Quarantine Diary

 

Hooray! This year's new Carol Reed mystery has dropped, and I have acquired it! 

It always takes me two days to play these games. This time I wasn't shy about checking the extremely handy in-game hint system, which frankly, I think is extremely necessary at various points in the game. The game is for fun. Don't let it frustrate you to the point where it isn't fun. Use the hint system, which is quite well done.

Quarantine Diary takes place during the Corona Virus pandemic, and Carol complains that her bank account is suffering. (Has she gone through all the money she inherited at the end of Remedy, the first game in the series?) No matter. We have a new mystery that has Carol, early on, investigating the lady who hired her as much as investigating the case she's hired Carol to solve.

As always, gameplay consists of visiting locations found on the map. In those locations we usually find either a clue, or an item. Items are nearly always just lying around somewhere. We'll wind up using them in yet another location. Every time.

Occasionally uses real Swedish signs

Normally inserts English signs

I like these sepia shots of buildings we are entering

A real house in Swedish red

This is just inserted for local color. No entry for us.

The locations often are very pretty, or houses that appear to be real houses and apartments. We meet people who are depicted in still photographs with voiceovers. The actors are firmly amateur and that, I've always thought, fits perfectly with these games. 

We meet several people in every game--Jonas, Carol's boyfriend, Stina, her friend, who is always a fount of local knowledge (and played by the lady who voices Carol), and, for comic relief, Bigge, who always sends Carol off on an errand before he'll help.

Jonas is an always welcome character.

Stina find information (and voices Carol in the game)

Bigge supplies comic relief

This is our client in this game

As simple as these games seem on the surface, actually their puzzles can be quite complex. They always feature numerous puzzle boxes and items needing passwords. Once we find the clues to these they become simple to solve. Or, we have to find an item that will interact with something that will reveal another clue or an important item.

The difficulty (and length) of the game increases because in almost every case, an item needed in one spot will be found in another location, with absolutely no rhyme or reason for it. For example, you need a tool to get into a new area. You'll find it just lying on the ground somewhere across town. If you happen to find it when you're there and pick it up (always, always pick up anything the game identifies), you'll have it in your inventory and will probably recognize it when you need it. If you haven't found the item you will have to use that hint system, or else traverse the entire game looking at every possible node. Use the hint system.

But it's all good fun. I've played every game of this series and look forward to a new one each year. I don't expect anything different from what I've played before, and that's what I want. 

When the year's game comes out, I buy it and settle down for a couple of days of very familiar fun, along with lovely pictures of Sweden.

Always enjoyable!

Dear Esther

I played this walking simulator several years ago using WASD, but now I'm trying to learn how to use my controller. So I thought I'd play it again just for the practice. And yes, I do need practice in navigating. Playing this has helped enormously!

(Sorry about the odd spacing in this post. Somehow the blog just isn't formatting properly.)

This is an impressive game—or was when it came out. I remember being astonished at the (now standard) graphics. The weeks swayed in the breeze and the ocean waves looked wonderful!

        

                                                           The Beach

We start out walking along the beach. All the way through the game we get texts displayed on the screen along with an excellent voiceover of the man who is us, apparently, doing the walking. It's all quite enigmatic, and the man is apparently depressed.

The difficulty in this game isn't moving and there are no puzzles; it's just trying to spot a path to use that will continue the journey. Three times out of four these are staircases and they're all fairly well concealed unless you turn around a lot! The only one that isn't somewhere behind us requires a leap of faith to continue walking along a ledge that looks as though you're going to fall off any second.

The "Bothy"

Getting off the beach we make it to a dilapidated cabin, but find nothing there. In fact, the whole game really is just navigation as the narrator tells us his thoughts.

Out of four chapters, I like the third best. It takes us underground into glowing tunnels. We splash around in standing water and finally figure out how to go forward. Eventually we're left with only one choice, even though it seems most strange.

                 

Candlelit underground area. Quite lovely really.

When we emerge from the caves it's nighttime, making navigation even more challenging. However, the story continues, such as it is.

It's finding the narration that tells us we're on the correct path and moving forward in the game. The scenery continues to be really nice, so it's a pleasant experience overall.

                 

The paper boats are in the story

                 

Dark but still pretty

The game takes over for the very end, and finally ends not in credits, but in a black screen with the sound of waves continuing. So if you get to that screen your game hasn't crashed; that's really the ending. 

I suppose if you tie it in with whatever we can glean from the story it makes some sense. 

This game really takes only about one to two hours to complete, but it's a landmark game of it's time and it certainly did help me to learn how to navigate with the controller! You cannot save games. Finish a chapter and then move on to the next. You can choose from the four chapters on the title page.

So that certainly was worth the time! I enjoyed it!

Sanitarium 4: Over and Out

 

Sadness. I am not going to be able to complete Sanitarium.

I've been gone for several months due to very serious computer problems--now solved with a new hard disk and battery--and very serious medical problems.

But here I am, back again. I fired up Sanitarium and used a walkthrough to try to find where I was. I actually found what appears to be where I left off and made a bit of progress, but then the game froze.

It froze completely. I had to log out of the whole computer and fire it up again. Again I did a bit and decided I'd better save what little progress I'd made.

But the game froze again on the menu screen.

So for now I'm giving up. I have more games to play. Perhaps someday I'll be able to get the game to work again. I'll try periodically. 

But alas, it's over for now. Shame, because the out-of-the-box weird imagination in this thing is astonishing. I'd like to see where it goes.

Maybe someday. But for now, it's over.