That’s assuming “Aimee” is actually in control of this world, as opposed to (say) having been drafted as its princess (as her template was in reality, but less cutely).
Ooh, I bet either Nick or Aimee has to put on the crown to end the madness. The reason it shoots lightning at anyone who tries to climb the tower is because it will only allow someone who’s there to rescue the princess up.
Moe’s right. For the most part Prof. Madblood was a villain who lived by The Comic Book Code. The worse thing that you can really say against him is that he was willing to kill Dave when it became clear that Dave was going to be a menace to him, his base and everything in it (including Lovelace).
No no no, this isn’t that kind of video game. What you need to do is this:
Examine the prison bed, and notice there’s some new stitching on the mattress. Use the tooth you picked up fighting the T-rex to slash open the mattress. Inside the mattress you find a note written by the cell’s previous occupant, saying that he’s dug a cleverly hidden escape tunnel, and then there’s just a bunch of numbers. The numbers don’t mean anything to you right now, but they’ll be important later. While you’re there, grab some loose fibers from mattress and a broken bed-spring (sadly only a single semicircle of coil). Combine the half-loop of the spring with the loose fiber to create a makeshift fishing hook.
Drop the fishing hook down the latrine, and you pull up a crumbly half-brick with a shiv made out of an old chess piece tied to it (but you lose the hook in the process). Use the shiv to unscrew the vent cover. The blade breaks, but that’s okay. Hold onto the chess piece anyway. Inside the vent cover you see something glinting in the distance, too far to reach. You tell the rat to climb in and get it, but he won’t go because he’s afraid of the dark.
Just outside the cell bars is a ladder with some paint cans on top, which you can’t quite reach. Throw the crumbly half-brick at the latter, and it’ll tip over, spilling yellow paint on the half-brick making it look like a piece of cheese. Throw the fake cheese into the vent, and the rat will run in after it. After a few minutes the rat will come back with the glinting object, but it’s not a key. It’s a pocket calculator that somebody’s gutted and spliced into the jail’s electrical wires. Enter the numbers from the note, and it triggers a secret trap door in the floor of the cell, which you fall through.
You find yourself in the secret escape tunnel, but unfortunately it’s caved in. Under the rubble is the skeleton of the cell’s previous occupant. Fortunately, the skeleton is holding a stick of dynamite and a lighter. Take the lighter, and try to light the dynamite to clear the rubble. You’ll discover that the lighter doesn’t work because it’s out of lighter fluid. You throw the lighter angrily against the rock wall, and try something else.
You notice a series of roundish ledges on the wall. Take one of the golden shields that you grabbed back at the Andes Adventure and place it on one of the ledges directly under the trap door, and it will reflect the sunlight coming in through the trap door into the tunnel, focusing it into a narrower beam. Unfortunately, it’s not reelecting towards the dynamite fuse but towards another one of the ledges, and the beam isn’t narrow enough to light it anyway. But if you place the other golden shield on the ledge where the light hits, you find you’re able to redirect the beam, and focus it even narrower.
More the shields around until you find the right combination of ledges. Finally the beam is hitting the fuse, but it’s still not lighting it. Pick up the lighter from where you threw it, and you’ll find the lighter fluid reservoir has cracked open, and the reason it didn’t have any lighter fluid in it is because there was a folded piece of paper and a set of colored lenses hidden inside. The paper is a piece torn off of one of those brochures they give you with a map of the park on it. There’s nothing you can do with this at the moment, but hold onto it anyway. Instead, place the two colorless lenses in the centers of the two golden shields. This will focus the beam of light so it’s concentrated enough to light the fuse, clearing the tunnel. Sadly, the explosion shatters the shields, meaning you can’t pick them or the two colorless lenses back up. You still have the colored lenses, though.
The tunnel lets up inside the vault of the bank across the street. Unfortunately you’re locked in. There’s a map of the park pinned up on the wall, but the piece you’ve got doesn’t seem to fit any part of it. Look at the map through the red lens, and you’ll see what looks like a series of numbers, but it’s not quite legible. Look at the map through the green lens, and it turns into an entirely different map of the park, this time showing it as it was back when it first opened in 1955. There’s still a number written on it, and it’s still illegible, but it’s cut off partway, through because part of the map is missing. Luckily, the piece of the map you found inside the lighter does fit this version of the map, and fits perfectly into place over the missing portion, completing the number… which is still illegible. There’s a fire alarm on the wall next to the map. Trigger the alarm, and as it sounds the lights in the room will go out and be replaced by red emergency lights. Now that the entire room is lit red, the first set of hidden numbers on the map becomes visible without having to look at it through the red lens. Now look at the map through the green lens again, and you see the two versions of the map superimposed over one another, and more importantly, the two versions of the hidden numbers superimposed over one another which combine to become legible: 0725
Unfortunately, you can’t find anywhere to enter the code. But wait… bank vaults are programed to open at certain times of day, aren’t they? What if it’s not a code at all? What if it’s a time? 7:25! But the clock on the wall reads 1:15, so you’ve got 6 hours and change until the bank vault opens. This is gonna be a long wait… or is it? Go to the clock and move the hands around until it reads 7:25, convincing the unlocking mechanism that that’s what time it is, thus unlocking the vault and allowing you to escape.
And yes, I did just spend the better part of an hour writing a walk-through for completely imaginary series of ridiculous point-and-click adventure puzzles so long that it covered up the “post comment” button and I had to futz with the source html on the comment box just to get it to post. I’m very dedicated. And very lonely.
I feel like there needs to be another piece of paper that isn’t really a clue to anything but raises profound ontological questions, but maybe I’ve played too much Submachine and MOTAS.
I’ve got the keys from the sheriff,
The doors will open wide.
You can go past him, walk right out,
And see what was inside.
I’ve got keys from the sheriff,
And soon, you will see,
I gnawed him, it was right fun,
For me.
—from “Keys to the Kingdom,” Princess Aurora. (Sorry I’m rushed for time this morning—and I don’t know the song that well.)
Nick’s expression says that he realizes that a copy of himself thought all of this would be a good idea….
That’s assuming “Aimee” is actually in control of this world, as opposed to (say) having been drafted as its princess (as her template was in reality, but less cutely).
Ooh, I bet either Nick or Aimee has to put on the crown to end the madness. The reason it shoots lightning at anyone who tries to climb the tower is because it will only allow someone who’s there to rescue the princess up.
Couldn’t they just break out by defeating the retina scan and rotating cipher lock digitally locking them in?
TOUGHEN UP LOVELACE YOU WERE RAISED AMONG EVIL.
Yes, but it was *Mad* Evil, which has fairly rigorous behavior protocols.
Moe’s right. For the most part Prof. Madblood was a villain who lived by The Comic Book Code. The worse thing that you can really say against him is that he was willing to kill Dave when it became clear that Dave was going to be a menace to him, his base and everything in it (including Lovelace).
No no no, this isn’t that kind of video game. What you need to do is this:
Examine the prison bed, and notice there’s some new stitching on the mattress. Use the tooth you picked up fighting the T-rex to slash open the mattress. Inside the mattress you find a note written by the cell’s previous occupant, saying that he’s dug a cleverly hidden escape tunnel, and then there’s just a bunch of numbers. The numbers don’t mean anything to you right now, but they’ll be important later. While you’re there, grab some loose fibers from mattress and a broken bed-spring (sadly only a single semicircle of coil). Combine the half-loop of the spring with the loose fiber to create a makeshift fishing hook.
Drop the fishing hook down the latrine, and you pull up a crumbly half-brick with a shiv made out of an old chess piece tied to it (but you lose the hook in the process). Use the shiv to unscrew the vent cover. The blade breaks, but that’s okay. Hold onto the chess piece anyway. Inside the vent cover you see something glinting in the distance, too far to reach. You tell the rat to climb in and get it, but he won’t go because he’s afraid of the dark.
Just outside the cell bars is a ladder with some paint cans on top, which you can’t quite reach. Throw the crumbly half-brick at the latter, and it’ll tip over, spilling yellow paint on the half-brick making it look like a piece of cheese. Throw the fake cheese into the vent, and the rat will run in after it. After a few minutes the rat will come back with the glinting object, but it’s not a key. It’s a pocket calculator that somebody’s gutted and spliced into the jail’s electrical wires. Enter the numbers from the note, and it triggers a secret trap door in the floor of the cell, which you fall through.
You find yourself in the secret escape tunnel, but unfortunately it’s caved in. Under the rubble is the skeleton of the cell’s previous occupant. Fortunately, the skeleton is holding a stick of dynamite and a lighter. Take the lighter, and try to light the dynamite to clear the rubble. You’ll discover that the lighter doesn’t work because it’s out of lighter fluid. You throw the lighter angrily against the rock wall, and try something else.
You notice a series of roundish ledges on the wall. Take one of the golden shields that you grabbed back at the Andes Adventure and place it on one of the ledges directly under the trap door, and it will reflect the sunlight coming in through the trap door into the tunnel, focusing it into a narrower beam. Unfortunately, it’s not reelecting towards the dynamite fuse but towards another one of the ledges, and the beam isn’t narrow enough to light it anyway. But if you place the other golden shield on the ledge where the light hits, you find you’re able to redirect the beam, and focus it even narrower.
More the shields around until you find the right combination of ledges. Finally the beam is hitting the fuse, but it’s still not lighting it. Pick up the lighter from where you threw it, and you’ll find the lighter fluid reservoir has cracked open, and the reason it didn’t have any lighter fluid in it is because there was a folded piece of paper and a set of colored lenses hidden inside. The paper is a piece torn off of one of those brochures they give you with a map of the park on it. There’s nothing you can do with this at the moment, but hold onto it anyway. Instead, place the two colorless lenses in the centers of the two golden shields. This will focus the beam of light so it’s concentrated enough to light the fuse, clearing the tunnel. Sadly, the explosion shatters the shields, meaning you can’t pick them or the two colorless lenses back up. You still have the colored lenses, though.
The tunnel lets up inside the vault of the bank across the street. Unfortunately you’re locked in. There’s a map of the park pinned up on the wall, but the piece you’ve got doesn’t seem to fit any part of it. Look at the map through the red lens, and you’ll see what looks like a series of numbers, but it’s not quite legible. Look at the map through the green lens, and it turns into an entirely different map of the park, this time showing it as it was back when it first opened in 1955. There’s still a number written on it, and it’s still illegible, but it’s cut off partway, through because part of the map is missing. Luckily, the piece of the map you found inside the lighter does fit this version of the map, and fits perfectly into place over the missing portion, completing the number… which is still illegible. There’s a fire alarm on the wall next to the map. Trigger the alarm, and as it sounds the lights in the room will go out and be replaced by red emergency lights. Now that the entire room is lit red, the first set of hidden numbers on the map becomes visible without having to look at it through the red lens. Now look at the map through the green lens again, and you see the two versions of the map superimposed over one another, and more importantly, the two versions of the hidden numbers superimposed over one another which combine to become legible: 0725
Unfortunately, you can’t find anywhere to enter the code. But wait… bank vaults are programed to open at certain times of day, aren’t they? What if it’s not a code at all? What if it’s a time? 7:25! But the clock on the wall reads 1:15, so you’ve got 6 hours and change until the bank vault opens. This is gonna be a long wait… or is it? Go to the clock and move the hands around until it reads 7:25, convincing the unlocking mechanism that that’s what time it is, thus unlocking the vault and allowing you to escape.
See? Simple.
And yes, I did just spend the better part of an hour writing a walk-through for completely imaginary series of ridiculous point-and-click adventure puzzles so long that it covered up the “post comment” button and I had to futz with the source html on the comment box just to get it to post. I’m very dedicated. And very lonely.
This is, like, the best thing ever. If Shaenon and Jeff don’t make this happen (maybe another CYOA type thing?) I’ll be disappointed.
I think it may be a long time before I ever again write a CYOA story. I still shudder at the nightmares I got during the writing of the last one.
That said, the walkthrough is delightful. Kudos to you, OP. You made my life better with your hour of time.
That bit about the rat being afraid of the dark matches exactly the kind of bizarre motivations in those games. Very fun comment to read.
That is fantastic
:kow-tows repeatedly: I am not worthy! I am not worthy!
I feel like there needs to be another piece of paper that isn’t really a clue to anything but raises profound ontological questions, but maybe I’ve played too much Submachine and MOTAS.
That aside, this is perfect.
Sir, please tell me you are employed in the video game industry somewhere. This sounds like a sheer delight!
Ah… well… I could tell you that, but I’d be lying.
Well, I’d hire you!
Wow, that’s just … I mean, it … The way you … And with such … I applaud you, BrokenEye! Well done indeed!
Oh, bravo!
[clap] [clap] [clap]
Yeah, and how would singing a little song have gotten you the keys?
It may not be pretty, but rats get things done.
Right. This is a Dark Whimsy setup. I’d forgotten for a moment.
Gotta admit Disney would be a lot cooler if their 90s era was like this….also love how Nick retains his Princess status in this world
Oh and the expressions in this strip are fantastic!
I agree! Nick and Lovelace will probably never send a rat to do that job again.
Yes, but once they see what the mice do they’ll wish that they had stuck with the rat. It would have been less cruel.
N is for NAMELESS GUARD, devoured by mice…
Hey! X marked that spot.
Those faces! Hard to say if panel 3 or panel 4 is the best.
I ship these two so hard
Does virtual reality include virtual vomiting?
I’ve got the keys from the sheriff,
The doors will open wide.
You can go past him, walk right out,
And see what was inside.
I’ve got keys from the sheriff,
And soon, you will see,
I gnawed him, it was right fun,
For me.
—from “Keys to the Kingdom,” Princess Aurora. (Sorry I’m rushed for time this morning—and I don’t know the song that well.)
Vomiting? Eeew, physical bodies.
Look at it this way. The rat killed two birds (har!) with one stone. Get the keys and remove the guard.
Meaning that the Jail Break is a very forgiving scenario.
I’d be very cautious from now on. It smells like a trap.
In my headcanon, the crow-sheriff is called “Winston Smith.”
Ok, Winston Smith was the guy in /1984/ who changed newspaper articles in the Ministry of Truth. How does “Long Live Big Brother” fit in here?
Winston and Willard… sounds like a Britcom, but it’s not!
Like I said before, rats are survivors, and will do what they need to in order to maintain that state.
That rat is now my spirit animal.
Once again, I question whether there is something wrong with me for how hysterically funny I find this particular strip!
Poor Nick, being a pacifist who has been accessory to inadvertent violence twice in such a short time can’t be good for him.