Submachine: Future Loop Foundation

[Mr. Trapezoid]

How the graph works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL4GLH03gyA

Personal notes:

For being a promotional project it sure has a good chunk of content, more so than submachine 0 did.

The game starts on a good note. Escaping the ward has you obtain a key in a very peculiar way, finding the knife makes you go back to the ward and cut open the walls for a credit card and using the credit card to escape the prison is strangely cinematic and exciting.
And then you leave the prison...

After that the game is not doing so well design wise. There's a really cool moment when you travel into the picture of a projector, but the keys and locks are not spread interestingly here. You have three choices you can make: go for the music track, get the movie reel or open up the final room. You will need the movie reel in the final room so what most players will go through is this: Unlock a lock, get a key, unlock another lock, get a key, unlock another lock, get a key, unlock another lock, get a song.... this is repetitive and predictable. What helps a bit here is that the song is a bonus, so skipping it lets you skip three locks, but this is already a short game getting even shorter if you do this.

Using the movie reel on the projector ends the game, however, in 2014...

[Mr. Trapezoid]

Dungeon graph: Submachine FLF (2014)

[Mr. Trapezoid]

...the game was expanded with new puzzles and the promotional content was removed. Three of the keys and locks from FLF 2007 were used for the promotional song. Instead of removing these locks and keys, more content was made to justify their inclusion.

I don't know if the graph was designed like this on purpose to retain the feel of the original FLF, but what ends up happening here is making the issue of FLF's second half even worse. Now you have to unlock one lock with one key to get one new key for one new lock seven times sequentially to complete the game. It is really unfortunate, FLF has a good opening and expanding the game could have fixed the issues of the original but instead it worsened. For this reason, I must unfortunately say that submachine: FLF 2014 is my least favorite submachine game. But there are still 6 great main titles to tackle so not a big loss.

Tune in tomorrow for the dungeon graph breakdown of Submachine 5: the Root

[Mr. Trapezoid]

No comment for this one?

I'm a slow writer.

[ENIHCAMBUS]

No comment for this one?

I'm a slow writer.

You're not an slow writer, its a well known fact that Vortex is a ninja.

[Vortex]

I agree that FLF 2014 is somewhat worse in terms of game flow. I hope Mateusz will integrate it better with the other games in the Steam release, right now it's the one that stands out the most even with the added references to Sub9 (which also felt a bit forced tbh).

[Augustus]

It did not feel forced for me, I must say I have played it for some years, I like some upgrades but the Sub9 connection doesn't make to much sense for me. The Root seems to be more logical, but Mateusz should do what he wants to do, it are his games, and I must say that I have gotten used to the connection.

[Sublevel 114]

I dunno why I never asked it before:

By a chance, do you know guys, was Jukebox ambient from Submachine: FLF HD (my second favorite in the whole series! ^^) composed from scratch by Thumpmonks, or is it remake of some already existed tune?

Thanks.

[Augustus]

I believe it was the Future Loop Foundation themselves who did it, but it isn't credited on the Submachine wiki so I cannot confirm.