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xyzzysqrlLast time in our Irish ghost story Nancy Drew found a jetpack.
...
You know what? Let's check this thing out.
Here are the controls to our goddamn jetpack which we stole from a hut in the middle of a swamp. You know what? I have no idea how this thing works. I set some knobs, flip some switches, throw that slider up there all the way to the top, and activate it.
It explodes, killing Nancy instantly. This is why jetpacks are not home consumer technology, people. Let's set this aside and move on. I'm sure when the time comes to use it, we'll find a crytic manual encoded somewhere. Meanwhile, since we're next to the bar, I drop in and pay Donal a visit. Let's see what Captain Jerkass has to say. When I ask him about the bog he just laughs. It's impossible to cross the bog! He heard that an old gypsy woman lived in the middle of it, when he was a kid, but obviously it's impossible to get to her place if you're fond of being alive. ... right! Sure it is. Okay, we have an OLD GYPSY JETPACK, or a "Romani Flight Device", as I will be referring to it.
I also ask him about some of the things over beyond the wall. He muses there there's a stone circle out there with ogham runes on it. Not that he can read them! Not even buying a book on them helped. Since I seem to be collecting the First Lending Blatantly Goddamn Obvious Puzzle Solution Library, I ask if I can borrow his book. Noooo. Not in the lending mood. Alas, his favorite band is missing a drummer, and he's been moody and depressed without their music. Nancy offers to get on stage and drum for him.
Pictured: Okay, three, Drew, one let's jam.
I am pretty sure I know people who at this point in the game would thrust their arm into their own chest and remove their liver, then eat it, rather than do this minigame. This sort of thing is why I'm playing this series of games publicly, to be honest. Because I'm constantly left going "YOU WANT ME TO WHAT." As Nancy Drew herself states, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must contain at least six minigames and a scavenger hunt." It's the Drew Theory of Deduction.
(she never said that)
The band kicks up a jig, and ... and I'll be honest, even hitting every beat, to my untrained ears it sounds like two guys playing a merry and upbeat irish jig with some moron plonking aimlessly at the drums trying to drown them out. In spite of this, I get a "MARVELOUS" rank, a bunch of tokens, and Donal claiming it was an amazing rendition. Nancy reminds him of the book and he hands it over straightaway.
...I'll be honest, I sat there and imagined Nancy wildly and eagerly pounding away in a drum solo while the rest of the band edged out the back door as I did the game a couple more times for fun. THUNKTHUNKAtickaBOOMBOOMthumpaBOOM. Be glad, you don't have to sit there and watch me do it. Ahem. I wander off back to the castle and quickly find the runes and circle that Donal was talking about. Okay, now this puzzle took me a while because it was a big ... mass... LUMP of information. The ruins have four columns, each with three sections that rotate to show four faces. On the first section is Zodiac signs. I look in the Zodiac book and ID these as Taurus, Aquarius, Leo and Scorpio. ALSO in the book is a note that I hadn't noticed before that says "Winter -> Fall -> Summer -> Spring" in a circle. So I look those up:
Aquarius: Feb 17 - Mar 11, Spring
Taurus: May 15 - June 20, Summer
Scorpio: Nov 24 - Dec 22, Winter
Leo: August 11 - Sept. 16, Fall
Okay, so UNDER those, there's pictures of trees. With leaves, blooming, with leaves falling off... blah blah, you're getting this, right? I have to set the pillar at the top to show the bare dead tree and Scorpio, right? But UNDERNEATH ALL THAT SHIT is some RUNES, and these fuckin' runes are COMPLICATED, and they're all "Beltane, Lugnasa, Samhain, Imbolc". I have to read the OTHER book and corelate the knowledge THERE to arrange all this crap properly.
Which I do, because I am awesome. I am on point here. I solved this puzzle all BAM it only took like two hours BAM okay done.
So this time out of a stone tile on the ground pops ANOTHER printing press plate. 01011001 this time. I grab that and bugger off. Okay, now to the... let's see... there's a 'Barn' on Kit's map. I head north and find the barn. Inside is the... I'm not making this up, I swear... WOOLY-NO-MORE V6 ENGINE, a giant barn-filling mechanical shearing device that reads the emotional state of a sheep to ... Just... have a picture. I can't even...
Pictured: The Face of Progress
I have no idea what the hell you do with this thing. I carefully walk back out of the barn and head off to try something a little less insane. Like maybe solving the doll puzzle, now that I have a bunch of those things. On the way past I ask Kit about the sketching ("It's a hobby. Some people collect stamps, I sketch how I'd develop real estate.") and then trot upstairs and show it to Kyler. Kyler thinks about it briefly, then dismisses it as nothing particularly interesting. She then asks Nancy if she'd please go out and collect some flowers from around the castle grounds that have "ward off evil spirits" properties, and provides a list. ... Now, I've been seeing flowers everywhere, so I accept this task with a sense of weary resignation.
(At this point there is a pause in the narrative as I get dinner and watch Game Center CX with the woof.)
I'm back! And of course I end up not exactly going off and doing the doll thing. No, instead of doing that I scurry around the castle grounds picking flowers. While I'm out there, I find the last gear! It is, of course, tied to a wind chime out by the barn. OF COURSE. But mostly it's romping around the castle yard, going "flowers here, flowers there, la la la la la". Right. Eventually I have them all, and the last gear for the gear puzzle, so it's back to solve that in the castle! Just outside the door to Kyler's, Nancy stops for a minute.
"He didn't know how to TELL you! He doesn't want to get married!"
"Matt WILL be back! I know what you're doing, Kit, but it's over between us! And that sketch was... I don't even understand why you'd do that!"
"It's just a hobby!"
And so on. Nancy flat-out refuses to walk in on this conversation. Instead I ... go off and solve the doll puzzle.
*heavy sigh*
That... takes a while. Since when I do one, it gives me a token and a second puzzle. Doing the second puzzle gets me... another token.
*baffled* Well... uh... Let's just go talk to Donal for a while! ...On the way past Kit's area downstairs, I notice something. Hey, he has something sticking out from under the bed he's always sitting on. ... Why, it's Matt's luggage! Man, I don't EVEN KNOW who is guilty anymore. Donal has nothing to say, so I end up pointlessly treking around the grounds for a while before coming back in to find Kit sulking on his bed again and Kyler upstairs once more. I cheerfully point out the luggage to Kit, who seems down. He looks at it and gets EVEN MORE down. Oh god, Matt -has- been here the whole time. He's done everything wrong AGAIN. He tried to clear the air with Kyler, but it turns out she not only tried to pin him as the bad guy, she was right about Matt -and- right about Kit's feelings for her. Kit sorta flumps over on his cot and -pouts-.
There, there, Kit.
Donal, it turns out, is the one who hid the luggage. He figured if he took Matt's things, Matt would leave. Instead, the Good People took Matt. Donal eyes Nancy. "You're good at finding things, are ya?" he muses. Then he passes her a key. "Go find ten sheep that're roaming around the grounds and lock them in the barn. Whistle at them, they'll follow you. I'd do it myself, but I'm old." ...so... Yeah, now I have to Collect Ten Sheep. The exciting life of Nancy Drew.
I go do the gear puzzle instead. This takes a while, and I do in fact manage to get from point A to point B using only eight gears, but it requires me to also rotate points C and D. Eventually I do. The knight's head spins around on its little pole and spits out ANOTHER DOLLHOUSE PUZZLE JAH-YEEEEEZUS CHRISTMAS.
Back to the dollhouse! Except... This one requires a doll that looks a lot like the doll I saw in the bog hut, and that one wasn't finished because it was out of wool. Sounds like it's time to HARVEST SOME SHEEP. I run around outside, playing the flute at sheep. They teleport off back to the barn, just... -warp out-. This no longer seems weird to me. Eventually all ten are in the barn, and... that seems to be it. I report back to Donal and he's like "Good." ... And... that's it.
*tap fingers*
Eventually I get the next event to trigger by running back and forth between the barn, Donal, and the house in the swamp for a while. Nancy eventually looks at the doll, looks at the wool bin, realizes it's empty, realizes sheep are made out of wool, and asks Donal if she can shear one. Donal crosses his arms. "No." he replies. "You're going to have to shear me three bags of wool. Then I'll let you keep whatever else you get."
Okay sure what the fuck ever how hard can it be.
Guys, I am -really bad- at shearing sheep.
NEXT TIME: Maybe I get this whole sheep thing right!
...
You know what? Let's check this thing out.
Here are the controls to our goddamn jetpack which we stole from a hut in the middle of a swamp. You know what? I have no idea how this thing works. I set some knobs, flip some switches, throw that slider up there all the way to the top, and activate it.
It explodes, killing Nancy instantly. This is why jetpacks are not home consumer technology, people. Let's set this aside and move on. I'm sure when the time comes to use it, we'll find a crytic manual encoded somewhere. Meanwhile, since we're next to the bar, I drop in and pay Donal a visit. Let's see what Captain Jerkass has to say. When I ask him about the bog he just laughs. It's impossible to cross the bog! He heard that an old gypsy woman lived in the middle of it, when he was a kid, but obviously it's impossible to get to her place if you're fond of being alive. ... right! Sure it is. Okay, we have an OLD GYPSY JETPACK, or a "Romani Flight Device", as I will be referring to it.
I also ask him about some of the things over beyond the wall. He muses there there's a stone circle out there with ogham runes on it. Not that he can read them! Not even buying a book on them helped. Since I seem to be collecting the First Lending Blatantly Goddamn Obvious Puzzle Solution Library, I ask if I can borrow his book. Noooo. Not in the lending mood. Alas, his favorite band is missing a drummer, and he's been moody and depressed without their music. Nancy offers to get on stage and drum for him.
Pictured: Okay, three, Drew, one let's jam.
I am pretty sure I know people who at this point in the game would thrust their arm into their own chest and remove their liver, then eat it, rather than do this minigame. This sort of thing is why I'm playing this series of games publicly, to be honest. Because I'm constantly left going "YOU WANT ME TO WHAT." As Nancy Drew herself states, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must contain at least six minigames and a scavenger hunt." It's the Drew Theory of Deduction.
(she never said that)
The band kicks up a jig, and ... and I'll be honest, even hitting every beat, to my untrained ears it sounds like two guys playing a merry and upbeat irish jig with some moron plonking aimlessly at the drums trying to drown them out. In spite of this, I get a "MARVELOUS" rank, a bunch of tokens, and Donal claiming it was an amazing rendition. Nancy reminds him of the book and he hands it over straightaway.
...I'll be honest, I sat there and imagined Nancy wildly and eagerly pounding away in a drum solo while the rest of the band edged out the back door as I did the game a couple more times for fun. THUNKTHUNKAtickaBOOMBOOMthumpaBOOM. Be glad, you don't have to sit there and watch me do it. Ahem. I wander off back to the castle and quickly find the runes and circle that Donal was talking about. Okay, now this puzzle took me a while because it was a big ... mass... LUMP of information. The ruins have four columns, each with three sections that rotate to show four faces. On the first section is Zodiac signs. I look in the Zodiac book and ID these as Taurus, Aquarius, Leo and Scorpio. ALSO in the book is a note that I hadn't noticed before that says "Winter -> Fall -> Summer -> Spring" in a circle. So I look those up:
Aquarius: Feb 17 - Mar 11, Spring
Taurus: May 15 - June 20, Summer
Scorpio: Nov 24 - Dec 22, Winter
Leo: August 11 - Sept. 16, Fall
Okay, so UNDER those, there's pictures of trees. With leaves, blooming, with leaves falling off... blah blah, you're getting this, right? I have to set the pillar at the top to show the bare dead tree and Scorpio, right? But UNDERNEATH ALL THAT SHIT is some RUNES, and these fuckin' runes are COMPLICATED, and they're all "Beltane, Lugnasa, Samhain, Imbolc". I have to read the OTHER book and corelate the knowledge THERE to arrange all this crap properly.
Which I do, because I am awesome. I am on point here. I solved this puzzle all BAM it only took like two hours BAM okay done.
So this time out of a stone tile on the ground pops ANOTHER printing press plate. 01011001 this time. I grab that and bugger off. Okay, now to the... let's see... there's a 'Barn' on Kit's map. I head north and find the barn. Inside is the... I'm not making this up, I swear... WOOLY-NO-MORE V6 ENGINE, a giant barn-filling mechanical shearing device that reads the emotional state of a sheep to ... Just... have a picture. I can't even...
Pictured: The Face of Progress
I have no idea what the hell you do with this thing. I carefully walk back out of the barn and head off to try something a little less insane. Like maybe solving the doll puzzle, now that I have a bunch of those things. On the way past I ask Kit about the sketching ("It's a hobby. Some people collect stamps, I sketch how I'd develop real estate.") and then trot upstairs and show it to Kyler. Kyler thinks about it briefly, then dismisses it as nothing particularly interesting. She then asks Nancy if she'd please go out and collect some flowers from around the castle grounds that have "ward off evil spirits" properties, and provides a list. ... Now, I've been seeing flowers everywhere, so I accept this task with a sense of weary resignation.
(At this point there is a pause in the narrative as I get dinner and watch Game Center CX with the woof.)
I'm back! And of course I end up not exactly going off and doing the doll thing. No, instead of doing that I scurry around the castle grounds picking flowers. While I'm out there, I find the last gear! It is, of course, tied to a wind chime out by the barn. OF COURSE. But mostly it's romping around the castle yard, going "flowers here, flowers there, la la la la la". Right. Eventually I have them all, and the last gear for the gear puzzle, so it's back to solve that in the castle! Just outside the door to Kyler's, Nancy stops for a minute.
"He didn't know how to TELL you! He doesn't want to get married!"
"Matt WILL be back! I know what you're doing, Kit, but it's over between us! And that sketch was... I don't even understand why you'd do that!"
"It's just a hobby!"
And so on. Nancy flat-out refuses to walk in on this conversation. Instead I ... go off and solve the doll puzzle.
*heavy sigh*
That... takes a while. Since when I do one, it gives me a token and a second puzzle. Doing the second puzzle gets me... another token.
*baffled* Well... uh... Let's just go talk to Donal for a while! ...On the way past Kit's area downstairs, I notice something. Hey, he has something sticking out from under the bed he's always sitting on. ... Why, it's Matt's luggage! Man, I don't EVEN KNOW who is guilty anymore. Donal has nothing to say, so I end up pointlessly treking around the grounds for a while before coming back in to find Kit sulking on his bed again and Kyler upstairs once more. I cheerfully point out the luggage to Kit, who seems down. He looks at it and gets EVEN MORE down. Oh god, Matt -has- been here the whole time. He's done everything wrong AGAIN. He tried to clear the air with Kyler, but it turns out she not only tried to pin him as the bad guy, she was right about Matt -and- right about Kit's feelings for her. Kit sorta flumps over on his cot and -pouts-.
There, there, Kit.
Donal, it turns out, is the one who hid the luggage. He figured if he took Matt's things, Matt would leave. Instead, the Good People took Matt. Donal eyes Nancy. "You're good at finding things, are ya?" he muses. Then he passes her a key. "Go find ten sheep that're roaming around the grounds and lock them in the barn. Whistle at them, they'll follow you. I'd do it myself, but I'm old." ...so... Yeah, now I have to Collect Ten Sheep. The exciting life of Nancy Drew.
I go do the gear puzzle instead. This takes a while, and I do in fact manage to get from point A to point B using only eight gears, but it requires me to also rotate points C and D. Eventually I do. The knight's head spins around on its little pole and spits out ANOTHER DOLLHOUSE PUZZLE JAH-YEEEEEZUS CHRISTMAS.
Back to the dollhouse! Except... This one requires a doll that looks a lot like the doll I saw in the bog hut, and that one wasn't finished because it was out of wool. Sounds like it's time to HARVEST SOME SHEEP. I run around outside, playing the flute at sheep. They teleport off back to the barn, just... -warp out-. This no longer seems weird to me. Eventually all ten are in the barn, and... that seems to be it. I report back to Donal and he's like "Good." ... And... that's it.
*tap fingers*
Eventually I get the next event to trigger by running back and forth between the barn, Donal, and the house in the swamp for a while. Nancy eventually looks at the doll, looks at the wool bin, realizes it's empty, realizes sheep are made out of wool, and asks Donal if she can shear one. Donal crosses his arms. "No." he replies. "You're going to have to shear me three bags of wool. Then I'll let you keep whatever else you get."
Okay sure what the fuck ever how hard can it be.
Guys, I am -really bad- at shearing sheep.
NEXT TIME: Maybe I get this whole sheep thing right!
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-23 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-23 07:53 pm (UTC)Horrifying, is my guess.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-24 01:00 am (UTC)*dissolves in helpless giggle fit*
no subject
Date: 2012-08-24 05:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-02 02:16 am (UTC)Congratulations on solving the rune puzzle from Nancy Drew: Riddles in Riven, by the way.
As always, these games are surprisingly good at keeping me guessing until the very end, in that I think this is the penultimate Malloy update and it's still not 100% obvious who the bad guy is. I'm thinking it's probably not Kyler, but that leaves literally everyone else and I really can't decide between Kit, Donal, or SHOCKING SWERVE MATT HIMSELF. I have no idea which and hell maybe it is Kyler I don't know. Nancy Drew mysteries are MYSTERIOUS, unless that's just a product of me being way too used to Laura Bow.
But for the sake of I guess I have to pick one... let's go with Kit I guess. I have zero faith I will not immediately be proven wrong.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-02 02:27 am (UTC)