Kronolog - No Time to Cry

Written by Morpheus Kitami

By observations of what's noticeable in a scene it is the most visible...but then again, it is supposed to be...

As nobody else really felt like looking up a walkthrough to give hints, it fell upon Ilmari to once again look up the walkthrough, giving me the clue that I should check the electrical box. On the left, with the obvious markings. The game says its suspicious, but when I use it, tells me off. 100,000 amps feels good any day, which caused me to put it under the "flavor" part of the game's environments.

If only I had a pair of wire cutters...

What I didn't spot was that I was supposed to look at it, up close. I can open it up easily, revealing the circuit breaker for this floor. I guess the 100,000 amps was a red herring. I'm not sure what I can do here. Ilmari also mentioned that you should press the dot on the exclamation mark, which isn't a hotspot. This reveals...

This game is actually weird about having so many foreground objects in it.

A secret passage into Proconsul Zimmer's backroom. We've got a lot of fine art here. A clock of indeterminate era, a painting of Reinhardt Schmidt in full Nazi regalia, an American colonial chest of drawers, Louis XV chairs, an empty candy dish and some other small pieces, like a woman who is presumably Zimmer's sister, she looks just like him, only her mustache is darker.

Anyway, here's an empty case.

Don't be fooled by the number of drawers in this cabinet, only one opens, and it just has a funny looking cross. By the way it's described, I have to open it at some point or another, since even the game describes it as odd-looking. Can't do it now though. Let's see what's on the other side of the screen.

A smart person's joke would be to say that the only cross I should have here is one that's upside down.

I can't do anything with the map, apparently it's a monitor screen, but that desk is promising. It takes a moment to figure out, because the game doesn't just let me examine it, I need to use the chair, which apparently Zimmer got when he broke his coccyx.

This was so long ago that I don't even remember who that's supposed to be.

The drawers aren't usable then, instead I can look through the top. I'm sure pressing the wrong button here will cause a game over. More news on Philip's termination order, Latimore, is firmly on Zimmer's side, wanting to use the device to bring Schmidt back into the present just for a party. There's also a photo, which I didn't realize I could take, putting me to the item limit. A vidicom message, which I discover by using the buttons on the right, tells me that Latimore tried to get Philip to help them on the time travel project, but of course he threw his lot in with the Lakonas.
On the bust, the buttons activate a light and the door out, respectively, the intercom has door, which causes Zimmer's Secretary to kill me, but with a moment beforehand, meaning I need to use it somehow, a vidicom, with the aforementioned message. And then a map.

I can't wait until the Nazis conquer space, then we can see what they call the Cygni government!

It's not clear at first, but you can interact with the flashing icons, which tell you things are going south for the greater German Reich. Their sabotage against their Canadian allies for using rice is going poorly thanks to the Japanese introducing their bacteria resistant rice. Grossman, it turns out, is taking advantage of Hoffmann's work to make toxic waste eating cockroaches, which, befitting his name, will be an alternative food source.
At this point, I run out of stuff I can reasonably do. I can't do anything with the cross or the photo, and there's seemingly nothing else I can interact with. So I ask for help again. Anonymous (Then Ilmari) tells me I missed something in the background. I kind of figured that but I didn't really want to explore the background. Sigh...

As my compatriot would say, what a relief.

Okay, this one's on me, I should have tried that medallion under the light earlier. This one I should have been able to spot. Pushing it, of course, opens the wall.

Guess who bought a book about statues?

Okay, I see how this works. This leads back to the Salokrys, but behind the lasers. No fiddling with a transparent tube required. Don't tell me I'm overthinking that one? To the left we have the Venus of the Rhine, on the right is a Greek statue that the Proconsul had gold plated. I'm not sure if this is a reference to how all the Greek and Roman statues we have are actually copies of metal ones, which were melted down for their metal. What I actually do here is just press the button, then, and I kid you not, look at the doorknob, turn the lock on the door, and then get out of it and use the door.

Inside, I just look at the Salokrys and use it, then use the fake diamond...or was it the real diamond? Kidding. As I try to look away, suddenly a hourglass pops up. Uh-oh. Minutes pass...it seems the game crashed. I do it over again, nothing happens, so I leave. Uh...guess I should go into the cyropod now? Yeah, that works, I'm on my way to New Mexico now.

I mean, I guess there's not much you can do with an underground bunker...

Ah, scenic New Mexico. This is of course, Grossman's Los Alamos lab, which I quickly find out by clicking the 14* thing on the bottom, and that book on the table. Which has the phone numbers of all of Grossman's German cabinet conquests, because the ladies love men who eat cockroaches. The big thing there is a grinder, which destroys items. Thanks, I needed that, I didn't have a throw away option. (I do) A cola can, an ancient lithium battery, and a solder remover. Those all sound far more useful than items I have now, it's a shame I now have to figure out what to throw away.

I guess I'll throw away the CDs and take the latter two items. Oh, I can't take the solder remover because I'm not cleared. Or the can, because nobody cares about recycling. Finishing up this room, we have many chemicals in the bag, none of which I can take, including Red no. 5, which I thought was a reference to Amaranth, a food dye banned in real life for being a carcinogen, but that was no 2. Searching for Red no. 5 tells me nothing, with me getting the answer that maybe it's made from bugs. Which would be a hilarious reference if intentional. I doubt I'll know unless food dyes is one of our readers hobbies or I suddenly get an urge to read about the development of food dyes. Oh, and there are power outlets everywhere, because the developers love hidden objects.

"You're living in a time machine!"

What's this? Seriously, what is this? Oh, I can enter. It's the time travel device, and unfortunately for me, I'm missing one of the diamonds...and there's also a padlock on it. Guess I'll have to go to through the door now.

I caught this screenshot when Hoffmann was walking...I mean getting funky.

And here we have Grossman's desk. Everything on it seems to be flavor. The door to the left leads to Hoffmann's death, but he seems to be okay so long as he stays in here. Despite soldiers constantly walking past those glass bricks*. In the foreground we have a bizarre coffee setup, the only thing I can take is a glass pipette. Finally found that. If I get close to the roach nest in the corner, which seems to be killing the game's framerate, I can see there's a playing card in there. The game tells me that it's a laser field. I must admit, this wasn't the use I was expecting, but let's take this glass pipe to the grinder.

*Also, I want to point out that characters as the characters go past the glass, if you're in the farthest away line, I.E., next to them, they'll be bigger than you, which encapsulates this game's graphic design

It's half a playing card that says hELZ, which I can't pick up. I imagine it's for a password, but I haven't seen anything that needed one. Now I'll just put that in the obvious place...

...And if you've been paying attention, that hasn't showed up yet, because whatever else I haven't done is incredibly opaque. Since I've been fooled twice by my inability to scan the background for answers last time, we'll see about it again. On this screen there's a vent, which I can't do anything with, and in all three rooms are light bulbs, none of which I can interact with. But the game is happy to tell me that I've burned my hand, because nothing makes you enjoy an obtuse game more than an obtuse game mocking you for trying to figure it out.

After checking the chemicals, it's all one big hotspot, I realize this isn't the answer. I'm shocked. There's no secret important object in the background, no fancy wall accent I missed. Just gray walls and objects on them. So that should mean I can solve whatever puzzle is going on here...once I figure out where there's a puzzle.

Eventually, I uncover the answer by luck. I just interacted with the chair in Grossman's office, which caused Hoffmann to climb up, allowing me to reach the vent, which I can open. At this point the game fails hard in telling the player what to do, simply stating that I opened the vent for some reason. Well, game, you didn't let me do this for no reason. There's no indication of that so far. Maybe this is what the Spelunker's Helmet is for, no nothing. Maybe that's what the battery is for, guess I need to check what the manual was saying when they talked about combining items.

To combine items, you need to use the use function in the inventory screen on one item, then not quitting the inventory, because that removes the item from your hand, use the other item. This gives me a working helmet...which doesn't actually do anything. Oh, I have to click walk on the vent, despite using that anywhere else while here causing me to get down from the desk.

This is really what the game needed. I hope this is the maze I was warned about and not the first of two mazes. I was going to bruteforce it by going left until I found something interesting, but it turns out the things that are interesting are the vents below the player, and most are instant death. Well, it's this sort of thing that causes me to put this crap off because what I need to do after a tough month is play a rousing game of find the pixel. But this game doesn't have much sound, so I can fire up the latest Blitzkrieg album and get cracking. (I was going to make a joke about how it would be more appropriate to play KISS - Dynasty, but that joke is going over everyone's heads)

I made this in Gridmonger BTW.

Key:

• Skulls, death, I want to point out you wait about 10 seconds after every death, and I died more times than there are skulls here.

• Lightning Bolt, Grossman's Lab

• Black Bar with Lines, if you enter this tile from either direction, you're met with a fan and can't get through, just here because I'm using a dungeon crawler mapping tool.

• Person, the other place you actually have to get to.

It's tedious, everything's samey, and if you click twice before the animation finishes you advance a place. There is no way you can survive this without making a map, but with a map it's just tedium. Now, the game actually does give you something to make clear when you should drop down...it's just that I didn't realize that it was the device I got from Philip. It's not very helpful except when you're directly on the locale, because it only tells you when you're getting closer or farther away.

This leads to Dr. Serena Morrissey. She, unlike the others, is a resistance member, who Hoffmann knows, because he calls her Agent Luminaria. She wants confirmation, and Philip left a message on the device. I then have to give her the device, which involves getting very close under a time limit. The message is just Phillip telling Serena to take Hoffmann out to the Lakona Pueblo, where I need to meet the shaman No-Kah-Wat. She is to give me a pottery shard and a poem. I have to talk to her afterwards, in which she mentions that she hasn't seen him for some time, and to change into something less suspicious from the closet.
The poem, which I can examine in my inventory, goes like this:

You're not the first, but you are the last.
You will be the future as you are the past.
In divided states truth will be seen.
The first is second to my sweet queen.
Merged in order to make them eight.
They forge the key to Kronon's Gate.

Oh, good, another puzzle. Anyway, using the closet advances the scene, where a thunderstorm is going on as we travel to Lakona Pueblo. It's a mesa.

Mein Gott in Himmel, graphic design!

Hey, they changed graphics artists. This guy injected some life into his designs, though perhaps this is because this is the first time they could. Looks like another screen that drags the framerate down to zero. If I didn't mention it before, every time an animation happens, Hoffmann stops dead to wait for it to finish. Also, check out that pottery shard in the foreground, that's right, it's a reassemble the item puzzle. Well, if I ever play those Puzz-3D games when the time comes, I'll need to get used to this sort of thing. There's also some rope, which I get before going down the hole.

I'm in someone's house, or some sort of ceremonial place, and Hoffmann teleported before I got control. There's another pottery shard, a basket I can't interact with because the perspective in this room doesn't work with how Hoffmann moves, kachina dolls, which the game only refers to as kachina, a pouch on the ceiling I can't use and a bowl I can't touch and a bucket. Which I can use with the rope to get water, but when I try to get the water, the game drops it all into the well. Reloading. Apparently this is a puzzle, because I can't go anywhere else.

What I'm supposed to do is take the end of the rope. (GEE THANKS) Use that on the rings above...which still isn't good enough. Now I have to thread it through another ring on the right. This locks me to the back row and I STILL have an end of the rope to deal with. After a few moments going back and forth, I notice the niche I took a shard out of is useable. Purely randomly, I use the combined pot in the niche.

It turns into a snake, and doesn't kill me. (Surprisingly) It moves onto the ground and turns into another ring. Which is almost enough, I just needed to use a bungie cord on the end of the rope and the ring. Perfectly logical. What happens next? Do I use the water to put out the fire or grab that pouch above me? No, I push the water off and then grab the ring to open a trap door.

This must be the shaman I was told to meet, and Philip's girlfriend, Luisa and also the shaman's granddaughter. I can't talk to the girl, but I can talk to No-Kah-Wat, who says he was expecting me. "It is good to see the great bond of strength between father and son." He then says I'll need this strength, and then shows me a story of the past.

So, it's basically all this Livingston's fault. Cool, cool. Hoffmann mentions he has the crystal, and the shaman gave the other to Philip. He then gives Hoffmann his spirit stick for protection. Hoffmann asks if this is Luisa, and No-Kah-Wat says he put her in suspended animation to protect her, he needs an important item to awaken her. At first I think I've missed it, but it's the photograph.

This gets me a short cutscene in which Luisa says that in this world she's Philip's wife and carrying his son before telling us to fix time and meet them in the other world. I get a rosette. (I suspect the puzzle is set up this way so the game is sure I can carry it) And then I get sent to Philip's house.

We got mesquite trees on the left, dying due to toxic waste, and prickly pear cacti all around. Which despite having gloves, I can't actually take. My...what a lovely place. In the background are bees and a car, which don't seem to be of any value. If I go into the background, I change closer to the house, where I still can't interact with the bees, but I also get the ability to look in through the empty window and examine discarded tires. There's also a canteen I can't pick up.

Inside, it's examine twenty objects. Rather than go through it all, I can pick up an old tomahawk and three matches, the latter hidden in the niche at the top of the fireplace. What else can I do? Open the drawer, which doesn't have an obvious hotspot, and has nothing anyway. I can open the closet, which also doesn't have an obvious hotspot, to find clothing and a leather jacket, which I can't use. I wander around, thinking I need to use the axe on the cacti, to no luck, then return and notice the side of the closet. Yay, another round of spot the seemingly irrelevant accent! Putting in the rosette opens up a hidden compartment containing the other crystal. Now I really don't know what I can do.

Okay, let's think about this logically. I can't use the TV for some reason, and the outside area shows two windows when there's only one here. There's seemingly no exit here. Also, no secret passage to the left or down. I guess I should just spam everything and hope for the best...wait, combining the spirit stick and matches work to light the spirit stick. Was that something I was supposed to do or something I just did because I'm an ass?

...Because I was supposed to use it to drive the bees off the hive. Which I didn't know because I could go to the right before, where the bees are. I do this to get the other half of a playing card, which says BELZ. So...hELZ BELZ. I can also pick up the canteen on this screen but not the last. (It also still shows up if you go back) Wrap your head around that. This allows me to reach another area, a cave, albeit awkwardly since you have to go behind the rocks for some reason.

...Because I was supposed to use it to drive the bees off the hive. Which I didn't know because I could go to the right before, where the bees are. I do this to get the other half of a playing card, which says BELZ. So...hELZ BELZ. I can also pick up the canteen on this screen but not the last. (It also still shows up if you go back) Wrap your head around that. This allows me to reach another area, a cave, albeit awkwardly since you have to go behind the rocks for some reason.

Did you guess it was another maze? Congrats, you know how annoying this game is. Maybe this is related to the poem. You are not the first but the last...so the niche on the right? Ah, crap, there are four items in here and my inventory is full up. A bedroll, a tent pole, a flashlight and bug spray. All right, I'm going to have to gamble, toss out the playing card and the wrench, assuming in the former I only need the letters and the latter has given it's purpose. Take the flashlight and bug spray. I then go right, where my solar-powered flashlight doesn't work and I get eaten by a bear in a dark cave.

So I repeat this, except going outside first since a solar-powered flashlight should logically keep a charge for a little while. Then I go left, and it still doesn't work, and I get killed by vampire bats. So it isn't a maze, it's just a trick, and I have to figure out which of these four items I actually can use. Hey, maybe I can combine the bedroll with the bug spray, since that's generally flammable in our timeline, then with the stick for an impromptu fire stick. Or not, because I'm apparently smarter than the developers of this game.

I quit for a while, then return, since it occurs to me that it might be the rag instead of the sleeping bag...and it turns out that maybe the bug spray was a red herring to begin with. Let's start with the east cave, hey, there's a bridge there.

The bridge collapses and Hoffmann dies. I laughed, it's some pretty swift animation. Right, let's see the west cave.

It was so obvious this was going to happen, since the timbers were half rotten. This doesn't kill me, it just blocks my way out. Another point of no return.

I'm guessing this guy's been dead for a bit. It's Eric Latimore, impaled on a stalagmite. "Good. Someone besides you hated him, too!" Apparently I can't actually do anything here, it's just something nice. Off to the right is an elevator, at which point Hoffmann wonders if this is a secret silver mine...and I can't enter because it needs a card. I curse to myself for a moment that I dropped the playing card before deciding to go to the left to check Latimore again, he has the card.

Seems that this is the place they're putting all the high-ranking Nazis in cryosleep. When the artists try, they can make something cool-looking, but they don't seem to be trying often. I'll just go in here, hey, it's the lab from before...and I've died because I had a lit torch. Reload, drop the torch before going in, and I'm back in Grossman's lab. I can't do anything new now, so I just go to the left mindlessly.

This time it's Grossman in here. He goes on about how lovely the roaches are, before spotting Hoffmann and saying he'll feel him to the roaches, dead that is. Then I get a chance to do something, so I use the tomahawk, knocking him out and pushing him into the roach nest. The end rest is not pretty. An alarm goes off, and I can't navigate my way around the room before I die, the guards came in. I repeat it and it's still true. Okay, maybe there's another trick here.

It occurs to me that maybe I needed to use the fancy angle grinder on something, since that's quite literally the only thing left here I can interact with. I can make the tomahawk sharp...which does exactly the same thing to Grossman. Hmm. I think that's a glitch. Well, crap, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Or why I need to kill Grossman if there's nothing in it.

I discover it after I accidentally glitch out Grossman's dialog, turns out that if you interrupt a dialog with the area information button he just stands there, looking at his spirit animal. Which I then use to look around. The desk has a key on it, the children of unmarried parents. Now it's time to play everyone's favorite game...

...Guess the code. Can't brute force this one, seven million ways to lose, or whatever it is. No, I'm not giving you CAPs for guessing how many results there could be, please don't waste your time. I figure out the solution not through what I suspect is the way I have to, which is read the poem I was given, but rather intuiting the playing card I was given in two parts, since that's the only thing with 8 digits. hELZ BELZ, which if you flip around, as it's a playing card, gives you 2738 2734. Which I didn't guess right away because I didn't remember if the font gave the Z as a 2 or a 5. Or reverse the order.

Next time, the horrifying conclusion of Kronolog. (Or maybe the Halloween game, something similarly horrific)

This Session: 7 hours 00 minutes
Total Time: 11 hours 30 minutes

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!