The screen faded completely to black. Even my character disappeared. Then it faded back in and I was somewhere else. It's a small gray room with just one window. There's what looks like a table on one side and a large lightbulb on the other side. The lightbulb is like three times as big as my character.
I tried to interact with the bulb several times but nothing worked. I guess I'm stuck again. I'm really not good at this adventure game thing.
Steve
[email protected] (Samantha Strickland) 5/29/13, 3:10pm
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re: This Weekend!
Hey Steve! I'm so excited about coming up to see you this weekend. I have Friday off, so I'm just going to drive up in the afternoon. Maybe I could swing by your office and pick you up. That way, you don't have to take the BART home. Since they're not paying you, they can't really complain if you take off if I get there early, right?
Love,
Sam
[email protected] (Steve Norman) 5/29/13, 3:56pm
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re: re: This Weekend!
Sounds great to me! I'm sure they won't mind if I leave early. Things have been so slow around here with E3 coming up. Most game companies are holding back releases and there are press embargoes on previews. I've been spending my team with this weird little indie game someone sent us. I think it's an adventure game, like those Sherlock Holmes games you play but much, much simpler. The graphics are black and white and totally 8 bit. We don't even know who made it.
I'll tell you all about it this weekend!
Steve
[email protected] (Jane Goolsby) 5/29/13, 6:24pm
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re: re: Music Question
Holy fuck, Steve, what the hell is that? That's godawful. MIDI has its purposes, but playing music straight out of a PC speaker with no instrumentation sounds like an auditory abortion. But I still played it for my friends, and they all rolled their eyes when they heard it was from a video game.
This is a very, very, very poor rendition of “Trei Culori”, or “Three Colors”. It was the Romanian National Anthem during communist rule.
J
[email protected] (Steve Norman) 5/29/13, 7:25pm
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re: re: Music Question
Thanks, Jane. But this raises a bunch of questions. First, how do you have a friend that recognizes the national anthem of communist Romania? And second, why did it sound so familiar to us?
Steve
[email protected] (Jane Goolsby) 5/29/13, 8:02pm
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re: re: Music Question
I have cultured friends. That doesn't explain you guys though.
J
[email protected] (Dave Ritter) 5/30/13, 10:01am
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re: That's not a lightbulb
Is it your god damn job to make us all feel old here, Steve? I followed your instructions. Good job, by the way, even though you were just doing what I told you to. I got to Room 120. That's not a lightbulb. It's a vacuum tube. They used to be in our televisions, back before everything was LCD or plasma.
On a related note, using the command “TOUCH TUBE” crashes the game, so that's a dead end.
Dave
[email protected] (Steve Norman) 5/30/13, 12:21pm
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re: re: That's not a lightbulb
EXAMINE TABLE
READ NOTE
Just do it.
[email protected] (Dave Ritter) 5/30/13, 1:03pm
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re: re: That's not a lightbulb
HOLY SHIT! What is this game? When I read that, I felt my fucking heart rate double. Do you have any idea what it's talking about?
[email protected] (Steve Norman) 5/30/13 1:19pm
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re: re: That's not a lightbulb
No clue. Unfortunately, it doesn't get us any further in the game to find out. I'll keep screwing around with it, but Jill gave me a couple pieces of copy to proof. Might not get to it until later, if you want to keep pushing on.
[email protected] (Dave Ritter) 5/30/13, 1:46pm
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re: You gotta read this
Yo Ken, I think you need to hear about this. Steve and I have really been laying into this Room 127 game. I know, I know, I probably have better shit to do than play around with some kid's experiment in Game Maker. But we've finally made a little progress. The game doesn't tell you anything. Nothing at all. We had to fuck around to even find out there was a text input prompt.
Best way to describe it is like a more lo-fi Hugo's House of Horrors. Weird ass text input, flying blind without instructions, it's just like the good old days. Didn't seem like there was much to it—no story or even context for why the character is in this hallway—but then Steve finds a note on the table in the first room.
“They take the blood from us. They put the blood in us. They mix it in. They pull it out. I am not myself anymore. Not whole.”
That's it. Just a random note on the table. It's the first sign we have telling us what this game means. I think we should do a story on it. Maybe just a feature. Steve can write it, I told him this is his thing. But I want to know if anyone else has seen this game or played it. Or beat it. I want to know what it is.
[email protected] (Ken Greene) 5/30/13, 3:33pm
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re: Room 127
Hey Steve
I think we're going to have you write a quick feature on Room 127. You don't have to finish the game or anything. From what Dave's said, it seems hella obtuse. But I guess it's a total novelty. No other site on the internet has written about Room 127, so we might as well be the first.
Would be nice to get some unique content up during E3, maybe just to distinguish us from the pack and drive traffic our way.
Ken
[email protected] (Dave Ritter) 5/30/13, 4:21pm
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re: Tube Room
Steve:
I've figured out this much so far. You can BREAK the vacuum tube. That's not a common verb in adventure games, but this is not a common adventure game. The background sprite then shatters. At that point, you can TAKE GLASS. Don't ask me why it works. Just does. Now to figure out what to do with the glass...
[email protected] (Steve Norman) 5/30/13, 4:39pm
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re: re: Room 127
Thanks, Ken, that sounds great. It seems like Dave and I keep making incremental progress in this game. I'll work on something tomorrow and Monday and have it ready to put up by Tuesday, no matter how far we are. With any luck, we'll have our minds wrapped around this game and we'll have beaten it.
Steve
[email protected] (Samantha Strickland) 5/31/13, 9:02am
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re: Headed up!
Hey Steve! I'm just going to shower, pack, and head on up! I can't wait to see you!
Love,
Sam
[email protected] (Steve Norman) 5/31/13, 9:29am
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re: Glas
Exit the tube room and USE the glass in the hallway at night.
[email protected] (Dave Ritter) 5/31/13, 10:11am
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re: re: Glass
Oh man, what the hell was that? WHAT THE HELL? Where did that dude come from? Why did the screen go red? Why did he take me to the next room?
WTF is this game, man. Seriously.
[email protected] (Steve Norman) 5/31/13, 11:35am
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re: re: Glass
Don't TOUCH the lab equipment once the nurse takes you to the clinic. Just like the vacuum tube, touching it crashes the game. Also you can't BREAK it.
[email protected] (Dave Ritter) 5/31/13, 12:10pm
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re: re: Glass
The note that's on the board in the clinic is just as fucked up as the note about the blood in room 120. Make sure you don't miss it.
[email protected] (Steve Norman) 5/31/13 1:51pm
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re:re: Glass
I drank the liquid in the vial. Crashed the game. Another dead end.
[email protected] (Brett Jackson) 5/31/13, 3:03pm
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re: Your Girlfriend
Hey Steve, your girlfriend is sitting in the lobby. She's cute enough that I might try and steal her.
Shit, she is over 18, right?
Brett
[email protected] (Dave Ritter) 5/31/13, 4:19pm
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re: re: Glass
There's a hole below the table in the room with all the cages. If you ENTER it I think it takes you outside. But it's too dark to see anything.
[email protected] (Steve Norman) 6/2/13, 2:51pm
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re: Weekend
Hey Sam...
I'm so sorry about how everything turned out this weekend. I don't know what was up with me. I was a total jerk. That wasn't me. You know I'm not like that. Ugh... I just feel so shitty about it.
We should have gone out to the park like you wanted. It was such a nice day and... I guess everything spiraled out of control from there. I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me.
Please call me when you get in. This is eating me up. Let me know if there's anything I can do.
Love,
Steve
[email protected] (Samantha Strickland) 6/2/13, 6:10pm
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re: re: This Weekend
Steve,
You know it didn't start on Saturday. It started right when I showed up, when you made me sit in the GameCore lobby for like half an hour while you played a game. And then you wouldn't stop talking about the game, even when I said I didn't want to hear about it anymore.
I'll call you later. I need a bit more time to cool down.
Sam
[email protected] (Steve Norman) 6/2/13, 6:33pm
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re: re: This Weekend
You're totally right, Sam. Again, I'm sorry about everything. I'm finishing up a story about Room 127 tonight for the website and once it's up I'm going to put the game down. I've been thinking about it too much. It got in the way of paying attention to you this weekend and that's completely uncool.
Please call me.
[email protected] (Samantha Strickland) 6/2/13, 10:52pm
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re: re: This Weekend
Hey Steve,
Thanks for the long talk on the phone. Maybe I overreacted. It's good there's something your job is interesting, but it's also good you're going to be done with that damn game. Every time you said something about it, it just gave me this uneasy feeling... I'll read your article but honestly I hope it's the last time I have to even think about it.
Love you,
Sam
[email protected] (Ken Greene) 6/3/13, 9:39am
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re: Dave?
Hey guys,
Has anyone heard from Dave this morning? He left a backlog of video work that he swore he'd get done over the weekend.
Brett, sorry if you get stuck with the editing
Ken
[email protected] (Jill Wright) 6/3/13, 9:52am
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re: re: Dave?
Nothing on this end. Usually he's pretty good about letting someone know if he's not coming in.
[email protected] (Steve Norman) 6/3/13, 10:31am
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re: Room 127 Feature
attachment: Room127.wps
Ken:
I've finished up my story on Room 127. Let me know what you think.
Steve
[email protected] (Ken Greene) 6/3/13, 12:49pm
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re: re: Room 127 Feature
Hey Steve,
Sorry it took me a while to get back to you. Dave being out of the office has put us behind on several projects. All of our pre-E3 coverage is going to be coming out way late tonight. If you happen to be proficient with Final Cut Pro, now would be a great time to let me know.
The article is real good and suddenly I'm curious about this game. I particularly liked this bit:
“The bits of text scattered throughout the game carry you through the incomprehensible puzzles and obtuse gameplay systems. There is no telling what Room 127 wants you to do next. In one moment, it tells you that a command prompt is not recognized. In the next, it requires that same prompt to move forward. But somehow, despite the frustration and guesswork, you are pulled through by sheer curiosity. You want to know where this story is going, and if there is a story at all.”
Did you end up beating the game? Where does it go? Does it have a story? I guess these are the questions I'm left with. I understand why you'd leave them out of the article; if this game ever goes wide, you don't want to spoil anything. But I want to know.
Ken
[email protected] (Steve Norman) 6/3/13, 1:22pm
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re: re: Room 127 Feature
Ken:
No, I haven't beaten it. This morning I hit yet another roadblock. I made it to a shed outside what I guess is the main building and I have no clue what to do. The background makes it look like some sort of distillery. I don't know... I think I need to put the game down. I have to start over every time it crashes—which is often—so it takes forever just to try a new theory on how to progress. I have no idea how long it is. I don't think I want to take the time to find out.
The game is intriguing, but that's all it is. I've probably let it take up too much of my life. Maybe if this article gets someone to send me a walkthrough, I'll burn through it. But until then I'm probably done. I still haven't even figured out how to take screenshots of it!
And no, sorry, I've never used Final Cut.
Steve
[email protected] (Ken Greene) 6/3/13, 2:01pm
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re: re: Room 127 Feature
No problem on either account. But like I told you, you've got me interested in this game. Maybe I'll swing by your office and pick it up so I can pick up where you left off. How about we just pass this thing around the fucking office until we finish it off?
You said a walkthrough would be helpful. Mind sending me instructions as far as you've gotten?
Ken
[email protected] (Steve Norman) 6/3/13, 3:15p
m
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re: re: Room 127 Feature
Ken:
The disk and the USB floppy drive are both in Dave's office. I gave the game to him after I installed it. As for a walkthrough, here's a quick and dirty explanation of everything we figured out up to this point.
WAIT until dusk and go to the dark part of the hallway. OPEN the door. ENTER Room 120. EXAMINE table. READ note. BREAK tube. TAKE glass. EXIT room 120. Walk back to the windows. WAIT until night. USE glass. Once you've been taken to the clinic, EXAMINE board. READ note. EXAMINE equipment. TAKE vial. EXIT clinic and walk left for thirty seconds. When you see the door, ENTER room. EXAMINE cages. READ note. Then step to the black spot under the desk and EXIT room. Now you're outside. Walk right until you reach the shack and ENTER shack. EXAMINE Desk. READ note. From here... I really don't know.
Steve
[email protected] (Ken Greene) 6/3/13, 3:50pm
to: [email protected]
Room 127 Page 4
