Topic: Castle Escape | New Chapter available

[fernewelten]

Castle Escape

Hello folks, Meet Count Bumbley.

He's a brave chap, he's affable, and ... he doesn't want to marry his love, Lady Anemone, just yet.

Lady Anemone, OTOH, has other plans. And she has the wiles and willpower to see her plans through.


Count Bumbley must escape his fate … and with your help, he will be able to!

• Battle talkative shoes!
• Help a poor ghost to be redeemed!
• Solve absurd riddles!
• Meet absurd characters!

Download the game here
There are two chapters available, for the time being in separate files:

• Castle Escape: Chapter 1 – for Windows for Linux (untested)
• Castle Escape: Chapter 2 – for Windows for Linux (untested)

[heltenjon]

This post is about chapter 2.

I enjoyed the new chapter. As usual, there is a clever puzzle design and a contraption which the player has to work out how to use. It was cool to be able to switch characters, and I'm instantly fond of the poor ghost fellow.

I was stuck for a while hunting for the glasses.

Spoiler: ShowHide

I couldn't find them and was sure I had to fan the fire to light up some other space in order to find them. 

I guess that there's another place other players may get stuck, but I lucked out and got it. 

The game also deserves some applause for using music themes connected to the character who is the focal point at that time, much like movies do. However, my personal music taste doesn't quite match, especially the long vibrato tones (the ghost music). I'm impressed that you composed this and play it, it's just not my genre. I did like the music in the "this has happened" segment, though!

This is shaping up to be a really nice multiple chapter escape game. I'm very much looking forward to the next installment. Perhaps it's time for a more sympathetic female character then? Count Bumbley can get away with some mysogonistic remarks, given his somewhat poor choice of girlfriend, but you don't want to overuse the trope of nagging or stupid woman without balancing it, either with stupid male characters or positive female ones. (This comes after playing most of your games.)

EDIT: If someone's wondering why I'm not commenting on part 1, I did so already when it was a MAGS entry a while back.

[sthomannch]

Finished the first part, clever puzzles and funny story. Then I started the second game (Linux version). After the intro, when the mouse pointer changes to an arrow so that you can interact, the game crashes after about 1 second with a segmentation fault.

...
Setting up window
Initialize sprites
Engine initialization complete
Starting game
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

in fact, no coredump around. I can give it a try with the Windows version...


Later: Windows version works (Wine). Clever puzzles again, unexpected but logical.
I have

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found the glasses

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found the blueprints and exit in the cupboard

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opened the magic box

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stopped the clock, so I could read four characters of the door code

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but it seems the ghost cannot help me with the crystal ball, so I am a little stuck here

[fernewelten]

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but it seems the ghost cannot help me with the crystal ball,

so I am a little stuck here

Hi, sorry that I'm a bit sluggish replying: My mother has died this Friday, that I have tended to and cared for until the very end, and I've got a full book with chores, tasks and duties right now.

Spoiler: ShowHide

You need to enter the cupboard as Count Bumbley. Don't use the ghost, it can't enter the cupboard. (You can enter the lower right compartment of the cupboard by clicking its back wall.)

The problem with the lock in the cupboard is that it will draw a new set of random letters each time you get the chance to guess and enter the combination. It's different and random each time. So your chances to guess all the letters correctly purely by chance are kind of slim.

Unless ... you can ... you know ... cheat a little and increase your odds somehow?

[heltenjon]

Later: Windows version works (Wine). Clever puzzles again, unexpected but logical.
I have
(Crystal ball)

Spoiler: ShowHide

but it seems the ghost cannot help me with the crystal ball, so I am a little stuck here

You are close.

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You don't need the crystal ball to show the last letter. But you do need to remember what a crystal ball does.

My mother has died this Friday, that I have tended to and cared for until the very end, and I've got a full book with chores, tasks and duties right now.

Our deepest condolences.

[fernewelten]

...
Setting up window
Initialize sprites
Engine initialization complete
Starting game
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

in fact, no coredump around.

Oh dear. I'll post a bug report for that.

Trouble is, the game is written in AGS 4, the major version that will come after the next major version (AGS 3.6) It's somewhat experimental and sometimes gets fixes a bit later than the other major versions but it's the only one that features the new compiler, and I wanted to stress test the new compiler.

Well, the compiler was up to the task apart from some small bugs that I found and fixed, but it seems that the Engine and/or Editor are not and generate faulty Linux. 

[fernewelten]

..

[fernewelten]

Perhaps it's time for a more sympathetic female character then? […] (This comes after playing most of your games.)

You're dead right there. You're probably alluding to the bridge troll in “Huggles”?  That latter one happened purely “by construction”:

Spoiler: ShowHide

Huggles' Mum needed to be female because she's the one that lays eggs, so I wanted Huggles to be male for contrast. The bridge troll needed a credible motive to deny Huggles the bridge. What credible motive could a bridge warden ever have to dislike a perky, helpful, harmless rabbit? And that's when I came up with the idea, well, perhaps the guard dislikes males in general, irrespective of their perkiness. So the guard was born that hides their own insecurities and weaknesses by projecting them onto the bystanders whilst deluding themselves about their own capabilities. Huggles being male caused the guard to be female. Thus, a female delusional bridge troll.

 

It would be kind of cool if I could come away from that “escape” theme in further installments of the saga, it's getting a bit old (for me). Instead of “Castle Escape”, the game could be called, “Tales of Castle Burburton” or some such. Perhaps Lady Anemone could be the next protagonist and redeem herself somehow whilst explaining what turned her into the possessive, domineering personality in the first place. Some credible reason would need to be provided.

It's kind of hard because there's not much room for character progression in those game jam miniatures. You need to transport some specific personalities quickly, and the easiest way to do this is by drawing on clichés.

I haven't planned an overall story for the saga; I'm making up things as I go along, aligning the installments to the respective jam theme.

[sthomannch]

My condolences. But nice to hear that you could be with her during this time.

[heltenjon]

Perhaps it's time for a more sympathetic female character then? […] (This comes after playing most of your games.)

You're dead right there. You're probably alluding to the bridge troll in “Huggles”?  That latter one happened purely “by construction”:

Bridge troll, Ratzelda, Lady Anemone. Now these are all good, funny characters in themselves. It just looks a bit one-sided if one considers your collected output. Interesting to read how the bridge troll character came to be! (Though something of the same effect could have been if you wrote a character hung up on the differences between rabbits and hares.) 

It would be kind of cool if I could come away from that “escape” theme in further installments of the saga, it's getting a bit old (for me). Instead of “Castle Escape”, the game could be called, “Tales of Castle Burburton” or some such. Perhaps Lady Anemone could be the next protagonist and redeem herself somehow whilst explaining what turned her into the possessive, domineering personality in the first place. Some credible reason would need to be provided.

It's kind of hard because there's not much room for character progression in those game jam miniatures. You need to transport some specific personalities quickly, and the easiest way to do this is by drawing on clichés.

I haven't planned an overall story for the saga; I'm making up things as I go along, aligning the installments to the respective jam theme.

Well, I like to follow the characters and see how they develop. What starts out as cliches may turn into something else by the time the story is done. Turning the tables and giving her the lead role would be interesting!

[fernewelten]

you don't want to overuse the trope of nagging or stupid woman without balancing it, either with stupid male characters […]

I can offer the neighbour/vigilante from “Jake's Very Last Journey”: He's so full of teaching Jake self-righteous lessons that he can't listen to anything whatsoever that Jake tries to say. And he's male. 

[heltenjon]

I can offer the neighbour/vigilante from “Jake's Very Last Journey”: He's so full of teaching Jake self-righteous lessons that he can't listen to anything whatsoever that Jake tries to say. And he's male. 

I suspect this is the only game of yours I haven't yet played. 

[bertolino]

please help me find glasses

[fernewelten]

please help me find glasses

1. Right-click on the places that you suspect to contain the glasses. Eeric, the ghost, needs to look for the glasses. If you left-click instead of right-clicking, you make Eeric try to interact with the hotspots and objects instead of making him look at them. Eeric is so weak that he can't interact with a lot places of interest. So if you left-click on those places, you get a “I can't do that” reaction from Eeric even if the glasses are actually there.

2. So here are some hints on where to look specifically:

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They are low.

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They are behind thin panes of wood.

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They are behind the third door of the cupboard that contains all those books, covered partially.

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Hover with the mouse over the rightmost door of the cupboard with the books, any you'll find that Eeric can see through the thin wooden door: it fades away. The upper compartment of the space contains the glasses, behind, I think, a large beaker with pens in it. Right-click on the glasses.