A dedicated forum founded by Mateusz Skutnik, creator of world famous Submachine and several acclaimed point-and-click flash games.
https://www.pastelland.net/forum/
correctENIHCAMBUS wrote:This man was surely not there in 2005...
3r wrote:EVERYTHING WRONG
WITH
Puzzle Autopsy: Submachine 1
SPOILERS
(duh)
That's human nature.Review wrote:Why? Because. Stop asking so many reasonable questions.
Same with the Submachine series.Review wrote:By the end of the game, MYST does actually develop a story, and there’s an explanation as to why you’re there and what you’re trying to accomplish.
When you boil it down like that, that's all you really can do in these sort of games. Crimson Room, NautralXE, Afro Ninja, they all do the same thing. So it's not anything wrong, it's just how the games are played.Review wrote:Early escape game designers rarely added that kind of detail to their games, resulting in titles that had just a bunch of stuff to click on until a door opened to a picture of The Outside (which has a blue sky and trees … that’s how you know it’s The Outside). Submachine 1 predictably fits this mold.
Well I hope you never consider MOTAS, then.Review wrote:’m a player who really values story, and I roundly despise online escape games, so you know which camp I’m in.
Ha ha ha ha ha, wow...this is actually funny. I smiled when I read thisReview wrote: The whole thing is set to the dynamically jarring strains of a looping soundtrack that sounds like a country & western band caught in a slow-motion bus accident.
. But no, it's still offensive.Yet you should know the goal because the Submachine series is classified as "room escape" on most popular websites.Review wrote:In Crimson Room, the goal was weak but clear: you’re in a room, there’s a locked door, and you have to open it. In Submachine, you’re in some sort of a … bunker (?), there’s a diamond-shaped machiney apparatus on the wall (which isn’t even for certain – the graphics are so simple that it could be a wall hanging or a mural), aaaaand … go.
That's the goal of the whole series. The game works against the Player, dropping no clear hints about what to do. It's all on the Player to be tested and to take the extra step in figuring things out for him/herself. This becomes clearer as the series progresses.Review wrote:That’s one way to wordlessly communicate the Big Goal to the player right off the top. Missed opportunity.
But as soon as you found just one tile, I would think the goal would become pretty clear.Review wrote:Anywho, we have four panels to collect (even though we don’t know it) to operate that device
This is true, but as we've seen nothing with trial and guesswork so far in the game, then there's no reason to believe that this puzzle would do that to us.Review wrote:Once pulled, the switches cannot be un-pulled, so there’s no trial-and-error or guesswork involved whatsoever.
This is something I've been concerned with too. But, if you assume that the walls, ceilings, and floors are one pixel thick, then yes. But I'm assuming that since we haven't broken any of the walls or floors from our weight that there is some sort of thick wall between each room where foundations can be laid. The pipes could go through there. Mateusz omitted these from our sight because, well, gameplay material is more important than non-gameplay material.Review wrote:The conduits the switches are connected to lead to absolutely nowhere, as you can see from this map I pulled from the Submachine wiki
The game has you doing something because it will probably help you progress in the game. It's not reverse-solving by this point. You see a potential puzzle, find a way to solve it, and reap the rewards. The game doesn't need to baby-feed you the directions for each puzzle. Ever played Antichamber?Review wrote:Once the cubes are all floating, a panel magically appears in the box, which conceals the panel you need (though you don’t know it) which helps open the door (which you don’t know about). This is a bit of quasi-reverse solving again, because the game has you doing something without knowing why. You’re just mucking with these bells and cubes, taking it on faith that something useful will happen once you’ve solved the puzzle.
A better, more goal-oriented approach would be to show the four cubes floating when the player enters the room. Show the panel inside the box. Then close the box up, and make the cubes drop. Now the player understands that elevating the cubes will probably re-open that panel. But setting all that up takes effort, and why be arsed?
Ah, shush.Review wrote:Opening the clock (that you don’t know you need to open or why)
I wouldn't consider this a pixel hunt unless you're playing the game on 80% zoom.Review wrote:This is the one possibly pixel-hunty I alluded to earlier: when you place the pearl in the tiny hotspot inside the clock, you fix its … pendulum, I guess? … and the panel appears.
Thankfully, the Submachine series continues to make more sense as the game progresses. Kind of like this other game called Myst.Review wrote:We’re not about to start making sense at this stage in the game.
This will all make sense in Submachine 4, don't worry.Review wrote:Randomly-associated combos are my biggest beef in both real and virtual escape games.
Ok, let's see here. 1: We have already seen two of the puzzle tiles come from hatches. Why is this hard to figure out? 2: It's possible that the left radio button is clickable but is meant to not do nothing. Have you ever used a radio where you didn't use all of the buttons in order to achieve a desired task? Like powering it on? The AM/FM switch is pretty unhandy unless you turn the thing on first. 3: The bottom drawer is merely an aesthetic choice by Mat himself. Imagine if games got rid of everything that wasn't directly involved with the gameplay. Including background buildings, landscapes, etc. That would be pretty boring. 4: Of course, if it was a choice between the larger or smaller machine, why would you pick the smaller one that doesn't have a hatch? Moreover, we notice that the large machine has a handle that doesn't stay down until you power it up. This says something about where to go once you turn the power on. 5: By this point most likely the only thing left in your inventory is the spoon, and you know you need to get that hatch open. (Don't pretend otherwise) If it were me I would find any way possible to use that spoon with the metal box even if I didn't know exactly what to do.Review wrote:Of course – OF COURSE – to get that riveted hatch open (which you don’t know you’re trying to open), you need to short out the machine. So … wait for it … press the right button on a radio (but not the left button, because it’s not clickable – OBVIOUSLY), and the drawer underneath will open. (The top drawer, not the bottom drawer. You can’t touch the bottom drawer, so it might as well not even exist. So why draw it, I ask? But I ask too many questions. Shhhhh. There, there.)
Inside the drawer is a spoon which you need to place between the exposed electrical nodes of the machine (THESE nodes, not THOSE nodes on the other end of the machine in a different room. Why would we want to short THAT side of the machine? It doesn’t even have a riveted hatch in it that we’re trying to open even though we don’t know we’re trying to open it yet. Sheesh!) Doing that will short the machine, frying its nodes. The short will, of course, LOGICALLY AND PREDICTABLY, make the riveted hatch fall off, revealing the final panel.
Incorrect: The absence of the charge made the plate fall off.Review wrote:If you’re not following the obvious logic here, it’s that a powerful electrical charge will slice metal rivets in half, so that anything they were fastening will fall off. It’s scienticious™.
Enlighten me. (get it?)Review wrote:Everyone likes to feel smart, after all.
And of course, this was Mat's first big game. He wasn't well known at the time, and he was just starting out. To be fair, not every puzzle is straight forward, but Rome wasn't built in a day. You see his obvious education on the matter expanding throughout the series until he surpasses most if not all other game designers in this genre. And as far as studying in isolation, I think any player would never get the full effects of Submachine if they played only one random game. You can't just decide to play Submachine 9; you won't get it. It's logical to start from the beginning and follow it through.Review wrote:When played together with its sequels, I’m sure the series gets more intriguing as it goes along, and as its designer grows along with it. But studied in isolation, Submachine 1 has a few uninteresting, illogical puzzles and commits a couple of design crimes that are more misdemeanor than felony.
(Disclaimer: don't take this counter-review seriously, I had a lot of time on my hands)3r wrote:REVIEW SIN TALLY
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THE LIGHTHOUSE
That was my problem with some parts of the review. The game is easy enough as it is, what exactly does this guy want? Also, about the coin puzzle and all that, if "logical" puzzles means that they are consistent with the game's plot and setting, then one just has to play SNEE for a little (specifically 672) to see that the Basement probably emerged as a random Submachine mutation, the puzzles created/absorbed along with it, and not built by someone who wanted to trap the player in as he/she assumes. There is no in-game reason that puzzles have to be user-friendly, since they likely weren't created for humans anyways. Of course you learn all this later, but if you jump to conclusions so early it isn't making a fair criticism to the series; the game can be played in isolation, but that doesn't mean it is meant to be.Error_3113 wrote:The game has you doing something because it will probably help you progress in the game. It's not reverse-solving by this point. You see a potential puzzle, find a way to solve it, and reap the rewards. The game doesn't need to baby-feed you the directions for each puzzle.
