By Ilmari
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| French opening? |
For the entirety of the game, Blount has spoken of a labyrinth or a maze in the land of Foliander, and now when I finally got there, I was confronted with a chess set. Oh well, a puzzle is a puzzle. What was I supposed to do here?
It seemed that the chess set was missing some pieces, which I would have to first manufacture. There was a can of paint and a chisel, but nothing to paint or to chisel. This meant moving to another room.
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| Note that it’s enough to have just picture of a moon to make Blount a wolf |
It is an incontrovertible fact of human existence that
Duck Amuck is the most genius piece of animation ever created. Thus, it is no wonder that I was very pleased with this screen, where the idea was to literally make things appear by painting them. But first I needed some ink. There was a piece of paper with numbers in it that wolff-Blount said were dried ink. If Fulbert raised a dust cloud, when the wolf was standing on the paper, the resulting sneeze blew all the numbers around the room. I could then pick them up and put them in the inkwell.
I also required some wood and marble for the chess pieces. Wood was simple enough to obtain: I just had to cut a wooden ruler to pieces. Marble was a bit more difficult. There was a picture with a wagon full of marble, but the wagon was so placed that the marbles were still out of the picture. I could draw a horse to the wagon, but it still was missing a wheel. I used my coin as a wheel, and then the horse could draw the wagon a bit further and reveal the marbles.
The rest of the screen had to do with the big story book. The first page told of an archer living in the Sherwood forest. The archer was still hidden in a tree, because he had no arrows. A nearby geometry book had some arrows that I had just to detach from the paper by jumping on the book. After I had given the arrows to him, the archer promised to follow me to the chess set.
The next page in the story book showed a castle, where a brave knight lived. I could not hear anything he was saying, since he was still too far away. The easy answer to this problem was to paint the road a bit further.
The knight still required a mount, so I gave him a horse figurine I had found at the shelf. Another piece for my chess set was ready.
The final page of the book showed a lady waiting for her prince Charming. I drew a shadowy figure that sang to the lady, but the lady just threw some water at it, washing the ink figure away. I drew it again, with otherwise similar results, except now the ink figure left a mandoline behind.
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| Rules of the game |
I already had my bowman and knight, but I was still lacking the lover and the killer. Time to do some chiseling.
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| A rabbit? That doesn’t look like a killer! |
Before chiseling the block of marble and the piece of wood, I had to outline the figures, applying chalk to wood and compass to marble (otherwise, the result was something like above). Now, chiseling the marble and the wood produced small figurines of Blount and were-Blount that I still had to dip to the paint bucket.
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| Chiseling Blount |
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| And were-Blount just needs some colour |
A piece was still missing, but I had no idea where to get it. I tried clicking everywhere and noticed that I could get the hands to juggle some balls.
One of the balls flew to a pig figure and made a crack on its back. As the pig now looked like a piggy bank, I dropped a coin in it. The pig opened up and revealed Othello, a mouse from an earlier level. He was too scared and ran away, if I tried to pick him up, but playing the big mandoline made him go into a trance.
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Full set!
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The chess game itself was rather simple, especially as the enemy pieces did not move, but merely guarded certain squares. So, all I had to do was move the bowman and the knight to squares where they would take care of the henchpieces, move the wolf/Killer to deal with the evil king and then move the Blount/Lover to castle to play some mandoline to the princess.
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| Bowman is about kill a guard |
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| King is about the get axed |
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| And here’s the romantic ending |
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| Oh, I also had to pick up a key from the board |
And that was just the first stage of the “maze”. We’ll see what comes after it in the next post.
Session time: 45 min
Total time: 11 h 55 min
my thoughts as always:
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of having again a screen with the hands controlling everything, and the chess puzzle is quite fun. Crafting each piece is also interesting and original, with all the numbers, and the story book. A lovely scene. It gets into weirdness typical Goblins shenanigans, but still with a bit of logic to be able to solve it.
Gotta love the headers in the newspaper, they generally hint at something that you already visited, or are going to. Expect the mirror thing to come next.
You are getting very close to the end, I expect the next post to cover the final screens. I think you will find there something like a "maze", but not really it.
I love that you had to make your own chess pieces here, and drawing a longer road to get the knight was funny.
ReplyDeleteYeah, this was my favourite part of the game. I enjoyed the chess itself, but I equally enjoyed constructing the pieces. Even my kids got into the game and started suggesting solutions by this point! I got a little frustrated as I had a feeling the dust had to be knocked onto Were-Blount, but after trying it 6 or 7 times in different positions, nothing happened. I pulled out a joker only to find I *was* on the right track, and it was just a matter of needing to be in the exact right spot at the exact right time. Grrr.
ReplyDeleteAnyhoo, I'm tipping we've got a Won post coming up next. The end is nigh!