A Common Thread

Reality bending games are becoming more and more common.

[noneuclideanstories]

There's a bundle of the 4 main title Room games for sale on steam, and I think I might buy it if I can get my parents to cover my next gas tank refill. I've played the first three already, but across different devices and it'd be nice to have them on my computer to play again. I remember playing the first one when it released on my mother's iPad, and to be honest, I can't recall what I was playing it on by the time the third game released, but I think it may have been that same iPad. Can't wait to play Old Sins.

[noneuclideanstories]

I played Old Sins last week. I'm obsessed again.

[noneuclideanstories]

A big part of this blog is because I've always loved spaces that exist as puzzles. Environments where the trees and the buildings exist as something to be solved by someone with outside knowledge. Perspective puzzles that might barely make any sense in-universe, if it's possible to solve them at all without the meta knowledge the game-player would have. Game-player, or book reader, or movie watcher- what have you. I was always fascinated as to what it must be like to live in them, to perhaps glean that the world around you was designed deliberately, but you are dimensionally restricted from seeing the full picture to parse it. Would you become part of the puzzle? Would your words, extemporaneous to you, be readable as a coded message spelled by the first letter of every line when transcribed on a page? Would your footprints as you go about your daily duties write out a number when viewed from a camera you have not been written to be able to see? Would the narrator you cannot hear address a viewer you will never know with a metaphorical description of your actions which points them to look at a painting you made two months ago?

And if you do obtain this knowledge, is it not an eldritch experience?

[noneuclideanstories]

There's a bundle of the 4 main title Room games for sale on steam, and I think I might buy it if I can get my parents to cover my next gas tank refill. I've played the first three already, but across different devices and it'd be nice to have them on my computer to play again. I remember playing the first one when it released on my mother's iPad, and to be honest, I can't recall what I was playing it on by the time the third game released, but I think it may have been that same iPad. Can't wait to play Old Sins.

[vintagerpg]

Taking a look at some books this week that prepared me for a lifelong love of RPGs. First up, Christopher Manson’s mysterious Maze.

Maze is a puzzle book, originally published in 1985 and carrying a hefty $10,000 prize for the person or persons able to: navigate from the entrance to the center (Room 45) in sixteen steps, figure out the riddle in the central room and solve it using hints found on the shortest path. The contest ended in 1987, when the prize money was split among twelve people who got the short path and who were all equally close to solving the riddle. It took 20 years for me to crack the shortest path. I don’t have a clue what the riddle or its answer are. I am not sure anyone has ever entirely figured it out.

Maze is special because of the room illustrations. It forms, in my mind, a kind of perfect, non-violent dungeon crawl, like Tomb of Horrors without the grisly deaths. Each room is packed with visuals that act as clues to the puzzle, but also form a kind of surreal set dressing. Surreal in the proper sense to the word – a lot of Maze reminds me of the work of Rene Magritte. They also remind me of Piranesi’s Le Carceri engravings from the 18th century and, of course, the often perplexing illustrations from pick your path game books.

Nominally considered a children’s book, the enduring appeal of Maze for me is how menacing the whole thing is. The prose is written from the perspective of a guide who may very well be a charming minotaur and his witty words barely conceal his contempt. The atmosphere of obscure mystery is pervasive. The rooms themselves have many an infernal decoration – a demon statue here, a pitchfork there – and the whole fictional space feels dangerous, like a place you should not have entered in the first place and, once inside, should not be dallying in.

A must for any game master’s shelf, I think.

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[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

I love caves as a horror theme but I HATE when there are things in the caves. Horror writers utterly ruin cave stories by not realizing that the cave itself is the monster.

It’s fine when caves are a gateway that something is coming through, or the cave is somehow alive and malicious, or if the only monster is what the narrator brings in with themself, but I hate hate hate when writers expect me to be creeped out by spelunkers being menaced by creatures that live inside the cave.

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

my beloved mutual, I agree that every labyrinth needs its minotaur

but the horror of a labyrinth from the perspective of Theseus is nothing like the horror of a labyrinth from the perspective of the Minotaur… a cave is horrifying because the Earth built it to contain you

[somestorythoughts]

“A cave is horrifying because the Earth built it to contain you”

So I was fully on board with both sentiments, cave as the horror sounds cool and monster in the cave is cool, and then comes that line and holy shit that is a new horrifying thought.

I think I’ll put it in a story somewhere

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

It’s a thought I always have while caving. Looking into a naturally-formed chamber or hallway that has never seen the light of day is eerie—there’s a reason specific chambers end up with architectural names, like “the ballroom” or “the great hall”. The resemblance to human habitation and artefact is uncanny… sprawling, incomprehensible structures in crude mockery of buildings and cathedrals and dungeons, as though designed by some awful alien intelligence that had only dreamt of human needs. Inhospitable doll-houses, lightless, windowless, with oubliettes and dungeons and poison winds and air that robs the breath from your lungs. We refer to our ancient ancestors as “cavemen” but they were no more adapted to the labyrinthine darkness than we are today—we did not spring from caves but from the treetops and savannas with the sun and stars above us. A cave is a mouth, a throat, a digestive system. It is just tempting enough to draw us in—cool and sheltered and beautiful, but it has no real will to sustain us. Green things do not grow in caves. Even the other predatory creatures that shared our caves fell victim to them, when they slipped or strayed or wandered too deep.

[noneuclideanstories]

With Ultra Deluxe coming out soon, I’ll be uploading a video project after it’s release that I intend as a love letter to my favorite game. I won’t give away too much, but it’s basically a let’s-play with some additional elements.

[thefuzzydave]

This is the coolest desk I’ve ever seen.

[ritzbyss]

old maze art

[noneuclideanstories]

The Maze.

I met them at the gate though I usually wait inside. Preoccupied with their own thoughts, impatient, like so many children, they didn’t see who I really was. They never noticed my crown, my pain, the fire in my eyes.

Like all the others they think the Maze was made for them; actually, it is the other way around. They think I am some poet who will lead them through the symbols and spaces of this Underworld. They think I will teach them lessons. They should call me Cerberus…. I am the lesson.

The monstrous walls rise up and run away as far as the human eye can see, circling and dividing. Which half is the Maze?

Even I get lost. It changes–sometimes slowly, imperceptibly … sometimes suddenly. This House is not only made of stone and mortar, wood and paint; it is made of time and mystery, hope and fear. Construction never stops. I take some pride in my role as architect.

They think I will guide them to the center. Perhaps I will….

The sun was very hot.

Together we walked through the gate into…

[noneuclideanstories]

Ah, a fellow wham city fan! Hey there! That’s pretty cool that you reblogged this. Thank you

[ryanpanos]

Infinite Stairs and Dissected Buildings | Marcin Bialas | Socks Studio

Marcin Bialas is a Polish artist who’s specialized in etchings and drawings in black an white. Among his large production, a recurring theme is dissected buildings and surreal constructions, such as infinite staircases and labyrinthine interiors, an atemporal combination of G.B. Piranesi and Brodsky/Utkin prints. The structures seem unfinished, yet already in ruin, able to plunge the viewer into an uncomfortable feeling. Somewhere between nightmares and theatrical settings, Marcin Bialas’ retro drawings explore the dramatic potential of different projections and points of view.

[veeeffvee]

Visit Original Link

You know. From the Museum Ending.

I find it weird that no one compiled these into a post yet (at least to my knowledge :/). You know, for those who can’t look through the files.

Also, come on, its really hard to hear these in the Museum.

[alpha-beta-gamer]

Moncage is a clever little puzzler where you attempt to solve a cleverly designed perspective based puzzle box that depicts different scenes from a mysterious island.

Read More & Play The Alpha Demo, Free (Windows)

[eggyboyoart]

STANLEY PARABLE

+

PRESENTABLE LIBERTY

=???

I have a theory, you don’t have to read if your not interested.

Okay, I don’t have many points/reasons why I think this but I’m mainly doing this for myself so I can come back to this post when I need to.

Let’s describe the two games first.

The stanley parable is a storytelling game where you can choose your own path and get multiple endings, most of the endings are quite complex and some are emotional. There are 3 characters, Stanley (playable character), the main narrator and the female narrator. As far as I know you can only get the female narrator if you don’t go into the mind control facility.

Presentable liberty is an indie horror game. You play as an prisoner in a empty cell with nothing to do but read the letters of characters slid under your door. There are 4 characters, Doctor Money (the antagonist), Charlotte, Mr. Smiles and Salvador.

In this theory, I believe that these 2 games are connected. In the Stanley parable, all the other employees are missing. They have completely disappeared from the office. Now I think that the reason they are missing is because of the virus in presentable liberty. They are all dead or dying.

Now, I think that when Charlotte died and Doctor money soon died in his sleep to the hands of his own virus, they both began to ‘haunt’ Stanley. Doctor money as the main narrator and Charlotte as the female narrator.

[noneuclideanstories]

Oooooohhhhhh I love this a lot. Ghosts (in some folklore) do have some abilities to alter reality in a certain space like a building.

[stimman3000]

.

[callmebliss]

Me when the tweezers come out: What… Me when the thing: NO! Me when the other thing: [breathless screaming]

[vintagecandy]

Redraw of this terrible old drawing i’m tired of seeing reblogged on my dash!!

[classicillustrations]

Christopher Manson’s Maze

[sixotwoisthelife-deactivated202]

Interesting re-imagining of a room from the Christopher Manson book Maze.