Innocent Until Caught: Lovable Rogue, Error, Lovable Not Found (Request for Assistance)

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

The trains must run all the time, even when nobody is riding them, that, or they didn't want a random NPC here.

Last time, I thought I got defeated by an insurmountable glitch in which I could not enter a subway car. Being somewhat wise, I held off on calling it quits until you guys had a look. Lo and behold, Busca comes through and saves my bacon with a link to a post saying the exact cycles I need to fix the issue. I don't know if this is a DOSbox issue or if there really are only a handful of machines that this game could work on in real life. It would certainly explain why Innocent Until Caught is on the lesser known side.

Inside the subway car is an aerosol can and no way to determine where I'm at. In case you thought that inventory was getting crowded, don't worry, it's all of us. You, me, and Jack. He says it as soon as I pick up the can. Getting off is not that easy, it's not a rapid thing, but depending on how quick you are you may not get off.

I end up at...Regurgit? Regurgitate? Regurit-Tayte? I guess the Romans did name their exits vomitoriums, so it isn't...entirely inaccurate. Getting out proves to be tricky, because in the time since I last played, I've forgotten that you have to click on the hotspot with your walking icon. Adventure Game Studio really trips up my thinking...or maybe I'm being too nice to this game.

If you're observant, you can spot something I missed here.

Outside it looks like Coney Island to me, or at least a facsimile of it. There's a bench and a hotdog stand I can do nothing with. A fly buzzes around to the left. The first door leads to an office which is closed except for the front door. The second leads to a police station where an unlucky woman is being arrested by an evil cop and a desk sergeant watches. I can talk to him, but only to tell him that I'm the greatest thief in the galaxy...which he doesn't believe.

"Look son, scenic bushes!"

Next stop on my train tour is East Eruk. There's a locked maintenance door in the subway, I'll have to come back later for it. (No, the screwdriver doesn't work) Outside, looks like somewhere akin to a theme park, because it's a zoo. There's a dad who's taking his kid to see...something at this hour of night, and the kid whose balloon I definitely don't have to steal at some point. The only path Jack will take is to a zoo exhibit, which has a valuable egg in it, but I'm on the wrong side to reach it. 

I wonder if jokes about art like this will still be relevant four hundred years in the future?

After a couple trips through places I've already been, my next stop is The Hill. Smells like money, looks like money, which probably means a dozen traps. The first building is an all-day art gallery. Inside, beyond the boring old exhibits that Jack wants nothing to do with, is a fancy object behind a glass case, by Renato Spangle. It's alarmed, so it must be valuable. Outside, the only thing further is a locked door next to some cameras and a mushroom I can pick up. Jack now says his inventory is full, to which I have to ask why I get the fancy inventory to begin with?

Jack has a lot of options for how to approach this conversation...

I've now been everywhere and sort of have two things I can do. I just need to figure out how to dealarm the object in the gallery and find a backdoor to the zoo exhibit. So I wander around looking at stuff, until I return to that office next to the police station. It's a bank and there's a button next to the door I can press. A guy pops out and tells me to go to a teller. Huh, well, how can I do that? The windows are closed. Turns out I can talk to the windows, and then a woman pops out. I can threaten to rob the place or open an account. Hey, maybe that's what the money's for! I can't put it through the window, but I can give it to the guy at the door, at which point the window won't open and I guess I have to find something else to do.

Wandering around for a bit, I end up back at the zoo. While messing around with my items, I found out you can use the screwdriver. Since the game draws my attention to the balloon...I used the screwdriver on the balloon, and the game lets me. The father doesn't even care, so now I can pick up that string. We're losing the lovable part of lovable rogue, and the worst part is I don't even know what the string could be for.

I come back to the hot dog cart and notice that there's a hot dog on it. A stone, cold hot dog. Without thinking, I pick it up. Oh, I can't put it in my inventory because it's full. Well, I guess I'll drop it...and I can't on this screen. Well, that's just great design. I reload, drop the newspaper in the bank, and then realize that this was all pointless because I know exactly where to use the hot dog, on a plant in the exhibit which looks like it eats meat. Which I can't reach yet because I don't know how to find the back door to the zoo.

Back at the pawn shop, the guy is out in front of where the vase I pinched was. He doesn't know I pinched it, so I can try selling him a bunch of stuff I have. Against my better judgment, I try the deflector ring. He then tells me that it must have taken a lot of skill to steal this, and he has a wealthy client, willing to pay any price for three treasures. The egg of a rare bird located in the local zoo; The sculpture I already noticed in the museum; Treasure Bonds in the local bank. Aha, we've finally found our way into the main plot, even if I've already figured that two of these three things are worth stealing. Hopefully I didn't screw up the order of events by already putting the cash into the bank.

It's hard to tell, but when I use the doorbell, Jack will ask for his bag back, they'll say what bag and I can potentially do something while the door is open. Potentially, because I've got nothing. We'll come back to this. It now occurs to me that I can use the passport to fool someone else into thinking that I'm that person. Possibly. It isn't like the game tells me who it belongs to. Unfortunately, it isn't good for the boat's guard robot...or the police or the guy at the doorbell.

Okay, at this point, it's been a while since I've made actual progress that didn't feel like me trying everything on everything. Guess I should think on how I can do something. I've figured out I need to get into the exhibit somehow, change the valuable egg there with the egg I have, and since there's a meat-eating plant, use the hot dog I have. If I get some way to capture that fly wandering around, I can stick it in the jar for some reason.

Still, what if the dog is used in that hole in the alley I may not have mentioned? Or with the fly? No, nothing. Camera flash does nothing to those two things, also, camera needs recharging after about four shots. I figure at this point that I really need to get a badge or something from the police station to further the plot...and I can't figure out how to do so in the slightest. I'm playing Elvira II on my own blog, and despite being a frustrating experience where I'm banging my head against a wall, it somehow feels easier than this.

Our hero, everyone.

Eventually, I find myself back at the bar, trying anything in vain. And then I hit upon another awful, evil idea. That serving robot? I can call it and use the screwdriver to remove the circuit board for it. Our hero, everyone. I believe the intention is that I somehow disable the one of the ship, but I can't approach that without first somehow disabling it. Which I can't do. The circuit board doesn't work on anything else, so that seems to be the intention.

More wandering around, until I head for the museum again and idly try to steal the exhibits. I manage to steal a scale model of a planet...I.E., a ball...or pellet as the game prefers to mention. (I'm no longer carrying the beer or the newspaper, since the use of either will become apparent as soon as one does show up) Aha, I show this to the copper, get arrested and then find something in the prison cell...no...I can use this on the robot to disable it, then replace the board...no...Sell it...? No.

Randomly trying items with other items on my inventory eventually results in me attaching the lid to the jar. Something I tried and failed to do back when I got it. I want to point out something, you can only click on that jar around the actual pixels, not the see-thru stuff. No, I can't use the screwdriver on anything. Or the perfume or the oil can. At some point, this stuff is going to actually become useful and I'm going to be immensely frustrated.

I wander around talking to people again. The pawnbroker will remind me of the treasures I'm trying to get...and nobody else has anything new to say. The biker and the matron are both done. The kid doesn't want to talk to me for some strange reason. His father, the bar patrons and the police officer all have nothing to say to me right now. The guy wandering around at the space port and the lady outside the bar say nothing. The security guy at the spaceport wonders what I'm still doing there.

At this point, I've been wandering around for a while, doing nothing, and the only thing I've done is rain on a kid's parade and found the main plot. Everything else? Nothing, nada, ja nai. At this point I'm tired of doing things and feeling like I'm getting nothing out of it, so I might as well end here with a Request for Assistance. I've got nothing at this point. Nothing at all. I've tried, I've meditated, I've failed.

To recap what I've figured out and done so far:

•  The first treasure I need to steal is in a museum case which is alarmed. I have nothing that can dealarm it. I suspect that I'll figure that bit out eventually as I play through. Or I'm dumb and missed something I was supposed to do.
• The second treasure I need to steal are bonds in a bank. I gave them money, but still need to get in somehow. Nothing I have seems to work. Again, I suspect that the solution will be easy to figure out once I have what I actually need.
• The third treasure is a rare animal egg, on display in the local zoo. I know nearly exactly what I should be doing here. Feed the hot dog to the meat-eating plant in front of the nest, replace the egg with the regular one I have. Unfortunately, I don't know how to actually get in there. I know there's a boat which is guarded by a robot, but I can't disable it to get on.
• There's a locked door in one of the subway rooms. It'd be nice to open it.

Apologies for the short entry, but it's not from a lack of trying on my part. Next entry from me will be on Halloween, this year's horror movie adaptation, which I would give a hint for, but chances are you'd never see it coming anyway. Stay tuned.

Inventory: Camera (no film), Giant Egg, Passport (someone else's), Cane, Tax Receipt, Oil Can, Newt Bru, Newspaper, Perfume, Jar w/Lid, String, Length of Hosepipe, Hat, Radio Cassette Player, Fake Subway Token, Screwdriver, Aerosol Can, Mushroom, Hot Dog, Pellet, Circuit Board

This Session: 2 hours 20 minutes

Total Time: 5 hours 05 minutes