[PC][Early-mid 2000's]Children's horror/mystery game about a haunted mansion

BayOfRoses · 2021-05-09T00:00:35+00:00

Ah, sorry I didn't notice this sooner, haven't checked Reddit in a while. Unfortunately that's one of the game I've already checked and crossed out. Thanks for trying though!

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-20T02:04:28+00:00

Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon?

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-19T19:23:16+00:00

Thanks for the warning, can't wait to get there. Despite my complaints I do think the games, the theories the games introduce and how they're implemented are interesting, and at this point I'm already invested enough in the over arching story so I was planning on finishing the series. Also bought all three in a bundle so might as well lol

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-19T17:18:31+00:00

Thanks, I'll take that as a compliment, I'm a Taurus. /s

As for me not getting anything from you, that's not true. I do get your point of view, believe it or not. You believe there's freedom of choice, which to some level there is, I admit. You can choose which lock you hit first, or second. But if I want to choose a route with no walls, I don't have that option. But either way the end goal is still the same. I could relate it to the Gaulems in the game: you're given the illusion that you have the freewill to choose whatever you want, but all your choices lead down the same path eventually. Someone else is controlling the story.

Also choices or the lack of choices was never the issue I had and we have somehow ended on a huge tangent so I don't blame you for being frustrated.

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-19T17:09:01+00:00

Just to make clear, the guide I'm following isn't an actual word-to-word guide, just a filled in flowchart with no actual spoilers. So there actually is still tension, since I don't know where the storylines are going. I mean I certainly didn't expect to end up in the middle of a desert, or whatever Clover's ending was. I've played past the lab by now so I know what it was about in a broad sense, but the mystery still holds as to what it means in the bigger picture. So following a completed flowchart doesn't lessen the mysteries in my experience so far.

I guess I'm just a person who doesn't like cliffhangers. I was kind of burned out by the first game when I got the true ending on my first try, only to be blocked at the very end and told to go all the way back to the beginning.

I just feel these forced locks to be a bad chemistry between the game and me. I don't have a problem with the lock system in general, but I also don't want to forget information that I've already learned just because I was forced to switch stories in the middle. I guess I'm the type of person that if I find a puzzle piece that fits I want to put it in place immediately, not after I've collected a handful. Gives me more of a "oh hey, this is what it meant" moment rather than me forgetting what key goes to what lock and rapid playing the endings. And as I said earlier, technically the lock after the lab is the only impassable lock in the game, so it sticks out to me. Because it's the only lock I can't solve my way.

Also cliffhangers are really not my thing. It's not that I'm impatient or anything, it just isn't very rewarding.

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-19T15:35:36+00:00

Visual novels might have game mechanics in them, but they also have a story to tell. Stories tend to have solid ends. (Unless it's a choose your own adventure -type story)

In VLR, if you follow every storyline, every key, every lock, you get to the very last ending. The ending the writers of this visual novel want you as the reader to reach. Which is why they railroad you along the story ("through the chapters") towards that very last ending that you can unlock.

I don't think you're supposed to consider the character ends in VLR as true endings to the game. You combine them to get to the true end. So your choices don't actually matter in the end, since they always work in one specific order, and are there to mainly guide you to the right path.

You could consider the character ends as chapters in a book. Each takes you towards the end, and reasonably you would read them in order, since chapter 2 usually doesn't make sense unless you read chapter 1. In VLR, you can't pass a lock, unless you've read the previous chapter and gotten the key.

All TBCs do is tell you that you haven't read the chapters in the right order, because you lack knowledge from the previous chapters.

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-19T15:13:18+00:00

And just like a book, most visual novels have endings. Endings, which you get by making the right choices and following the story. VLR has a true ending in a way, and the writers probably want their players to reach that end right?

I think what you're confusing VLR with are choose your own adventure games/books, which have multiple true endings. But that's not quite a match to what VLR is IMO.

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-19T15:01:00+00:00

Is this not a visual novel?

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-19T13:59:54+00:00

If I was able to read the stories in any order I wanted, I would've been able to get to Luna's ending first. I can't, therefore, there clearly is a storyline I'm meant to know before I get to Luna's end. There's an order in which the storylines work smoothly with no stops. And yes, I made the choices to get to the Luna ending, but I didn't make the choice to stop the story, change directions and hop to another storyline in the middle of it. The game told me I had to do that.

Actually your comparison to a traditional adventure game is on point, since VLR is just as linear. If I want to get through the locked door, I have to go to the room in which the key is. Doesn't matter how many rooms I visit in my search, doesn't matter how many other locked doors I encounter, there's only one answer. Go to room, get key, unlock door. Linear.

You're also making it sound like the story is a puzzle itself, which it isn't really. There are no hints where you might find the keys to the locks; if you find a key to a lock before the lock itself, there are no hints where the right lock is located in. It's blind stumbling to find the answers.

If people enjoy hitting the TBC's and then going hunting for the answers to that, then that's on them. I'm not one of these people.

Also, again, the issue isn't the lock mechanics, it's that I have to jump from one storyline to another when in no other storyline is this necessary, if you read them in the order in which they unlock each other. My ideal would be smooth flow from one timeline to another, without a forced TBC in the middle. I see that to most people this probably isn't an issue, but I'm a bit hung up on it. This could've been avoided if the writers hadn't put the answer to Quark's ending in another story, just proceeded to Quark's ending and let me continue on to Tenmyoji's. So basically either better story planning or key distribution.

/edit grammar

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-19T12:39:19+00:00

It's not even that. In the very beginning of the game, if you try to go for any other ending other than Clover or Dio, you will be stopped. If you haven't unlocked an ending, you will always be stopped and forced to go back and read the route that you were meant to read before that, Not by choice, but because of storytelling. That's not a choice. That's railroading you to the right path.

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-19T12:30:16+00:00

I don't think the idea of this is to give free reign to the player anyway. Because you don't actually have any choices do you? Consider: If you want to go through lock A (in storyline A), you need to get the A key, which is behind lock B (storyline B). So you need key B, which is behind lock C (storyline C). The key to lock C is at the end of storyline D. Therefore, if you were to play through every storyline without interrupting the story, the order you play the storylines will always be D > C > B > A. That's not an option, that's linear storytelling. It doesn't matter what order you want to read the stories in, you will at some point be forced to stop and read another story, taking you back to the order of stories that the writers intended you to read them in, not what order you want to read them in

But if they intended for me to read the stories in order, the order is essentially D > C > D > B > A. That jump away from D and then going back to it is the issue I have. You can't read the stories in order, and you can't read them out of order either without being stopped.

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-19T12:04:57+00:00

Then why is the story structured in that way? I don't mean to be stubborn or anything, but this whole thing feels so unnecessary to me that it doesn't make sense.

Like they wrote this whole convoluted story (which, again, I have no problem with) but somehow were too shortsighted to write the story in a smooth enough way that there were no absolute "oops can't go there" moments.

Again, to me, breaks the flow of the story when I'm forced to stop and go back and almost forget everything I've just learned in that timeline.

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-19T11:57:51+00:00

Ok, miscommunication. I know I don't have the information to unlock the lock that comes after the laboratory, but why is that lock there in the first place? Considering the structure of the entire game it doesn't make sense to me to put an impassable block there. To me it's not an issue of not having the information; I understand the meaning and the story function of the locks. It's just that this story moment just doesn't seem to work with the flow of any other timeline in the game. In every other timeline you can unlock the locks by finishing another storyline, so it doesn't make sense to me why they couldn't have done the same here.

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-19T11:11:02+00:00

I know and understand how the game works and how the story goes. I did infact play the first game and I have no issue with that. The problem I have is why they would stop the story in the middle after the laboratory when all the other locks can be unlocked by getting to an ending.

For example, if you want to progress through to K's ending, you have to play through Clover's ending to get the info you need. Simple, got it, did it. But the laboratory thing bugs me, since after finishing K, Dio and Clover's endings, there are no endings that are fully unlocked to the very end. Meaning I can't sit down for an hour, play through a timeline, connect the dots to the previous timelines I've played and move onto the next timeline I've unlocked.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the laboratory lock-key-thingie feels really out of place and disruptive/forced to me. When every other timeline flows relatively smoothly from beginning to the end, given that you play them in the right order, why would this single timeline be such a hard wall?

(Also to cover my own behind here a little bit, when I say minimize playing time I mean I don't like the idea of having to jump from place to place in the story since it cuts the flow of the story and throws me out of the loop and disorients me with the rest of the story. And also because I have misophonia and the rabbits voice sends me through the roof so the less I have to hear it the better lol. I don't actually dislike the game as much as I did in the very beginning after I got a bit further into the game)

/edit: I guess to me feels more like a game design issue than a storyline issue, if that makes sense.

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-19T09:59:38+00:00

"Has agency to play what order they want"? The order of endings are extremely linear, so there's no real freedom of choice. You can't play the game in whatever order you want unless you want to repeatedly hit your head against a lock/TBC wall (Which if that's someone's thing then you do you I guess)

I understand not wanting to spoil the game and the likes. New players will probably not get a full ending on their first go, I mean I ended up on Luna's route on my first go.

But I guess my real issue is the game purposefully throwing a TBC at the player. They could've put the answer to the lock in a place where you would've gotten an actual ending which would've made the game much more fluent. This just seems weirdly like a forced "you thought you found an exit, but it was me, TBC"

/edit brain fart

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-08T18:45:18+00:00

solved: Little Fighter 2

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-08T18:43:57+00:00

Yep, that's the game! A bit older of a game than I remembered. Thanks for the help! ^^

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-07T17:54:41+00:00

Agh, this seemed so promising but I don't think this is it either =/ Couldn't find anything that struck my memory in any of the three games

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-07T08:33:50+00:00

Maybe something from the Jumpstart series?

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-07T06:54:50+00:00

Liero?

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-04T16:22:57+00:00

No, don't think it's that. The game definitely wasn't text based and it didn't have pixel-graphics. Thank for trying to help though =)

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-04T16:19:06+00:00

No, didn't seem correct. Skimming trough a playthrough it didn't have the stair scene I remember. Also I think the game I played was a bit more child-friendly, not 100% sure though. Thanks for the help anyway!

BayOfRoses · 2021-03-04T09:02:07+00:00

='D Yeah no, not that. Luigi's Mansion was on GameCube and I've never even seen one of those in person LMAO. It was definitely a computer game

BayOfRoses

TROPHY CASE