Pastel Stories

Filed by Mateusz Skutnik at 3:24 am under Submachines
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Lazy sunday? Fear not! The new UPDATE from the submachine network is here! (third batch, second update).

enjoy!

P.S. – as before, please do not write the coordinates in comments. Such comments will be deleted on sight. Thanks!

Filed by Mateusz Skutnik at 4:08 am under Submachines
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walkthrough: english | czech | spanish

reviews: PCWorld

As I remember, there was a note found in Submachine 4 mentioning 32 chambers filled with sand. Well, here they are in another short off-main-storyline installment of the Submachine series.

………………….

[more submachines]

Filed by Mateusz Skutnik at 12:35 pm under Submachines
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When you star at the right of the “submachine” there a green jade pick it up. Then go left.

Click on the brown box pick up “autumn plate”

Click on the brick wall with the drawing and go in the hole. (pick up the green jade) then go down and right.

In the big room go left and pick up the lever and the green jade.

Go up and pick up the winter plate (on the wall with all the symbols)

Then go right twice (the screen with the big haed. Put the lever into the wall on your right. Pull the lever up. Then go left twice and go down in the hole created by the lever.

Pick up the wooden stick. And go right. On top of the wall there is a wooden bowl pick it up. and go right. It’s written “Air wind and fire dig through sand” So go right and place all the cement box to air wind and fire (in that order) On the Wind one there is a jade on the sand. Pick it up. And on the Fire one click on the wooden box and pick up a round stone. Go left three times and go down once.

Pick un the jade and put the stick into the left wall (the round thing) Pick up the topaz and go down then right. (pick the Jade) and go right twice. You should be in front of a round “face” with a hole in the middle, Put the wooden bowl on the floor in front of the hole and click on the wall sand should come out of the mouth and fill up the bowl.

Pick up the bowl full of sand and go left once. Pour the sand into the goblet of the statue then go left (you should lose the bowl after that. Climb the rope at the top and a bit left you should be able to click to pick up the spring plate, after that go right. In the floor at the right of the wooden prison door there’s Topaz number 2 pick it up. Open the prison’s door (click and drag up) then go right.

On the wall there are two round clickable cement block. Click on the right one until the open spot is in the left and down quadrant (quadrant 3 on a diagram) After that click on the left one until the open spot is on the bottom. Go inside the “prison’s” door and pick up the “stone cone” then go down the ladder. Pick up the weight stone. Then go back up.

Go all the way back where you picked up the wooden bowl there’s a stick on the wall that you can push but it always go back up. Put the weight stone on it and go back where you came from. (now you can go all the way down)

Go down and left pick up the round stone. Go right pick up Jade 7.

Go left twice and click three time on the clickable cement block, go up and push down the white sqare. Go back down and click once on the clickable cement block go all the way back to the big face at the start of the game and put the 2 rounds stones in the eyes. (pick up Topaz three)

Go all the way back at the end and now the door with the three spikes should be open enter it and go left click on the wooden box (pick up topaz 4) There’s a wheel, put the stone cone in it and go right twice. on the wall there’s the plate 4. And completely on the right you can click on the wall to pick up jade 8. Go left climb the stairs. But the 8 Jadeites, the 4 plates in the wheel and turn very slowly each part of the wheel (starting by the plates, then the Jade then the topaz until it click) After that put the four topaz in and turn the middle of the wheel so it is straight.

written by Dave

Filed by Mateusz Skutnik at 12:34 pm under Submachines
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Casual game Submachine: 32 Chambers takes you on a journey within stone walls, past ancient ruins, and through drifts of sand. With nothing but your wits and a few clickable objects, you navigate the chambers and solve puzzles to win this browser-based game. Its hand-drawn look and absorbing gameplay absorbed me so thoroughly, finishing the game made me blink as if leaving a cave.

Submachine: 32 Chambers begins in a stone-brick room with a Mesoamerican-looking glyph and a futuristic machine. If you’ve played any of the other Submachine games, you’ll recognize the apparatus as the teleporter that brought you there. Even if 32 Chambers is your first introduction to the Submachine games, you’ll immediately learn how it works: You mouse over objects and chamber edges, looking for items to pick up and directions to go. A veteran of these games would have little trouble finding out where to click to collect items, move switches, and travel from room to room. My strategy was to mouse over every pixel looking for clues (and to get a little disconcerted when I ran across the statue of Ixtab, the Mayan goddess of suicide).

Luckily, the creepy statue was window dressing and not a clue about my progress. Despite the spikes that shoot out of the walls at the boundaries, there’s no way to lose at Submachine: 32 Chambers. You can leave the game and resume at auto-save points. The ThumpMonks’ eerie music adds to the mood, but sounds aren’t crucial for gameplay, so you can also play it muted to avoid disturbing your neighbors. If you decide to become more of a tourist than an explorer, you can avail yourself of the walkthrough link handily placed in the game itself.

The tenth installment in Submachine series, 32 Chambers has its own history. Despite the Mesoamerican look, 32 Chambers is not part of our work, but of Mateusz Skutnik’s vast “subnet” (submachine network) world. Polish architect-turned-graphic novelist Skutnik has been producing Submachine games since 2005, building up quite a following.

If you need a break–or a series of breaks–to challenge your mind, Submachine: 32 Chambers might be just the right little trip to plug into your day’s itinerary.

–Laura Blackwell

[source]

Filed by Mateusz Skutnik at 2:16 pm under Submachines
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Filed by Mateusz Skutnik at 2:07 pm under Submachines
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THERE IS NO DIARY PAGE

THERE IS NO MENU

THERE IS NO SPOON

THERE IS ONLY YOU

AND THE MACHINE

“All memories are lost in time, like tears in rain.”

Submachine is the title of a series of Flash games created by Polish game designer Mateusz Skutnik.

All of the games are point-and-click style puzzles and (excepting the two AU games) follow a continuous storyline. The general object of each game is to escape from an enclosed (and usually submerged) location that houses a mysterious machine. As the story progresses, the player finds more and more about the history of the “submachines” through clues left behind by a mysterious figure named Murtaugh. One of the well-known characteristics of the game is a complete and total lack of any other living being, even animals. This often leads to the games being filed under Nightmare Fuel, thoughYour Mileage May Vary.

The puzzles within the game rely on acute observation, a willingness to hunt for objects hidden in the exact opposite of plain sight, and other such tasks. However, the puzzles are very cleverly made, and on completion one usually feels some degree of self-satisfaction.

Some of the tropes found within these games are:

• After The End – This is debatable, as the games haven’t revealed what happened to everybody else. Given some of the desperate-sounding letters in the more remote locations you visit, it wasn’t pleasant.
• Art Evolution
• Author Stand In – Mur, the mysterious figure that leaves you clues and interacts with you during the fourth game talks about having a pet black cat named Einstein-Mateusz has two black cats. Coincidence? …Quite possibly, yes (especially after The Edge).
• Beautiful Void – unless you find the structural decay, haunting minimalist music and utter lack of population unnerving (see Nightmare Fuel below).
• Big Brother Is Watching-There’s always a feeling that you are being watched by some unknown entity, especially after game #3.
• Bragging Rights Reward – Collect all twenty “secrets” in Sub 2 and you get… nothing. (Collecting the secrets in games 4 and 5, however, let you view extras.)
• Broken Pedestal – In Submachine 6: The Edge (huge spoilers), Mur abandons you in the Submachine after you disable its defences; you had no importance outside of enabling his invasion plan.

• Some of the notes left in Submachine 4: The Lab already hinted at this.
• In the SubNet Exploration Experience, if you visit the Loop from the third game (coordinates 555), you’ll find a “Submachine As Perpetual Maze theory” which ends with a short plea for help in escaping from the area, and you find it is written by the same character as in the above example.
• Submachine 6 also sees players engage with the computer elements of the machine.
• The SubNet Exploration Project is devoted largely to presenting many of the various fan theories as to what’s really going on.
• Claustrophobes might want to think twice as well.
• High Octane Nightmare Fuel – When you play Submachine Network Exploration Experience, type in 666 for the coordinates and see where you end up.
• The second game starts with you completing the first game on an arcade machine, and ends with you realizing your “escape” was just another game.
  • The “or was it?” part comes in when you realize what your inventory is at the beginning of the second game – the diary entry, as well as the Wisdom Gem you can find in the extended version of the first.
  • However, you no longer have the coin…
• In Network Exploration Experience, type in 815.

• Call Back – In Submachine 4 you visit various locations that are similar (but not identical) to areas of the previous games. In Submachine 5, you return to the lighthouse from Submachine 2, and collect the Wisdom Gem you left there.
• Cosmetic Award – In Submachine 2 collecting all the “secrets” (tiny spheres hidden around the world) yields … absolutely nothing. (In 4 and 5 they unlock a “Making of” section. 6 has five secret areas which yield extra information.)
• Early Installment Weirdness – If you had played the original Submachine without any knowledge of later episodes, you’d have probably guessed that the series would just be another set of escape-the-room series that happened to have a suitably creepy atmosphere. Then they introduced the stuff about teleportation, alternate dimensions, relics from forgotten civilizations, strange futuristic technology of an unknown source, etc., and the first game just seems sparse in comparison.
• Ghost City-You never encounter any people or animals whatsoever, and if This Troper remembers correctly, only one piece of vegetation.
• Leaning On The Fourth Wall – One of the notes you find in Submachine 4 (by someone who stumbled into the submachine network and can’t find their way out) reads suspiciously like a call for help on an escape game discussion board, complete with description of how far they’ve got and cute username.

• Master Computer – In Submachine 3, the “Loop” was a Matrix-style sort of computer in the sense that it separated people’s consciousness from reality, engaging them in puzzles to keep them from questioning their surroundings.

• Mind Screw – Becomes particularly prominent in the second installment.

• Nightmare Fuel – This walks hand-in-hand with Your Mileage May Vary, as stated above. People who have solitude issues should probably think a bit before playing this game.

• Nothing Is Scarier
• Ontological Mystery
• Or Was It A Dream – Not in the exact sense, but some well-placed comments about being part of “the loop” made for some interesting thoughts after having completed one of the games.

• Pixel Hunt – Quite often.
• Portal Network
• Red Herring – Quite a few in Submachine F L F.
• Shout Out - Submachine 2 opens woth the words “I didn’t wake up. And I do remember”, parodying the opening of “The Crimson Room”.

• The Wiki Rule - Submachine Wiki.
• Zeerust – You can tell that some of the abandoned technology is old both because of the dust and rust and also because much of it just looks dated otherwise.

[source]

Filed by Mateusz Skutnik at 3:31 am under Submachines
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Filed by Mateusz Skutnik at 5:27 am under Submachines
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reviews: jayisgames | gameshelf

This is NOT a game. This is NOT Submachine 7 either.  It’s a project I’ve been working on for two years and it’s my best representation of what the submachine net is. You can freely travel between different locations, read some theories and observe how things work inside this network of submachines. There are locations that you might recognize from previous submachine games, there’s a lot of new yet undiscovered content, there are even locations that you think you know, but they’re somehow different.  Surely worth a look. The best part – it’s an open project, which means I can add more locations later on and it will all work together smoothly. So, tinfoil hats on and start exploring if you dare, because there are some dark places inside.

Some might say that it’s an interactive bridge between submachine6 and [upcoming later this year] submachine7 – and you know what? They would be right.

P.S. – please don’t post location lists in the comments. I will delete them. Let’s keep it unspoiled for those to come.

changelog:

- [19/06/2010] Batch #2. 10 new locations (60 total); 8 locations from sub4; 1 location from sub5; 1 unseen location; 3 new theories;

- [15/06/2010] Major technical update. Redone the mechanics of location change in order to fix the loading problem when it froze after loading new set of rooms (aka the black screen of death).

-[19/09/2010] Batch #3.  10 new locations (70 total); 10 unseen locations; 10 new theories;

-[04/2011] Batch #4.  7 new locations (77 total); 5 unseen locations; 2 from sub7; 4 new theories;

Filed by Mateusz Skutnik at 1:34 pm under Submachines
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Audience participation in single-player adventures

By Andrew Plotkin

For the past few years, Mateusz Skutnik has been publishing a series of mini-graphical adventures (in Flash) called “Submachine”.

The games are spare on storyline, but each game has a little bit. Even if the pieces don’t fit together tidily… yet. As you might expect, there’s been lots of ongoing forum discussion about the series.

Now the author has put up a new Submachine site: Submachine Network Exploration Experience. This is explicitly not a game; it’s a set of interlinked mini-worlds, slices of the other games. The only “puzzles” are exploring and discovering new coordinates to explore. (Earlier games introduced a coordinate-based teleporter system.) But — this is the cool part — each mini-world contains some printed notes: forum transcripts, giving different people’s theories of what’s going on and what various parts of the game mean.

This is a lovely way to include the player community in what is, mechanically, a series of solo adventures. It incorporates player contributions; it acknowledges that player response is part of the story, without throwing “canon” (whatever that means) out the window (whatever that means). The Exploration site is clearly expandable — the creator can add new mini-worlds whenever he wants. Or add new transcript notes. It’s not part of the series (there will be more Submachine games) but it’s part of the world.

You know my kinks, Watson, so you know this immediately reminded me of Myst Online. Cyan’s project was a hugely ambitious MMO, of course, whereas Submachine is one designer’s tightly-scoped project. But with SNEE (do I call it “SNEE”?) Mateusz Skutnik is tackling the same issues: ongoing story and the fan community. And, I must admit, he’s now a step farther than Cyan ever managed.

(I don’t recommend you start with the SNEE site — it won’t mean much if you haven’t played the earlier games. Start with Submachine 1: the basement. The whole series is accessible from the Submachine World web site.)

[source]

Filed by Mateusz Skutnik at 2:31 am under Submachines
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