Personal Findings and Thoughts
WMy friend recommended that I share my personal findings about the new edition of Nocturne here. And considering that 1o111111′s been reblogging their radio post several times, I’ll share what I have.
The Red Room exists in the new version, and is triggered by a special event. The time MUST be set to around 3:00 AM on January 28th, 2021, and the moon must be full ingame for it to happen. When a successful ‘Red Room’ launch occurs, the regular title screens get replaced by a screen resembling “|o||||||” (Or in one Uboachan user’s case, “191″. Example from my second test launch:
This means that a Red Room launch has succeeded. What’s necessary to activate it is to turn off the lights to Soentsuki’s room, and turn on the radio. After a bit of messing with the dial, the radio will power itself off and can’t be turned back on again. The lights also become locked in their ‘off’ mode. The hallway, which is different in this new load, is now darker and longer, and going through the door at the end of the hallway activates the Red Room. The game will get slower and slower over time, before crashing/closing itself. It seems to take around 4-5 minutes to actually crash. I’ll time it later.
I can confirm that this method works, as I was able to activate the Red Room 4 times with it. Any other timeframes don’t work. I personally used around 2:45, as that’s when I loaded up my first Red Room launch.
2. Title screens correlate to moon phases, there is a system there
This title screen showed up twice, and I got a half-full moon with it both times. Every “|o||||||” title screen has been a full moon. There’s a system there. Maybe someone with more time on their hands can figure out which title screens correspond to which phases.
3. Witching Hour and its correlation with the game
Nocturne was released, in my timezone, at exactly 3:00 AM. I’m not sure if this correlates to the Witching Hour (which is ALSO 3:00 AM), but I was able to recreate the Red Room by loading the game at 3:00 AM.
According to Wikipedia, in folklore, the witching hour or devil's hour is a time of night associated with supernatural events. Witches, demons and ghosts are thought to appear and to be at their most powerful. Black magic is thought to be most effective at this time due to the veil between worlds being thinner.
I’ve had my doubts for a long time that Soentsuki is a human. Sure, she’s humanoid, but is she a human at all? It seems the most likely that she’s long-dead, a spirit, and the room she presently exists in is some form of purgatory. This goes into my next point, which is more of a theory than anything else.
4. Purgatory? What’s going on with Soentsuki?
Soentsuki’s room feels empty. It’s felt empty for a while, actually. In the previous version, her room was straight up barren, with only a bed and a radio. In the new version, her room is *less* barren, but still feels empty. Sad. Like something’s missing.
What if that ‘something’ is Soentsuki herself? My friend and I speculated that Soentsuki seemed like a rich kid. A lonely rich kid, perhaps? Of note is the ‘Soen’ part of her name: Soen (疎遠) = alienation, loneliness, or silence
What if these rooms are, essentially, Soentsuki’s purgatory? These rooms were her domain, but she was lonely in life, and they appeared in death to her. I haven’t ever seen 1o111111 draw a humanoid that’s not Soentsuki. Some art depicts her outside her room, but most of the time, she’s confined to either her room, the balcony, or the hallway.
I have another whole theory on this, but this gets into more lore/storytelling than game mechanics, so I’ll save it for another post.