If it's Friday, this must be Friday Flash! Every Friday I present three (or more!) games for you to enjoy. Most games require the Adobe Flash Player, and I do test all of them on both Mac and Windows. I try to remember to let you know when there is music or sound, too, in case you're playing in a quiet environment.
This week we're going to explore the concept of "escape games." There's a tradition of these things on the web, and they're... different. Slow-paced, they're often very challenging. How can you combine various bits of information you find within the game to escape from the game?
We'll start with the works of Toshimitsu Takagi. His series is notable for being very simple and yet incredibly frustrating. In each puzzle you need only escape a single room, and at first glance there doesn't appear to be much in each room. How hard can it be?
In Crimson Room, his first puzzle, you're in a small room with nothing to do but explore by clicking. There is one point at which clicking fails you and you need to type something, but before that, it's all clicking — and timing is everything. I've already given you more hints than I started with, but it took me 45 minutes to escape this room. Can you do better?
I wrote about this game in early 2004 and garnered 142 comments from people trying to escape and relying on each other for help! There is music when the game starts.
Once you've managed to escape that room — and bought the t-shirt — you can try to solve the Mystery of Viridian Room. Here the emphasis is not so much on escaping as solving the mystery of the room itself. The delightful "Engrish" opening sentences give way to a game that is both more difficult and more interesting than Crimson Room.
This one took me 90 minutes to solve, mostly hung up on two specific issues. Firstly, the (dark) monitor with which I first played this game made it very difficult for me to spot a card I needed. Secondly, if you restart the game you must get all needed information from scratch, because it changes every time you play. Clues collected once won't help if you start a new browser session!
Article comments
1 - Phillip Winn
I can provide clues for these if needed, though I prefer to solve them completely on my own and think that everybody else probably should too. Then again, I ended up relying on a help forum to get through some of the higher levels of MOTAS myself a couple of years ago, so that makes me somewhat of a hypocrite, no? Sadly, those forums no longer exist.
2 - Mat Brewster
There goes my weekend. I had to restart the Crimson room because the first time the safe code wouldn't work.
Took me thirty minutes and I only cheated when the safe wouldn't open.
Now onto the next room. Oh and a little ego boost, I seriously look for these games every friday now.
3 - Mat Brewster
The Viridian room may drive me mad. Must go pay attention to wife or get divorce.
4 - Phillip Winn
You can pay attention to wife in a week or two, when you've worked your way through all of these!
Thanks for the ego boost. When I ran this series (well, one like it) on my old personal blog, some weeks I got zero comments and some weeks I got hundreds, as I mentioned above. I always enjoyed the weeks I got hundreds of comments more. :-)
5 - Mat Brewster
I forgot to add that I passed this on to some friends earlier this week. Yesterday I got a call from one of them. Seems him and most of his coworkers got to playing the Crimson room and were stuck on what to do with that silly dancing movie.
Like ten fellas were waiting on my response. I felt like a god.
6 - jon
this escape the island is driving me mad i need help i cant do aNYTHING