#submachine 2

[where-is-the-quantum-moon]

The Quantum Moon is at the top of the lighthouse from Submachine 2.

The Quantum Moon is at the top of the lighthouse from Submachine 2!

[svbmachine]

You are Murtaugh. Your worst fear ever was to be buried alive.

That night, you woke up to a thunderous roar - the very walls around you creaking under the rolling dirt putting pressure on the wood of your soon-to-become casket. It took you a moment to even process what was happening, and in that moment, like a deer in headlights, you simply watched as clumps and piles of rocky dirt poured in through the window.

Once you heard a sudden crack and burst coming from another room, the situation fully dawned on you - get the boards and nails, and seal yourself off quickly, or else you are done for.

The lower floor was the one that gave out first - you were lucky to have nodded off in your library's armchair, because chances are, if you didn't board up the second floor in time, it would have already been too late. Panic shook your entire body, as if hammering in the nails with just one hand wasn't difficult enough. Even after doing that, you still backed as far away from the windows as you could, because you couldn't trust yourself to have done even a semi-decent job in a state like this. The second floor balcony in the main tower felt the safest, the grey metal walls would surely last you longer than the wood.

You have just trapped yourself in the hell of your own making, congratulations.

Maybe this was the main plan. Maybe the zealots upholding their idiocracy didn't just kill you directly because they wanted you to do it yourself. Spend the rest of eternity going mad in a sealed tomb, then jump off of this exact balcony right here, that looked so tempting in this moment. It's stupid, but it's cruel, and many people wished nothing but cruelty to him right now.

The rumbling slowly became quieter and quieter, the layers upon layers of dirt muffling more layers upon layers of dirt rolling down the sides of the layers upon layers of dirt. Dirt all the way down. Dirt in his fingernails. Dirt.

It's moments like these that really force you to acknowledge your own mortality. In a quiet whisper, you promise yourself to never forget that you are a mortal, human being made of clay and light and blood, although you know that you've broken similar promises before. You promised you'd stay careful, and now you have one less arm. You promised to do no harm, but you can't get the look in Elizabeth's eyes out of your head when she saw you come out on the other side of that portal. You promised to find the answers you seeked, but you feel more confused and lost now than ever before.

But you can't imagine what it would take to make you forget you are human. It's the one thing that you can be confident won't happen.

Something small landed on the top of your head, bringing you back to reality. When you looked up, a newfound wave of horror filled your whole body. The dirt leaked through the metal walls of the top light itself. It was time to leave.

The teleportation device itself has been set up weeks ago now - you started planning moving out of this place 32 days ago, and now there was little to do other than pack up and wait for the electrical power to accumulate. Pouring the diesel into the generator, you shuddered at the sight of the dirt that poured into here from the tiny crack between the plating. You wondered if the side rooms of the tower were safe, and on your way down the ladder, sure enough - like a miracle, both the coils room and the tunnel seemed to be holding up for now.

Curled up in the side tunnel, you took out a piece of chalk from your pocket to do a quick estimate calculation of just how much mass this dirt must have to have broken through metal. The number didn't make you feel any more optimistic.

With about four hours left to burn through, you needed something to take your mind off of the dread, and so you returned to your familiar writing desk, put in a fresh new sheet of paper and got to typing something resembling a suicide note more than a diary entry.

Maybe it's a good thing Einstein has been gone for days now. You don't want to imagine the poor cat being left alone in a place like this, and you don't know how Elizabeth could possibly come back for it now. Somehow, she will, you know it, because "impossible" isn't really a thing when it comes to your dear Liz, and because unlike you she doesn't ever break promises. You paused your typing, remembering yet again how you looked up at her, dizzy but smiling with pride, fully expecting to be met with awe or wonder, but finding nothing but horror on her face. "What have you done, Mur?" she asked then, and you didn't know how to answer. It baffles you still how someone as understanding and enlightened as her wouldn't see the potential of the breakthrough you've made, how she seemed to be looking through you, not at you. It's clear you've hurt her, deeply, even though the only thing you were destroying was the outdated Structure that held back the both of you. You didn't kill anyone. Or at least you didn't mean to.

You reread the words you typed out on your paper. "For those who follow me," you added, knowing only one person who would have a reason to return to this wretched lighthouse, "I am sorry."

You decided to lock the second floor door behind you and throw the key as far away as you could. It was time to look for a shovel and waste the remaining three hours you had on seeing just how many layers upon layers of dirt you were buried under.

"Sincerely, Mur."

[svbmachine]

I& am officially going down an absolute rabbit hole of trying to find and log all the versions of the original Flash Submachine 2: The Lighthouse game. And no, this wasn't even prompted by me& finding and playing the early sketch - this is all because, for some reason, version 9 is labelled as a SPEEDRUN build.

AND THERE ARE NO NOTICABLE CHANGES FROM THE PREVIOUS VERSIONS POST-REVISIT. Only some subtle UI and menu differences.

But the craziest thing is? For all I& can find right now, versions 5-8 do not exist. It jumped straight from v4.1 on the official website up to v9 [speedrun].

Also there are two separate versions 3 because I& can TELL that the starting menu looks different, BUT THEY'RE LABELLED AS THE SAME. FROM THE SAME DATE TOO.

This is killing me&. I& will report back on my& findings once I& compile the doc. I& asked in the official Discord server, but I& don't think I&'m going to get a reply. Might attempt the forums later.

[sporadicstarstruckplanet]

[lonely-dog-song]

Submachine 2: The Lighthouse

[xivu-arath]

submachine 2

so! I played the lighthouse today. as before, my thoughts aaand a ton of screenshots under the cut. okay maybe not a ton but. several.

fiiirst of all, submachine 2 really toys with your perspective, as someone playing the game. it's a really neat touch - you start out with the first game as presumably an arcade game you've been playing before. but the basement does exist in the subnet, and you have the wisdom gem and the diary page - so what exactly is that machine doing here in the first place? there's two other points in the game where it prods at the fourth wall as well as its own internal structure, and it's just... really cool. 

I like that it does this - already, we're stretching a lot of boundaries, which is very fitting in a game that ends with you jumping between space and time using the power of light

also I like the slogan on the machine "see where it takes you" because it takes you really fucking far tbh. exploration and discovery are very important elements in the game because, well, that's why we're playing, right? to see what happens next, to explore the next setting and strange, tangled plotline - but in the games themselves, mur is also credited as an explorer, his motivation is to discover what's out there and push the limits of knowledge. well, that turns out disastrously. let's hope our journey has a better ending, right?

the lighthouse freaks me out, waaaay more than the basement. it's bigger, clearly something really big happened and you get a lot of cramped, shadowy corners and tunnels as well as spaces like this one - big and completely empty. once you go upstairs you see a few more signs that mur lived here, but this level is just... pristine and there is barely nothing and it looks really foreign and empty. the kind of emptiness where you might be watched, but where you never see anyone.

fun.

the vibe of submachine is always visiting a ruin, or being just too late - there was life here once, but it's come and gone and you're left to explore a shell and find out what was left behind.

sometimes, the feeling of being too late is really huge and urgent - but I'll come to that waaaay later.

and here we have the scale of juuust how desperate the other explorers were to kill mur. I'm not sure where I read this - 8? 9? the subnet maybe? - but they didn't actually just... dump dirt on the lighthouse, they actually moved it onto its side and then tried to bury it. so there really was no way out.

that's fucking horrifying.

mur feared being buried alive, so just how panicked was he when he built that portal?

this is just cute though. we have our first mention of liz in this game, which is hella important, but this is my favourite note because it reads as very... human. this isn't the all-knowing dude who picks up and then ditches research teams, who's portrayed as a vengeful multidimensional murderer chasing the other explorers through the layers - nah he's just an irritated guy who worries a lot about his cat.

any pet owner has been there, so I really like this - it's not important lore, it's not a Significant Hint but it's something you really would find in mur's house and I really like that it's kept in.

this was really cool! I don't know what it is, it just holds secrets and they don't do anything yet so I didn't bother getting all of them, but it's nifty.

did mur build this???

did he build all the stuff you find in the lighthouse because uh. that would be impressive.

mAYBE IT'S A CAT TOY what if einstein's meant to like... bat at the arms as they swerve around and away! that would be cool. that's my new headcanon.

oKAY SO FIRST OF ALL

froodette and I played a few of the games together at one point. it was dark, our parents were busy having dinner and we had gotten progressively more tense, probably bouncing our tension off each other. so when we got to this part, and the hand suddenly appeared and picked up the card, we both freaked out.

but I can play this part just fine on my own??? so thinking back on it makes me laugh omfg.

aNYWAYS here is another part where the game prods at your perspective. you're watching a recording - something that's already happened. but interacting with it (clicking on the card) prompts a hand which can't be yours, since this is a recording, to bring the card to the camera and it... goes through. somehow.

is that mur's remaining hand??? hi mur's other hand, nice to meet you.

or the protagonist is Super Cool and can manipulate videos and make things happen in them but either way it's... not clear what just happened, except that it's really not what you'd expect. just snatching up id cards from a video, nbd.

bUT YEAH LIKE... we, as the player, become that recording's audience. there is a fourth wall between what is taking place and us. except then that doesn't matter. cool!

aaand here's the end, which once again, pokes at the game. yeah, we just played through all of this and our character escaped the lighthouse and travelled outside - but it's just a game isn't it? did any of this actually happen?

are we playing the explorer. following mur's footsteps, or are we just playing the game with complete awareness? it's a cool idea, though the meta level of submachine drops as the storyline becomes more involved - not that I mind.

it doesn't disappear, though, not with the subnet and the ability to visit locations that we've seen before. there's a fun contradiction on the fact that we are outside looking in - but at the same time, the inside sure is willing to interact with us. there isn't much of a wall between the two, in submachine - but then, it's a game series all about breaking walls and moving through layers, isn't it? it's an exploration as much as a search for truth.

geez I'm being analytical today and possibly a little pretentious sorry guys!

[penny-anna]

Let's talk about Submachine 2.

1) The first thing you see in the game: interestingly, in the sketch version of this game, the opening sequence shows a desktop computer instead of an arcade machine, though it's still an arcade machine in the game itself. Beyond that, though, I got nothing. The implications of this are manifold. Where you actually in the basement and travelled through some kind of portal? Were you only ever playing it on an arcade machine? How much of this is even real?

2) Continuing on a little from the previous point: the Submachine chair! You see this same chain a couple more times in Sub2, in Sub4, I thiiink also in the exploration network... and in Covert Front 4, an apparently unrelated game. And the implications of this are weiiird, because the chair in Covert Front 4 is created by a kind of matter-generator machine and therefore isn't entirely 'real'. What does that mean for the Submachine. Idk.

3) A wee thing I only just noticed: there are tiles stacked in the corner of the room because someone - presumably Mur - ripped them off the floor to make the dungeons accessible. He probably put in the ladders/electric lights/etc down there.

4) This thing is super cool that is all. :3

5) There's something really unnerving about both the Turqoise rooms and the Yellow rooms: I think it's a combination of the weirdly bright colours and the fact that the tile/floorboard patterns don't look quite right, especially the floor tiles here. Weird.

6) The bulb at the top of the light house! Except it isn't a bulb. Or is it?

Now seems as good a time as any to talk about the parallels between this game and Sub9: the biggest, of course, being the repetition of 'did you travel too far, or two early?' in the closing sequence here and the opening of Sub9, but the two games are just structually very similar. The Lighthouse has a vaguely pyramid-like structure, with different bright colours associated with different levels; the sewer pipes recur in both, as does the image of a submerged building (compare the reisin spilling out in Sub9 to the earth spilling out of windows in Sub2).

Only in Sub2 you start at the bottom of the structure and work your way up, from ancient (ish) ruins to a sleek metal tower, whereas in Sub9 you work your way down, deeper and deeper and into more and more ancient and sacred places. They're almost mirror-images of each other.

Then there's the lighthouse itself: Mur claims in one of his notes to have harnessed the power of the lighthouse to create a portal - and light to guide your way is what you summon at the end of Sub9.

And then of course there's Mur having been buried... (alive?)

To add to the neatness of the whole thing, I've seen it noted that Sub8 has some parallels with Sub3 - the layers of reality, the same place in different dimensions, the gadget that tells you where you are, the tidy and almost gimmicky nature of the puzzles - except again, inverted, as going deeper and deeper into the loop in Sub3 brings you to the only bad ending the series has had to date, whereas going deeper into the loop in Sub8 frees you. Again, mirroring.

So does that mean Sub10 will mirror Sub1? Hmm.

Let's talk a bit more about the ending: you see, as you did in Sub1, an image of yourself escaping... but again, as in Sub1, freedom is revealed to be 'an image on a computer screen'. This recurs again and again throughout the series: every game you finish draws you deeper and deeper into the web.

I think one of the most interesting instances of this is Sub0, which opens with you apparently outside on a cliff-face, with blue sky and pretty clouds - but in the exploration network you can revisit the area and - guess what - the sky is a painted backdrop. What does it all mean. Does the world outside the Submachine even exist any more. Who the fuck knows.

[gothcrossing-blog]

This is where the series really kicks in.