Goblins Quest 3 – Won!

By Ilmari

What the…

Goblins-series has had some rather trippy sections, and the third game doesn’t fail in this regard. Just check the current level. Blount was divided into two mirror images and surrounded with such bizarre objects as the mirror of time, thinning and fattening mirrors and the old devil that sleeps in each of us. The ultimate end of the whole level was to escape through the mirrors of beauty and ugliness – Blount through the first and his reflection through the second. Before they could do that, they had to become beautiful and ugly themselves.

Getting on with the problem solving, there were very few items to pick up in this maze of mirrors. Well, there was one: an egg. But I could do a lot with just this one egg. I could pass it between Blount and his mirror images through holes connecting the regular with the mirror world. I could put it in the mirror of time, changing between three forms of egg, chick and chicken. I could put the chick or the chicken in the fattening mirror, to make it fat, or to its mirror image, the thinning mirror, to make it thinner.

I could also put a correct-sized chick in the machinery of the clock in the picture. When I had done that both in the normal and in the mirrored perspective, an alarm sounded and the old devil awakened. When Blount checked the old devil, he called the devil ugly. Was this something I could use to my advantage at the ugliness mirror?

Since I found nothing new to do here, I moved to the other room of this level.

Now this was a true maze! Or was it Blount’s brain? At least there were interesting objects, like the puddle of dreams, the window of memory, the vehicle of nervous impulse, the lake of vision and the box of hidden beauty. I wonder if that will help me in passing through the mirror of beauty? Too bad it was placed behind a protective fence of modesty. Also, for the first time in this game, Blount and the were-Blount were present in the same room at the same time.

The window of memory revealed a tidbit of information: Blount is the Prince Buffoon from the previous game

This room is a perfect example, why writing about the game is so much less satisfying than actually playing it. You see, a lot of the puzzles here involved just getting to places you couldn’t otherwise access by using the mechanisms of the setting to your advantage. Because the setting is so absurd, all of the actions seem incomprehensible, although they are quite consistent with the game world.

Take this puzzle for an example. The vehicle of the nervous impulse – the cart track at the top – has three settings that the wolf can activate with the lever (the lever is too heavy for Blount). Depending on the setting, the cart and the person driving it will fly in different directions

Here, wolf has used the cart to fly near the lake of vision

Jumping in that lake makes eyeballs appear (it is a lake of vision)

Dropping a sandcorn – oh wait, where do you get a sandcorn? Well, there’s a picture of Colossus in the window of memory, and it is possible to extract from it the memory of the sandcorn he had in his eye. Then dropping the sandcorn in a lake of vision with the eyeballs makes a teardrop appear and float. Within the tear is a sailfish, and you can use the cart again to pop the tear and release the fish

By quickly changing the settings of the cart and using it, it is possible to grab hold of the sailfish and let it deliver you to a place you couldn’t otherwise access. Pure genius!

The aim of that long puzzle sequence was to get my hands on a dragon decoy, which was obviously used for calling the help of the dragon from an earlier level. Dragon helped Blount to fly into places he couldn’t otherwise access, but also to get rid of that fence of modesty guarding the box of the hidden beauty.

Burn baby burn!

The box was locked, but I soon found a key for it. You see, the maze contained also a puddle of dreams. Asking the dragon to provide some heat dried it up, leaving only the key to be picked up. Within the box, I found an ointment of beauty

The one remaining puzzle in this room was a suspicious pile of grains. The obvious thing to deal with that problem was the egg/chick/chicken from the other room – I just had to first set it in the right age and shape (I’ll order one old, fat chicken). When the chicken had shuffled the grain, only a grain of folly was left (no grain of wit here).

With nothing else to do, I went to the mirror room and tried giving the folly grain to the old demon. The grain extracted all the ugliness from the demon. With the ointment of beauty and the extract of ugliness I could finally try my luck with getting out of here.

A tricky puzzle, not because it was particularly difficult to understand what I had to do, but because it required exact timing: you had to apply the ointment and the extract to regular and mirror Blount so that they would be precisely same time showing themselves to the wolves in the mirrors

I originally thought of ending the post here, but it turned out that the final level was relatively short, so I might as well go through it now.

Fulbert finds a mate

C

The trippy nature of the end game continued. At the middle of the room was the divinity of the land, which had two poles: positive and negative. The hatred between the two kingdoms had put the two poles in a disharmony, so that the angel and the demon, that used to play in sync, were now left in destitute. Under the feet of the divinity had formed a spring of bitterness from the tears of the separated poles.

The first task was to find some scores for the angel and the devil to play. The positive side of the divinity was holding a paper that seemed promising, but I couldn’t reach it. Testing what I could do, I noticed that I could smash the wooden fence and the brick wall at the far ends of the room. After that, pressing doorbells at both sides summoned two hands, who for a while drew the chain that pulled the plug from the spring of bitterness.

Like this

When the hands were doing that, I could make the wolf jump on the chain, where he then bounced upwards to grab the score from the divinity. I could also make the wolf jump in the now empty basin, where the other score was to be found.

Giving the scores to the angel and the devil, I could make them play some notes.

I could then tie the notes together with a yarn of time I had found, but the bond was still not strong enough.

So let’s call the hands to help me

Is it working?

 Yes, it’s now all a one note!

Jamming together

This has repercussions in the mundane world

Callback to Blount’s childhood

Everyone finds love

Well, wasn’t that a cute ending. Next time we’ll see how well the game fairs under the scrutiny of the PISSED rating.

Session time: 2 h

Total time: 13 h 55 min