on.

But I inadvertently solved another puzzle while trying to solve this. See, I first had the idea to use the soap on the lock or the rod, but that didn’t work. Then, I was thinking about something a little far-fetched, such as carving a key out of the soap. The knife is long gone, but I tried the nail. I got soap shavings for my trouble.

By now, you should understand my senses of humor, irony, and wordplay, and understand why this song is the best choice as a caption for this picture.

So, there’s another stuck sliding door, with another handle that requires some tender, loving care in order to open it. That oil from the last post would have been rather useful, but alas, Doralice felt we didn’t need it anymore. So, some soapy water would probably do the trick. But I can’t get that done either, so I just try the soap shavings on the door. It worked, but I’m still not convinced that dry, unmoistened soap would have got the job done, but I got there in the end anyways.

Hey, look, it’s an elf on the shelf!

I’ve come across another prisoner. This gentleman says he is part of the Space-Time Patrol, and pursues people who travel illegally. To me, the most incredible part of the following exchange is how readily she accepts this. Usually, the character learning about time travel is in disbelief and needs further proof to hop on board, but her first response is the equivalent of, “Officer, please don’t give me a ticket, maybe if I get you a donut...?”

(Note: We are not told his name during this entire exchange, but if you look in your diary afterwards to replay the conversation, you’ll learn his name is Melkior.)

So, the plot thickens. We enter a flashback scenario, where we will be acting out the past to answer Melkior’s question.

This transition is almost cinema-worthy

We’ve gone from the drawn by hand computer graphics of the ship's interior, to a scanned photograph of the entry gate to a mansion, blocked by the handsome white horse.

Perhaps the readers have some opinions on the drastic change in art styles? It’s something to discuss, no doubt. I’m not ready to form an opinion yet; let’s see the other locations first.

You would think the game would know the answer. It’s me that doesn’t know.

When you mouse over the horse, it’s labeled as a Handsome Stallion. But when the cursor hovers over the tractor, this somewhat sardonic description appears: “Who parked this machine here?”

Doralice cannot enter the property, because of the horse blocking the way. So that seems to be the immediate puzzle. Looking at the horse, we are treated to a very interesting cinematic choice on the designers -- we see the horse (and all interactions with it) from the inside of the gate, looking at the horse, and, effectively, in the direction of Doralice. Obviously, she’s just standing outside the view of the camera for this shot.

Clicking on the horse multiple times brings up different statements, such as “With Jolly Jumper in the way, I can’t get close!” and “Are you wild or time, my friend?”. Nothing I do has an effect, and it seems I have no inventory, so let’s look around.

There is so much horsepower all over this screen

The next obvious stop is the tractor. This brings up some of the discussion in the comments of the introduction post, the mixing of hand drawn pixelized art, with the scanned photography of the tractor. Very obviously, we’re going to need to interact with that blue thing in the picture.

I’m positive that not finding and using this item would be a terminal mistake

We are treated to a short video insert of our heroine reaching into the tractor, to a different area than the blue thing was, and extracting the blue battery. Well, we have a new inventory item, so let’s see if it could be used to solve our problem...

The ASPCA will not be boycotting our blog after all

So, back to the tractor. Now, some blind pixel hunting, at least to me. Inside the tractor, I find a glove box of sorts. Inside, a treasure.

Close, but no cigar.

And although the game didn’t give me any hint that more items were in there, by blind clicking the box again, I found another item.

Perhaps this is a language barrier issue again, but... now I can see the actual size of the pipe from earlier in the game. And that’s big enough to hold water? It looks the size of a dipstick to check the oil.

But I don’t think either of these will help me with this puzzle. An empty cigarette package, I don’t think the horse smokes anyways, and the pipe has no effect. Again, I’m not being cruel to the animal.

On top of the tractor, barely visible even on my modern 30” monitor, is a wicker basket containing an apple. And, oddly enough, as soon as I take the apple from the basket, the basket disappears. Guess I don’t need to search there anymore.

An apple is an appropriate treat for a horse. I’m rather confident in solving this puzzle now.

I’ve not poisoned it, my dear. I’m just a simple apple seller.

The horse steps away, leaving us with an unguarded gate. A close-up provides us with more information.

Who exactly keeps a dartboard on the outside of their entrance gate?

There is a dartboard mounted to the entrance gate, with a note attached by a dart. When you click on it, Doralice reads the note aloud, but as I soon discovered, it also now appears in your diary, just like those conversations.

And checking out the gate, we have to deal with the lock.

For most people, the first problem is the mortgage payments, not a squatter.

I looked in my inventory for something useful. This brings up another “feature” discussed in the comments of the last blog post -- nested inventory items. Mousing over the cigarette pack shows two more things, a matchbox and some foil. This is handled somewhat awkwardly, until you’re used to it. If you click on the cigarette pack, the nested items disappear from view. Much like a pull-down menu on a computer, you have to keep the mouse hovering over the pack, and then glide it directly to the inset item you want to select.

None of the inventory items are useful on the lock. And there is no direction for me to leave the screen, and unless I missed something, no more pixels to interact with. So, time for item manipulation. I had no ideas -- Again, this may be a cultural or time difference here. See, as an average lazy American, the only time I ever interface with a car battery is to jump start it. I’ve never cracked open the casing to remove the acid from within. But if you use the pipe on the battery, our ego will do just that.

Battery acid sounds like a great way to melt a lock. Let’s do it.

I’m not sure I understand this pun.

Or, perhaps, you could just say, “GET OFF MY PROPERTY!” Just saying.

And we’ve entered the property. And now, it's time to take a break. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

Session Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 55 minutes

Inventory: Dart, small pipe, empty battery, and the cigarette carton, containing foil and a matchbox.
Game Completed: 13%

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!