Spring Thing ’13 – Adam Holbrook’s Encyclopedia of Elementals!

Shameful things in my search history:

ikea horse puppet
i don’t know, son, we’re lions
rollerskating waitress jobs phoenix
ridiculous lion noise
echidna penis
ersatz homosexual relationship
larp not about vampires
a picture of a vagina
novels printed on toilet paper
don’t shoot the puppy
david bowie’s area
daisy dukes with the pockets left in

(If anyone you know needs a rollerskating waitress, hit me up!  I would be a great rollerskating waitress, or any other job I can do on roller skates!)

[spoilers begin here]

Hmm, is my aspect fire, light, or force?  Probably not force.  I like light, I like how it makes things visible, but I gotta go with fire, which contains light.  Also, you can use it to set shit on fire, which is a thing I like in a game.  I wonder if I get to unlock hats.

Huh, LOOK is not a thing?  I don’t know what to do without LOOK!  Sure, I’ve got this list of places and objects on the sidebar, but it’s just not the saaaaaame!

I get the feeling there are going to be light puzzles.  I have some glow powder and the game is making a big deal out of torches.  I can’t remember if I like light puzzles or not; I think it depends how fiddly they are.  That sure was a lot of I statements in a row.  I statements are important for deflecting perceived hostility.  It’s not you, light puzzles, it’s me.

Is there any reason for this hallway to exist other than “it’s a hallway, you gotta walk through hallways?”  Do I have to go lie down in front of a bulldozer?

Where am I, even?  I think I am some kind of wizard st-FUCK I forgot to name myself Calamity Boomfist! some kind of wizard student.  Am I a privately owned wizard student, or is this some kind of school, or what?

Why am I exploring it, anyway?  Because the game told me I couldn’t get back to sleep, so now I have to go look for secrets in the mysterious wing (which I think might be called the mysterious wing?)  I guess this is what people do when they don’t have the internet.  You know what I would actually be doing in this situation?  Watching an adorably bawdy Swedish couple play Terraria until I passed out.  As soon as I graduate from wizard school, I am going to invent the internet out of magic.

Oh, I can’t LOOK, but I can LOOK AROUND.  Good to know!

How do I know this is the forbidden library other than its being called the forbidden library?  Are there signs all over it saying “CETTE BIBLIOTECA EST VERBOTEN?”

[…]books of various topics both secret and taboo.
My dog is larger than life, both literally and physically.  (Also, “taboo” is a fun word.  You should say it out loud right now.  Taboooo!  I put a spooky ghost inflection on mine!  My neighbors think I am insane!)

Oh man oh man is this book the titular Encyclopedia of Elementals?  It is!  And it’s mine, bitches!

Well, shit, wait, this was a real-time timed puzzle?  Not a turn-based timed puzzle?  Do you know what I think about that?
I think that is
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLSHIT

Sorry I let you die, random guy.  : (
may you fly up so high to the sky
while we try not to cry
is there pie?
— a poem I wrote for the random guy I let die, 2013
I am good at poem

It’s the kind of heat that makes one side of you really hot, but the other side of you is cold.
Not only is this an awesome sentence (oh, that kind of heat!) but I am well familiar with this phenomenon from living in the Phoenix area.  See, every public space here is designed with the assumption that it is always nice outside, even though there are months, plural, where it is A BILLION ZILLION DEGREES FAHRVERGNUGEN, and sometimes in the winter it gets down to the forties or even thirties.  This is clearly too damn cold to be outside in whatever passes for your winter coat (generally, a t-shirt with a pair of mittens stapled over the nipples), and reasonable people would go inside at this point.  But there isn’t enough inside for everybody, so what they do is bring out a metal cylinder full of fire and we all huddle around it acting personally insulted that it dares be this cold.  Don’t get me started on what happens when it rains.

Man, I’m really bothered that I didn’t save random guy, but I don’t want to pull out a walkthrough and replay it.  I don’t even know if he’s saveable.  He’s got to be, right?  The game doesn’t even mention your failure to rescue him, which is a little weird.  Maybe it’s trying to focus on the positive?

The scope of this game just expanded and I don’t care anymore.  The only goal I have been given is to find a place to sleep.  (Now it wants me to sleep!)  I mean, shit, I can do that in my real life, both now and when I’m dead.

Okay, okay, game, I’ll give you 39 more minutes.

“Who are you? What are you doing in my house!?”
That is an eminently reasonable question, blacksmith dude.  You see, I am an adventurer, and I was obligated to enter it, because it was implemented.  Are you going to put the pointy thing down?  …you’re not putting the pointy thing down.

Ah, here we go with the backstory.  I am a spoil of conquest, apparently.  I must be special as fuck.

Hephaestus the blacksmith?  I’ve heard this one before.
“I’m madly in love with a woman named Sheila.”
Okay, maybe I haven’t heard this one before.  He wants me to, let’s see, go to town, find out what her favorite gemstone is, then go into the mines and convince a dude named Steve to just give me one of those.  You know, standard adventurer stuff he can’t do himself because he’s come down with a bad case of being an NPC.  In return, he is going to make me some armor and a weapon, which I think are plot coupons?  You got it, blacksmith buddy!

Oh shit yeah I want to make some money.

“If you can get the iron from him and get back here before noon, I’ll give you 50 gold because I like you.”
Because you like me, not because I went and got the iron?  Will you still like me if I get back at 12:05?  I am so confused.

Huh, here is a puzzle where I have to prove to a guy I have heard a joke before so he will let me leave!  I like this.

Hm, I wonder which one of these stores Sheila works at?  Hephaestus didn’t tell me.  I’m not sure he knows.

There are many different kinds of shoes sitting on shelves around the shop. It’s very impressive in a time when there are really only a couple different ways to make a shoe.
This game has some amazing sentences in it.

It’s wooden washtub big enough for a child to fit in it. It looks like it’s mostly used for catching blood.
o.O

…you know, if I don’t guess the punchline correctly, Steve doesn’t tell it to me.  Steve is terrible at telling jokes.  Steve is basically a terrible person.  I hate you, Steve.  I hate you, Steve!

Also, I should mention that Sheila is a bitch and a half.  Hephaestus is cool, but his name takes a long time to type.  I don’t see them working out, really.

Hmm, how do I find a sewing needle in this mess?  Hey, Hephaestus?  You don’t mind if I just take all your shit from your house, now that we’re buds, do you?

UGGGGH trying to guess the verb to crank this winch to lower a bucket into the well is driving me maaaaad

Okay, calling time on this one.  It wasn’t bad, but not only did it bring nothing new to the table, I’m not positive it didn’t antique the table.