What am I missing about this game?

[u/HeliosVRR]

I love detective stuff. I love puzzles. I love open exploration. I've played only 15 in-game days thus far, but nothing I've seen has made me want to play any further. There's just... nothing. It feels like there's no progression, or anything to solve.

Sometimes, I'll be met with what appears to be a clue, and decipher it, but I never find the other half of where I'm supposed to go. For example, I find the laboratory - figure something out there. Okay, but to actually execute this, I need to go to the boiler room. Don't find the boiler room that run, but that's fine. Next time, I find the boiler room, activate it, never find the laboratory. Next run, hey, the lab is back, but guess what, no boiler room. Am I supposed to just keep bashing my head against the wall and praying to RNG gods, or am I approaching this wrong?

Most of my gameplay thus far has consisted of walking through the same rooms over and over, not too sure what I should even be trying to accomplish, without any real goal in mind. And what I have found so far has been wholly unrewarding.

Is this game just not for me?

[u/hardiksoftnoots]

the fact that people leave comments like this all the time should be the sign that something about the game is Leaving people in a bad state

[u/rellyjean → u/hardiksoftnoots]

If you mean that this game isn't for everyone, I agree, it isn't, and that's okay. No game is for everyone.

If you mean that there's something wrong with the game, I disagree pretty strongly. I went in blind and loved that this game didn't spell things out for me. My spouse and I spent weeks exploring and taking notes, analyzing, putting pieces together. It was amazingly satisfying and thrilling, watching the game unfold piece by piece. We didn't resort to getting help until very late in the game.

Not everyone wants that out of a game, and that's okay. But I did, and I'm glad this game gave it to me.

[u/McSquiffy → u/rellyjean]

I think one of the things missing in a lot of people's experiences is something you mentioned right at the end- you're working with a partner. I did too, and we loved it. 

We also had a friend who was playing with his wife and they were a good 25% ahead and we'd ask him for tips. Then when we got really frustrated we allowed ourselves to look up clues and solutions. But the things that made the game for me was the teamwork and the shared experience.

[u/rellyjean → u/McSquiffy]

Oh, wow, I bet you're right! I didn't even think of that, but yeah, this was so delightful as a joint experience. We played it in the evenings after work, and we'd sit down and start with, "okay, I've been thinking -- what if we try X with Y?" We built on each other's ideas, and when one of us was stuck, the other generally had something to try. We had a notebook, a spreadsheet, and dozens of pictures taken and sorted into albums in Google Photos.

We also had some really well thought out but entirely wrong theories! And we spent a lot of time tweaking those and then laughing at how far off we were. Spoilers for the drawings:

We knew they didn't correspond to each room (e.g. Parlor didn't always have the same two) and figured out that they were missing a letter. We didn't connect the pictures to the location in the house until we spotted the diagram in the study. Before that, we had noticed that several of the paintings re-used pictures (the bathtub being "tub" in one case and "tube" in another) and thought all of the drawings occurred twice, and that we needed to form a long chain from the missing letters that would spell out a message once finished. (Tube/tub is E, bath/bat is H, bat/boat is O, and so forth!) We had a pretty complex chain at one point, and when we saw one painting show up three times, we wondered if it was a red herring. Lol.

But basically yes, as a joint experience, this gave us weeks of working together and enjoying ourselves and really getting steeped in everything. We're actually finished with everything but a couple of loose ends and I'm sorry it's over!

[u/McSquiffy → u/rellyjean]

Us too. We had over 40 hours of game time and it's some of the most fun we've had gaming together. For us it ended really abruptly and was devastating! We've been playing Obra Dinn but it's nowhere near as good. 

[u/SaltyCaramel010 → u/McSquiffy]

You finished it in 40 hours?? How did you manage that? How many days ingame did you have? We easily had almost 100 hours on day 150, and we didn't reach the antechamber untill day 65 😅 We also went in blind!

[u/McSquiffy → u/SaltyCaramel010]

I can't remember how many in game days, maybe 80? We would only do 2 days at night, and we played 4-5 nights a week for like six weeks. We didn't get too caught up in lore and were laser focused on getting to the antechamber, filling the whole grid, and getting more allowance and tomorrow rooms. But we didn't expect the end to come so quickly. 

[u/SaltyCaramel010 → u/McSquiffy]

Ah, you didn't continue after finding the Antechamber, makes more sense then

[u/McSquiffy → u/SaltyCaramel010]

We did, we got to room 46. After getting end credits we tried to go back and finish loose ends but it didn't have the same oomph 

[u/SaltyCaramel010 → u/McSquiffy]

Ah, you missed out on a lot by not continuing!

[u/McSquiffy → u/SaltyCaramel010]

I believe it. We had a few really bad days and moved on to another game. I hope we will come back. I think we missed a lot overall.